MNIC updates

I am pretty comfortable at the stage I am now with my placement. I have been able to form a solid friendship with 4 of the student, which I am really happy about. I feel like for the students I am not longer “this stranger who comes to class once a week” but have now transition some of the students saying “ hey Selam, are you coming next week.”

Last week I had the most unforgettable event happen. I walked in to the classroom, said hi to the students and the teacher and sat down. However, it did not take me long to realize that Twain was not in the class. I asked the teacher. He told me he will probably not show up, as most of his friends from other schools will be on their Spring break and hence he would want to hang out with them. Just when he finished explaining, Twain walked in. He did not seem like in a good mood. The teacher saw him and told him “she asked about you as she walked in” and his response was “ ohh that is really nice. It is nice to have people who care.” Seeing that I was able to him better by just doing something simple like this was beyond me. I was really touched. I went ahead to ask him why he did not look happy. He told me that when he was at school last week, he had to baby sit his niece at the same time. So, he decided to bring him along but he was told to leave because of that. I gathered they could have a rule against it as it would be destruction. This is kind of a though spot to be. I did not want to say what they did was wrong, neither did I want to say he is right (even though that was what I felt like saying.) I just listened. So incidents like this where I feel like I am actually connected to their lives, makes me really happy and believe that I am doing the best I can.

However, there are still other students in the classroom I still have not been able to reach out to. I still wonder why. I thought it was because I was spending too much time with the people I know already. So I decided to go around asking if they needed my help. This did not seem to work as most of them just said “no I do not need your help.” Most of them say it with an attitude I am still not used to. So it makes hard for me to try again. But then, I say to myself “ do not get ahead of yourself, you have just been here for few weeks. Not enough time for everyone to like you.” I guess which is why I am planning to do this during the summer too. May be if I stay that long, all the students will be convinced that I am there because I care.

With the kids of youth I am spending time with, I think everyday is a different experience. So I still think there is a lot to learn form my placement. The problem is I feel like time is not by my side. I am trying to push Twain to work on projects so that he can get the 4 credits he needs to graduate. As for Stephanie, I helped her with her geography project and she is determined to graduate at the end of this year. I specially wish I had more time when it comes to helping Tiffany. Having been moving to different places in the past few months, she has not been able to really focus on her schoolwork. She has not showed up to school in like two weeks. She is only two or three credits from getting her diploma., so with a little push, I know she will be able to make it – only if she could come to school more often.

As I mentioned earlier in my blog, I am also doing my internship at the same time. Hence, as I am tutoring these students I am also observing to see where their problems in life come from to aid my research in stress reduction practices. My hope for the rest of the semester is to finalize my research and produce something that would of help to these students.

CLUES update

CLUES is going much better at this point that it had been in the beginning of the semester. The other Macalester student volunteers and I have developed a routine for the evenings in response to their needs and through experimenting with the most effective distribution of volunteers. The kids know what to expect, which I think makes it much less stressful for them and lowers the formerly manic energy level of the group. Several families have dropped out of the program, so the smaller group is easier to facilitate in calmer activities, and I think the kids appreciate the increased attention. They recognize us when they arrive now, even the youngest toddlers. They do, however, continue to refer to us and address us as “Teacher.” I am not sure what to make of this; we did stop wearing our nametags after the first few weeks, and while we remember all of their names, it is understandable that they would not remember ours. But I think it is still an interesting dynamic; is it because we appear significantly older than them and are thus generic “Teacher” authorities because we are in a school space, or is it because our perceived identities correspond to the roles of power they typically experience?

We are supposed to be following a curriculum roughly parallel to the themes that parents discuss every week, such as goal setting, health, and academic achievement. Our group is conflicted about whether we should push the lesson activities on the kids, who would clearly prefer to engage in more active play, or respect the programs’ goals of encouraging more explicit aspects of youth development. I hope that the students are not expected to be receiving significant educational benefits from the program, because while we facilitate social interaction and problem solving in the context of group play, the curriculum we are expected to follow is secondary to our goals of maintaining their interest and peace given limited space and resources. This makes me question the appropriateness of allowing untrained volunteers to do important work in youth development in the absence of more qualified people; it seems like more training should be required, which is probably challenging given tight budgetary constraints.

I have noticed a lot of material in the school that reflects the theory we have discussed in class; there are folkloric dancing classes and Latin American heritage is celebrated in hallway art (“la cultura cura”), there is emphasis on healthy eating choices throughout the school, and there does seem to be a valorous effort to make constructive use of traditionally out-of-school time. As it is a bilingual school (only phonic and reading are conducted in English, according to the 2^nd graders in the program), I am interested in how that affects the development of their identity, particularly in terms of role models and culturally sensitive education.

Maxfield weeks 2 and 3

The goals that I find with the ACES program at Maxfield are to provide a safe environment for students, to offer positive adult role models for students, and to provide relevant experiences, both inside and outside the classroom. These goals are explicitly stated in our volunteer meeting room as well as on the front page of our volunteer handbook. We do our best to carry these out in the program. I think that ACES embraces the different cultures Maxfield’s students bring to the table, however the vast majority of students who participate in the program come from African-American backgrounds. As I talked about in my first post, ACES was eager to drop their curriculum for a week to accommodate Ramsey’s preparations for Parent’s Night. When students asked my why they were participating in these skits and musical numbers, I would reply that it is important for their family to understand that the school and our program value their cultural background, and that it is important to stay in touch with their culture.
I experience intercultural interactions every day that I step into my fourth graders’ classroom. They are always singing the latest songs and dancing around during the period between the end of school and the beginning of ACES. Because I am the new guy, and therefore inherently interesting, they always ask me if I had heard the songs before, to which I normally date myself by replying no. They start trying to teach me the songs for the rest of the session that day. This leaves me asking myself the question: should I start lying and saying that I do in fact know the songs so it doesn’t take time out of ACES’ curriculum.
I had an interesting experience two weeks ago with a pair of my male students. I was helping them out with their long division by using money as a way to divide by 25. This led them to ask how much money I carry around on a daily basis. I responded (truthfully) that I carry around roughly $15. They were stunned. They suddenly asked me if I attended college. They were perplexed by the fact that I am basically broke but I am still in college, because, apparently, they have been given the impression that only rich people can go to college. For the first time, I really understood a reason why people dismiss college as a goal: you need to be rich. It was interesting watching them analyze my information on college loans and scholarships. It was also pretty entertaining to watch their reaction to the idea of someone paying for your college (in the form of scholarship). I have had a pretty good first three weeks at Maxfield, and I look forward to my visit next week.

