Today an education counts Michiana Enough Plays to end Gun Violence at the South Bend Civic Theater, Night at the Museum in Napanee, Leading with Equity in Schools, Our Universe Revealed.

Understanding the Science.

Education Counts Michiana is underwritten by Pokagan Band of Potawatomi investing in education and economic development for centuries, supporting the past current and future development of the Michiana Region community foundation of Elkhart County.

Inspire Good Cause.

Kosciusko County Community Foundation Where Donor Dreams Shine.

The Dekko Foundation.

Community Foundation of Saint Joseph County Crossroads.

United Way, serving Elkhart, Lagrange and Noble Counties.

United Way of Saint Joseph County Marshall County Community Foundation.

Ready to Grow.

Saint Joe Early Childhood Coalition.

And a Gift by Elmer and Dolores Tepe Thank you.

Welcome to Education Counts Michiana I'm your host, Sam Centellas.

Education Counts Highlights, programs and initiatives that are impacting how we teach, how we learn, and how we embrace education.

This program explores ideas in all education sectors.

Preschool through lifelong learning.

K-12 post-High school and job advancement.

Training with the philosophy that we should never stop seeking knowledge.

Find additional resources at WNIT.org and on the Education Counts Facebook page.

First up, educating through playwriting and performing.

Founded in 2019, Enough Plays to End Gun Violence calls on teens to confront gun violence by creating new works of theater that will spark critical conversations and inspire meaningful action in communities across the country.

The objective is to promote playwriting as a tool for self-expression and social change.

Harnessing this generation's spirit of activism and providing a platform for America's playwrights of tomorrow to discover and develop their voices today.

South Bend Civic Theater is a host and partner in the production.

Kristen Franklin, Videographer.

Gregg Banks Editor.

So you are really supposed to run.

We have the police arrive, especially when somebody is hurt.

I was chasing them once.

When people run from a crime scene, the police have to chase it for years and years and years to several unarmed African-American males and females who have lost their life to the hands of officers who have been in pursuit of them, that maybe it didn't take deadly force.

It maybe it could.

It took something less traumatizing.

Freeze.

I am here to fulfill a role within a play called a Smile behind your specific theater.

It is a play that's a part of a series called Enough.

And these are plays that were written by young people to help put a stop or slow down gun violence.

And thus is a project that started a couple of years ago.

Gun violence in South Bend is an epidemic, and we really believe that a civic theater needs to be part of the civic conversation and it needs to give voice to those who feel they do not have a voice.

And in this case, that voice is the children.

The kids in this community who are plagued by this epidemic.

Now, I just want to hear your cry that cries.

Please don't shoot on stage.

So they have two 10 year olds.

It doesn't get no younger than that.

We're losing them.

Younger than that.

And so to hear these voices speak, the trauma, speak the pain.

If this don't have our public on the rear of their seats, I don't know.

How else can we deliver a message?

Go to shoot them.

Excuse me.

I don't really think it's good at all because it's hurting youth, communities, families by police violence and gun violence.

I'm playing the role, Officer Jeff.

He's a out someone who has forgotten his way and he's turned his back on where he comes from.

He's in a traditional policing system.

And in this policing system, it's he's trained a certain way and that it's, you you catch the suspected criminal.

You you are you're in pursuit.

Guns out win by any means necessary.

It needs to be done by him.

Have an encounter with this young lady which turned out to be an angel.

Let's get you home, sweetheart.

I think our team, we want you to come home.

Can't.

You Can't what?

I can't leave yet.

It costs them to do a lot of reflecting and thinking about the natural part of him who's a father and one who's caring to empathetically put his own son in the place of the young man that he's running after, which causes him to have more compassion, put his gun away, and to want to relate to the young man more and get them home versus get them, get them arrested or versus even pulling the trigger if you had to.

The profound responsibility that you have as an organization when you're telling these stories, this is not just an issue for these families, for these participants.

This is a life changing incident that happened in their lives, a tragedy.

And we want to try to create as much resilience, as much positivity, trying to create instead of trauma, trying to find triumph, you know, instead of being just overcome with the sadness and the tragedy of it, to find hope and to find the way to make a difference through that tragedy.

What we share the most is that we're bonded by grief.

