Rising Up:
Pittsburgh Westinghouse Academy 6-12
The Justice Scholars Institute: Making the path by walking

2024 | Written by Faith Schantz, Report Editor

Traveler, there is no path.

The path is made by walking.

~ Antonio Machado

On a cool March morning, 18 seniors troop into a classroom at Pittsburgh Westinghouse Academy 6-12. The class is “Introduction to Social Justice,” and the lesson will be about “defunding” the police. Students have already read Race to Incarcerate, by Sabrina Jones and Marc Mauer, and discussed the high-profile police killings of Black Americans. Today, teacher Sean Means invites them to consider other views. The idea behind defunding the police was to free up resources for proactive strategies and to reduce their power, he says. But what has been the result?

A student speaks up from the back of the room. In Pittsburgh now, you can’t get the police to show up unless a crime is already in progress, she says. After her workplace was robbed, managers were advised to hire an off-duty officer rather than to expect more protection from the force. “Did Pittsburgh police ever get defunded, though?” she asks. “Good question,” Means responds.

He shows a short news video about police officers quitting their jobs across the country. Should the police recruit in schools, he asks, like the military does? That would be useless, he’s told. “No one wants to be a police officer.” “I’ll put 80 grand on the table,” he says. No takers. He raises the figure until some students seem tempted. One girl says, provocatively, “I might be a police officer because I could do whatever I wanted.” “Where’s the location?” a boy asks. “Homewood? No. Mt. Lebanon? Yes.”

By the end, students had so much to say that Means abandoned one element of the lesson. He says this type of candid, wide-ranging conversation is typical for the class. Earlier in the year, it was easier to get through a lesson “because they didn’t talk as much. As they’ve grown, the debates just start rolling. And sometimes they’re so good I don’t stop them.”

If this classroom scene sounds more like an engaged college class than 12th graders coasting toward graduation, that may be because it is a college class. Westinghouse students who pass Introduction to Social Justice will earn three transferable credits from the University of Pittsburgh, through a program based in Pitt’s School of Education called the Justice Scholars Institute (JSI). Assistant Professor Esohe Osai founded JSI in 2016, beginning with Means as the first teacher and 13 Westinghouse students. Since then, the school has added the JSI courses “Argument,” taught by Angela Flango; “US History,” taught by Means; and “Basic Applied Statistics,” taught by Vincent Werling. In 2021, the program expanded to include Pittsburgh Milliones 6-12 and Pittsburgh Perry High School. More than 90 students enrolled in and passed JSI courses across the three schools just in the last year. To date, JSI students have earned over 1,000 Pitt credits, paid for by the program through grants and other funding.

Along with higher-level courses and the chance to earn college credits, JSI offers students college counseling, exposure to college life through visits to Pitt classes and other campuses, an Out-of-School Time (OST) component, and outreach to program graduates. JSI teachers can join the Teacher Collective, a learning community that shares information and works to support more successful transitions for students.

A question of opportunity

Westinghouse Academy is located in Homewood North, in Pittsburgh’s East End, in a majestic five-story building dating back to the 1920s. The majority Black community of Homewood holds some of the city’s richest cultural history, as well as a history of disinvestment and economic disadvantage. Boarded-up houses sit across the street from the school. Flango, who also teaches 10th grade English, has been at Westinghouse since 2017. “We have a lot of really smart, capable, dedicated staff, and we have great students with a ton of potential but also students that experience a lot of challenges,” she says. For example, in the 2023-24 school year, 92% of students were economically disadvantaged, and 67% missed nearly a month of school or more. Westinghouse also had one of the highest student mobility rates—the percentage of students transferring in and out—of any district 6-12 or 9-12 school.

Justice Scholar Nadia Dixon, of Wilkinsburg, says Westinghouse “is not as bad as it’s portrayed on the Internet. It’s a very tight community, even though we have our ups and downs.” She believes a student can get a good education there. At the same time, she recognizes that she didn’t have the same opportunities as students at some other schools, for example, Pittsburgh Allderdice High School in Squirrel Hill. “’Dice has a lot of AP classes,” she says, referring to Advanced Placement, which offers students more challenging content in high school and can allow them to skip more basic courses in college. Given her goal of being a lawyer, in 9th grade she would have taken AP US Government and Politics if it had been offered at Westinghouse, as it was at Allderdice. She did take a few AP classes, and the school is beginning to offer more, she says, but she wishes she’d had more options.

