And that's where it all began. The first day of class they played "Social Stratification Bingo", by the second week they were talking about sexism, classism, racism, and their own stereotypes and prejudices. It was all so different than any class Jess had taken before. This was finally something that mattered to her, something she really cared about. And Mr. Armstrong was just as good as his legend said he would be, maybe even better. He didn't want them to worry about grades, he wanted them to think and learn and talk and experience.

Jess gave it to him, too. She suffered through British Literature and Advanced Biology waiting for 4th period Sociology each day. When Mr. Armstrong announced their final exam would be a project of their choosing, Jess spent hours blankly staring at the TV debating what to do her research on. She considered studying the gender politics of Latin America or the effect of ageism on the social welfare industry. But Mr. Armstrong didn't like either of those ideas.

He said Jess should, "Study something you know first hand. That way you'll really care."

Jess pondered for days what could possibly be sociologically interesting about a small Ohio suburb--and then driving home from school one day she say two African-American students talking in the parking lot and it hit her.

Racism. She'd study race relations at Lakeside High School. There was definitely a problem. Jess guessed the African-American student population at Lakeside was about 15%, but she never saw black students mingling with white students. Although it had always struck her as kind of odd--she and her friends sometimes talked about how it was weird the "black kids hardly ever hung out with any white kids"--Jess had never thought about the issues formally or with any real organization.

Mr. Armstrong loved the idea of a project on race relations at Lakeside and urged her to conduct some informal research, through interviews or a survey, as part of the project. He thought talking to the people she was studying would be the best way to get a broad range of opinions to use as support in writing her paper. He thought it was a good idea and so did Jess.

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