Break free is an 11th Grade U.S. history class project that is on-going. We take action on trying to change the way people perceive gender norms, racial issues and everything in between. We created eye-opening activities in class to help us grasp that Institutionalized racism is still very real. For example, We put up big posters with different races on them on the walls as we went around and wrote stereotypes about that race. We did this to realize we all have these ideas embedded in ourselves.
To further understand where stereotypes come from we read a passage from Claude M. Steele's, Whistling Vivaldi. The passage talks about growing up a black man an dealing with what the author calls a stereotype threat. A stereotype threat is “Stereotype threat is defined as a situational predicament in which individuals are at risk of confirming negative stereotypes about their group. It is the resulting sense that one might be judged in terms of negative stereotypes about one's group instead of on personal merit”.
Breakfree Writing
A large part of the breakfree project is creating a personal connection to the movement. We created small cards that were called "That Cards". These are personal anonymous moments that we wrote about that described a time that we felt marginalized or misunderstood. No matter what your race is, everyone deals with these problems.
Picture of everyone's "That" card at exhibition.
Breakfree Video Project
An addition to the breakfree movement project we created social experiment videos that would be presented at our exhibition and posted online. Below is our proposal outline for our video, Project pitch and my group's final video outcome.
Proposal to our teacher-Picture above
Project pitch to our class-Picture above
Final Video-Video above
Breakfree Reflection
Breakfree means quite a bit to me now. Going into this project I was kind of uncertain that my small class could make an impact. The Breakfree project helped me realize that major impact has to start somewhere. The hardest part of this project for me would most likely be opening up to my peers about personal experiences that I wouldn't even tell close family members. This point in the project was crucial because it taught everyone trust in eachother. I overcame it by stepping out of my comfort zone and just diving into it. I have a gained a new respect for the marginalized people in the world. It gave me insight on what these people deal with on the day to day. I could see this realization helping me work in group projects later because it taught me patience. It helped me understand my privilege a lot more. I hope future generations take breakfree as seriously as I did and fully dive into social issue with an open mind.
Exhibition at Queen Bees
Queen Bees is the venue we presented all of our work at. It was an open to the public exhibition in North Park, San Diego. Along side all of our breakfree work we presented songs we covered in music class that sang about struggles of people. For example, we played Beautiful-Christina Aguilera and Waiting on the World to Change by-John Mayer. This exhibition was definitely the best one I've done in my entire High Tech career. It was so great because everyone was so excited to share their personal pieces with the public for the first time. Sadly, there is no video footage of me presenting my personal piece. My piece was a ted talk about gentrification and the balance of socioeconomic status and community in neighborhoods. The last 2 pictures are me presenting at the all-school exhibition.