Seven core values – originality, quality, respect, sustainability, community, wellness, and citizenship – provide clear guidance for everyone at BCD as we engage in the shared responsibility of fostering each student’s growth while supporting their individual talents and passions.

BCD Core Value: Citizenship – We guide members of our diverse community to become ethical, engaged, and informed global citizens.

Eighth Grade History teacher Sarah Pitcher-Hoffman collaborated again this fall with Eighth Grade Integrated Studies teacher Susan Benner to engage their students in service work through the IWitness Video Challenge. IWitness is an educational website developed by USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education that provides access to nearly 1,300 full-life histories or testimonies of survivors and witnesses to the Holocaust and other genocides for guided exploration.  IWitness brings the human stories of the Institute’s Visual History Archive to secondary school teachers and their students via engaging multimedia-learning activities.  The activities are designed to be participatory, academic and student-driven.

One of our Eighth Grade students, Sam F., made a video about incarcerated New Yorkers.  His video shows how prisoners are often stereotyped, treated poorly, and prevented from improving their lives.  “He interviewed advocates and currently incarcerated individuals. His video highlights the humanity of incarcerated individuals. Thank you, Sam, for making this video. We, too, hope it will raise awareness about the injustice of the prison system.” (PLSNY – Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York Website).  Sam also received these letters from two individuals at PLSNY:

Dear Sam,  To say I am impressed with your work is an understatement. I am so looking forward to seeing the video!  Your letters to Jay, Alex, Troy and John were so beautifully written, incredibly insightful and very kind. You have really stepped up to the plate on this project and I am sure your family (especially your grandfather) is very proud of you!  Great work and please send me the video whenever you can!

Sam,  Thank you so much for sending me the movie. It was great! You did such a good job of humanizing those who are incarcerated. Kudos to you! I am sure you received a fantastic grade – and it was well deserved.  Good luck in all that you do and please let me know if there is anything else I can do for you.

I am so proud of Sam, all of our Eighth Graders, and teachers Sarah Pitcher Hoffman and Sue Benner.  Together, they are living our mission, engaging as informed citizens, and, perhaps even more importantly, letting their lives speak.

PS Listening to the words of Sam’s final interviewee led me to remember a dvd that we produced several years ago, in which Sam (as a much younger student) reflects about the character traits BCD values and instills in students!  Here’s a short (unscripted) clip from that dvd: