Hanah Nguyen: Let’s do a hand heart, person on your left. Good morning.

Student: Good morning.

Nguyen: Eye contact, person on your right. Good morning.

Student: Good morning.

Nguyen: Because we combine diversity, equity, and inclusion work with project-based learning, our students are better able to understand themselves, each other, and their community. They have the self-confidence to really share their stories and inspire others to share their identity.

Cynthia Robinson-Rivers: We want to really focus on students developing positive identities.

Student: Just being yourself in general and being a part of our school family.

Robinson-Rivers: And it’s something that for many groups of our students, we have to mitigate against negative images that they see of themselves in the media, so that they can develop that positive identity.

Student: I really like drawing. That’s what I’m really most proud of.

Nguyen: Project-based learning is really about student-centered practice. For students to be engaged, to be invested, to love what they are doing, and this is the very first year that I’ve really focused on identity work.

2020 was tough.

Student: Yeah, it was.

Nguyen: 2021 was tougher.

Student: It was OK.

Nguyen: It was rough. It was rough as coming back from the pandemic. What were some of the problems that we saw?

Student: We saw that people are sometimes forgetting how to be a friend to others, and being in a community with other people.

Nguyen: Right. Talk about our solution, because it’s huge, right? And it’s almost invisible at times. Like, I thought to my feelings, it’s hard to see, it’s hard to sense. So what is our solution to this then?

Student: We’re trying to make poetry that tries to inspire people to be themselves, inspire them to be able to express kindness and compassion.

Student: This project, it means a lot to me, because I really want to inspire other people that there are second chances and that you can change, you can make this world a better place.

Nguyen: We were saying, what is something that we could do, as a school family, to inspire others? Their immediate answer was, “We want to create a mural.”

[Students cheering.]

Student: Now we’re talking.

Student: It’s beautiful.

[Students applauding.]

Nguyen: And then one student said, “Well, what about a butterfly? We’ve been trapped for so long. We were in this cocoon for so long, for so many years. And then now that we’re in school and we’re learning from each other, we’re actually blossoming and we’re able to, like, fly.

Dakota: We thought, like, if we had a piece of a wing, we can all put our identity in them and put what we like, what we do, our traditions. Like, that’s how we came up with the poem, and we put each of it together and it made this beautiful butterfly.

Nguyen: So writing the poem, we found pieces of our identity that we were most proud of, the parts of ourselves that we wanted to share with the world. Across the entire mosaic, they highlighted the word that meant the most to them.

What is your word?

Student: Alive.

Nguyen: Alive. What was your word?

Student: Confidence.

Nguyen: Confidence. What was yours, Alex?

Student: My name.

[Applause.]

Nguyen: Your name. Your name is a beautiful, beautiful word.

And the lights are going underneath each of those words to highlight the parts of themselves that they want to reveal to others. The parts of themselves that they believe make the community a better place.

Aden: I picked “Never give up” to light up.

Nguyen: And why did you pick that?

Aden: Because I don’t want nobody to ever give up, because I know they can do it. Anything’s possible.

Nguyen: Today, students planned out how they were going to build their circuits. They went shopping for all the different pieces that they were going to use, and there were multiple different batteries, different lights that they could use.

Student: Done.

Nguyen: They worked together to build each of the circuits and then inserted them into our mural.

Aden: The back where it was dark is like the darkness in life, and we are the light. Like, it’s like, the light is making the darkness go away.

Nguyen: A lot of things have surprised me throughout this entire process. I think the big part of it is the sense of vulnerability that this has allowed for the classroom community. You’re learning about their families. You’re learning about what their experience was in 2020. You’re learning about what they’re going through right now and why it’s so hard to be back in school again.

Student: Teamwork makes the dream work.

Nguyen: The root of teaching in itself is relationships, and you create a relationship through the everyday interactions that you have and the little moments that you build. It’s that you know my mom’s name, that you know what I did over the weekend, that you know what my hopes and dreams are, that you know that I spend my entire Saturday with my grandparents and taking care of my sister. It’s, like, the little stories that, like, build that trust.

Robinson-Rivers: Teachers like Ms. Nguyen do that so beautifully, where they’re building the community of the students together, helping them to be empathetic and compassionate to one another, but also with each individual child. When they have a positive self-identity, when they have confidence, when they have the tenacity and perseverance, they’re going to be better contributors to society.

Student: And trying to do something to help people and show your identity, and make the world better than you found it.

Schools That Work

Van Ness Elementary School