By Vanessa Williams
On Thursday, April 11th, Capital City PCS juniors took over teaching duties and facilitated workshops for their peers via the annual Capital City Youth Justice Summit. More than thirty workshops were presented on a variety of topics, including gun violence, outdoor education, and the climate crisis.

The annual Youth Justice Summit at Capital City PCS in Washington, D.C. included six sessions of youth-led workshops on a variety of social justice topics including book banning, the impacts of gentrification, gun violence, disability and policing, and climate justice. 

On Friday October 9, eighty high schoolers from Capital City Public Charter School in Washington D.C. joined a Zoom call with Claudia Sparrow, director and producer of the film Maxima. Maxima follows Máxima Acuña, a Peruvian activist fighting a multinational gold mining corporation over rights to her land.

Middle school students at Capital City Public Charter School and educators Lapeta Solomon and Mrs. Amanda Yeager have formed the school's first Gender Neutral Alliance. Lapeta Solomon is the 8th Grade Inclusion Humanities teacher at Capital City Public Charter School and a 2018 Education First, SEL Innovation Award winner for her work in founding the MS Gender Neutral Alliance and Gender Sensitivity Training for teachers and staff. Read more >>

The 5th Annual Food Justice Youth Summit, a collaboration between Capital City Public Charter School and the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability & Environmental Sciences (CAUSES), was an all-day (April 12), interactive event where DC youth lead workshops focusing on various issues related to food justice. Read more >>

High school students at Capital City Public Charter School, with the guidance of their U.S. history teacher Ben Williams, learned about the 13 guiding principles as a part of the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.

As part of the Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Schools, U.S. government teacher Ben Williams from Capital City Public Charter School taught a lesson titled “Getting to Know Bayard Rustin: A key leader and organizer of the Civil Rights Movement.” 

The theme was “Feed Your Brain: Nourish Your Community” and the session topics included: Food Sourcing, Food Policy and Laws, Food Production, Food Waste and Composting, School Lunches, and Food Access.

Teaching for Change was pleased to attend and photograph the 2016 Food Justice Youth Summit. See our posts about 2014 and 2015, and view more photographs from 2016 in our Flickr album. On April 7, 2016, 11th graders at Capital City Public Charter School hosted the 2nd Annual Food Justice Youth Summit to build awareness about food justice issues, both nationally and locally, at Friends Meeting House of Washington. This year’s event featured keynote speaker, Lauren Nixon... Read more >>

Students in Washington, D.C., had the rare opportunity to discuss the hidden history of labor through Brothers on the Line, a new film they screened in school, with Sasha Reuther, who is both the filmmaker and grandson of one of the famous Reuther brothers. Teaching for Change and Filmfest DC, with the support of the Wyncote Foundation, worked with educators Julian Hipkins III at Capital City Public Charter School and Susan Ikenberry... Read more >>

Doughnut holes and orange juice jugs cover the table. Chairs set in neat tight lines cover the floor. The background of the stage is painted with colorful murals from the latest school play. The entire setting looks perfect, orderly. But what happens next in the multi-purpose room of Capital City Public Charter School is not so expected, or orderly. It’s radical. Four groups of eleventh graders in Mr. Julian Hipkins history class presented... Read more >>

It was a hot day in early June, but the 11th graders inside of Capital City Public Charter School in Washington, DC never seemed to sweat. They were cool, put together, looking more like policy advocates in front of congress instead of soon-to-be seniors in high school. Their task: pick a problem facing the community, develop a proposal to fix it and sell it to an audience. Read more >>