Transcript Coffee Cups, Frogs, and Lived Experience
Coffee Cups, Frogs, and Lived Experience
Bertram (Chip) Bruce Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Communities
Learning communities Online communities Bringing the community into the classroom (Moll: funds of knowledge) Taking the classroom to the community (service learning)
“The community is the curriculum”
• The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain… until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life. --Jane Addams
Dewey on inquiry
• Thus the question of integration of mind-body in action is the most practical of all questions we can ask of our civilization. ... Until this integration is effected in the only place where it can be carried out, in action itself, we shall continue to live in a society in which a soulless and heartless materialism is compensated for by soulful but futile idealism and spiritualism.
Progressive education
“Respect for diversity, meaning that each individual should be recognized for his or her own abilities, interests, ideas, needs, and cultural identity, and “the development of critical, socially-engaged intelligence, which enables individuals to understand and participate effectively in the affairs of their community in a collaborative effort to achieve a common good.” --John Dewey Project on Progressive Education, U Vermont
Social reconstruction
There is no good education apart from some conception of the good society...The great weakness of progressive education is that it has elaborated no theory of social welfare. --George Counts, PEA address, 1932 Ella Flagg Young on teaching democracy
Public spaces
• it is not only a matter of admission and inclusion in predefined public spaces; it is...a matter of transformation of our institutions and public spaces - Greene, 1998
Self awareness
• Our students don’t come here because they are consciously seeking a liberating education or because they support Puerto Rican independence. They come here because they know that this school will work hard not to neglect them and because they’ll find out who they are. –Iván, a teacher
Nurturing
• This school is my sanctuary. I know this because once I step outside these doors my problems come back. They’re just waiting outside the doors to smack me in my face and start all over again. I stay at this school because I don’t have to worry about my problems. I got my mind set on other things. — Damien, a PACHS student, in Antrop-González, 2003
Healthy environment
• Dicen que el Coquí no puede cantar ni vivir fuera de la isla. Aquí, el Coquí canta a su isla con amor, sobreviviendo a la ciudad de los vientos aun en temperaturas bajo cero. - Luis Padial Doble
PACHS curriculum
the development of cognitive skills in the areas of Natural and Social Science, Mathematics, Communications, and the Arts.
the development of self-identity and self-worth by analyzing the Puerto Rican and Latino reality.
hands-on experience... video, bomba y plena, typing, dance, guitar and journalism.
Youth activism & community change
• Ginwright, Noguera, & Cammorota, 2006 self awareness social awareness global awareness
Community Media Lab
La Voz community newspaper, part of the Participatory Democracy Project Theater, e.g., The Spark/La Chispa, about the 1966 Division St. riots Community Internet Radio Podcasts of oral histories
Café Teatro Batey Urbano
• Cyber Wash • by Ghost Text
Social justice & technology
economic development individual community liberatory possibilities critique of oppression
Networked information systems
Rehab donated computers Configure operating systems, software Local & distance networking Set up a community technology center Teach people in the site
Inquiry-based learning
Fall 2006: uiuc.edu/goto/ibo Students worked with community members: Digital Archive, literacy across the curriculum, hydroponics garden, violence reduction, community wellness program Inquiry units : inquiry.uiuc.edu
(“PACHS”) Developing better communication practices
Community Informatics
Community information systems Professional research in action CI Corps practicum Networked information systems Inquiry-based learning
Students
• I’ve always been passionate about literacy and social justice. I also have always loved libraries. I just didn’t know that those seemingly disparate interests could be joined. Growing up in inner-city Chicago as a child of immigrants, I spent most of my time at my neighborhood public library. Although my mother only made it to 6th grade in her native land of Mexico, she imbued us with a love for books. Reading opened up so many possibilities in my life because it provides access to information. -Dali
Lessons
People participate because of felt needs Community action mobilizes diverse interests Challenges working across boundaries Learning when theory is integrated with action Technology is made, not found Things belong together after they are brought together Teaching as listening; learning as telling
The community is the curriculum
Highlander School: Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Pete Seeger, Bill Moyers, Eleanor Roosevelt, ... connections to Jane Addams, John Dewey Myles Horton: cannot teach responsible participation in democracy without access “we make the road by walking” --Horton & Freire
Coffee cups
Democracy is conversation. --John Dewey La taza de café puertorriqueña that kept us going through the process.
Community as Intellectual Space
• Paseo Boricua, June 15-17, 2007
Read more
Puerto Rican Cultural Center : www.prcc-chgo.org
Community Informatics Corps activism and community change Horton, 1990, The long haul masters program: www.lis.uiuc.edu/programs/ms/cic.html
Ginwright, et al., 2006, Beyond resistance!: Youth Coffee cups, frogs, & lived experience : www.uiuc.edu/goto/frogs
Acknowledgements
Batey Urbano PRCC Community Informatics Initiative Ann Bishop Sarai Lastra Alejandro Luis Molina Jose Lopez Matt Rodriguez Sunny Jeong Muzhgan Nazarova many more...