Jackie Spiezia, who serves as the research and evaluation coordinator for JSI and runs its OST program at Westinghouse, contrasts the college counseling she experienced with what Westinghouse students have reported. The Catholic high school she attended in New York City employed two counselors for its 60 students. Both were “incredibly involved in the process” of helping students prepare for college, she says, including holding FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) workshops and arranging for one-on-one meet-ups with college representatives. Westinghouse has three counselors, for about 660 students. “When I asked the students, who is the person that you feel supports you the most, the two names they gave were the names of their teachers,” Spiezia says. “And so I specifically asked, ‘What has your engagement been like with your guidance counselor?’ And a few students said they had not even spoken to their guidance counselor the entire year.”

In addition to AP, students at certain schools can take courses through Pitt’s nationally accredited, long-running College in High School (CHS) program, which partners with schools across the state to offer college-level courses at a reduced rate. In Pittsburgh, though, “They were never in schools that had populations like we serve,” Osai says. “Before we started at Westinghouse, there were zero credit-bearing opportunities in that building whereas at Allderdice there were a dozen or so classes offered. And that to me was not surprising but disappointing that people let that continue.”

Just like at Allderdice, there were students at Westinghouse who wanted to take college classes. “If we know that research says the students who have college courses in high school are more likely to succeed in college,” Osai asks, “then why not give them that chance? And we know that we had very low numbers of successful post-secondary graduation rates from [Westinghouse, Milliones, and Perry]. You have three percent, five percent, six percent some years who are finishing high school and actually six years later have a college degree. That’s not okay.”

She decided, “I’m going to make sure that those students have access to what they should have access to.” One major existing resource was CHS, which agreed to partner with JSI; currently, it provides teacher training and collaborates in other ways. At the same time, Osai knew that simply bringing CHS courses to Westinghouse would not be enough. JSI would also have to offer the experiences, exposure, information, and “scaffolds” that help students get ready for college, the kind of multi-faceted support that students in schools with more resources often take for granted.

Enrollment, attendance, community

One main difference between JSI courses and advanced course offerings in other high schools is that JSI courses are open to students who are interested in taking them. According to JSI policy, students should be automatically enrolled in the courses (with the choice to opt out) if they meet the criteria for a Pittsburgh Promise scholarship: good attendance and at least a 2.5 grade point average. (Nationally, automatic enrollment in higher-level courses based on objective criteria has been shown to increase enrollment for students of color.) Interested students who don’t meet the criteria can submit a letter of recommendation from a teacher. As Means characterizes it, “If you want to get in, you can get in. We’re not going to stop you.”

Osai points out that scheduling students is a “dark room” she can’t enter as an external partner. But teachers have found ways to spread the word. At Westinghouse, Means and Flango have been JSI teachers since 2016 and 2017, respectively. “I think us both being at the school for a number of years now has really helped us grow the program, kind of establish a name for ourselves in the school,” Means says. Because Flango teaches 10th graders, “She can really preach, talk about what it is, what that program is doing, and why they need to be a part of it.”

Seniors’ public presentation of their research, culled from the 15-page papers they write in Argument class, also serves as a recruitment tool. Flango realized that the research paper assignment had wafted into the “air” of the school when a 10th grader in one of her English classes said, “I think I’m going to write my 15-page paper on this”—two years before the assignment would be due. More generally, according to Nadia, current students share course expectations with prospective students. “Trust me—everyone that’s in JSI right now—we talk about all the work we get. So if you’re interested, you know the workload.”

In her view, those high expectations are the reason JSI students show up regularly for class. “You missed a day, you’re behind on so much.” Both Means and Flango report no attendance issues in their JSI classes. Another draw might be the bonds students form, with their teachers and with one another. The goal is for students to stay together for more than one year. For example, at Westinghouse, 11th graders can take US History with Means. The following year, they can take Social Justice with Means and Argument with Flango. (They can take Statistics with Werling either year.) “Two years to build the community,” Nadia says. “So yeah, we’re pretty close.”

