Dear O’B Family, Friends, and family (a special thanks to my wife and best friend Maggie and to my daughter Harper):
The following is the documentary that my students in the “World Cultures” (We & They: Globalization & the Human Condition via Critical Dialogue & Service Learning) senior elective course created to show the work that we did during April Vacation in conjunction with “Lazos de Dignidad”, which is an organization for refugees led by refugees mostly from Haiti, but also from countries such as Colombia and Syria. The organization also focuses on fighting draconian measures adopted by the Dominican Government and the Dominican Supreme Court, which circumvented its own Constitution to deprive hundreds of thousands of Haitian-Dominicans of Dominican citizenship. As the eternal Doctor King said, “an injustice somewhere, is an injustice everywhere”.
Yet, as the documentary shows, our work was based on love and the idea that compassion, solidarity and love are the best way to fight oppression and poverty. The documentary also shows the true power of education. While many of us are not familiar with Paulo Freire’s work (Pedagogy of the Oppressed), we hope to have shown that academic work combined with real world issues and service learning can lead to real change abroad and at home.
This work would not have been possible without the collaboration of two amazing educators: Ms. Bridget Ryan and Ms. Claudia Martinez as well as the emotional and financial support of the O’B family and our amazing friends and family. Our 22 students were fantastic and I would like to thank them for inspiring me and inspiring the children of the Dominican bateys (a young girl was devastated when I told her that we could not come back the following week). While all of the students were simply amazing and it was great to see those who I worked with in 6th grade (Jerhan Ponteen), 8th and 9th grade (Naya Shedd) and some many other 9th graders, mature as young adults and continue to show our city how amazing our students are (as Joseph told you, one day when you have your won children, your children will be very lucky, blessed and proud to call you parents), I need to give a special thanks Ms. Ana Bueso for reminding me of the importance of service learning (it is not easy to lead these affordable trips and be a parent at the same time) and the impact it had on her (we had 3 amazing journeys in her four years and she will be missed) and Mr. Chris Villar who acted as a fourth lead educator and took leadership and ownership of this amazing and beautiful documentary. Suffolk University will get an amazing engineer student next year with an appetite for social justice and maturity beyond his years.
I will conclude this with the words of the amazing Vivian Yu, whom I was very privileged (can you believe that I get paid to “teach” people like her) to learn and teach in the 9th grade and whom went on two services learning trips with me (New Orleans and Santo Domingo):
“The greatest things in life are not tangible, history will show that humans have long been after the secret to immortality like the legend of Ponce de Leon, the true secret to immortality is not a physical thing, not a fountain or spring, but rather in actions. I believe that we will live on, because a piece me remains in the shingles of the houses I built in New Orleans and Boston, in the smiles of the first graders at Trotter Elementary, and in the warmth of a cooked meal at the Haley house soup kitchen. Giving is synonymous to receiving. Volunteering is a vital part of being human, it shows the multifaceted nature our world and shares the diverse experiences that we all have on this Earth. Strength is often defined as the ability to defeat one’s opponent, the faster, the more brutal, the better. True strength is the ability to transcend beyond yourself. Beyond “we” and “they” to realize that underneath all of the masquerading we are all the same.”
