Video: 9-Year-Old Boy Schools Rahm Emanuel On Closings

By Samantha Abernethy in News on May 21, 2013 3:30PM

Meet Asean Johnson. He is nine years old, and he is a third-grader at Marcus Garvey Elementary. He was downtown on Monday at the rally to protest the city's plan to close dozens of Chicago's public schools, where he delivered this powerful speech. His school is on the list of closures, and if closed, Asean will be heading to Mount Vernon Elementary.

Asean has been active in the movement to save his school, appearing at rallies and delivering speeches to the school board and district leaders. He was featured in a Sun-Times editorial, which also pointed out the receiving school Mount Vernon Elementary has lower test scores than Garvey. Watch this interview with Asean from Monday.

In that interview, Asean talks about SEL, and we stumbled on this video of Asean talking about the SEL program (aka CASEL, Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning) at Garvey Elementary back in January.

On the map below, you can see where Garvey and Mount Vernon elementary schools are located in the Washington Heights neighborhood.

View Marcus Moziah Garvey Elementary School, 10309 S Morgan St in a larger map