“They are responsible for the positive classroom environment,” Flango states. “There’s way more of them than me. They’re responsible for this idea of taking care of each other and looking out for each other.” Relationships among classmates pay off academically as well. As Means sees it, “Iron sharpens iron.” When students see others working hard, they’re more likely to challenge themselves, he believes.

It helps that Argument is scheduled immediately after Social Justice and the classrooms face each other across a hall. And then, “Half the class is in my room for lunch,” Means says, adding, “I don’t think they know how much I like that and how good it makes me feel.” Osai notes that having that “special little corner” in the school made it easier to recruit students for OST, which took place on Wednesdays in Flango’s classroom last year. Osai recalls JSI staff telling students, “‘Hey, we’re going to have out-of-school time.’ And they’re all like, ‘Great, because we’re going to be here anyway.’”

Means has some cynicism after 10 years of teaching, especially with regard to the lip service paid to statements like “All children can learn.” Looking at how his students have built an actual community of learners, though, he feels hopeful “when I see how they work together and believe in one another. Briez is over there. He’s helping his colleague out. He’s helping this other kid out with his paper. Edwards is helping Diamond with her paper, and it is just running by itself. It’s a good thing in a place that’s struggled to find those types of things.”

*

On that March day in Means’ classroom, the bell rings. Students gather their laptops and backpacks and cross the hall to Flango’s room. Once they’re settled, she asks them to chart the elements of their research papers and check off what they’ve completed. She tells them, “I want you to see how much you’ve done.”

After a beat, she says, “You’re tired.” They nod. “You’re thirsty.” They laugh. “It’s dark, and you’ve been running up and down….” More laughter. Shoulders drop, and a wave of relief passes over the class. She reviews what the rest of the semester will look like, and asks who is coming to the study session over break. She’ll be away at a conference for a few days, she reminds them. “Now they’ve got you leaving,” a student says, pretending to grumble. “What’s next?”

High expectations, high support

Flango divides the Argument class into two parts. In the first semester, she says, “We learn the different types of argument, researching and writing arguments as well as delivering them, how to respond to counter arguments. So it’s a lot of reading, writing, debating and presenting.” The second semester focuses on the research paper. Students undergo the scholarly process of “brainstorming their ideas, developing research questions, coming up with a working thesis, doing an annotated bibliography,” and ultimately creating and delivering a presentation.

Westinghouse students who write research papers of at least 15 pages are eligible for a $4,000 college scholarship funded by an anonymous donor. Despite that lure, Flango says that when she first started teaching Argument, “the buy-in was more difficult. The kids were all of a sudden being asked to grapple with a lot more rigorous material. And even though the support was there, it was like, why would I choose to do something more difficult if I can do something that’s easier? As the years have gone on and they’re able to see the upperclassmen do it, and then you see your friend do it the year before you, [the path] has become a lot smoother and a lot easier.”

Nadia’s topic was cultural appropriation versus cultural appreciation and their effects on four cultures. She researched how each group defines cultural appropriation, conducted interviews, and read widely on the Internet to avoid basing her conclusions on one “skewed” argument, she says. She learned, “A 15-page paper is not as hard as it seems because 15 pages is a lot, but after you do it, it’s like, I was stressing for nothing.” In the end, she wrote more than 15 pages, and so did many of her classmates.

“It’s not just rigor and sink-or-swim,” Flango says. “We give them support—very targeted, specific support—every step of the way.” The key is to “meet students where they are” and allow them the space to grow, which can involve more than helping them develop research skills. “If you start to lose confidence or start to doubt yourself, we want to be there. We want to be that safety net to say, let me show you why I know you can do this.”

Students may also need emotional support based on the topics they write about. Many choose an issue raised in the Social Justice class, or a related social problem, and the topic may be personally relevant. For example, a young Black woman in the class wrote her paper on discriminatory practices in health care systems that affect Black women. But Flango believes the weight of an issue can provide its own form of support. “It’s a way of getting their voice heard on a topic that matters,” she says. “In a way, delving into these topics can be difficult, but also it’s kind of a release to be able to be like, look, I care about this. I want to present it. I want to spend my time looking into it.”

