Urban Experience Week Turns St. Louis into a Classroom
Upper School freshmen and sophomores spent a week in April exploring the “Gateway to the West.” By foot, bus, and train, they navigated the city of St. Louis to gain deeper insights into its origins, art, entrepreneurial spirit, and social challenges—and to generate solutions where needed.
Urban Experience week is designed to engage students in making personal connections to the community beyond Principia. “If you have a growing understanding of what the actual needs are in a community, and if you have a growing skill set and vocabulary in your academic experience, you can begin to link that to real-world problems, real-world opportunities, and potentially to spaces where you may be spending a lot of time, later in life,” explains Charley Martin (C’96), principal for student life and the developer of the Urban Experience program.
Freshmen Get to Know St. Louis
Two questions framed the freshman class’s study of the city: Where have we been, and where are we going? As English teacher Alicia Sorensen points out, “Without knowing the beginning, you can’t really see how we’ve progressed, where we’ve grown, and how we’ve changed.”
Pursuing these questions, freshmen began the program on a Sunday, looking at Principia’s own beginnings on the Page and Belt campus. They attended a black evangelical Christian church that now occupies the former Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist, on the Page and Belt campus. And they visited the YMCA that purchased most of the campus from Principia and currently operates on the site.
In the following days, students explored the cobblestone streets of old St. Louis, once a French fur-trading settlement and launching ground for westward expansion. They also walked through communities separated by the Delmar Divide, a street that divides the tree-lined, affluent neighborhoods to the south and the crumbling, mostly African American neighborhoods to the north—the legacy of racial redlining and social policies. In addition, they interviewed the president of the St. Louis chapter of the NAACP and learned how neighbors on both sides are working together to repair racial division.
In addition, students visited museums, galleries, and the City Garden, exploring how art impacts the city, gives voice to activism, and serves as a visual landscape. Finally, they explored St. Louis as a city of the future—visiting a makerspace, startup business incubator, and community development organization trying to revitalize the urban core.
“I’m not from St. Louis,” says Kori Jordan from Elyria, Ohio, “so at first I thought, ‘This is irrelevant. I don’t even live here.’ But now I feel like this is actually really cool. It gives you a different perspective.”
“It makes you want to dig deeper into the way different people get here, where they come from, and what everyone’s race or ethnicity is,” says Isaac Legard from Cleveland, Ohio. “If you dig deep enough, you notice everybody is connected in some way. It’s really interesting.”
Sophomores Dive into Research
Sophomores spent their Urban Experience week in St. Louis as well, but their adventures were designed and driven by their own research questions. They prepared in advance by researching and contacting experts, setting up interviews, and scheduling their time in the city using workflow software. Then, based near downtown in Third Baptist Church, teams of students fanned out into the city, executing their research plans. Topics varied broadly, including entrepreneurship and innovation, sustainability, sports and community, urban arts, and entertainment. In each case, students not only delved into the topic but also identified its impact on St. Louis and generated new ideas to help the city confront challenges in that area. Final presentations focused on a specific urban issue related to the group’s topic, explained its causes, and offered next steps to solve problems.
“One thing I love about the sophomore program is that it allows opportunities for choice and for developing real-world skills,” notes Jim Moser (C’04), math teacher and sophomore grade-level coordinator. “A major learning goal for them was not just to learn about St. Louis but to develop those 21st-century skills of working collaboratively, communicating with experts, and thinking bigger—not just being in a classroom and sitting at a desk but getting out there and doing actual research.”
Urban Experience week culminated with presentations to the community on the School campus. Freshmen shared the collaborative artworks they had made, and sophomore teams presented the findings of their research, including proposed solutions.
“We want our students to be change agents,” says Martin. “That is the outcome. As they walk across the stage, we want them to know how to collaborate and how to effectively communicate with their public speaking and in meetings—and we want them to have a sense for how they can make a contribution.”
Take a peek at this year's Urban Experience in the slideshow below.