Rethink Resources

I’ve got a lot of posting I need to do just to catch up. About a week and a half ago I participated in the Free Minds, Free People - A Conference on Education for Liberation in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago.

Conference activities took place at Little Village Greater Lawndale High School - Social Justice High School - a school within a school. This school is the result of serious community organizing- culminating in a 19 day hunger strike by parents who knew the neighborhood desperately needed a new school. Take a look at some of the amazing mural work inside the school.

School based educators, community based educators and what seemed like almost half youth participants from across the country gathered to learn from each other and talk about popular education and liberatory teaching methods and ideas. Themes for the conference workshops were: Arts and Social Justice Education, Action Research, Community Based Organizing, Critical Consciousness (Racism, Sexism, Heterosexism etc.), Curriculum Development, Criminalization of Youth, Literary Analysis, Parents as Liberatory Educators, School Based Organizing, Social Justice Schools, Youth Leadership Development.

So much great work and you can take a look at their site to see who all was there. And yes, plans are already underway for another conference and ongoing connections.

I especially learned a lot from everyone doing Participatory Action Research with youth. The history and current work on Freedom Schools is making me think. And of course, I was completely excited to see the Young Women’s Empowerment Project representing- with a workshop teaching everyone how we do popular education workshops talking about teens and the sex trade.

To highlight one workshop, in “Getting to Youth-led: Building and Supporting Youth Leadership in School and Community Based Education for Liberation Programming” youth and adult allies from Umoja Student Development Corp based inside Manley Career Academy, a Chicago high school, talked about their work. Posters from student research projects were on display as well.

This poster refers to how businesses along Roosevelt Rd. on the West Side of Chicago fled the neighborhood and left it crumbling (until the developers looking to gentrify the neighborhood came in).

This poster is from an action research project on the effect gangs have on schools and student’s experiences in schools.

After hearing about Umoja’s work, we got into small groups to discuss what youth-led meant to us. We definitely had some common themes. But it’s still new work and it wasn’t easy to define.

As a community based educator, I’m looking forward to more discussion, skill-sharing and connections with people passionate about social justice and transforming education.