As Andover and Lawrence High School (LHS) Spanish students sat in a circle of desks at LHS, Michael Rivera, a LHS student, shared his hopes for the future of his city, despite his personal struggle managing an education, after-school jobs and teenage fatherhood. “Sometimes there are people who throw fastballs at you and tell you that you are not going to make it. But that doesn’t bring me down. That just gets me more motivated to do the things that I want to do,” Rivera said. Rivera was one of many students to reflect on his life in Lawrence as a part of the collaborative project between Andover and LHS. The project aims to create a candid documentary about Lawrence in response to recent negative depictions of the city in the media. Andover students taking Spanish 511, “Community Engagement in the City of Lawrence: We, the People” taught by Mark Cutler, Instructor in Spanish, have collaborated with LHS students and Lawrence Community Works, a community development nonprofit organization, to create the documentary. Through interviews with Lawrence residents and clips of daily life in the city, the documentary aims to counteract stereotypes about Lawrence and help build a sense of community pride. The collaboration between the two student groups initiated honest conversations that challenged previous misconceptions that the students had had about the other, according to Cutler. Filmmakers at Movement City Youth Network, an affiliate of Lawrence Community Works, began planning the documentary and later told Cutler about their idea in order to get students involved in the production process. Culter’s class was inspired to participate in the project after the February publication of a negative “Boston Magazine” article about Lawrence, titled “Lawrence, MA: City of the Damned.” The article read, “Crime ?is soaring, schools ?are ?failing, government ?has ?lost ?control, and ?Lawrence, the ?most godforsaken ?place ?in ?Massachusetts, has ?never ?been? in ?worse ?shape.” Cutler said, “The idea is to make a documentary on Lawrence to address the images that the media portrays about the city because they’re often very negative. So [the filmmakers from Movement City Youth Network] wanted to depict all of Lawrence and show all the perspectives instead of bashing the city constantly as the media has. Their idea was not necessarily to tell the opposite and say that Lawrence is a beautiful city and that there’s nothing wrong with it, but rather to tell a truthful story in which you get all perspectives.” For the documentary, Spanish 511 students conducted interviews with William Lantigua, Mayor of Lawrence, immigration lawyers and students and teachers at the city’s public schools. During their double period on Thursday mornings, the students also visited parks and coffee shops in Lawrence to strike up conversations with residents of Lawrence. Each student had a specific role in the class project. In addition to interviewing, students worked as editors, project documenters, translators and advertisers. As part of the project, some students also served as reporters for “Rumbo,” a bilingual newspaper and radio station based in Lawrence. According to Cutler, filmmakers from Movement City recorded LHS students and their teacher, Cesar Sanchez, describing their experiences living in Lawrence. The students also conducted several interviews with local residents. Although Cutler initially hoped to integrate the Andover and LHS classes on a weekly basis throughout the Spring Term to complete the project, due to scheduling conflicts the two groups have worked mostly independently. The Andover and LHS students met for the first time on Thursday. Cutler and Sanchez organized a “fishbowl” activity, in which one group of students spoke inside the metaphorical “fishbowl” while the other group listened silently outside. The Andover students first listened to the Lawrence students voice their thoughts and opinions about the project, and then Lawrence students listened to the Andover students’ responses. After each group had spoken for about 10 minutes, the teachers opened the conversation to both classes. The students agreed that in order to make a difference with their project, they needed to break down stereotypes. Drew D’Alelio ’12 said that he decided to take Spanish 511 because he wanted to discover the truth about Lawrence uninfluenced by the opinions of his peers at Andover and his friends in his hometown of Boxford, MA. “You can’t judge a book by its cover. You look at Lawrence and what people from Boxford and Andover think about Lawrence, how it’s a poor immigrant city and how the people living there don’t have a whole lot of potential. [But] they’re [the people of Lawrence] stuck in an environment that might not be that fair to them sometimes. You just have to learn to look at [the situation] from both sides before generalizing,” said D’Alelio. However, Jonathan Chacon ’14 noted that there was some truth to the stereotypes that should be acknowledged. “I just want to go out there and say that there are rich kids at Phillips Academy, and it is true that many have lived very privileged lives,” he said. “I have lived a great life, and I am very grateful for that, and I am not going to go out there and say I can understand every other person’s perspective. I can’t. But I think what is important for all of us to do is that we try to understand one another and not just understand our differences but what we share in common.” “There will always be some truth in these stereotypes because stereotypes don’t just come out of nothing, but [we should] try to gather a more complete picture,” added Chacon. Rivera concluded the conversation between the two classes with a personal reflection about his experiences growing up in Lawrence. Although he is a teenage father, Rivera said that he is determined to continue his education in hope of a better future for himself and his son. “People have told me to just get my GED [General Education Degree] and to just leave school, and I tell them that I planted this seed a long time ago. Just because I started my adulthood life early doesn’t mean that I can just dig up that seed and throw it away. I have to finish what I have started already,” he said. “For my son, I want to see him grow up and do what I wish I could have done.” Cutler said, “[Though] the plan was to be co-contributors to this documentary, and I think it’s a shame [that the plan did not work out], the LHS students are still a big part of what we’ve done. They’ve influenced a lot of our thinking about the city.” He continued, “Through the kids at Lawrence High, [my students] were able to see a different side of Lawrence. I think that even though [the LHS students] weren’t part of [our project] on the ground, getting their hands dirty with us, they are very much internally part of this, part of who we are and what we are doing with this class.” The Andover and LHS students met three times over Winter Term to initiate the community exchange project. At the first meeting at LHS, the students introduced themselves to their new peers and discussed plans for the term. When the LHS students came to Andover for the second meeting, both classes visited the Addison Gallery of American Art to examine depictions of Lawrence in art. The LHS students also attended classes with their Andover hosts. Over Extended Period Week, the LHS students returned to the Andover campus, and students from both classes shared creative poems, stories and music with each other. Cutler said, “This is community-based learning. The idea is that we engage with [another] community. We don’t try to solve a problem as “‘[community] service’ might suggest, and we are not trying to save anybody from a situation, but rather we are responding to a situation and working with the community with which we are engaged to address it.” Colton Dempsey ’12 said, “[From this experience] I hope to take away a better understanding of Lawrence and get to know some interesting people. On a greater scale, I just think that it is interesting to dive into the culture of a place that you hardly notice is there and actually explore it and realize how deep it is.”
