Children like to ask questions. Across physical, cultural, and political borders, learning happens when they can indulge their curiosity. When I began working with San Francisco public school students in their kindergarten year, I stepped into an environment defined by upheaval. They were living personal stories of foster homes and adoptions, of immigration and legal struggles, on top of the ordinary chaotic adjustment to the school environment. Their spirited persistence was my motivation to begin researching progressive theories of education that incorporate social, emotional, cognitive, creative, and physical learning.
The first workshop site in San Francisco was at Graze the Roof, a model urban garden perched high above the streets of the Tenderloin district on the rooftop of Glide Memorial Church. Glide provides a long list of free services to the community of the Tenderloin, the neighborhood with the highest percentage of people living below the poverty line in San Francisco, as well as the highest population density and concentration of homeless individuals. The strategy of law enforcement in this neighborhood is “containment”, creating an area where illegal activities are essentially condoned to prevent their spread to the rest of the city. As a whole, San Francisco is not a family-oriented city, its demographics and public image heavily slanted towards young people and professionals without children. According to the US Census Bureau only 14.5% of the population is under 18 years old, as opposed to 27.3% in California as a whole. Through their poverty and their demographic insignificance, children in the Tenderloin are publicly invisible and silenced despite the many languages they speak.
A group of students at the Sphoorti Foundation Children’s Home learn gestures of Kuchipudi, a classical dance form of Andhra Pradesh, with a teacher from the JJ Metta Memorial Foundation.
Leave Your Comments