In my eyes, to be progressive is to represent, support, and improve the lives of those who face struggles with a better and more unified future in mind.
For the Progressive Challenge, everyone in our class had to choose an issue that personally meant a lot to them, and that they wanted to make a positive impact on. The results ranged from water pollution, to cyber bullying, to veterans. We were all put in groups of 2-4 based on what we chose individually.
My group's topic was the LGBT community. The reason I chose this topic is because it's been growing more relevant and talked about in recent years, and a lot of the issues surrounding it are very personal to me and mean a lot to me. It's an issue that has to be talked about if we ever want to see progress in it.
Our first step was to gather research from articles.
In our research, we found three informative sources: "Being African American & LGBTQ," an article detailing experiences and hardships faced specifically on African American members of the community, "Like Walking Through a Hailstorm," about discrimination against LGBT youth in US schools, and "LGBT Homelessness," about the struggles of homeless members of the community. Then, we included two scientific sources with statistics from studies: "Gay and Transgender Youth Homelessness by the Numbers," documenting the number of homeless gay and transgender youth in the country, and "LGBT seniors face harder old age," which included statistics from a national study of LGBT people ages 50 and above. Finally, we researched one opinionated commentary source: "Victim of LGBT Student Bullying In Ohio Tells His Story," a video of a gay high school student named Zach telling about his experiences being bullied for his sexual orientation.
The next step was to conduct interviews with different people: an opposer of LGBT rights, an advocate for them, a professional, and a member of the community who was victim of oppression. This was to give us multiple perspectives on the issue on a more personal level, so we could better understand how to create a solution. Additionally, our group also had an "immersion day" where we had to insert ourselves into a situation that a person in the LGBT community would face, and document our reflections on it. In our immersion, I walked at Balboa park with my group partner, Eliott, holding his hand as if we were in a relationship.
Here is a video of our reflections.
With all of our research and interviews and immersion experiences put into consideration, we created an "Interrelationship Digraph," a chart webbing together different aspects of society and how they affect each other and in relation to LGBT issues.
The arrows on the chart point from one part of society to the other part that it affects. So, for example, an arrow points from "Family influences" to "Self Image" because the former is what causes an effect on the latter. From this, we observed that "Self Image" (the way victims of discrimination in the LGBT community see and respect themselves) was what had the most aspects of society influencing it. The conclusion we drew was in the form of a statement called the "Human Centered Problem Statement": "Multiple cases of even minor or unintentional discrimination can lower one’s self esteem greatly, making them unwilling to express themselves freely."
From this statement, we had to figure out an invention or idea that could be created to cause the biggest positive effect on the issue. After some brainstorming, our first idea we landed on was making a children's book focusing on LGBT topics, as none of use had ever really seen too many books focusing on them. However, after doing some looking around, we found that there were plenty kid-friendly LGBT books, and the main problem was that people weren't seeing them. Thus, what we finally decided to create for our project was a bookshelf!
Our bookshelf was one that could be easily transported around a school and between schools, with books about LGBT rights and general acceptance and respect for others aimed at elementary school kids. Our reasoning behind this was the fact that we as people develop our understanding of what's normal pretty early on. Someone who spent their entire childhood without any exposure to a certain community would only know about said community from things they hear about them, regardless of whether these things were true. With this bookshelf, young kids would be able to learn about topics that are too often considered to be "too adult" to talk about to them in our society and further educate them on these issues. That way, they'll be less likely to develop prejudices against this community as they'll already know it as something familiar and normal.
To put our project into use, we had a "Progressive Day" where we went out and tested the idea with a target audience. At a nearby elementary school, we showed a couple of fifth grade classes our idea, and some of the books, asking what they thought of them. In addition, we also visited first grade classes, as the books we had were more fitted for that grade level, and read to them. Initially I was concerned with how everything would go, but in the end, it went rather smoothly! The students, from the first graders to the fifth graders, were all invested in what we showed them and were very open when it came to sharing their thoughts. Here's a video containing pictures and videos from this experience, as well as some further reflections:
Doing this project was certainly not like anything I've ever done for school before. It genuinely felt like my group's project could make an important impact. In fact, from our Progressive Day, I'd say it already has! That's what I can appreciate the most about this project: it felt important. Personally, I can definitely see our mobile library idea being something that catches on in different schools, which is super cool. However, this project definitely was hard at times; I'd say the most challenging parts were the times where I had to contact people to visit the school and for interviews. I'm not used to reaching out to strangers, and that's something I hope to improve on. This project has proven to me that it's not that scary, nothing disastrous at all happened.
After creating our idea and showing it to the students, I hope that they've learned something from it. Especially the first graders, as they were closer to our target audience with the books we displayed. My ultimate wish is that they were able to intake what we read to them and bring it to heart. For them to learn to respect others despite everyone's differences, to not laugh at someone or bully someone because they may seem unusual, that's the impact I hope to make on not only that class, but children across the country, across the world. Maybe someday our idea can make it that far.