Mark Fusco: Teacher and Students Making Changes

ATD Fourth World interviewed Mark Fusco, a teacher at Hyde Leadership Charter School who worked with us for the October 17 International Day for the Eradication of Poverty [IDEP] in 2015. Mark and his students presented a powerful speech during the commemoration at the United Nations. After the event, the high school students carried the energy further and have done amazing work in their community! Here’s what they did and how they did it.My name is Mark Fusco and I have been teaching at Hyde Leadership Charter School for six years. Hyde is a unique high school because it is small and character-focused, and promotes ethics of social justice. We are located in Hunts Point which is an area of the Bronx that has been abused and oppressed by the city for decades. Over the past few years, a number of veteran organizers have teamed up with nascent non-profits to achieve positive changes such as new parks, boulevarded streets, more trees, and reduced violence. I see it as my job to constantly be aware of the latest developments in the neighborhood becauseI spend a lot of my life here. Teaching, for me, should merge the community with classrooms to make students’ lessons more relevant and authentic. When I’m at my best, the students become my partners in this work—connecting me to new networks in the neighborhood or waking me up to things I’ve never thought to consider. As an English teacher, you prepared the delegation of your high school for the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. What brought you to this journey? Our Director of Development, Josh Williams, volunteered at a Street Library event and found out about an opportunity for our students to speak at the United Nations. I thought it sounded unique and important, so we identified students we knew were politically engaged and might be interested in meeting to talk about serious issues like global poverty. Not all of these students were academic all-stars; the most important was their fire for justice. This group’s enthusiasm and ATD Fourth World’s guidance helped it come to fruition. That day was special because many of us, including myself, had never been inside the United Nations. We were in awe of the beauty and scale of the place. We even got excited to have our own translator earpieces. But to speak at such a forum for the first time made the visit truly unforgettable. Students were particularly impressed with how international the gathering was (people presenting in a number of languages), and were inspired by the common commitment that all of these very different parties shared. It felt like a miniature global community.After IDEP, you felt that the students needed to make an impact locally. Why did you feel such a need? What happened at IDEP that helped you form the ideas? How were your thoughts carried out as actions?As we were putting together our UN speech, a couple of students asked, “So what happens after this?” I was so touched by this because I secretly hoped that the group would turn to working on other issues and take things further. I just wasn’t sure if the motivation would stay. All the ideas about the Hunts Point 2030 Vision Project as well as the 311 Campaign came from the students.First, half of the group went around the Hunts Point area and took pictures of things that needed fixing. They used the 311 application to pressure the city government to clean the streets or re-activate the broken traffic lights. They saw the results immediately. However, there was one area by the Amtrak train tracks that the 311 could not fix.At the same time, the other half of the group was creating a vision plan for Hunts Point. At the meeting we had with the Majora Carter Group (a major mover-shaker company in the community), we saw their specific ideas for “Hunts Point Heights.” Students were concerned that this was a thinly veiled gentrification plan so they created an alternative. They wrote in detail about businesses, schools, and housing they wanted to see develop. Then we brought in two candidates for City Council to hear about our vision plan and share their opinions on how we could clean up the area by the tracks.After that, we held a school-wide event with multiple community stakeholders (police, business leaders, non-profits, politicians) to share our vision plan on a larger level. We also advocated for all our students to use the 311 app to improve the neighborhood.We also went to New York University to share what we’d learned and what we wanted to do. Lastly, we got our new City Councilman to actually fix the area by the tracks that we’d been advocating to fix.This achievement was extremely satisfying because we were able to both enforce a long-term plan of action but also create immediate, tangible changes. These kids are immensely talented, ambitious, and hopeful. The success of their IDEP speech made them feel like they had a voice and they could make positive changes. ATD Fourth World instilled in us the crucial principle that working toward social change is not so much about giving people material things, but is about listening to individual communities and helping to facilitate their self-generated goals. That is far more empowering and sustainable. Our group felt motivated to make our friends from ATD Fourth World proud. Thus, it became a year-long partnership where we visited their site and they came to our event in April.We learned that persistence is perhaps the greatest virtue you can have when trying to make changes.What will be the next steps for this group?Now that we have established a relationship with ATD Fourth World, NYU, and the City Council, we will leverage these connections to get wider exposure, learn about the most pressing issues, and continuously advocate for change. We are going to work with our city councilman to clean up all the trash that sits behind the fencing, which lines about ten blocks where some of our students live. Of course, we also intend to speak once again at the October 17 International Day for the Eradication of Poverty!