In 2021, Tamalpais Union High School District (TUHSD) began implementing an initiative called Stop and Learns, designed to provide students with research-based, timely information on current topics that impact their daily lives. The sessions occur across all TUHSD campuses and classrooms, focusing on topics negatively impacting the student community, such as bias, microaggressions, and drug awareness. Despite mixed student engagement, the district will continue these sessions in hopes of educating students.
While all TUHSD students are required to take an array of history classes, including semester-long Social Issues, the district designed Stop and Learns to cover topics absent from the curriculum.
TUHSD created the first Stop and Learn in 2021, to address the fentanyl crisis, specifically concerns about the lack of accurate information surrounding the drug. In response, the district partnered with its wellness team and Song for Charlie—an organization dedicated to raising awareness about counterfeit prescription pills sold online—to educate students on fentanyl risks.
Following the success of the first Stop and Learn, TUHSD continued the program with district-wide sessions on bias, the N-word, and microaggressions. According to Kelly Lara, the Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services at TUHSD, they select topics for workshops based on student feedback.
“Generally, [the subjects of Stop and Learns] come out of students saying, this is a really important topic that we feel that all students need support with, because it’s coming up in our school community all the time. It’s causing harm or it’s negatively impacting the students, and we think students need to learn more about it,” Lara said.
The latest Stop and Learn session in September, featuring guest speakers from the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and the Islamic Networks Group (ING), aimed to educate students on antisemitism and Islamophobia. The session included a slideshow, classroom discussion, and an hour-long webinar led by professionals brought in by the district.
According to Archie Williams Principal Jacob Gran, the most recent session on antisemitism and Islamophobia was beneficial to students. He believes the educational benefits of the Stop and Learns lie in offering the program at the district level.
“The idea is that every student is experiencing more or less the same lesson. We can construct something at a district level and then push it out to all the schools within the district, [so that] every student is having a similar [educational] experience,” Gran said.
During Stop and Learns, the district offers optional affinity spaces for students who identify with the topics or groups of discussion. The affinity spaces provide students with an opportunity to engage with the material in an environment where they feel safe and comfortable.
“For folks that might share an affinity with a certain identity, it’s a way for them to also build community and maybe even dive deeper into their own experiences with people that can really empathize and understand the experiences of where they’re coming from,” Gran said.
Archie Williams sophomore Hanaleia Lavie found the Jewish affinity space in the most recent Stop and Learn to be where she felt safe and welcomed.
“It was really refreshing to not… feel like I had to speak for all Jewish people, and to just have my own experience, as an individual,” Hanaleia said. “It felt reassuring that there were a lot of other students that, not only were Jewish, but took pride in their Jewish identity and claimed it, and came to that space.”
The Stop and Learn sessions executed in classrooms received mixed reactions from students. Students who were able to take the time to engage in the material generally found the sessions to be informative.
“I think the last [Stop and Learn] was really eye-opening for me, especially just learning about statistics about hate crimes towards Muslims,” Hanaleia said.
However, for other students, the Stop and Learns are not achieving their full potential due to students not fully participating in the lessons.
“I feel like [the Stop and Learn sessions] have a lot of really important material that they’re teaching, but students just aren’t engaged. Like, I have lots of friends who say, like, ‘Oh, I just fell asleep,’” Hanaleia said.
Students Taking Action Against Racism club president and Archie Williams junior Frida Alarcon believes that the Stop and Learn sessions would be more engaging if they were more interactive, or gave advice on how to confront real-life situations in which a person might encounter bias or racism.
“I think make [the Stop and Learns] to more involve people, not just listening. [The program] could have exercises, like how to react in this situation [involving injustice],” Frida said.
Despite disputes on the efficacy of their formatting, Stop and Learns have helped students to learn new terminology and develop a deeper understanding of relevant issues in today’s society.
“I remember last year, at a Stop and Learn it was a good experience for me… I learned a lot about different nouns and adjectives to use with different groups of people or communities, I think that’s very helpful,” Frida said.
TUHSD’s effort to educate students on these topics in itself has not gone unnoticed. To Frida the idea that the push for racial equality in classrooms is coming from the TUHSD is meaningful.
“The district really cares about [educating students on racism and bias], they put two hours out of their time to do it, to ask people to come, I think that’s a good thing,” Frida said.
The TUHSD plans to continue creating Stop and Learns to educate students on relevant and important topics in the student body. According to Lara, students have requested a Stop and Learn focused on consent, which may be the topic of the next session.
“I’m hearing a lot of input from students about consent, and so I do envision an upcoming Stop and Learn to be focused on consent. I think that issues with consent are causing great harm in our community,” said Lara.
Principal Gran believes in the importance of addressing social issues and topics as a part of a student’s broader education. Because Stop and Learns are a critical part of a student’s education and lifelong learning, TUHSD plans to continue the sessions for years to come.
“This work is essential and never ends, as it is a fundamental part of life and continuous learning,” Gran said.
