Carnegie Mellon University
April 24, 2013

News Brief: Hear Me Launches School Climate Campaign

The Hear Me Project of the Robotics Institute's CREATE Lab will launch a new four-month campaign focused on the theme of School Climate with an open house on Friday, April 26, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Big Dog Coffee, 2717 Sarah St., on the South Side.

Hear Me collects and records the thoughts and experiences of young people in the Pittsburgh area and shares them with political and school leaders and with the community at large. For the School Climate campaign, Hear Me has partnered with the Education Law Center, a legal advocacy group that co-founded the Pennsylvania School Climate Coalition. The coalition is concerned about over-reliance by schools on exclusionary policies, such as expulsions, suspensions and referrals to law enforcement, which it says creates a negative school climate.

Hear Me has spent four months collecting positive and negative stories from kids about the environment in local schools. Those student voices will be shared with the community through audio kiosks that will be installed in local coffee shops, libraries and other public spaces. Information about the campaign, audio stories by students and information about how to sponsor a kiosk is available at www.hear-me.net/schoolclimate.