Preparing for New Orleans:

It is extremely important to prepare students for the service-learning journey ahead.  One cannot expect anyone to magically put on his or her “hero” hat and embark on a journey to serve others.  Collaboration and teamwork is much more powerful than individual “heroism” and this can only be achieved via preparation and service learning itself and at home. We are not seeking “heroism”, what we are seeking is to rethink education and our world via service learning.     

Moreover, this entire journey is a teaching and learning social activism and leadership process that needs to start before the actual trip and become a life long odyssey.  We want our students to realize their full potentials, re-imagine themselves, New Orleans and the world so they can make a difference in a globalized and unified community and bring this new social justice lens and leadership to our city, our neighborhoods and our school. 

The Preparation:

All of the 14 students who are participating in this trip have committed to either volunteering once a weak as a writing tutor at the Trotter Elementary School in Roxbury or volunteering on Saturdays at the Habitat for Humanity’s Boston Re-Store in West Roxbury.  The students and I will also be working with the local Habitat for Humanity to help build a home for one day in March. 

The students who want to embark in the journey to Recife, Brazil in 2015 will have to do the same from March 2014 to March 2015.   

We & They Course

I am very excited about what we have developed at the John D. O’Bryant School of Math & Science. We have a new course called “We and They: Globalization & the Human Condition Via Critical Dialogue & Service Learning”.  My students and I are piloting this course and the course asks students to critically think about the problems that people face abroad and at home and to break down the myths created by the “fictitious lines” (borders) that have shaped an economic globalized world where its peoples remain separated and divided.  Moreover, this division leads to the concept of “we” vs. “them” and isolation, indifference, conflict and war.  The students are also looking at how this division happens within our own borders and create regionalism, racism and a “we” vs. “them” attitude within our own country, state (Massachusetts) and city (Boston).  The following are some of the topics and materials that we discuss in this course that will guide the students into a global “conflict resolution” conversation:

·       De facto vs. de jure segregation: Trayvon Martin, Little Rock 9 and Little Rock Central past and present: Little Rock Central 50 Years Later (HBO Documentaries)

·      Genocide: Blinded Activism vs. Efficient Diplomacy: Rwanda, Darfur and how to prevent future genocides

·      Globalized Values & Morals: Tradition vs. Progress: Changing Roles of Women & the “Emergence” of Gay Marriage & the American & Russian Responses: Wadja (Haifaa Al Mansour)

·      I-Toys & Globalization: Pros & Cons of Globalization & Multinational Factories: What dictates morals: supply or demand?

·      Power & the Psychology of Oppression: Oppressed and Oppressors (2014-2015): Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Paulo Freire)

·       Race, Social Class & Ethnicity: Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus (Brazil) & Black in Latin America Haiti & the Dominican Republic: An Island Divided (PBS; Dr. Henry Lewis Gates Jr.)

·      Terrorism & Counter Terrorism: The Ethics and the Economy of War & Zinn’s Cycle of Stupidity: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, 9-11, War on Terror & Drones: Howard Zinn’s The Bomb, Unmanned: America's Drone War (Brave New Films) & The Untold History of the United States (Oliver Stone, Showtime)

·      Welfare Reform & the War on Poverty: Nickel and Dimed: On Getting By in America (Barbara Ehrenreich)

Every year the course will conclude (April Vacation or June) with a service learning trip, so students can put into practice a new form of activism that uses education to re-imagine and reshape our world.  The trip will involve working with the local community and where possible to build or renovate homes or a community center with the local Habitat for Humanity. The course also calls for local (within Boston) service learning, before and after the international or national service learning trip.  

The course also focus on teaching students how to fundraise, so all students regardless of socio-economic status can attend (students going to New Orleans will only pay $200 to $300 as off pocket expenses).

April 2014 New Orleans

April 2015 Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic