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Community Partners
VUE Number 7, Spring 2005
An interview with Elana Karopkin  Audio Clip 1
Elana Karopkin is principal of the Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice in Brooklyn, New York.
What do you think the partnerships at your school bring to your students?
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TEXT VERSION:
I think the partnerships bring a lot of wonderful things to the students and to the school. One of the most important things that they bring is a sense of, why are we doing all of this? There's just a sense of real authenticity when, instead of just learning about something, you're actually doing it and doing it with professionals in that field.
For example, in the first few days of high school, our students write opening statements, which are really persuasive essays in disguise, about a fictitious trial, and then they go and present them in a real law firm in front of lawyers, and they get feedback, not just from their teachers but also from practicing attorneys, who have to in day-to-day life use true skills of argumentation. So it's experiences like that that really give a very strong or at least part of a strong why: why go to school, why care about high school, why is that important. Lots and lots of students cite "I don't understand why what I'm learning is important" as a reason for a lack of engagement, and I think the partnerships really help to defeat that.
Another partnership that we have as an example that is pretty powerful is that our students work with an organization called DCTV and they are working on the production of a documentary. So they learn about film editing, they learn about documentary, what it is, why they're important, and how they're created. But they don't learn this, again, just from their teacher; they are working hand in hand with a documentarian. And then they are actually creating a documentary. The school on its own would never have the resources to hire a bunch of lawyers and a documentarian, and have a law firm in our building, and also access to video editing equipment, but through our partnerships, we're able to bring those things into the lives of our kids.
Another really important reason to have partnerships is this idea of interest. Our students all say they are interested in issues of law and justice when they come to the school. That's the only thing that they have in common. But even for students who haven't articulated a particular thematic interest, getting students into hands-on, real-life learning generates interest. It makes school a place that they like to come, where they think important things are going on. It's really the partnerships that help us breathe life into our reading and writing and numeracy curriculum. And so it's for those reasons I think they actually help with our school's academic program.
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