Community Engagement and Gender Consciousness
Community engagement and gender consciousness : frontline work on reinforcing the principles of women's agency.
This class will explore the complex issues which affect the endemic poverty of women in the African diaspora. This will include communities in Detroit and Ypsilanti in the US, the Caribbean and Southern Africa. There will be two components of the class, the shape of the scholarly and theoretical discourse will require texts from publications books, websites, blogs and journals. Because gender in communities of color in the US cannot be extricated from race, this intersection will be an equal component in interrogating the problematic of chronic poverty in this population. And this will be the location of the first engagement although the diasporic gender inequality will still be an integral subject and be included as a site as the course evolves. The rise of nonprofits and startups, the growing number of study abroads, numbers enrolling in Peace Corps, AmeriCorps and Teach for America, represent a hunger for meaning, for making a difference, to change the world. There is no question that students must pursue academics and scholarly work while in university however what they need as well is a chance to act on their ideas. This is why this class requires an activist component that engages them in the community so that they can experience the challenges and benefits of putting ideas into action.
It is not expected that this community engagement will in one semester radically transform young women’s lives extricating them from poverty. What is intended is for both the community and university of Michigan students be engaged in the process of transformative work. It is possible that one or two students might be impacted and put themselves on a path to success. Regardless of the outcome, the content of the discourse which continually reiterates their importance as women and the necessity of completing school might continue to resonate as they face see a the many challenges that threaten their education. Implanting in young women, this foundational idea is critical. However for the university of Michigan students they will experience in the community a way to be engaged in their communities on difficult problems and see a way of committing themselves to such work even if their careers are completely different. This is the hope of consciousness building work for both young women in middle schools and university of Michigan students.
The activist requirement of the class will involve community engagement on a variety of gender issues. For the Detroit and Ypsilanti locations for example, the students will be assigned to groups of young women in struggling middle schools. The purpose of working with young women who are poor, predominantly black and from poor schools is to attempt to inculcate the importance of finishing school. In these locations there are high levels of drop outs, of early relationships and of pregnancy. When young women finish high school it radically changes the trajectory of their lives, putting them on a path to success. Women who complete school make more money, have lower STI (sexually transmitted infections) levels, higher levels of tertiary education, delay pregnancy until adulthood etc. Ideas about prioritizing one’s self, discussing the challenges of gender and reflecting on their vision, and the pressure to become sexually active are some of the issues that girls must face.
http://education.seattlepi.com/effects-high-school-students-not-finishing-high-school-3118.html
University of Michigan students will spend 4 weeks working with small groups of young women on developing open dialogue and discussion which will have at its center a module that attempts to raise the gender consciousness of young women which I have developed but still needs to be more shaped by the students themselves. At this stage the middle school and high school students will be asked to provide feedback on the effectiveness of the module and to give their input into making it more current and also to discuss what would be the appropriate technology to engage young people in such conversations. This will be a collaborative experience between university of Michigan students and the middle school and high school students. The end product is the development of a module on gender consciousness that will be taught to u of m students who will then take this module to communities who will then shape the module. The intention is to train young people and community members in learning this method and then use it in their communities.
Some of the lesson plans for example will require the middle schoolers to select from electronic media examples derogatory to women of color, discussing why their choices demonstrate both racial and sexist biases.
Other strategies, will employ writing blogs with u of m students and starting groups in their schools based on doing the race and gender module as part of their agenda.
Developing this course will require establishing connections with schools, setting up logistics and ensuring that all school requirements are met and that an appropriate evaluation be identified.
Continuous work on perfecting the module will also be an important preparatory step as well as working with the other student teachers who feel passionately about this cause
