On Saturday, April 28th, the NYCSU will be hosting SlamJam, an open-mic performance space for students from throughout the city to connect and express the vibrant culture we students can create. The SlamJam fulfill one of the Unions major goals, bringing students from around the city together to create a common community. We have space at the Lafayette Presbyterian Church in Fort Greene, Brooklyn from 7-11pm.

Tell ALL YOUR FRIENDS!!! POST FLYERS IN YOUR SCHOOL!!

Any one you know who does poetry, plays an instrument, sings, raps, dances or anything else creative….COME AND BRING YOUR FRIENDS!!!

This is a really great growth opportunity for the Union!

The address of the Lafayette Presbyterian Church is:

85 S. Oxford St
Brooklyn, NY

at the corner of Lafayette Ave and S. Oxford St.

TRAINS:
A,C to Lafayette Ave.
G to Fulton St.
2,3,4,5,R,M, N,D,B to Atlantic Ave-Pacific St. (a little farther a way that the A,C, or G)

There will be an NYCSU meeting this monday (April 9th) at the UFT offices at 50 Broadway on the 2nd Floor at 5:00PM. All students are invited.
-Seth

Clearly, it is easy enough to say that a school must become a home, but how do we make it happen? What constitutes a home? How can we apply the comfort and sense of ownership that we feel toward our homes to our schools? The NYC Student Union has begun to identify the institutions within schools that determine whether students feel that their school belongs to the student body and school faculty as a community, or that it belongs to someone else who is separate and different from this community.

At the present time, we have divided these institution into six categories. They do not speak for the entirety of the issue, but are a first step to breaking down student apathy and building new ways for students to truly love their schools.

I. The Physical Building
-Students will have increased access to the school building and all of its facilities
-Students will be encouraged to use the physical space for a large variety of constructive purposes, using the inherent creativity of youth to turn schools into major cultural centers

II. Rules and Regulations
-School rules will be constantly evaluated to make sure that they are not only purposeful, but meaningful.
-A rule’s ability to make students feel secure must always outweigh its ability to make students feel oppressed

III. Representation
-Effective student governments will exist in all schools, allowing the student body an accessible way to make real change within their schools.
-Students will have equal representation always in organizations such as School Leadership Teams (SLT)

IV. Security
-Security will be focused on positive action instead of negative reinforcement
- security guards, for example, might hold workshops on self-defense or gang violence, establishing a positive relationship between security and the student body.

V. The Classroom
-Emphasis on critical thinking is crucial. Schools will experiment with creative, flexible ways to assess students and will not depend on standardized testing.
-Smaller class sizes will allow classes to become places of deep thinking, discussion, and learning, rather than fact factories.

VI. Student Rights
-Students will have, and will be aware of, immutable rights that provide them with real strength to combat foul-play and authoritarianism in schools

The Campaign Against Student Apathy (CASA) is The New York City Student Union’s newest, most groundbreaking project. We seek to identify the causes of student apathy within our schools, our communities, our government, and ourselves, and construct a new plan for how we can maximize the potential of every student, not only to learn, but to become active, engaged, and to positively change the world around them.

Student apathy is a large and complicated idea, and sometimes seems difficult to stick into a package, like CASA. But student apathy becomes concrete and very real when we recognize the ways in which it manifests itself. An astonishingly high dropout rate, a low percentage of students involved in extra- and co-curricular activities, low test scores, truancy, vandalism, and even classroom violence are all caused, ultimately, by student apathy.

After hours of discussion with students from schools around New York City, we realize that student apathy pervades all schools, high and low performing, well- and under-funded, specialized and zoned. Consequently, we have concluded that student apathy originates at a place much deeper than the sources traditionally cited as causes of student failure. Student apathy comes from the universal feeling that we, students, are herded around what feels like a learning factory (or worse, if there is little learning happening), nameless and faceless - merely a desk that isn’t empty, and that in four years, we will graduate and move on, never to return.

This is why we must, above all, turn our schools into much more than schools for our students. We must turn them into homes.
Hence, CASA. Home.