Racism and Inequity in Structures of Education (RISE) to the Forefront

RISE (Racism and Inequity in Structures of Education) to the Forefront’s mission is to bridge the gap between scholarship done around race and schooling with community activist efforts. By bringing together both marginalized high school students and UC Berkeley students and working closely with educators and UC Berkeley faculty, we foster an essential community partnership to challenge educational disparity in the city of Berkeley.

Over the last year, RISE to the Forefront established a collaborative community partnership with the alternative high school in the Berkeley Unified School District, Berkeley Technology Academy (B-Tech). As co-instructors of a course at B-Tech called Sociology of Knowledge, we built relationships with students, teachers, and the principal. Together we created a digital zine, acting as the school’s first newspaper. To culminate the first year of the partnership, we hosted a conference on May 21, 2008 called A Dialogue on Collaborative Community Partnership for Educational Equity and Youth Empowerment. This conference was a space to inform our future work.

Future goals include the institutionalization of the Berkeley Youth Collective in Fall 2008. This after school youth collective, also funded by the Chancellor's Community Partnership Grant, will be a space created by and for B-Tech and UC Berkeley students. As B-Tech students collaborate, create, and implement year-long auto-ethnographic human rights research projects, UC Berkeley mentors and community partners will guide the development of literacy, writing, math, and technology skills that dramatically expand college preparatory educational opportunity. This after-school collective will provide a safe, supportive, and academically-enriching space for continuation high school youth to develop personally and collectively. The end result will be a unique community collaborative informed by high school students’ research and students developing access to higher education.