Working in NYC public schools is really like having the best of two worlds. On the one hand, you have access to so much culture, awesome trips, and people who can come in and speak to your kids about diverse subjects. On the other hand, you have to work under the Department of Education's strict guidelines. Depending on the school you work at, you may have a range of full to no freedom when it comes to what you can teach and how you can teach it in your classroom. This year my school falls closer to the latter category, which is why I decided to go against the grain and work on a project with my kids that involved them taking action and realizing their potential to change the world around them (cue sappy music).
One of the units of our mandated curriculum asked us to read a César Chavez speech, and focused on the idea of being an "agent of change." This gave me the idea to ask my students to look at themselves as potential agents of change. I decided to jump start this project with a special guest speaker who I believe is himself an agent of change, Shawn Garcia, founder of RevFit.
When I asked Shawn to come in and speak to my kids about why he started RevFit and the change he wished to make, he was all about the visit. He told me that's exactly what RevFit is all about. We scheduled a date, and before meeting him, my kids got a lesson about media literacy by learning to navigate the RevFit website and coming up with questions to ask Shawn when he came to visit.
In his talk, Shawn told us about his upbringing and how he saw that people living in certain underserved communities were so unhealthy because we simply don't have access to healthy food options and local, reasonably priced workouts and health classes. He told us statistics about the Bronx that shocked me and my students (did you know that the Bronx is the poorest county in the US, and the unhealthiest in New York?). He told us that he saw a need in his community and his people, and wanted to fill that void. He told us about how speaking to us was a way to spread the knowledge, even if we weren't all going to join RevFit. He told us about being ambassadors of health and caring enough about our loved ones to share what we know about being healthy.
After speaking to us, Shawn honestly inspired my students. They told me how much they admired his will to work for RevFit, despite how it wouldn't bring him wealth or material gains. They admired how smart he was, and that he followed this seemingly crazy dream of his. They even asked about volunteering for RevFit!
In a school system that constantly tells our kids to fill in bubbles and follow the rules, we sometimes need people to shake things up and go against the status quo. That's really the only way to make change happen. An agent is a person or thing that acts to have some kind of effect on something. With so many things wrong in our communities and in our world in general, we need more agents to carry out this change and spread that light to others. My students and I are so grateful to have had the opportunity to meet and be inspired not only by Shawn, but also all of RevFit and the work that they do. As Jim Carey said in a recent commencement speech, "Your need for acceptance will make you invisible in this world." It's the people in the world who don't accept the way of the world and who are willing to be made fun of or told that the good they are doing is unacceptable that really make change. We need more of those people, and I think Shawn's visit helped my kids see themselves in that light.