Date: Fri 13-Dec-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: STEVEB

Quick Words:

schools-Bridgeport-exchange

Full Text:

Sharing Perspectives On City And Town

B Y S TEVE B IGHAM

Despite being just a 20-minute drive apart, most would agree that Newtown and

Bridgeport are two very different worlds.

But as students from Newtown and Bassick high schools are learning, those who

live in the two communities don't always fit the labels people often put on

them.

Forty students from Bassick, an inner-city school on the west side of

Bridgeport, spent the day at NHS Monday, joining 40 Newtown students in

activities that helped demonstrate that through communication and

understanding, the barriers of racial isolation can be overcome.

Last month, Newtown students visited Bassick to take part in similar

exercises.

"The whole point is to show that they can all find something in common,"

explained Bassick English teacher Agnes Reilly, who lives in Newtown. "Kids

always find that they have a lot in common, even though it really is two

cultures."

NHS is about 95 percent white, while Bassick is 97 percent minority.

As the two schools united in the NHS auditorium Monday morning, they were

quickly split up into eight groups (five students per school, per group). Each

was then given the same amount of materials and a limited amount of time to

create a contraption to hold a raw egg so that when the contraption was

dropped from a height of eight feet, the egg inside wouldn't break. But there

was a catch. The groups had to then switch inventions so that each group had

another group's contraption. They were given another five minutes to make any

adjustments.

The students, stunned to have lost the contraption they had constructed and

disappointed at the thought of having to use some else's, were taken aback by

the situation. However, when the eggs were finally dropped, hardly any of the

eggs broke.

According to NHS substance abuse counselor Allyson Haley, the purpose of the

activity was to relate it to the issue of school desegregation and to show

students that people have different ideas about how to make something, wear

something or do something, but any one solution isn't necessarily right or

wrong.

One Bassick student couldn't help but recognize the parallel.

"It's just like the egg; we didn't want to give it up because we didn't know

how it was going to work," she said. "We gotta be willing to trust one

another."

Ms Haley agreed.

"We've got to test and try to test things out first before making any

judgments. We're often too quick to jump on the negatives about people or

things and not thinking enough about the positives," she said.

In the end, the students from both schools agreed that keeping in close

contact and learning more about one another was the best way to break down the

barriers.

The accord comes five months after the state's Supreme Court decision in the

case of Sheff vs O'Neill in which it ruled that the racial imbalance in the

schools in and around Hartford were unbalanced.

This is the seventh year that students from the two schools have gotten

together as part of a joint venture between Jan Brookes and Mrs Reilly. Both

Newtown residents, Mrs Brookes is a sociology teacher at NHS and Mrs Reilly

teaches English at Bassick. The two met at an NHS basketball game back in 1990

and a few months later, the suburban-urban exchange became a reality.

There are stereotypes, Mrs Reilly points out. Those from the inner city often

look at kids from the suburbs as "rich and racist, and even devil worshipers"

she said, while those from towns like Newtown often equate urban kids as

"violent, gun carrying, not focused on education, having babies and selling

drugs."

"There is some truth to this but not everyone fits into that mold," Mrs Reilly

said. "We want the kids to get past the stereotypes."

Often, as Mrs Brookes pointed out, fear is the biggest barrier.

"Kids really want this to work," she said. "I know if we had integrated

schools we would probably have some problems, but not as many as everybody

thinks."