objective
Located in the West Side of Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, EXCEL Academy at Orr Campus serves 443 students, 87% whom are African-American and 13% of whom are Hispanic. 97.3% of these students are from low-income households. While they study at EXCEL, they also deal daily with the threats of deadly gang violence, and drugs and alcohol.**
EXCEL, a product of Chicago’s small schools reform efforts, outlines its mission as follows:
Our mission is to motivate, teach, support and encourage a new generation of learners to pursue high academic and career goals now and after high school graduation, with a focus on teaching and leadership. Our philosophy views students as active learners, participants and leaders in their own educational process and amongst their peers and community.
Working towards the school’s mission, art teacher Jeanne Walker created The Heroic Journeys Project as a chance to bring members of the school community together for the celebration of student resiliency and courage. The project has three levels involving both in-class and co-curricular work:
- School beautification – The creation of mosaics for display in the halls based on the Romare Bearden’s Odysseus collages which depicted the Homeric epic in terms of African imagery. An after school club started building these mosaics in the Fall of 2006 (others were done in years prior). The project will continue into the 2007-2008 school year.
- Establishing cultural relevance – Beyond Bearden’s images, students wrote accounts of their own acts of heroism and moments of resilience. Many of the students met on their own time with Peer Consultants from DePaul University's Center for Writing-based Learning.
- Discovering universal themes – Students identified and explored the causes of social injustice in their neighborhood and assembled collages to represent these themes.
These efforts are assembled in the anthology Journeys. To continue the collaboration with DePaul University, this website was created by students in the Master of Arts in New Media Studies program.
** Source: Chicago Public Schools