This February for Black History Month, the spotlight shines on the Minority Empowerment Club at Riverside Brookfield High School. The club, spearheaded by two passionate first-year RB English teachers Chloe Bruck and Daniel Rubio, aims to provide a platform for students who may often feel underrepresented or marginalized.
By creating a safe and supportive space, the club not only helps students navigate their high school career but also works to amplify their voices, foster a sense of belonging, and cultivate leadership skills amongst its members. Rubio is setting his sights on growing the club as a main focus throughout the rest of the school year.
“We are essentially starting from the ground up,” Rubio said. “A lot of the students who were members graduated last year, so we are very motivated to build our numbers in participation.”
While Rubio hopes to see the numbers within the club grow, that comes with defining the club’s purpose and giving the students a reason to be involved. He provides a variety of reasons for student involvement and why those who feel they are being underrepresented should take a chance on the club.
“Giving them [students] a sense of belonging, especially at RB, [is important],” Rubio said. “When you look at the demographic specifically here, we do have less than 5% of African American students here. They do say there is strength in numbers, so I think having a space for them is going to help us grow exponentially.”
Timely enough, the month of February is Black History Month, which falls right in line with what Minority Empowerment Club represents. They are seizing the opportunity to fit what this month celebrates into their plans.
“The first thing we worked on was creating a mural that is going to be visible in the atrium, so we’re pretty excited about that,” Rubio said. “For the second week of Black History Month, we are going to have a Martin Luther King-inspired ‘I Have a Dream’ quote wall as an opportunity for students to share their own dreams and aspirations.”
Bruck and Rubio have done an exceptional job with planning ahead for this important month, creating numerous week-long activities and discussions centered around the importance of Black History Month. As for Bruck, she is extremely eager to get the club going in full gear as the year progresses. As the two teachers work together to involve the larger school community and get the word around, they are finding new and innovative ways to do just that.
“At the beginning of the year, we were putting up posters trying to gauge student interest,” Bruck said. “Recently we’ve had an uptick in membership when we started planning for Black History Month because it is the Minority Empowerment Club’s job to do that and get things going in that regard.
This month is vital in kickstarting the club’s importance in the eyes of the student body at RB. In real time, Bruck and Rubio are seeing students evolve towards not shying away from speaking their minds and further deepening their involvement.
“When we do have these meetings, Mr. Rubio and I will sort of sit back and just ask if there is anything they want to talk about, and we’ve been lucky to have a group of students who are very willing to do that,” Bruck said. “Students who are more comfortable being vulnerable in the classroom and talking about things that are important to them opens the door and shows other students who might be as inclined to do that, to raise their voice as well.”
As the club is still in a stage of refining and continuously building up, Bruck has a vision of what this club will look like in the upcoming years, as its legacy will grow as long as it maintains the same dedication and hard work.
“I’d like to see us in the future be more vocal in the school with supporting minority communities,” Bruck said. “There are so many months of the year that are labeled as support for those communities, so being more intentional about bringing that into the school community [is important].”
In a time when many students may feel disconnected or isolated, the Minority Empowerment Club offers an important reminder: every voice matters, and everyone deserves to be empowered. Through continued efforts like these, RB is making sure that no student feels left behind.
“I think that one of the beautiful things about this school is that there is diversity with so many different groups of students,” Bruck said.
