AAS 197J ClassWeb Magazine

Community Education: Student Empowerment

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Assignment 5: Reflections on Relationship between Various Class Projects for This Quarter

By the end of this quarter, our class will work on several different projects with the children and teachers of Wilton Place Elementary School. These projects include our weekly site visits to Wilton Place classrooms, a booklet of student writings from the five classes of children, a tour of UCLA for the children, and an end-of-the-term reception for the children and their parents at Wilton Place.

In most UCLA classes, it is easy to see assignments and projects separately. However, in this class it’s important for students to see the relationship between these projects and to work with children and teachers from this perspective.

For this reflection journal, write about how you see the relationship between the various projects in our class. In other words, how will your work with the children on the booklet connect with your weekly site visits and the end-of-the-term reception? Similarly, how can you use the various projects to help teachers and their ongoing work with kids on improving reading and writing skills?

Eriko Suzuki, "Teamwork and Community Relationships"
Meredith Lee, "Applying What We Learn from Our Class in Our Community"
Dean Saranillio, "The Unity of Theory and Practice"
Melissa Hilario, "First Visit to Wilton Place Elementary School"
Melissa Hilario, "School Can Be Fun When Learning Relates to You"
Cheryl Samson, "Youth Empowerment and Service Learning"

The Unity of Theory and Practice: How are the site visits relevant to what we have been studying in the class?

By Dean Sarananillio

Paulo Freire in his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed explains: “I never advocate either a theoretic elitism or a practice underground in theory, but the unity between theory and practice.” The ability to incorporate our readings into the classroom brings an added dimension into the understanding of Freire and the various other writers. The readings have allowed me to further my questions of the efficiencies of the authoritative model of teaching in the public education system as well as realize the importance of the implementing and experimenting with other models of education. It seems to me that though progressive educators are implementing different more effective strategies for teaching, they are continually receiving resistance from the school system.

While teaching their students to be active agents in the formation of their histories the teachers have to teach from the Open Court “script” which limits the teachers control over her/his class and the Open Court system at times teaches contradictory material. For instance, in the “Open Court Skills Assessment Test” there is a sentence, which asks the student to match the antonym. The sentence states: “Jackie Robinson had to face hostility from white players and fans during the long baseball season.” The phrasing of this sentence places Jackie Robinson in a position from which he “had” to endure his oppression instead of challenge it. The sentence doesn’t recognize that the “white players” were wrong for discriminating against Jackie Robinson, it instead romanticizes Jackie Robinson by writing that he endured racism and by enduring your racism for a long period of time it will eventually go away. These kinds of sentences are phrased in a way to legitimize racism, especially when given to young students of color. When progressive educators are attempting to teach students to be self-determining, sentences like these are attempting to keep them dependant on the exploitative power structures of the system.

The various readings that we have been doing for this class have been extremely enlightening. It’s amazing how many ideological similarities Paulo Freire, Frantz Fanon, and Malcolm X have regarding oppression and the reproduction of oppression. I have never heard of Paulo Freire before this class nor have I read articles specifically written for student and community activists. These articles help to raise our consciousness so that we may in turn hopefully empower the younger students. They also help us to relate theory and practice through effective organizing and strategizing. These readings are so pertinent to solid, efficient activism that I copied and sent some of them to my friends back at the University of Hawai‘i.

By working with the elementary students I hope we are able to implement the ideas we have been reading about into the classroom. I think we should continually experiment with different learning methods with the students and our ability to visit Wilton Place Elementary gives us this opportunity.