After a process in which our students researched and advocated for a host of place-based research topics, the juniors have ultimately formed six small groups (9-12 students per group), each of which will study a different socio-political issue over the course of the year, culminating in a week-long place-based research trip in April.

Each group will travel to a location that has been proposed by students as a place where this topic is most relevant and immediate--places where (as founder of the Equal Justice Initiative Bryan Stevenson urges us to do in his speech on how to change the world that served as a framing text for our work together this year) we can:

• get proximate to these issues and the innovative work being done to address them
• examine multiple perspectives in order to challenge easy narratives and assumptions
• find reasons to remain hopeful by learning from those driving change in their own communities, and
• embrace discomfort as we push outside of our comfort zones and into the unfamiliar.