July/August 2008
Alumni Corner
“Yes We Can” Inspires Bronx Students
By John Shafer ’05
Jackson Shafer ’05 has used Barack Obama '83’s theme of "Yes We Can" to inspire his students in the South Bronx. I remember the moment in my Literature Humanities class when I realized I needed to be a teacher. My professor, the phenomenal Julie Bleha ’96 GSAS, ’98 GSAS, inspired me to sink my teeth into the intimidating morass of Virginia Woolf’s narrative. Pained by the thought that we wouldn’t get to fully explore the previous night’s reading, I realized that I wanted to share this information with everyone I knew. I wanted to help others unlock this incredibly exciting world that I once feared was too complex and sophisticated for my young and inexperienced analytic powers. Then I spent a day of volunteer work with Columbia Community Outreach. For a moment each year, Columbia’s insulating geographic bubble bursts and students flood more neglected areas of the city with much-needed energy. The students I met in Harlem were interested in hearing about my class and they were excited to go to college. I, of course, encouraged them to apply to Columbia, an educational institution I believe provides one of the most balanced and inspiring core curricula.
I work in the South Bronx at a high school of 400 students. I found my way into this classroom as a member of New York City Teaching Fellows immediately following college. The Teaching Fellows program allows an alternative route to certification while providing under-resourced schools with young and motivated teachers. I quickly learned that my students had never been very interested in politics or in issues facing the world outside of the South Bronx. When I asked many of them who our Vice President is, most responded with blank stares. It saddened me that my students felt so little connection to their federal government. I only realized the full extent of these disenfranchised feelings when multiple students asked me, “Is the White House named ‘white’ because it was meant to be exclusively for white people?” These students believed that not only did their voices not matter but that their leaders were explicitly determined to quiet their voices and protests.
As I walked into the teacher’s lounge on January 4, I found two of my colleagues so emotional that they couldn’t speak. I asked them what was wrong and they told me that they never thought they would live to see the day that a state that was 94 percent white would vote for a black man. I realized that my students had to know about this. In my 12th-grade English Honors class we had been discussing race in American literature. We had spent the fall reading James McBride, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the students’ understanding of race and racial politics in America had become nuanced and profound. I brought in the New York Times article that described Barack Obama ’83’s Democratic primary win in Iowa and shared it with my students. We discussed it as a postscript to the literature and history we had been discussing in class. One of my students raised his hand and with tears in his eyes told me that he had never believed that someone who looked like him could ever really be accepted by white people and rise to a position of power and authority. The class was stunned. The “us versus them” mentality that had surrounded their lives was beginning to crumble.
Students were suddenly talking elections and politics. Thirty minutes before class I found my classroom full with inquiring students wanting to know about the next elections. I started to teach the electoral process to my English Language Learners. These students are from Ghana, Yemen, Honduras, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Cambodia, Puerto Rico, Peru and Ecuador, but they all became inspired by the new messages of hope and unity. Students began to regale me with stories about debates they were having with their parents. Parents were blown away with how much their children cared and how knowledgeable they had become. The day after Super Tuesday, my room was packed with students wanting to hear my analysis. The same students who hadn’t known who our Vice President was asked me about demographic breakdowns, exit polling and voter trends.
Then Obama’s “Yes We Can” speech altered the dialogue in my classroom. Students were transfixed. They asked if they could write their own Yes We Can speeches. Seeing this as an ideal teaching opportunity, I agreed. These speeches motivated my classroom. I needed only to mention “yes we can” and watch homework, classwork, attention and the level of respect improve within the classroom.
Inspired, I sent an e-mail to the Obama campaign alerting them to the excitement inside my classroom. To my amazement, the campaign responded to my e-mail and suggested that the words of my students be shared with a larger audience. Two months later, a 13-minute video was posted on the Obama campaign Web site (available on YouTube) that featured my students discussing the themes of race and empowerment in their lives.
The response we have received from this video is hard for me to comprehend. It has had approximately 400,000 hits and has been featured in classrooms across America and abroad as an example of inspired teaching and student engagement in the classroom. My students have received hundreds of personal responses from Nigeria to New Zealand thanking them for sharing their voices and opinions. Many people expressed their desire for my students to be the future leaders of the world. The same students who thought the White House was reserved for white people were being listened to, appreciated and celebrated.
I became a teacher because of Columbia. It was there that I honed my skills as an actor, thinker, activist, volunteer, friend, academic, adviser, artist and tutor. I learned how to live, love and learn during those thought-filled four years in Morningside Heights. The greatest lesson I learned in my history and English majors is that group-oriented thinking has been the root cause of most of the strife and discord throughout history. Transcending this became a life goal and a consistent theme inside my classroom. I would like to share with the greater Columbia community the vision that all people need and deserve the chance to believe in themselves as individuals. I took for granted my inherent faith that I would be able to succeed in college. We need to empower future generations to believe that they can succeed in college and in life no matter who they are, where they come from or what they look like.