Author: Dale Mezzacappa

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with news on the city’s public school system.Martin Luther King High School social studies teacher Nadirah O’Connor said her students have a lot of questions. They want to know why their neighborhood is impoverished. Why so many guns are on the street. Why “every five minutes” they are going to a funeral. And why in nearby wealthier and whiter neighborhoods like Chestnut Hill, there seems to be none of that. There are no easy answers, but O’Connor tries to unpack these issues in her civics classes, where students learn about…