In Spanish class at El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice in Brooklyn, New York, freshman students work on family trees. One young girl carefully cuts out green leaves from construction paper. A boy fills in the background of his cardboard with clouds and birds. The trees are as varied as their Spanish accents-Dominican, Puerto Rican, and others, including a particular cadence identified with Brooklyn itself.

The family trees are part of an integrated Sankofa curriculum that helps freshman explore themselves and their cultural backgrounds. Sankofa is an African word loosely translated as "reaching back to move ahead." El Puente students come to better understand their heritage and the expression of what makes them individuals.

Facilitator Patricia Gonzalez stands at the chalkboard and asks, "What does -culture' mean?" The students identify food, clothing, dance traditions, music, language, and religion. Students will also cut out magazine pictures of their favorites to decorate their family trees.

Many of the school's 130 students already speak Spanish fluently, but need more practice in reading and writing. Spanish class is designed to help them develop bilingual literacy. With purple glue sticks, they adhere pieces of green and brown construction paper to cardboard. Next they will add pictures of family members and describe them en espanol.

The Sankofa curriculum is used in each of their classes freshman year. In global studies class, students study the countries of their ancestry, and write a biography of their parents. In English, they create an autobiography and a road map of their lives. In art class, they will create their "Who Am I?" books to be bound and displayed.

"The first year curriculum is built on exploring the self," says Joe Matunis, El Puente's art teacher. Matunis is responsible for all the mural work done by students, including one that decorates the wall of El Puente's garden, only blocks away.

"The arts component is very personal, a confidence-builder," Matunis says. But he worries about more restrictive, structured statewide graduation requirements encroaching on their program of study. Will they have to give up an integrated curriculum that helps kids learn about history in the context of their own communities-all so that they are well-prepared for the multiple choice New York State Regents exams?

El Puente currently uses a portfolio method in addition to traditional tests required by the state for graduation. Students write about long-term projects and present the work they've done throughout the year. Matunis confirms that alternative assessment is not about lowering standards; it is about making learning more engaging. "In the beginning, we were determined to do be a fully integrated, project-based school," he says. "We're trying to find ways to continue doing that."

A Day at El Puente
In 1993, the El Puente community center partnered with the Board of Education to create one of 16 New Visions schools-public high schools built from the ground up by individual communities. Today, El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice is the only high school for human rights in the country.

The setting is a former church on the corner of South Fourth Street, in a neighborhood that has been plagued with poverty and violence throughout its history. Many of the students arrive already accustomed to structured learning environments, but things are different at El Puente: teachers are called facilitators here; no bells announce the beginning or end of class; the decorations, including banners hanging from the cathedral ceiling, celebrate the pursuit of peace and justice. Art is at the core of its integrated curriculum, which inspires students to explore issues relevant to their culture and their community.

In Cathy Wilkerson's advanced algebra class, seniors graph the results of experiments on the effects of variables-such as the distance from and height of a light source-on the length of shadows. From the ceiling hang silhouettes of dancers and musicians that look like shadows-but they're actually left over from last year's cultural bazaar, another annual event in which El Puente students celebrate the traditions of different cultures. This classroom represented the Harlem Renaissance.

In Josh Thomas' economics class, students work in groups to answer the following questions: "Your group has enough metal to make watches or bracelets or knives. What will you make? How will you make it? Who will get what you make? "

The questions evoke many issues that are relevant to students' lives, such as how the economy shapes the daily struggles of their families and their communities. It's another example of how El Puente's curriculum considers the student as a whole; learning takes place when students encounter facts and theories in the context of their everyday lives. Says Thomas, "Here we can talk about human rights and social justice as they experience what it is to live in this society."

Students Talk Back
Evelyn Hernandez, Mia Hilton, Omar Torres, and Rodolfo Solis come from different neighborhoods. They have different styles of dress and shades of skin, but they have one thing in common: they're thankful for El Puente.

"We want to be here," Hernandez says. At El Puente, Hernandez joined the Disciples, a school-sponsored rap group that offers an alternative to the type of the rap music widely criticized for glamorizing violence and misogyny. The Disciples rap about peace and justice in the streets outside their school.

Torres' friends urged him to go to a big high school with a gymnasium-something El Puente currently lacks. But after his first year watching seniors beat up freshmen at a local public high school, he decided he'd rather be in a place where people treated one another well. "Nobody messes with you here," Torres says.

One word is echoed again and again in their testimonies: this is their family. Silas says, "School doesn't end here at 3 o'clock."

Many of their peers at New York City public schools won't be continuing their education after graduation, but almost all their friends at El Puente will be going on to college. Those who don't, join AmeriCorps, "or things like that," according to the seniors.

Hernandez tells a story about how she finally passed a math Regents exam upon coming to El Puente. Her math teacher worked with her during lunch, stayed with her after school, and called her at home. "That's the reason I passed my test," Hernandez says. "If it wasn't for this school, I don't know where I'd be."