Digging Deeper in Auburn Gresham: A first-person perspective
Valentina Gamboa-Turner
Published: April 1, 2015
During this spring semester the Chicago Teacher Education Pipeline (CTEP) staff and our community partners have launched a pilot to enhance our urban redesigned courses and the complementary clinical visits. In Auburn Gresham, Sheenita Robinson of Greater Auburn Gresham Community Development Corporation (GAGDC) and I set out to develop a more engaging and mutually beneficial clinical visit planning process. Sheenita shares her thoughts with me about why it is important to collaborate with ISU faculty for their upcoming clinical visits; "This is not a momentary visit; we hope that faculty can come in and think about the visit as an opportunity to engage and become invested in our community" she said. Through our partnerships with local community based organizations ISU students and faculty engaged with CTEP have all positively contributed to our three partner communities of Auburn Gresham, Albany Park and Little Village as well as gained invaluable knowledge and experiences.
The goal of our programing and our community partnerships is to continue this symbiotic relationship and use our collaboration as a platform to elevate the caliber of urban education students that will hopefully become CPS teachers. Urban redesigned courses and our clinical visits are often the first opportunity ISU students have to explore possibilities of teaching in an urban setting. Therefore we work to produce an experience that is intentional and inspiring to our future urban education students.
- Transition from School to Adulthood SED 360 is an example of how this elevated collaboration came to fruition. Sheenita and I held several Skype and conference calls with Dr. Shelden as we worked to create an event that would benefit our ISU students' education as well as the Auburn Gresham community and schools. Dr. Shelden's goal for the trip was for her students to "gain an understanding of students, families and community organizations…views on barriers and assets related to successful transition for youth with disabilities or who are 'at risk.'" Dr. Shelden had a vision to create a semester long project in which an initial trip could bring ISU students face to face with community partners that work within programs that assist youth with these transitional skills.Since communities and higher education groups rarely cross collaborate in this manner, it took the expertise and developed relationships of GAGDC and our community liaison Sheenita to pull together a panel of professionals that would be open to work on an ongoing basis with students to develop curriculum and programing that would support special education students and "at risk youth" in life skills development. Through their network we gained partnerships with, Urban Partnership Bank, Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago and CVS Health.
On a sunny, but cold day in February our ISU students attended a panel discussion with these community representatives at Urban Partnership Bank. Our panelist began explaining their role in their organizations and how they serve the Auburn Gresham community. The ISU students asked several questions about barriers for urban youth and lack of resources to support these initiatives. The panelists were open about their hurdles to overcome; however, explained how they are creatively solving some of these bigger social issues by building alliances. Aurora Cruz of GAGDC shared how she brings ex-offenders to CAPS meetings to help them transition back into the mainstream and find resources that can keep them "on track." Urban Partnership Bank shared how they have designed banking systems that can help families that have made financial missteps, fix their credit. Amy Lawrence an ISU alum and current special educator at Simeon high school talked about how she has worked to gain her students and families trust in a community that she does not reflect racially.
After the panel we all enjoyed a meal from a locally Black owned and operated restaurant. For many of our students this was their first experience trying gumbo. During our lunch we broke out into small working groups so students could meet one on one with representatives from our partner organizations to strategize project ideas that would benefit the community. Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago Executive Director, Jannice Simmons, spoke to the students about the challenge of getting people to attend financial literacy workshops. Jannice explained how they have developed a targeted, block by block strategy, that centers around a local elementary school to engage families that may be in a housing crisis. The students in this group strategized on how engaging students in school could pull the parents in. "I remember in my elementary school we had an interactive fair in which we used play money," said one ISU student. Other students thought about incentives they could give families to interest them in attending a financial literacy workshop. Sheenita shared how "just developing a plan that could help teachers reach out to parents about financial literacy is a big help."Many teachers in CPS want to support their families, but they often do not always have the time to develop a plan to get it done. The students and Dr. Shelden will continue to develop curriculum and or an action plan that they will deliver back to the Auburn Gresham community.
During our planning process for Dr. Shelden's visit, Sheenita and I ran against some significant barriers in getting organizations involved due to massive state funding cuts. Being involved in the community, it is very evident to us how these funding cuts in early childhood education, youth employment and violence prevention initiatives impact the delicate web of social services. However, we quickly realized that many ISU students do not share in our experience of how vital these resources are to struggling communities. In response, we created a Community Resources Simulator workshop for the students and developed three scenarios based on real stories of some our neediest families. Sheenita pulled together a local resource guide that could help these families with their complex real life challenges. We divided the students into groups and asked them to take the place of these families and use the resource guide to come up with a plan of how they would problem solve their current situation. Our students worked together to come up with some comprehensive plans. It was inspiring to see them make connections we had not even anticipated. Many of them highlighted one of Auburn Gresham's key institutions St. Sabina Church and their Arch Youth Center and Employment Center. After they came to their own understanding of how these resources could help their fictitious families navigate hardships, we had an honest dialogue of how our state cuts have significantly impaired their ability to deliver these services and in some instances the services no longer exist because of these dollars being pulled. This was a great exercise in letting our future urban educators get a taste of what life is really like for their urban students. We hope to continue to build and strengthen this bridge between ISU students and our partner communities. Our goal is that these clinical visits will prepare our students to utilize their imagination and problem solving skills to become prepared and influential urban educators.