This week in Breaking Barriers, the McKnight Middle School students prepared for a Martin Luther King, Jr. assembly and selected several of their peers to represent them and speak in front of the school at the assembly.

Breaking Barriers is an outstanding outreach program created by the UW Bothell Diversity Recruitment and Outreach office. Led by UW Bothell administrator Anthony Kelley and McKnight Middle School administrator Arty Christiano, several UW Bothell students run weekly workshops for groups of young male students at McKnight Middle School in Renton, Washington near Seattle. In supporting underrepresented populations, the program ends up working with mainly African American and Latino youth. In total, about 60 middle school students are participating in the program, which aims to develop leadership and communication skills. The program is also designed to transform the culture and teaching practices of the middle school in order to better serve underrepresented populations. It is a unique program and I really like it because it gives a voice to the students in a dialogue about how the school can better support them. I am making photos and filming some of the project, while advising UW Bothell student Amen Mengesha in his production of periodic video updates for the parents and a documentary film that will be finished at the end of the school year. Stay tuned! See photos below and more in this older post.