Culturally Relevant Writing and Expression
Music, Culture, Literature, Writing (MCLW)
Overview:
Guest Lecture visit with Chuck D, hip Hop Pioneer, of group "Public Enemy". a prolific writer an rock and roll Hall of Fame inductee. Chuck shares his inspiration and writing techniques with the InterTribal youth
The program launched a culturally relevant writing module with support from La Clase Magica, UCSD Vice Chancellor's EDI Office. Youth and young adults utilized their distinct funds of knowledge to hone their academic writing skills and unleash their creative power as a strategic tool to help embrace their agency and voices.
Lessons learned from over the years provide a working module for reservation communities. In addition, a course servicing adults and teen-agers was offered at San Pasqual Indian Reservation, our proven learning educational site.
The curriculum emphasizes:
• Informative/Explanatory Writing
• Argumentative Writing
• Creative Writing
• Video Literacy, Story Writing
National bestselling author and Pulitzer prize nominee Victor Villasenor. of Yaqui descendent. Victor speaks of his illiteracy as a teen and how his family's traditional wisdom became the inspiration for his bestselling book "rain of Gold".
Writer’s Workshop Course Abstract
Theoretical Framework:
Cultural memory is generally characterized as a particular form of deep-structured preservation of earlier histories, while the experience of forced migration often exemplifies a violent break from one’s origins. However, #DNA is proven to have memory and holds more data then many large comupters combined.
This proposed course interrogates possible means of rejoining these seemingly disparate processes (i.e. the deeply rooted cultural ‘conservation’ associated with collective memory and the cultural ‘untethering’ of forced migration). In this multimedia writing course Native high school students will both examine and create critical forms of media that investigate the ways in which displaced peoples can attempt to reclaim and marshall aspects of cultural memory in order to negotiate complex notions of collectivity, belonging, and identity.
Various years, youth specifically used media archaeology and micro-ethnography approaches, students (with the guidance of a research based instruction team) wrote, produced, and filmed a 13 minute cultural memory-based ‘collective autobiography’ video project, which incorporated their course writing, filmed video content, audio collection, and artwork in an effort to begin to reconstruct ties to their local Native maritime culture. Editing services were provided by the instructional team and informed by the students’ editorial input. At the conclusion of the course, students exposed multimodal forms of research writing, including literature search and review, data analysis, storyboarding, and experimental documentary design and production.
The film created was called "Native Like Water: We're Still Here". It is now touring film festivals and premiers national and internationally.
Main Instructor: Dr. Caroline Collins
This course utilizes collaborative learning techniques including but not limited to Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development in order to promote the scaffolding of students’ individual and collective knowledge. Due to this emphasis, the course will be discussion driven, will include group work in addition to individual exercises, and students sit in a circle during class sessions. The course also hopes to capitalize upon the use of students’ unique funds of knowledge (Moll) and their distinct cultural and linguistic resources as vital bridges to their learning and development.
Caroline Collins, phD Candidate at UCSD Communication Department co-leads the class and curriculum development
Cultural Relevance: Word, Sound, Power
The course utilizes culturally relevant readings, materials, and pedagogical tools and welcomes the assistance of guest resident scholars to select appropriate resources. Examples include:
• Informational texts and multimedia content with Native emphases
• Creative writing excerpts from Native authors
• Renaming the “Writing Lab” and “Final Portfolio Symposium” with culturally meaningful names that embrace the community aspect of writing lab space and the communal sharing of their work, topics, identity.
Womens and Mens writing circles provided for deeper thought and for sharing issues pertaining to gender challenges and experiences.
Caroline Collins, Lead Instructor, San Diego: Holding a Doctorate and MFA, Caroline is a from UC San Diego whose research interrogates the intersectionality of cultural memory, identity, and media especially as they relate to particular notions of ‘citizenship’ and human rights. She is currently working on her qualifying papers, several educational activism projects, and a research based documentary.
