Public Achievement

What is Public Achievement?

Public Achievement (PA) is a national grassroots civic engagement initiative that strives to engage young people in public work, community organizing and social change movements. The goal of PA is to empower youth to become active participants in the struggle for positive change in their own communities. To this end, youth in small groups partner with Naropa coaches over a sustained period of time and actively work together on a project that affects themselves and their community.

Coaches assist the youth in choosing an issue in their school/community/world that they feel passionate about and want to work on. The youth themselves decide on a project to address this issue, and then work to complete this project over the course of time they work with their coach.

Coaches do not control or direct the group, but are there as scaffolding to help youth to make their own decisions regarding what is important and how they want to get things done. Through the process of working on their project, coaches make connections between the work the students are doing and core concepts such as accountability, public work, diversity and power. A major goal of PA is that the time spend working on these projects will help youth develop skills and knowledge that they will continue to use to do public work throughout their lives.

Public Achievement at Naropa University

The academic year 2007–08 marks the fourth year that Naropa University has hosted Public Achievement at Centaurus High School. Students at Naropa who enroll for one or both semesters of HUM 330/331: Democracy, Education, and Social Change serve as Public Achievement coaches at Centaurus on Thursdays, and also meet once a week as a class to reflect and critically examine their work in light of course readings and lectures on educational theory, social policy and child development.

Last year Naropa started an exciting new Public Achievement Program at Angevine Middle School in Lafayette. We are very excited about the format of this program: Each Thursday, Naropa students bring a small group of Centaurus High School seniors who went through Public Achievement the year before coaching a sixth and seventh grade class at Angevine Middle School. Naropa students coordinate these Centaurus seniors and Angevine students.

Occasionally Naropa students also serve as coaches at Whittier Elementary School in Boulder, coaching small groups of school-aged children in the development of social action projects.

Past Projects

The following are a few of the issues that have been addressed in the past by Centaurus students and their Naropa coaches.

• bilingual counseling
• campaigns to address African genocide
• campus beautification
• creation of campus murals to address diversity and unity
• curriculum revisioning
• diversity awareness
• driver’s licenses for undocumented Immigrants
• extending the youth curfew in Lafayette
• hip hop as a tool for consciousness raising
• public perception of Centaurus High School
• raising critical consciousness about war
• school parking permits for undocumented students
• securing a youth venue
• teen parenting and teen pregnancy resource development

How To Get Involved

If you would like to get involved or learn more about this program, please contact Jessica Giles, Director of Community Studies at 303-245-4719 or jgiles@naropa.edu. The Community Studies Center’s office is located on the second floor of the 2111 Arapahoe office building in the Northwest corner.

Coaches

Max Gibson (Kansas City, MO)

Max is a senior Interdisciplinary Studies major combining Contemplative Psychology, Environmental Studies and Humanities, and would like to pursue work supporting the growth of youth. Max’s PA group at Centaurus High School is working to raise awareness of genocide and systemic poverty in Uganda.

Aaron Guman (West Chester, PA)

Aaron, a sophomore, is a visiting student from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, but is seriously considering staying at Naropa for the duration of his undergraduate years, majoring in Interdisciplinary studies with a focus in Peace Studies and Psychology. Before college, Aaron spent the first eighteen years of his life in West Chester, Pennsylvania. As far as careers go, he’s looking into counseling, ministry, teaching and nonprofit work - and probably a combination of all these. Aaron’s Public Achievement group is working on renovating the bathrooms at Centaurus, to improve morale and cleanliness in order to create a more enjoyable environment for living and learning. He says that his experience in Public Achievement may be the coolest thing he’s ever done.

Amelia Charles (Pioneer Valley, MA)

Amelia is a senior pursuing an Interdisciplinary degree in Peace Studies, Religious Studies and Environmental Studies with a minor in Writing and Literature. Amelia is writing her thesis on the role of the freedom songs of the Civil Rights Movement as a community organizing methodology. She is interested in becoming bilingual in Spanish and pursuing a career as a community organizer. The PA group Amelia currently coaches is working towards painting a culturally diverse and youth-oriented mural on the main wall outside of Centaurus High School, in their own words, "to open the community's eyes to our school and the greatness held inside." They intend to use graffiti as the writing style because it "has been used historically as a vehicle for youth artists to express themselves when they feel invisible in society." They also intend to depict their school mascot, a (white) male Roman warrior, “alongside a female Aztec warrior, to represent the gender unity and diversity on Centaurus' campus. The Aztec warrior is also honoring the history of Hispanic and Chicano@ culture in Colorado."

Leanne Bird (Vancouver, BC)

Leanne is a senior in the Contemplative Psychology Department with a focus in Somatic Psychology. She currently serves as Coach Coordinator for the Angevine Public Achievement Program.  After college she is interested in continuing to work with civic engagement programs for youth, and in exploring the connection between psychology and social engagement. She also wants to do work with women and in the public school system. When she was a coach at Centaurus she worked with two groups—one that changed policy at their school so that undocumented students could now obtain permits for their cars, and another that organized a series of diversity dialogues at their school around topics such as religion, gender and sexual orientation. For the past two years Leanne has been coaching Centaurus High School seniors on how to serve as coaches for middle school students at Angevine Middle School.

Leah Tisdale (Canada)

Jenna Corbin (San Diego, CA)

Tyler Harrell (Norfolk, VA)