Under-rated of the month: That teacher in high school that was so inspiring and challenging that you still keep your essays and the class readings in your room back home.

     That person for me was my AP World History and Honors Comparative Literature teacher. In comparative literature class, he had us watch the movie "The Mission," which was a big hit when it premiered. I talked to other teachers about the movie and they all loved it, especially since some of them lead mission trips to other countries. They found it inspiring.

     My comp. lit. teacher, on the other hand, had us analyze it more deeply. We all came to a similar analysis: the main character (a Western man) isn't truly helping these indigenous people.
     In the movie, the Christian men were presented in a way that made them seem like they were living in native villages and relating to the native people. The nuances of the movie showed the true discourses that the writers/directors thought of when making the movie. The natives were never fully dressed. They always seemed to laugh, smile and make primate-type sounds. The natives who did speak, spoke perfect english because they were educated at the newly erected mission. The white men ate with silverware and on shiny plates. The natives learned how to play Western music on a flute.
     It seemed to me and my classmates that these missionaries were held up as greater beings. They were the classic saviors-of-a-primitive-culture disguised at good guys. Sure, they suffered in their pasts but did they suffer with the people that they came into contact with? I argue not.
     A justified summary of this message comes in the form of Paulo Freire's Dedication Page from his book "Pedagogy of the Oppressed": To the oppressed, and to those who suffer with them and fight at their side. 
     If we are to truly impact the situation when we work domestically or abroad, I argue that we must step into the situations of the oppressed. We may never feel the true pain of a homeless person seeking health care or a 40 year old Bolivian who never received the proper education to read or write. But we must at least make wholehearted attempts to enter their world and suffer. Nonetheless, I have no idea what this may look like in practice when I travel to Bolivia.
     One thing that always struck me during comp. lit. was the fact that my teacher never stood up in class. He sat down with the rest of us and acted as a facilitator of discussion. Instead of standing on a stage and speaking with power, as most teachers do, he gave that power to us. It was the best class I ever took.

Coaching Corps

For my practice experience I will be working with Coaching Corps, an organization that uses the power of sports and service to improve educational, health and social outcomes for underserved youth. They are partnered up with many organizations across the Bay Area, looking for assistant coaches to help run youth sports teams as well as serve as mentors for these kids. The partner organization Coaching Corps assigned me to was Berkeley Youth Alternatives, a non-profit, community-initiated organization located in Berkeley, CA, that provides a multitude of counseling resources and after school programs for troubled youth, including sports fitness. I am currently an assistant coach for a 5^th grade girls basketball team, where my responsibilities extend not only into the realm of basketball instruction and sports discipline, but also into the role of a mentor and guiding figure. 

One of the aspects of my organization I love the most is Coaching Corps strives to utilize their students volunteers beyond the couple weekly practices they attend and carry out larger events to directly address other areas of these children's lives like the importance of education. One of those events will be occurring this Sunday, April 13. Coaching Corps will be hosting Take Your Team to College Day. This event will bring the kids we serve to the Berkeley college campus and will give them an opportunity to explore the possibilities of higher education. At this year's event, we have kids coming from Bears Youth Basketball, Willard Middle School, and MLK Jr. Middle School. This is the agenda they provided us:

10:30AM-11:45AM Volunteers Meet Up & Introductions

Help with any set ups/preparations and receive a tour guide map with talking points to review; participate in an ice breaker and form a buddy system when the kids arrive; interact with the kids!

11:45AM-12:45PM Campus Tour

Give a tour of the UC Berkeley campus! You will not give a tour alone; you will work with a buddy of your choice as well as a student-athlete. All tour maps, stops, and talking points will be given to you so no prior knowledge is necessary at all.

12:45PM-1:15PM Scavenger Hunt

Help out with a Scavenger Hunt that includes Sather Gate, Campanile, and more! 

1:15PM-2:10PM College Student Panels

Be a part of a panel with student athletes and discuss college life, give advice and info about staying active. 

2:10PM-2:45PM Activity & Pick Up Game

Participate in a quick activity and a soccer pick up game with the kids!

2:45PM–3PM Closing

Closing remarks, hand out goodie bags, answer any questions, and take photos.

As you can see it's a packed schedule filled with many positive experiences and provide these children with opportunities to learn about higher education as well as do the things they love, like sports. Juxtaposing the two in an event like this is a great way of teaching these underserved children to associate the fun they have with sports with school.

The reason why I bring this up is not only because this event is quickly approaching, but because of our discussion of visual documentation both in class and discussion. Many of the photos on Coaching Corps's website display exactly these sort of events of youth empowerment and support. That is how they market their cause and receive funding. In our discussion when we were looking and analyzing each other's photos (from our respective organizations), we discussed what our organizations were trying to get across. It's nice to see those pictures come to life and witness what they were trying to get across first hand through this event.    

I have recently been reading a book by Hava Rachel Gordon, “We Have To Win: The Inequality and Politics of Youth Activism” which has been really interesting for me because even though I’ve read a lot about activism, protesting, and non-violent civil disobedience, I didn’t realize the importance, the impact, and the differences of youth activism within the larger scope of activism.
 In her book, Gordon talks about her experience working with several groups of youth activists, and also about how youth activism became a movement, specifically here in Oakland. One of the many things I found fascinating was that even though these student activists didn’t share similar backgrounds, they worked hard and cohesively as a collective. However, movements in the past, such as the 1960’s counterculture movement, and even activism today such as Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring have fallen apart, because partnerships dissolve as the average age and size of the movements grow.
 I know, I know: some people would see these as staunch claims. And you know what?
I would agree.
 Yet I ask you to hear me out. Youth movements tend to be more cohesive and thus successful, however, I would argue that it’s the number and location of active participants that play a crucial role in determining (to a good extent) the their success. A lot of youth activism is school-, school district- or small-government targeted, and this means that they have a smaller scale within which they have to be effective, in order for their movement to be successful. And even though youth activists obviously tend to be younger than the average activist, and because there are fewer youth activists because of this, leaders within the movement remain easily identifiable and thus their demands remain clear and identifiable as well. In comparison, larger activist movements that affect and are adopted by larger groups of people tend to be their own undoing: because the reach of the activism itself is so far, the deeper causes within the movements in different locations has a tendency to change, and the larger movement’s social fabric undoes itself.
 I’m doing my practice experience with a not-for-profit organization that acts within the Bay Area called 100 Strong, a leadership and mentorship program for high school girls, especially those from marginalized and historically-disadvantaged communities. We’ve just started our pilot year and are currently acting within Oakland, which has a rich and vibrant history of social movements of its’ own. Though we don’t deal with these student-activists specifically within our program, important skill sets for engaging at such levels see, and even be, the change that they want to see in their communities. Sustainable change anywhere has often come from those who experience these struggles, and understand the systems, relations and institutions at play, and thus also the changes that need to be made. In building leadership and mentoring skills, teamwork, organization, management and other such skills, there are investments and knowledge being integrated into a community, through the individuals who are a part of them.