Newburyport High students headed to competition in Washington

Jun. 16—NEWBURYPORT — A group of recent Newburyport High School graduates are headed to Washington, D.C., next week to show off what they have learned about decreasing targeted violence in the country, with a potential $5,000 prize on the line next week.

Leela Kowalski, Keenan Jackson, Isabella Guido, Lila Gridley and Anna Fortier elected to take Tom Abrams' Perspectives for Leadership and Change class this year.

Perspectives for Leadership and Change works along with EdVenture Partners' Invent2Prevent program, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and asks students to develop their own dynamic products, tools or initiatives to prevent targeted violence and terrorism.

The Newburyport High School students aced their class well enough to compete for the $5,000 prize in Washington, D.C.

"There will be thousands of people watching them because it will be streamed worldwide," Abrams said, "and it will be the bigwigs at the Department of Homeland Security who will be judging them."

The students agreed they wanted to promote stories of fellow students who have felt ostracized in the community, as well as those who have stayed connected with their communities.

"We wanted to make people feel that they had somebody who had experienced something like they did," Fortier said.

The class conducted an anonymous survey of fellow Newburyport High School students, soliciting stories about those who felt ostracized, while also layering in the tactics that made them feel welcome.

Fortier said it was strange seeing the survey data come back.

"We tried to be impartial because we knew a lot of the people and we tried to step back from it," she said. "But, it was little bit tough to see those sorts of things happening."

Abrams said the group initially planned to put its findings on Instagram but realized they might be doing more harm than good.

"When we started getting the stories, we began wrestling with the idea of, if we put it out on Instagram, could that anonymous person be identified? And, if so, might they be further ostracized and exacerbate the problem?" he said.

People tend to feel ostracized if they are in groups that vary from the norm, according to Kowalski.

"The demographics of Newburyport are predominantly white and middle to upper class," she said. "So, a lot of the people who fell outside of that norm are the ones who really felt on the outside."

The class took a look at data collected in recent Newburyport Youth Services developmental asset surveys. The data indicated that eighth-graders at Rupert A. Nock Middle School were in need of what Abrams called "protective factors."

"The eighth-graders," Jackson explained, "had to deal with COVID-19 all through their sixth and seventh grade and they spent a lot of that time going to school virtually. As a result, a lot of them were socially isolated and needed help."

The high school seniors built "escape rooms" for eighth-graders in a pair of empty classrooms at the middle school in May.

An escape room, according to Jackson, is a room that includes locks, safes, clues and riddles which the occupants will need to open or solve in a certain amount of time to get out.

Groups of six to seven eighth-graders rotated through the middle school escape rooms, which were designed to foster cooperation and empathy.

"You're in there with a group of kids who you're not normally friends with and you have to work together if you're going to escape," Jackson said. "So you're forced to work together and that was our goal."

Jackson said the escape room project "went about as well as it could have gone," while also providing he and fellow seniors with a lesson in human behavior.

"We had the same clues in both rooms throughout the entire day," he said. "So, kids would run through and then talk with their friends and give them hints. So, we saw the kids were figuring it out as the day went on."

The Invent2Prevent program had previously been limited to colleges and universities but was opened to roughly 25 high schools this year. Newburyport High School found itself among the top three high schools in the program, along with Bob Jones High School in Madison, Alabama, and Marysville High School in Marysville, Ohio.

The Newburyport students will present their project during the Invent2Prevent final presentation and competition at the Department of Homeland Security campus on Tuesday.

The winner of the competition will receive $5,000, second place will receive $3,000 and a $1,000 prize will be awarded to the third-place group.

"We will be recycling that money back to the school," Abrams said.

The students and Abrams are taking the trip, all expenses paid, courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security. Kowalski said she is excited to travel to Washington.

"It's pretty cool that we made it this far," she said. "We put a lot of time and effort into this, so we're happy that we're going to be presenting."

Abrams stressed that his students volunteered to take part in the program, which took up a lot of their free time.

"They graduated about two weeks ago but they still have been coming in to continue to work on this project," he said.

Staff writer Jim Sullivan covers Amesbury and Salisbury for The Daily News. He can be reached via email at jsullivan@newburyportnews.com or by phone at 978-961-3145. Follow him on Twitter @ndnsully.

Staff writer Jim Sullivan covers Amesbury and Salisbury for The Daily News. He can be reached via email at jsullivan@newburyportnews.com or by phone at 978-961-3145. Follow him on Twitter @ndnsully.