How many TUSD students get to Skype with Yale profs and students?

by David Safier

What does it mean to TUSD middle school students who get to participate in a UA class and be accepted, listened to, applauded? You think it might make the dream of attending college seem a little more real?

How about if some TUSD students have the opportunity to Skype with profs and students at Yale? I mean, Yale! Geez! For those young Skypers, Yale is no longer some strange, unapproachable place that might as well be in the next galaxy. Those young men and women talked back and forth with people at one of the most prestigious universities in the country. The country, hell. One of the most prestigious universities in the world!

It happened Wednesday night.

Last night (February 22, 2012), students from the now-banned Mexican American Studies (MAS) classes at Tucson Unified School District skyped in from Tucson to New Haven, Connecticut, for a Teach-In at Yale University.

Last night (February 22, 2012), students from the now-banned Mexican American Studies (MAS) classes at Tucson Unified School District skyped in from Tucson to New Haven, Connecticut, for a Teach-In at Yale University.

I'm sure if you gave a standard Civics quiz to students who taken MAS courses — how many Supreme Court justices are there, what are the three branches of government, what are the contents of the Bill of Rights, etc. — they wouldn't fare as well as AP students. But ask them how the Arizona legislature works, how bills move through the legislature, what happens in committee, and they might know more about that kind of rubber-meets-the-road, civics-in-action stuff then their AP counterparts. And if you ask them to name the members of the TUSD School Board, what happens at the meetings — questions like that — you might listen for awhile, smile, nod, and tell the MAS students, "OK, enough already, we get the picture." They've had a front row seat watching how government works, and how it doesn't work.

And now, some of them have reached across the country to swap stories with the academic elite. How often do opportunities like that come to TUSD students, students who aren't attending the city's elite public schools, many of whom aren't supposed to make it very far in school? That's pretty damn awesome.