We didn't accept be on this side of the road in life, but it is important that one knows who just joined this club, know that they're not alone.

And so that is what led my tears into, you know, just steering the streets, the wall behind me, or the soul boxes, as we've called them.

Every photo behind me is a life that was lost to gun violence in South Bend, not in the nation, not in the world, in this city.

And those are the kind of things that put faces to names, that put names to statistics.

And we're trying to tell these stories through the voices of our young people.

All young people, they're not robbing our young people are not pursuing guns.

Our young people are not getting caught up in this gang life.

Some are wanting to live a prosperous life and grow up to become a different kind of man or a different kind of woman from what they've seen.

But a lot of time, a lot of officers, such as the person here, have decided to not just be the officer, they become the judge, they become the jury, and they become the executioner.

Well, this now will make 18 young faces that we have done throughout our entire season.

And yeah, they are the youth.

They are high schoolers and middle schoolers that are writing these plays.

I mean, they can vote.

I think this is a good way of us to steer votes and talk about what's happening with these young kids because they're using their voices on paper and then we're performing it on stage.

I mean, if we haven't heard them before, this is the time to hear them.

It'll be like to deliver the message to the pleas of issues and the people that it's not good, like you don't have to use a gun.

You can just have a conversation, will stop the chaos of it.

Learn more about the initiative at WNIT.org.

History Reimagined.

The night at the museum program at the Nappanee Center brings history to life through interaction and engagement.

Local volunteers portray figures from Nappanee History and help community members learn about the area's heritage and development.

Segment produced by Nathan Krebs.

You know, this building tends to come to life at night.

I'll bet.

Is your wandering through here tonight.

You're going to hear stories about Henry Frazier way more than what he and I can come up with.

Now the museum is our lights out program.

So we shut off all the lights in the museum and we bring history to life.

We have anywhere from 8 to 9 vignettes of people who act out scenes from Nappanee History.

It's turned into a very well-loved program.

A lot of people know that it's the second weekend in October every single year, so we always have people who are either asking about it ahead of time or we have people who are asking to volunteer for the event.

Freeman of Goshen.

I believe he might not have time to take on much more work.

Yes, he still says this year is about architecture.

And because Nappanee had one architect who designed the majority of the downtown and hundreds of homes.

So we're celebrating his life and then also talking about the buildings rather than the people behind them.

In addition to a second story to the baseball player, the hall.

So I'm Lillian Hartman.

I'm part of the Hartman house.

I am the second stop of the night and what we do is we explain Nappanee history.

Typically, we have 10 to 13 groups come through for this, and it's about a three hour program.

We take about we work it out like a month out for everybody on their calendars.

We do a dress rehearsal.

We do a lot of practices.

Our our furniture company here has been making advances lately, and he came in a few days ago.

So our volunteers are our actors.

So now that the museum is completely volunteer led, so a lot of our tour guides, our volunteers, our actors are volunteers.

We have anywhere from we just had one of our actors who was reflecting on that.

He started when he was ten years old with an eye at the museum, and he's still with us in 2023.

So they they just act out and they bring they act out the scenes and bring Nappanee history to life.

And I think the most fun part will be showing the communities what history is today.

Exactly like from the day and from back then.

So the most important thing for me, bringing history to life is showing the community what Nappanee history is about.

What how it developed, what it shows exactly.

Like all the history from everybody.

Especially for the younger generations.

Because schools don't teach this history anymore.

It mess up and kind of talk about how the Japanese new Eldorado and Mr. Baldwin got so upset.

I think learning something new each and every single time, we always have people who walk away and they're like, Oh, I never knew that about Nappanee or Oh, I remember that.

And it brings up a whole bunch of more memories.

Our founder of Only One Call, one of her quotes was, I hear so many people say that they hate history, but it's my goal for them to love it.

So that is our goal with Night at the Museum is to have fun with history and to have people love history.

Learn more at WNIT.org.

Understanding Inequity.

The South Bend Community School Corporation hosted a nationally renowned author community leader and urban educator to speak about how school communities can lead with equity.

The presentation earlier this year was designed to bring educators and the wider community together to better understand issues surrounding inequities in schools and classrooms and create ongoing dialog.

Kristen Franklin Videographer.

Greg Banks, Editor What does it look like to be a young man in relationship to his community?

