Photo credit: Brenna Kennedy-Moore. Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi were sophomores at Princeton High School when they realized something: Their school had a race problem, and no one seemed to know how to address it. Did you know that 3 out of 4 white people don't have a single friend of color? “We had a personal responsibility to do something,” Guo said. The only way we’re going to get people to care about people who look different than them is to humanize them through storytelling. TV: How does the idea of racial literacy go beyond the classroom? These two young women recognized … Three out of four white people don’t have a single friend of color. ( Log Out / To revisit this article, select My Account, then View saved stories. The School Vouchers Betsy DeVos Supports Might Promote Segregation. We will continue to lead Choose but then Princeton High school will become one of the chapters and we have young boosters, juniors and sophomores who are willing to take that on. ( Log Out / And it's the winner of the 2016 Princeton University Princeton Prize in Race Relations, the 2016 Joint Effort’s Witherspoon-Jackson Community Youth To Watch, and the 2016 Not In Our Town’s Unity Award, among others . We are very passionate about making sure that these stories feel like they are on a deserving platform. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Because the story really helps spark empathy, and then the stats ground the interview.". How did you become aware that there is an incomplete understanding of racism for so many people? For more information, see our website: http://www.princeton.edu/sjp/. We just love the intersection of current events in reality with course content and it’s got to be the most engaging work. WG: We are really very proud of the second edition but we recognize that there are so many things that need to be improved. Photo credit: Brenna Kennedy-Moore By Nellie Ghosheh and Yelena Serrato Burbank, ILL. and Floydada, Texas While walking laps around their high school’s track during gym class, Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi began a conversation that exposed a deep interest in… "We were suffering from conversations in the classroom where we were being pressured to speak on behalf of our entire race [and] basically nobody was investing in racial literacy," Vulchi tells Bustle. The two teenagers began driving around their hometown, Princeton, New Jersey, and asking strangers to share their experiences with racism. It enables students to enact change, it inspires activists so students leave the classroom not only equipped with other literacy such as math, reading, and science to make a difference in the world ,but they are equipped now with a will and a fight in them for social justice. What we need to do is equip all students with the historical and sociological toolkit for racial literacy.” and that’s really what our book strives to do is just to equip these students with the proper toolkit to talk about race in America. PV: Winona and I both got accepted into, Winona into Harvard and me into Princeton, but we want to take a gap year to further develop The Classroom Index. We wanted to prove to people who were telling us that racism didnât exist here, go to the next town over. And, obviously, vote!!! In the following months, Guo and Vulchi wrote The Classroom Index, a 224-page racial literacy textbook, sponsored by Princeton University, that draws on the stories they collected and supplements them with statistics and research about systemic racism. So, when we started out that is what we encountered but afterwards, when we started exposing the reality of race relations in America, we discovered a lot of students who had this burden on their shoulders and have since joined the movement. Meet teenagers Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo who collaborated with Princeton University on ‘The Classroom Index,’ a textbook devoted to racial literacy. Priya and Winona are co-authors of “Tell Me Who You Are: Sharing Our Stories of Race, Culture, and Identity. Added to this, they presented a TED talk entitled “What it Takes to be Racially Literate.” That talk was named one of the top three best presentations of TEDWomen by Forbes. With the assistance of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton, Priya and Winona developed Princeton Choose: The Classroom Index, a racial literacy textbook and toolkit made up of personal stories and research that makes it easier for teachers to talk about race in the classroom. Photo credit: Brenna Kennedy-Moore By Nellie Ghosheh and Yelena Serrato Burbank, ILL. and Floydada, Texas While walking laps around their high school’s track during gym class, Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi began a conversation that exposed a deep interest in… When race is mentioned, it’s only in history class when slavery is taught. So current events and even the election. In fall 2018, the two will be heading off to college â Vulchi is heading to Princeton, and Guo will be going to Harvard â and they plan to release the second, more comprehensive version of The Classroom Index. Choosing Racial Literacy with Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo. What do you think needs to be done (specifically) in classrooms? TV: You have a diverse team of 10 members working with you on The Classroom Index. Let’s start with the basics. By Winona Guo (News & Features Co-Editor) and Elliot Wailoo (News & Features Co-Editor) Graphic: Nina Zhong. We weren’t sure when we started, if we wanted to commit our time and energy to this work but we decided that it is worth it. There have been people from the beginning who have really believed in us and took the time to help us especially Ayesha Qureshi our communications manager and Protim Adhikari who was the first member of our adult advisory board, all of whom we are grateful for. WG: We are the type of students who enjoy all of our classes. Thereâs a huge culture of silence in our town," Vulchi