Dorothy Stang Popular Education Adult High School (DSHS) offers a high school diploma to a population ignored by educational institutions. Older Spanish-speaking immigrants have one opportunity to complete high school — the GED. The GED, however, has an 80% attrition rate nationally. Dorothy Stang Popular Education Adult High School offers a diploma endorsed by De La Salle high school and it has a 92% graduation rate. DSHS offers the traditional high school courses but the curriculum is unique because it integrates two themes into all courses: eco-justice and culture.
Eco-justice takes up the ethical legacy of our namesake Sister Dorothy Stang, who was assassinated for her defense of both the small Brazilian farmers and the rain forests being destroyed by big plantation owners. To honor students’ cultures, students last year worked collaboratively with the guidance of Brazilian-born visual and teaching artist Mirtes Zwierzynski to create the mural Nuestras Vidas, Nuestra Cultura — a mural that represents their histories and journey here (See video below.)
It is not just our curriculum and popular education method that distinguishes us. DSHS emphasizes the moral imperative to promote social justice as the goal of education.
Our faculty (two MDs; a Civil/Environmental Engineer; seven doctorates in Political Science, Math, Theology, Sociology, and Literature; twelve Masters degrees in ESL/Bilingual Education, Counseling Psychology, Social Work, Math, Philosophy and an ABD in Education) is distinctive, too. Everyone (including the staff) is a volunteer.
The night school program is intense. Classes meet from 6–9 Monday through Thursday. We offer life experience credit, and graduation takes place in nine months.
Currently Science, Social Studies and History are addressing climate change and its effects on public health. Science students will be engaged in experiments on greenhouse warming, sea level changes, and weather pattern shifts; they will collect data for a health survey. History and Social Studies will examine the history and effectiveness of people’s movements to resist corporate dumping of chemicals and industrial pollution in poor communities. Pilsen’s success in challenging polluters will be studied. Literature students will write poems dealing with these environmental/political themes and Math will create scales and graphs that accompany this unit.
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Renny Golden was a professor of Justice Studies at Northeastern Illinois University for 30 years. Is a co-founder of Dorothy Stang Bilingual High School and author of three books about El Salvador during the war years of the 1980s.
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