Are you an asset or are you a liability?

Today, we brought Principal Cafe Land to talk to us about the empowerment of black males, and with a reason we're focusing on black males.

It is because it fits with our My Brother's Keeper initiative with South Bend School Corporation.

And that initiative is to helps young men of color to start school ready to learn.

It's to help young men focus on high levels of engagement, career opportunities, and also to really show them the way and to provide second chances and opportunities.

President Obama, this was his initiative.

He wanted something that was going to speak to black and brown youth, young young men of color toward helping to empower them.

What I do, I'm that guy that goes around the country and helping principals primarily and assistant principals to become that much more effective at what they do with the young people, including the young men.

As opposed to them leading ineffectively.

And then we lose kids that we really sit in the loss.

Every city in America leading cause of death of black men between the ages of 15 and 29 is murdered by a black man.

I got to change it.

I got to change.

People say to me, What's wrong with black boys?

And I say, Well, you're asking the wrong question because there's nothing wrong with black boys.

There's something wrong with the way that we've been approaching black boys.

There's something wrong with what we've been exposing black boys to.

There's something wrong with the way we go about teaching black boys.

So with all these things wrong in terms of the adults in that even spills into the home.

It spills into the community where the ones who were wrong, they were born into this, right.

They're victims of it.

We see that parents are really supportive of this effort and really make sure and support their kids and getting the school and really helping them to engage more deeply with these opportunities.

And one of the other pieces that's really important about that, My Brother's Keeper, is high levels of student engagement.

Again, these community partners, one that focuses on social emotional development and and growth and that's with Five Star Life.

We go to the Five Star Life Summit where they focus on leadership and students have just really had a full wraparound development opportunity that really counters the narrative around young men of color.

I cringe because black history is not just a 28 day thing that is life long, see?

And you and I, nobody in this room, whatever, master it because there's too much of it.

My go to is always history and I just want to see what is MBK or whatever.

Just make sure that at the end of the day, our young men, when they look into the mirror, they know who that is, they know what that is.

Looking back at them historically and culturally speaking, that is so critical because as long as they're walking around with historical amnesia, then they're liable to gravitate to anything, whether it be in terms of things to do, things to listen to whatever.

But when they have their sense of history, their sense of who they are, there's there's there's a less of a probability that they're going to gravitate to things that are destructive toward them, toward toward others who look like them.

I went as a principal and bought cases of the Autobiography of Malcolm X and in literally gave them to my young man and said to them, I have expectation that you're going to read this book.

And then we're going to have discussions about this book and do not stop midway, because then you'll never get to Malcolm X, You'll only know Malcolm Little, right?

You got to read the whole book in order to know Malcolm X is really been a very positive experience for our community and for our for our schools and our students.

Our principals are taking on this leadership role and targeting really providing targeted resources for young men of color.

But what we've seen three areas.

One would be our literacy.

Our literacy scores are improving because we've made really great partnerships.

And one of those partnerships is tutor Notre Dame or we call it, and tutor in D, and it provides intensive 1 to 1 tutoring on literacy four times out of the week for students in grades two through four.

And we are really pleased and seeing the students scores increase their efficacy, their agency, they're really, you know, seeing their opportunities to grow.

So somewhere the elders in the young people we got we got to meet up with right.

Meet each other half way so that we're learning from each other, not just them learning from us.

Of course, we're going to provide them with counsel because we're the elders.

So.

So there's a certain guidance, there's a certain direction, there's a certain leadership that we want to provide.

But again, they're where they are as far as age.

So they have something to offer to us too.

And it takes all of us while it takes men, it takes women, it takes boys and takes girls.

And if the school has a need, the community has a need.

And so we really ask people to come and listen to and to discover ways of how they can continue to wrap around our young people and provide that extra support that we need as a community.

Find out more at WNIT.org.

Assessable scientific understanding.

The mission of the Our Universe Revealed Lecture series is to make current research and science accessible for everyone.

Our Universe Revealed is a partnership between the University of Notre Dame, Indiana University, South Bend and the Saint Joseph County Public Library.

Local experts from the universities lead explorations of scientific topics and engage the public in conversations that inspire curiosity.

Nathan Krebs produced this story, and you can see the fruiting body, the high foul, that fungus coming out of the brain of the aunt.

