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Since 2005, two Center Teaching Fellows have maintained a teaching garden in Overtown, Miami’s original black community. Carlos Morales Gonzalez and Alex Salinas, both English professors at the Miami Dade College InterAmerican campus, installed the garden at Phillis Wheatley Elementary for fifth graders in the I Have a Dream Program, which provides tutoring and mentoring for students through high school and scholarships for college. Gonzalez is an Endowed Teaching Chair at MDC while Salinas serves as the Center’s Publications Director.
For the past three years, MDC students participated in the project through a weekly garden club or by scheduling individual sessions. But this year, the professors have started teaching a course at the elementary school every semester through the MDC Honors College—a unique service-learning model that moves reflection and more explicit academic work from the campus into the community. It’s also unique in that it brings together two stable cohorts: the same group of college students will work with the same group of Dreamers for at least 2 semesters, a far cry from relationships that may last only a semester, a few weeks or even a single day in many service-learning models. The possibilities for learning and relationship-building are rich.
Using the garden as a laboratory for learning, the professors have created a curriculum that serves both the Dreamers and the MDC student mentors. One of the guiding principles is that ideas, dreams, friendships and lives, following the pattern of mother nature they see in the garden, begin as seeds that flourish with the water and sunlight of love and respect. The curriculum folds together writing, art, biology and even community history and geography. Both MDC students and Dreamers keep a writer's notebook in which they journal about everyday experiences and reflect on readings through text and images. The notebooks affirm the connection between language and identity while serving as tools to produce essays and other writings. For MDC students, much of the reflection centers on the experience of moving between Little Havana and Overtown, neighboring communities that have been historically divided by race, language, socioeconomic class, and ultimately fear. During the project, MDC students explore the origins and effects of racism, segregation and poverty.
The partnership also brings the Dreamers onto college campuses to instill them with a sense of excitement about lifelong learning. In the Spring of 2006, the Dreamers experienced a tour of the Kendall Campus that ended with a group of 60 students chanting “Knowledge is Power!” in several languages; and the Dreamers’ tour of the Medical Campus in Summer 2006 included blood pressure exams and demonstrations with medical simulation dolls that amazed the children for the life-like quality. A tour of FIU is in the works.
An excerpt from course description in syllabus:
Keep in mind that this experience is not only about giving something to the Dreamers. You are in a position to gain a great deal. In essence, the school and the children become our main "text." We will read, interpret and write about the experience. The interactions you have, for example, will give you a powerful context for understanding the psychology of children, basic educational principles, and social problems like poverty and racism. And perhaps most importantly, in getting to know these children, you have an opportunity to form bonds that will last for many years. This course, we hope, gives you a taste of what it truly means to serve.
Participants document the work at Phillis Wheatley in a blog: philliswheatley.wordpress.com
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