A Transformative Education
Global Campaign for Peace Education
Transformative Education. What is it? What does it look like? What does it not look like? Who does it affect? We will explore these questions in our forum, A Transformative Education, through an independent, but a collective workshop for eighth-graders attending Academia Cesar Chavez on March 28th, 2022. We– Tonantzin, Christian, Cecila, Kimberly, and Sophia– are all students at Macalester College, hosting a forum where we have workshopped an afternoon of learning, discussion, and art-making, to explore the practice of transformative education.
Our forum will be split into two thematic parts. The first part will serve as a space for us to introduce ourselves, present the topic of Transformative Education, and engage in icebreakers with the students, to establish a sense of trust, care, and community.
In the second half of our forum, we will have students split off into groups, based on the art medium of their choice, which will be facilitated by us. In these groups, we will facilitate dialogue on Transformative Education and encourage art-making as a method for students to express their responses to this topic. We will debrief as small groups and close our forum by offering ways they can keep in touch with us.
Mural Jessica Sabogal, http://www.jessicasabogal.com/new-gallery-5/a2aqjaxepig8aichzakjpfa499wd08
Background Information
Academic Tara Yosso describes the way in which the common narrative assumes that all students start out with the same resources and opportunities beginning in elementary school all the way to college. If a group of students do not succeed as well as others, it is not the institution’s fault but rather the students’ families and cultures for not emphasizing the child’s education. Because students’ cultures are not being valued but rather blamed, this often leads to a process of assimilation in order for students to be academically successful. Counterstories are “an understanding that inadequate educational conditions limit equal access and opportunities in Chicano/a schooling”. For our forum, we want to ask how this relates back to charters schools, especially the ones centered on culture.
From their conception, charter schools have been proposed as a means of improving school outcomes for students of color who suffer from lack of access to educational opportunities. As a product of school choice, charter schools were intended to be more integrated than traditional public schools and would then produce superior academic performance. Over time, however, charter advocates have moved towards the position that charters will produce academic equality, with their goal to narrow the achievement gap. In Minnesota, a racially divided charter system has emerged. School integration requirements do not apply to charter schools. And many St. Paul students—Asian, Black, Latino, and white—are choosing segregated schools and leaving the diverse school district. Many of these schools are true single-race schools. Some explicitly target and recruit students from particular racial or “cultural” groups. As a result, district enrollment is declining, and St. Paul district leaders are making difficult choices about closing public schools. Academia Cesar Chavez was the top school choice for Latine students leaving SPP, with a population of 97.1% Hispanic/Latine students. Through its mission and approach, we see the value that they place on culture and identity. Academia Cesar Chavez is still finding ways to prioritize their culture and is in the process of implementing such changes through their conversations and policies.
In thinking about art-making as a practice of transformative education, we intend to center bell hooks’ belief in the process of self-actualization as critical to thinking about education as a practice of freedom. We plan to set up five stations with different art mediums (clay making, collaging, lino printing, collaborative quilt making, coloring and drawing) as a way for students to practice their agency in expressing their vision of the future with regard to their identities, communities, and education. The prompts guiding the art-making involve thinking through the students’ identities in relation to enacting change in their communities and education. We hope students feel assured to contribute to their education and make it their own through the intuitive and self-actualized process of art making.
The long history of art as a transformative tool is highlighted by the experiences of Xicano artists Faviana Rodriguez, Jesus Barraza, and Melanie Cervante in an interview highlighting their printmaking collective, Taller Tupac Amaru. The interview was with editors Alec Dunn and John MacPhee in Signal: 01, a journal of international political graphics and culture, who emphasize the intersections of art and politics internationally along with assessments of how these intersections have functioned at various historical and geographical moments. The multigenerational movement towards liberation frames the art practices and content of these artists at Taller Tupac Amaru including acts of agency, skill sharing through media production, the power in naming experiences and intergenerational skills, along with support and wisdom shared by mentors. In thinking about community education, Melanie Cervantes voices through a framework from the Third World Liberation front, “When I think of all the liberatory movements that I represent in my art, they’re just specific examples of resistance to the multiple oppressions entwined in capitalism, right? What does it mean to imagine a society that looks differently? I could be doing a million other things in terms of content, but making that conscious decision every time is about thinking of a future where young people might look back on this as their history and hopefully be living in an economic system that is not going to destroy the world.” The powerful vision shared by Melanie highlights the practice of freedom in world-building expressed through her artwork. In thinking through the same topic, Jesus Barraza expresses, “A long time ago I figured out that shit is not gonna get better for Indigenous people on this continent in my lifetime. 1992 was quin-centennial of the beginning of the cultural invasion where our people have gone through cultural genocide. It’s taken us 500 years to get to this point. Our lineages, our histories, and the things that have been passed down to us. So after the first 500 years, there’s gonna be the next 500 years. I see myself as part of that first generation of the next 500 years coming up. A lot of this stuff is throwing stones. The art we’re creating is like throwing little stones at a wall, and as we keep going its gonna weaken and its gonna break. We’re not trying to be the solution, it’s a multigenerational movement that we’re a part of. It’s not that much, but we are able to pass this on and get a few more kids throwing stones. Eventually it’s all going to tumble down.” Barraza emphasizes the power art holds for enacting change through a multigenerational movement that values the cultural history that continues to inform his identity and values today. We hope in co-creating the forum space with the students, we can share the power in naming our experiences and identities through art-making. Melanie highlights an experience with a mentor, Celia Herrera Rodriguez, who shared some wisdom on the power of naming her experiences expressing, “When I got there (the taller) it took me a while to embrace being an active agent of change and an artist. It was only after the encouragement of a Xicana artist, Celia Herrera Rodriguez, who really pushed that identity. She was like, “You’ve been doing this, you just haven’t named it… So I really started my art practice doing fabric, textile work, and stencils. The fabric work really came out of Celia pushing her students to do what they knew, and I was like, ‘Well I learned sewing from my mom, and my mom learned it from her mom.’ It’s a generational thing, and a source of empowerment, this ancestral passing down of doing work that talked about being an Indigenous Xicana.” The process of self-actualization expressed through art making will hopefully push the students to recognize the powerful tool their identities can hold for enacting transformative change through community and education.
Audience
Our target audience are 8th grade students from Academia Cesar Chavez. We will be located at Academia, a school whose interior and exterior space is designed with the intention of creating a safe and comfortable environment for Latinx students. We find this to be the ideal location as we hold the expectation that students will be most comfortable in this space from their familiarity with the school, and more specifically with the communities-within found by students at the school.
Expected Takeaways
Academia Cesar Chavez Classroom
Students will explore transformative education by contextualizing where our current education system stands and learning what a transformative approach to education can look like. Through art-making in community, students will practice centering themselves– a step towards self-actualization–, having agency, and realizing whatever they may envision. We hope students will leave believing in the value of their voices, identities, aspirations, and healing in community. Paulo Freire once said “education as a practice of freedom”. We want to take it one step further with our forum and say: art as a practice of freedom.
Logistical Information
Date: Monday, April 18th, 2022
Time: 12-2pm (Transportation time not included, about 20 minutes)
Location: Cesar Chavez Academia
Invited Presenters: N/A
Academia Cesar Chavez Gym
Required Texts
Art making, identity, transformative education
- Dunn, A., & MacPhee, J. (2010). Signal : 01. Taller Tupac Amaru: The Future of Xicana Printmaking PM Press. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from INSERT-MISSING-URL. 6-36
Education as a Practice of Freedom: Reflections on bell hooks
- Akello Specia and Ahmed A. Osman
- Becky Z. Dernbach