says. WG: After we leave, Priya and I will continue to do Choose and morph it into a racial and social justice advocacy work for the rest of our lives. The list on what can be done better is endless. Gain that consciousness, and we hope that you’ll begin to care about how all these injustices in our world must be changed. While walking laps around their high school’s track during gym class, Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi began a conversation that exposed a deep interest in racial literacy. Students across the nation are opening our book and looking at stories that probably donât reflect or represent the neighborhood or states that they live in," Vulchi says. ... Winona Guo is a co-founder of CHOOSE and author of "Tell Me Who You Are" (Penguin Random House, June 2019). There needs to be a balance of both, the gap between our hearts and minds needs to be bridged, in order for us to have a complete understanding of the way race operates in America. Our end goal is for The Classroom Index to become the leading social-justice educator tool in America. They want people to feel proud of their own background while also taking the time to listen to other people’s stories, no matter who they are. A Lab Report On Princeton’s Ph.D. Assemblyman. PV: When we first started, we had difficulty in creating a team because in the town we live there is a huge culture of silence. Winona Guo: We actually met sophomore year and we had the same AP U.S. History teacher and in class we had been talking about Eric Garner, Ferguson, and … So we thought why not take the model that we created pairing stories and teachers' lesson plans to really talk about all of these social justice issue that really matter. We hope that it will impact classrooms nationwide and that all K-12 students in the United States will develop the tools for racial literacy using our book as a platform. I spoke with Winona and Priya about their thoughtful, passionate, and creative work in bringing the change we so desperately need. . Read books by well-respected experts on race — The New Jim Crow, The Fire Next Time, Race Matters are all some we love. Vulchi and Guo are now sophomores at Princeton and Harvard, respectively. We chatted with the two young activists about racial literacy, their textbook, the importance of diverse stories, their hopes for the future, and more. ", "I donât think I have particularly a favorite state or a state that sticks out to me, but just the people in every place we go. In 1903, the African American scholar and author W.E.B DuBois wrote these words: “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.” In 2018, the words of Dr. Dubois continue to haunt us. We went from 50-something pages to 224 pages; it was sponsored by the Princeton University Department of African American Studies and the Princeton Education Foundation. TV: On your website, you ask visitors to share their stories. Lots of the research we know and believe are from books like these. They started Choose itself with the goal of joining the movement around and the discussion of race, but its creation in its early stages left even their friends skeptical for the need to discuss race. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Priya Vulchi (left) and Winona Guo co-founded CHOOSE, which aims to build racial literacy among students. PV: Winona and I both have AP Government and Politics and this is with the same teacher who inspired us to first start Choose sophomore year while speaking about current events in AP U.S. History class. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. What research and fact-finding practices can you share with Smart Girls? The nonprofit aims to drive meaningful conversations about race among grade-school students by creating a curriculum based on racial literacy. Princeton High School senior Winona Guo has been named a 2017 U.S. Presidential Scholar. WG: In so many schools and districts across the nation social justice and social literacy education is still so lacking and social justice education we feel is everything. Why is storytelling such an important aspect of racial literacy? About Tell Me Who You Are. For quantitative and academic research: Find credible sources!! To avoid that, we designed our textbook so that pressure can be alleviated from the handful of minority [students] in the classrooms and onto the diverse faces within the pages of our book. Winona Guo 's Work. The movement, The Classroom Index, and Choose, and all the amazing people we have met over the past two years have really inspired me and Priya, I’m sure, to dedicate our lives to this work. There are studies out there that show that kids start recognizing racism as young as 3 and 4 and these kids are recognizing these issues and not talking about them in the classroom and that is totally not okay. One of the things we talk about at Smart Girls is the importance of finding out what you care about, what injustices you want to shine a light on, then participating in finding lasting solutions. Change ), The Princeton Summer Journal is a publication of the Princeton University Summer Journalism Program, which annually brings 35-40 low-income high school students from across the country to Princeton's campus for an intensive, all-expenses-paid 10-day seminar on journalism and college admissions. Then, brainstorm how you can leverage your skills and resources and identities… to make a dent in that world. Living in [New York City] we can be exposed to more stories and connect it to more people and talk about race and social justice. The conversation just felt really detached from the actual people, the lived experience, and it was almost as if people were becoming desensitized by the cold stats. Make sure people of color are getting to vote and are not disenfranchised. "This journey has really showed us that coming out of high school, writing this textbook on racial literacy â we had this idea that we were racially literate, that we knew what we were talking about.