So our universe revealed has been part of the College of Science since I joined in 2016.

And it's grown over the years and the person who originated it left the university for another organization.

But our dean wanted to continue the great community engagement that was started with our universe revealed.

And in order to bring it more into the community, we decided we would partner with both ISB and approach the Central County Public Library to see if we could host it here.

So last year we launched the first year of this partnership for the Our Universe Revealed Lecture series.

It's free, open to the public, and it's designed to just highlight some cool research that's going on in this area.

We cover a lot of different topics, so all areas of science and actually this year we're going to be bringing in the music and arts as well into the series.

And so we're just featuring people from both of the university, so Indiana University, South Bend and also University of Notre Dame and people just sharing what they do and then partnering with the library was important in terms of not having it on a university campus, but having in a place that's publicly accessible and really trying to bring science to the public.

The library offers thousands of programs every year, but nothing is quite like the Our Universe Revealed series, because these are leading faculty from both University of Notre Dame and from Indiana University South Bend coming here to speak to community members and answer their questions.

So it's it's, you know, live instruction and the community can pick and choose what lectures they go to.

And so our role at the library is to promote this series and also provide space.

I think the talks are accessible.

You don't have to have any kind of background you can just come in and learn something.

And so they're really geared to be just a little snippet of moving into learning about a topic.

And then if you're interested, you can of course dive deeper.

Are researchers who do the presentations are really highly skilled at talking to general audiences.

So although their research is very high level and complex, they're very skilled at talking about science in a way that's engaging to general audiences, which is really our goal.

We want we want people to be engaged with science and to be curious about science and the world around them.

So for a long time, the incentives within the Science Academy have incentivize people or encourage people to communicate with each other and not so much communicate science outside of their peers.

So they re-imagines the strategy and the goals of our universe revealed to really hopefully right unpack and really translate all of the jargon and the nomenclature that can get so heavy and get people so bogged down in the sciences and really kind of offer it as as a as a as a capacity building opportunity and just kind of community conversation.

My name is Shakir Risk.

I am associate professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Indiana University, South Bend.

I also teach in the medical school I serve as a speaker for our universe, revealed series, and I talked about my research through art and storytelling.

Part of being a scientist is communicating.

Science is talking about what it is that we do in the lab.

And unfortunately, sometimes as scientists, we develop our own language and a lot of jargon that can be a bit daunting for people who are not scientists, but even some people who are not even in our own field.

And so the challenge is to really bring it in a in a way that you can remove those barriers because those essentially become barriers for people to be able to explore my field of biochemistry.

So how do we do that?

Well, one of the main aspects that I like to use is art, and I like to draw and I like to paint.

So, you know, taking some of the molecules that I study which have these amazing and fantastic shapes and drawing them and showing people what they look like and giving them kind of a snapshot of what is happening inside our bodies and inside of ourselves.

That's one way that we can relat I think our universe revealed is a really great opportunity for us as scientists to really make a connection with the community.

And it's a great opportunity for people in the community of all ages and all backgrounds to come in and really learn about something that they may have been curious about but really didn't have the resources to be able to get good information.

It feels good to be able to learn.

And so to be able to open up a conversation that historically has just been kind of like cut off for a lot of people.

It's just like, it feels good.

People leave excited, they leave happy, they leave engaged, they leave curious.

Right?

And so I think that's the best, best outcome possible that if we can if we can offer a conversation that's open and accessible enough to inspire people's curiosity and and their their belief in their own ability to, like, ask questions on their own, I think that's pretty pretty cool.

Check out WNIT.org for more information on all these stories.

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The success of Every Student matters.

Education Counts Michiana is underwritten by Pokagan Band of Potawatomi, investing in education and economic development for centuries, supporting the past current and future development of the Michiana region community foundation of Elkhart County Inspire good causes.

Kosciusko County Community Foundation, where donor dreams shine.

The Dekko Foundation Community Foundation of Saint Joseph County Crossroads, United Way, serving Elkhart, Lagrange and Noble Counties.

United Way of Saint Joseph County.

Marshall County Community Foundation.

Ready to Grow.

Saint Joe Early Childhood Coalition.

And a gift by Elmer and Dolores Tepe.

Thank you.

This WNIT local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

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