A Community Ethnography Project Seminar, Urban Teacher Education Program, University of Chicago Created by Professors Amy Millikan and Noemí Cortés

In collaboration with the Chicago Grassroots Curriculum Taskforce and its Grassroots Community Tours program

Teachers and schools, more generally, need support to develop and implement pedagogy that investigates and draws from the social contexts of the lives of urban youth... Rather than presenting the community as a place to rise above, schools must equip themselves to draw from the knowledge that students bring with them to school – knowledge that is often not in their textbooks but is acquired from the streets, family cultural traditions, youth culture and the media.

-The Art of Critical Pedagogy by Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade and Ernest Morrell

Context: The Community Ethnography Project is part of UTEP's two-year teacher training program. It's a signature assignment that kicks off the residency experience by supporting the community immersion of resident-teachers.

Overview: You will be spending the first 6 weeks of school immersing yourself in your new school’s community. You’ll be learning a lot about your new students and your clinical instructor and the way your new classroom works, and throughout this learning, we want you to remember that context matters. Your classroom is situated within the context of the city of Chicago, a school community and a neighborhood community. In order to be an effective and relevant educator, we must immerse ourselves deeply in these communities and understand not just what the school believes about the community it is situated in, but what the members of the community believe about themselves and their relationship to the school. It is also vital to understand the historic and systemic forces (e.g.; social, economic, political and cultural) that have shaped the present conditions in the community – and how people have responded to these forces. It is our hope that through this process, you will begin to internalize a way of seeing your students, your colleagues, your administrators in a larger context, and better understand the multiple spheres of influence that are always at play. We hope that you apply the skills and dispositions you acquire in doing this project, always paying attention to the community in which you are working, what it means to be an outsider in that community and what it means to learn from all that community has to offer. We want you to understand many aspects of the community from many different kinds of people who live in it in order to more fully inform your practice as an urban educator. Learning Processes: As you learn about the community, we’d like you to do all of the following things. Some activities will be done as a team, some in smaller sub groups or pairs, and others will make sense to do individually. Some of this will depend on the size of your school site team and some of it will depend on personal and group preferences.

Take a walk through your school’s community:

• As you’re walking, write what you see, hear, smell, notice, and the questions that come into your mind. Please use the following questions as a guide to take notes.

• What do you see as strengths/assets in the community? (jot down observations, draw a map, or a concept web if that’s helpful). Why do you see these as strengths/assets?

• What do you see as the challenges within the community? Why do you see these as challenges? • How does this experience impact your own thinking about the school you’re working in? How will this

experience impact your interactions with students and families; ways you engage with the school community; ways you engage with the community at large?

• What are you noticing about your own thinking as a result of doing this walk? How will this impact your next steps?

Photo by Matt Tuteur

Have lots of conversations:

(As you prepare for each conversation, think about who you are engaging with and the types of questions you may want to ask. Be sure that you are in a space to be a learner, an active listener, ask follow up questions, and are open to having your assumptions challenged).

• Converse with a student • Converse with a parent • Converse with your CI and other teachers • Converse with a community elder • Converse with a community organizer (from a community based organization) • As you speak with these people, find out about the experiences living and working in this community

Do research:

• Learn about and learn from the history of this community (the conversations above will help you learn but you may need to learn in other ways as well)

• Learn about how this community is situated in the context of Chicago; find out about how this community was impacted by Burnham’s Plan of Chicago in 1909 and plans from subsequent years

• Learn about Richard J. Daley’s urban renewal agenda and how it impacted this community • Learn about, and from, the history of the housing, the presence of public housing, and the involvement of CHA • Learn about the infrastructure and public transportation in this community • Learn about the history of racial segregation and violence in this community • Learn about the change in demographics in this community over the past 100 years • Learn about disinvestment and deindustrialization • Learn about the relationship between the neighborhood and the school • Learn about “traditions” in the area -- block parties, summer games, long-standing families of the area, etc. • How has the school/community been impacted by the recent school actions (i.e.,closings, consolidations, cuts)? • What actions or responses has the community engaged in to address issues of housing, violence, school

actions, etc? Resource Note: Urban Renewal or Urban Removal: A Grassroots Look at the Struggle for Home and Community (CGCT) is a helpful text to engage many of these questions.

Do a home visit with a student from your own classroom:

• This is meant to be designed as a chance to get to know a family more intimately, learn more about a particular student, and establish a partnership with parents/guardians in that child’s education

• With your CI and principal’s help, arrange a home visit. You’re welcome to go with your CI. Many CIs have done this for the first time with their residents and have learned a great deal from the experience

• Introduce this visit as a learning opportunity for you as teacher, not as an evaluative visit and explain that this is a way for you to get to know the student/family/community better. Some tips:

• Be observant (you can start conversations about things you observe: a family, photos or other visible items) • Re-state your purpose (to get to know one another) • Talk about the child’s interests, summer, family activities, hopes and dreams, etc • Get clues about norms of interaction from the child and the family (pay attention to nuances in interactions,

don’t just assume that cultural norms apply unilaterally) • Consider bringing a small gift (baked goods, flowers, etc) • Avoid carrying a notebook, write reflections later

Reflect on the experience, including any hurdles (personal or logistical) you overcame to make it happen. What did this experience teach you about how this family views its relationship to the school? What did families say that surprised you? What did they say that resonated? What did you learn about partnering with families for the future and what is critical about developing strong parent relationships at the beginning of the year? What is the role of teachers in facilitating these relationships and partnerships between communities and schools?

Final Project Portfolio: In your portfolio, keep a collection of the notes you take, pictures, conversation reflections, quotes, history that you learn about. Create and include a timeline of the different tasks you did to understand this community, when you did them, and with whom you did them. Also include an annotated list of any resources you used during your research or recommendations you received as you spoke with people and learned about the community. In seminar: On a set date, your school site group will do a brief presentation of your community. Think of this as a kind of ‘descriptive review’ of the community. You may present in any way you wish - power point, Presi, collage, poster, simulation, video, etc. Every presentation should be digitized so that even if you do a poster, for example, you should photograph it or videotape it. Your presentation should address one essential question:

• What have we learned about our community? • How will this learning translate into teaching and learning opportunities for us and our students in this context?

Be sure to include a copy of your presentation (picture, paper, CD) in your portfolio.