“To me, it’s all about raising their critical consciousness,” Osai says, about the research paper, the Social Justice discussions, and the program overall. “How do they make sense of the world that has not treated them fairly?” One way is to investigate how systems perpetuate inequalities, with the goal of changing them. Another way is for students to find their purpose, including why they might want to go to college in the first place. “It keeps you in the struggle longer when you have a sense of something bigger than you,” she says, “something you’re pursuing that’s part of your opportunity to change and support your loved ones, those around you, the world at large.”

What do students need?

JSI students at Westinghouse who participate in the after-school program don’t have to wait until they’re adults to begin to address issues they care about, making their learning relevant to their present lives. While the OST space looks different at each of the three schools, depending on student and program coordinator interests, at Westinghouse Spiezia invited students to participate in action research. At first, she says, they came in wondering, “What is this space? What are we going to talk about? What are we going to do? Is it going to be fun?” They played some get-to-know-you games and she talked to them about “youth participatory action research,” which aims to give young people decision-making power when they take on an issue. They visited Osai’s Adolescent Development class at Pitt, and learned that research is a collective endeavor. Spiezia also tried to show them, “This is fun.”

The Teacher Collective had chosen the low rate of college completion for Black PPS graduates as a research project. After Spiezia presented data to her students, they adopted the same question. By the end of the year they had crafted a research question, identified interview subjects, created interview protocols, and conducted mock interviews for teachers, counselors, principals, and district-level administrators—with a plan to pass on the project to the new group this year.

These investigations are part of a broader effort by the JSI community to keep pushing on the question: what kinds of support do students need to succeed in high school and ultimately to graduate from college? Osai acknowledges she has no control over whether JSI graduates can pay for four years of post-secondary education. But if she could, she says, she would hire a staff member to check in with program graduates who are freshmen in college, starting with questions like, “‘Have you been to the library yet?’ ‘Have you been to the office hours?’ ‘Have you gotten your books yet?’ These are little things, micro things, that can have great impact down the line.” JSI teachers reach out to their former students, and the Teacher Collective has conducted interviews with program alumni to ask what kinds of support they find most valuable. Osai would like to make those contacts systematic, “so there’s this constant feeling of, ‘I have back-up.’”

Program staff have also conducted interviews with current JSI students. While Spiezia didn’t conduct any of the formal interviews, “Something that I can speak to is that students appreciate even the act of asking,” she says. Staff also learned, “Students care deeply about their classes. They care about their work, and it’s a matter of understanding why they didn’t want to go to class or an assignment was overwhelming, and bridging those feelings with support.”

“Did we do enough?”

Means says he tries to give his students a realistic view of their lives after high school. He wants them to have careers they can be passionate about that also pay well—no degrees in “underwater basket-weaving”—with the goal of having one job that will allow them to read to their children at night.

Each year, he wonders, “Did we do enough?” Just as he runs out of time in his classes, at graduation “we ran out of time again because there’s still things that you want for them.” Even so, one of the emotions that day is pride. “We did this for our children,” he says. Professionally, JSI has offered him a level of honesty and authenticity he hasn’t always experienced. “Through the teachers that we’ve had, all the people on the Pitt end, and the students that we’ve had in the program, we’ve been able to build a culture in that space where people actually believe in what they’re saying.”

Nadia, who served as valedictorian for the Class of 2024, graduated with 12 Pitt credits she hoped to transfer to her chosen school, Howard University. With those classes behind her, she appreciates not having to take some of the general education classes, because “Who doesn’t want to be out of a gen-ed? No one.” Overall, being a Justice Scholar helped her develop confidence in her ability to do college-level work, and her classmates seemed to feel the same way. “The program helped them realize college is not that hard,” she says.

Spiezia completed her first year as program coordinator at Westinghouse in June. She was happy to witness motivated students’ enthusiasm and excitement as their college offers and scholarships flowed in. She was even prouder of being part of other students’ evolution throughout the program, seeing them make a life-changing choice.

“Maybe they weren’t sure,” she says, “even—‘I don’t know if I want to go to college.’ And then, it’s like, ‘I didn’t apply to college yet.’ And then, it’s like, ‘Okay, I applied to college.’ ‘I got in.’ ‘Actually, I think I’m going to go.’”

See Westinghouse’s data here.