LYNN — While the Jean Charles Academy reimagines education, their students are reimagining the world.
As a part of the project-based humanities curriculum at the academy, students were introduced to the structure of countries, how they operate, and how citizens can affect change.
“The World Fair requires students to pull together what they have learned over the course of the school year and use those skills to build a park, state, or country,” said JCA Founder Nakia Navarro in a statement.
The different grade levels at JCA tackled this challenge in different ways, Navarro said. Kindergarten through second grade students designed parks based on the parks they visited throughout the school year and pitched the designs to Mayor Jared Nicholson.
Third through fifth grade students created states, and sixth and seventh graders designed countries. These students were required to discuss “equal rights, accessibility of all people, and costs associated with building accessible spaces.” In addition, students also had to “create a state or country flag, bill of rights, determine a system to maintain the peace, education systems, and build a scene from a major historical moment in their state or country’s history.”
The park projects stood out in particular, Navarro said.
“The hardest to forget is the K-2 cohort parks. The kids did a simply fantastic job. They created a budget that offered residents above livable wages, increased the number of garbage cans, increased the number of trees, and made sure that there were safe, clean places within their design for youth to play and dance,” she said.
Other students were tasked with making their own economies after learning about capitalism, socialism, shared economy, and communism.
Jean Charles Academy is an independent school based in Lynn that is focused on serving the educational needs of Black, Brown, Asian and no- to low-income communities. The school grew out of a six-week educational summer program, after parents expressed their desire for a year-long program. Jean Charles Academy hosted in-person education for 40 founding families in the 2021-2022 academic year.
The World Fair will become an annual event.
Emma Fringuelli can be reached at [email protected].
