Project Summary

The Nobody Asked Me Campaign is a community research project that aims to highlight and empower students, families, and community members and their experiences living within Baltimore. The project centers community voices to strengthen Baltimore City Public Schools in hopes of ensuring students will receive a “thorough and efficient” education, and that they willbe in safe, healthy, and healing environments where they can learn and develop the skills to thrive in Baltimore.

Our Promise

The Nobody Asked Me Campaign aims to fulfill the promise of the Constitution of Maryland (ARTICLE VII) in providing a “thorough and efficient” educational system to Baltimore students by highlighting students and their families’ lives, experiences, challenges, and voices. We aim to co-produce policies and develop a pathway of promise with teachers, school administrators, content experts, community members, policymakers, and elected officials to support academic success and overall well-being. Not only do we aim to produce social justice policies and strategies so students can develop the skills to thrive, but we also seek to empower students and their families by acknowledging their joy and their perspectives on joy, love, justice, success and community.​

For Far Too Long

Nobody has asked students and their families what they want and how to produce these solutions, what joy means to them, and what educational justice looks like for them. The Nobody Asked Me Campaign is different. We aim to center students and their families; experiences, voices, and affirm their insights to produce healthy and healing centeredenvironments for students’ academic achievement, career success, and overall well-being.

The Nobody Asked Me Campaign specific aims are to:

Develop a pathway of promise for adult success in Baltimore

Break down silos between community members, activists, teachers, school administrators, elected officials and researchers to meet the developmental needs of youth

Dismantle anti-Blackness and other forms of discrimination in policies and practices

Affirm and reaffirm meaningful humanistic relationships through care, love and joy

Allocate thorough and efficient funding and resources in schools and government agencies to meet the physiological, social, and emotional needs of students, youth and their parents

Develop interagency support to help students and their families

IN THE NEWS

Hopkins researcher Richard Lofton teams with community organizer Larry Simmons for in-depth interviews of Baltimore families to discuss social issues most important to them
By Katie Pearce, The Hub, Johns Hopkins University
 
EXPERTS EXAMINE THE SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE AND HOW TO DISMANTLE IT
School of Education, Urban Health Institute host symposium focusing on complex issues surrounding school policing, employment, and concentrated poverty as part of Baltimore’s Civil Rights Week
By Katie Pearce, The Hub, Johns Hopkins University