Cultural Specificity at CLUES

CLUES attempts to bridge the cultural gap between mainstream public school education and Latino immigrants. It takes place in an English-Spanish bilingual school on the West Side, a largely Latino neighborhood. CLUES facilitates what in Spanish I think would be called "capacitaciones," capacity-building workshops. Last week someone from the local branch of the Saint Paul public Library talked to the parents about Spanish and English opportunities and resources, and this week a woman from La Clinica, a sliding-scale clinic serving primarily lower-income Latino families located in the West Side, came to speak about reproductive health, La Clinica and other health resources. All of these meetings are conducted in Spanish. That part of the program is explicitly intended to introduce Latino parents to resources and methods of parenting that will make their children more successful in this school system. While it is respectful of the parents' backgrounds (I believe the majority of them are originally from Mexico and Central America), it does not celebrate their culture so much as attempt to mediate and facilitate its intersection with mainstream United States institutional culture.

This approach is definitely committed to working within the system, rather than attempting to address underlying systems that cause students from Latino families to be less prepared for school, such as the parents’ job instability or lower earning potential (many parents are seasonal workers) in the exosystem, or larger political and cultural processes in the macrosystem. But in the work that it does to integrate Latino families into the school culture, albeit without much celebration of family culture, the program acknowledges a more immediate need than ones that could be addressed on the policy level; kids are not going to do as well in school if their parents have unstable employment, are unaware of access to affordable healthcare, or do not know how to use the free resources offered by the public library. I would argue that these are basic connections to be made and relatively unassociated with cultural practices. However, the next week’s theme is discipline, and I think this may implicitly address a cultural difference. While language or socioeconomics may prove to be barriers to the earlier topics, I think that discipline is a highly subjective and culturally informed style of parenting. And while perhaps the behavior of these children, unmitigated by the more dominant behavioral norms, is detrimental to their social relationships and ability to learn in the classroom, teaching parents how to discipline their kids necessarily privileges one culturally bound style over another. Perhaps this is what children need to succeed in the context they are given, but I think it needs to be interrogated more extensively.

My job is to provide childcare for the children while their parents participate in these workshops, and often discipline creates conflict. For example, last week, a 5-year-old boy was kicking some other children, and when reprimanded, dissolved into tears. His older siblings rushed to comfort him and his father even left the adult meeting to intervene. While childcare generally necessitate deferring to the parents’ preferred style of discipline, I felt this may have been an interaction informed by our different cultural experiences. I am eagerly anticipating the next session to see how the more theoretical topic navigates culture.

Cultural Specificity at MNIC

Even though MNIC is to serve any one from any race or culture, who are least likely to be served or wanted in other programs, as of know most of the population are African Americans with few immigrants form Ethiopia and Somalia. So, they have had to develop curriculums and activities that are mostly centered around the African American culture. For example, most of their stuffs are African American which helps because, form what I have seen so far, they feel a lot more comfortable talking to people who they can relate to. Another example is my researchs, which I have been told to focus on stress reduction for African American teens. A curriculum I just finished developing about nutrition also had me researching on the kind of food that is common among African American communities. All this is done with intent to reach out to the students with their culture in picture already.

Because I am normally there during class activities, I do not see them doing after-school activities. However, last week I got invited to a dance club the students have formed. They normally do hip-hop and dance-hall kind of dances. I was excited to have been invited to their practice sessions but I was told by one of the teachers that since they are the ones who run the club, they do not meet regularly. When I asked why not get them a teacher, they told me they want them to learn to be responsible for what they do (which I think it is a good reason.) So they have not been meeting for a while now. They also have a basket ball time, since most of the students are NBA fans and love basket ball.

Another activity they do is a credit-recovery project, where most of the students lean towards art. Pearson, who I have become friends with, is for example writing poems/lyrics and also giving interpretation (like the theme of the poem.) He let me read one of his poems and I was so surprised by how good he is and happy that he is also using this talent he has to express his feelings and problems. The other thing he is also doing is comparing the graffiti between Chicago and the Twin Cities. Since he is originally from Chicago but has been in the Twin Cities for a while now, he feels pretty good about this project. He hopes to also reproduce some of them in a more appropriate way.

All these examples show how MNIC, beside having the culture of the student at heart, it also lets them do what they want to do in a more constructive way. However, I wonder how the few others from a different culture feel. During one of the classes I attended, there were two people from Ethiopia and Somalia. The teacher was also African American like the rest of the students, so the whole conversation took place from their culture point of view, partially because there was no contribution from the Ethiopian and Somalia. Why? There is the language problem. They are both working on their English, which has limited their participation in class. The school has them enrolled in ESL class. So there is defiantly lack of intercultural interaction as the school is focused on African American teens - at least in the classrooms. But the school does arrange for students interested to have internships in places like Macalester (currently two students working with the sustainability office), which exposes the students to different cultures.