Political Action Projects Create Community Involvement And Awareness For NHS Seniors

By Jeff White

Think about 50 issues – international, national, or local – that concern you.

That’s exactly what Newtown High School government students did at the beginning of this semester. Focusing in on the issues they felt were most pressing, students proceeded to leave their classrooms, spread themselves throughout Newtown and the surrounding area, and do something about them.

For years now, an anchor to the American government course that seniors are required to take has been the Political Action Project, an incentive to get students out into their town to take an active role in some form of government or town organization.

Four years ago, when American Government teacher Ed Obloj came to the high school from the middle school, he took a look at the Political Action Project curriculum from years past, and decided that he liked it. He refined it a little, mostly to give students further freedom in the types of projects they choose to pursue, and passed it on to other government teachers.

Over the past two weeks, Mr Obloj and Candice Dietter, another American government teacher, have sat back in their chairs and soaked in a semester’s worth of political action. Each knows that it is one thing to teach government involvement, and quite another to see students actually doing something about it.

“The majority of them feel like they have done something useful,” says Mr Obloj, who says that he was pleasantly surprised with the efforts of his students.

Students worked individually or in large groups for projects that involved more hours. To sit and listen to each presentation was to watch students paint a canvass of issues that they feel matter most to Newtown and surrounding communities.

A Personal Political Action Project

For Kristen Bandura, the topic for her political action project was an easy choice: it was something that hit close to home.

Six years ago, Kristen’s brother, Geoff, was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome, a higher functioning form of Autism. It did not rock the family, she says, because they knew he had autism. It was the doctors who until then had been in the dark.

People who suffer from Aspergers Syndrome possess many of the verbal and mental capacities that elude those who have low functioning autism, oftentimes to an exaggerated degree. Though their mental capabilities might exceed what is thought of as normal, Aspergers sufferers often lag behind in their social skills.

But for Kristen Bandura, the real issue was letting people know just what Aspergers syndrome was all about.

“I definitely wanted to do something dealing with autism,” she recalls of her time spent choosing a subject. What she settled on was following a bill that the state legislature was currently reviewing, all the while drumming up support and awareness for it.

People with Aspergers – because they are high functioning, IQ-wise – often do not get the funding they need to attend special autistic-specific programs, compared to others with differing degrees of autism.

Bill 5451 would help with that disparity. Although the bill would not provide services for specific individuals, it would call for a committee to be established in order to help decide whether or not higher functioning autistic people should get funding for services. It is a needed step in an effort to spread autistic aid more widely. Currently, the bill awaits the signature of Governor John Rowland.

For her part, Kristen spoke with teachers, parents, and students, wrote e-mails, attended Aspergers Syndrome support groups to explain the benefits of Bill 5451 and how they could support it.

“I am positive that if a committee was established, they would see a dire need for the services to be provided,” she says.

Although she delivered her final presentation to her American government class early this week, Kristen’s Political Action Project is not complete. She says she intends to go to more autism support group meetings to continue her talks on Bill 5451, as well as urge Newtown residents to write letters to their state representatives in support of the bill.

“It just made me want to work harder for the cause,” Kristen says of her Political Action Project. “Political action projects were meant to give that extra motivation to apply positive feelings that you have in order to get things accomplished, and that is what happened with me.”

She also knows that if any of the time she spent on the project helped the bill to pass, it was time more than well spent. If Aspergers sufferers could attend programs that currently they cannot afford, it will make all the difference to them, and to her brother, Geoff. “I know that the clinics that are available could really help them in their life.”

Taking Action With Words

Because students had a wide range of ways to dive into their political action projects, some students opted to take on town issues with research and writing. Their essays reflect time spent grappling with town land use issues, Legislative Council decisions, and the workings of other town committees.

Chris David, a senior in Mrs Dietter’s class, did not know at first in what way he wanted to get involved in town government. But then he remembered that his mother was active on the town’s Economic Development Commission.

For three months, David sat in on EDC meetings, and during his own time researched ways in which Newtown promotes itself to outside businesses. “It’s something that a lot of people are interested in,” he says. “I thought it would be an ideal situation to get involved in the government and be an active citizen in the community.”

Fishing through mounds of handouts from those meetings, David was able to figure out what projects were currently progressing, and what projects are pending for the near and distant future.

Culling his research, he was not only able to draft an essay on the workings of the EDC, itself a valuable resource for students who did not know the function of this agency, but on the state of large and small business in Newtown, and what is on the horizon. He focused on Fairfield Hills, Hawleyville, and Sandy Hook Center.

“It was interesting to see where Newtown was heading in the future,” Chris says. “That was one of the main things I got out of [the project]: a little interest in seeing what was going to happen to Newtown in future years.”

Other students took to the pen as well, though not always to draft long essays. Many students opted to express their research and position on different issues by submitting letters to The Newtown Bee.

Senior Geoffrey Brennan took up a campaign to get Walnut Tree Hill Road repaired. “This road has not been adequately repaired in the entire fifteen years that I have lived in Newtown,” he writes in a letter to The Bee’s editor that calls for town action making the road’s repair a top priority.

Tony Rocca, another student in Mrs Dietter’s class, asked a simple question for his political action project: What’s happening to all our trees?

In a letter to The Bee’s editor, Tony takes issue with the rapid rate of development that Newtown is experiencing, and how this development is rapidly swallowing up natural resources. Although Newtown still remains only half developed, Tony says a conscious effort needs to be made to keep it that way.

Although the students who expressed their views on current town issues through writing did not necessary go out into the community and perform a service, Mr David says that they still got a lot out of their political action projects.

“With students, the one thing is that they are going to [eventually] become registered voters and run the government,” he explains. “If you get them involved early and understand what is going on, they know what to vote on for the future of their community.”

Creating A Mural Of Unity

Almost all seven of them were needed to hold it.

Wanting to do something different for their political action project, Sage Huskins, Kate Ryan, Andrea Marsiano, Katherine Molberg, Kate Thoreson, Catherine Foster, and Jason Godoy aimed to come up with a way to symbolize town unity. They held their floppy solution to their goal up in front of Mr Obloj’s class last week: a complex, multicolored mural in which popular Newtown landmarks are seemingly connected by large globe at its center.

“The whole idea was to stop the violence,” Kate Ryan told the class during the group’s presentation.

Knowing that they wanted to get young kids involved in the project, group members decided on the mural, and held a contest with Sandy Hook Elementary and middle school students to see who could come up with the best representation of unity. Fifth grader Katie Merenti created the winning design, a town nestled in the folds of mountains, the middle school, police station and the meeting house’s steeple prominently displayed, with the words “United We Stand” arching along the top of the painted globe.

Although the group originally thought it would paint Katie’s design on a building somewhere around town, members settled on a canvas mural, so that it could be moved from place to place.

Currently, it hangs in the Memorial Room at Newtown Youth Services, though the mural has made trips to local elementary schools and the high school.

For a project meant to promote unity, it did just that. Seven students, all of whom admit to being different from one another, came together to accomplish a goal. They employed the help of younger students, and the result is an image for which every town should strive.

Maybe simple political action projects cannot effect real change, or at least not quickly. But these students know big changes come with small steps, and getting younger students involved in a project was a good way to start.

“The time that they spent doing something positive was the time they weren’t doing something negative,” Andrea Marsiano said, “and that’s just the greatest accomplishment.”