I’m excited about teaching again this coming fall semester at the university. There was a vacancy for the Community Education Class and how appropriate is the timing of this opportunity after just finishing our training at the International Class (at least the symbolic finishing of this period of our training because as Fred said we take our development with us). I will have to follow a curriculum but I’m not complaining, I’m revisiting Paulo Freire, a required reading for the course is Pedagogy of the Oppressed. It is such an amazing book and the rereading of it has allowed me to see how much I’ve grown. In my first reading I was mesmerized and caught by the passion it was written with and by a book where actually was talking about making a difference in the world. Up until then passion and commitment to change was not part of my vocabulary as a psychologist. Today reading it, it is different, I won’t go into much detail but there is one mayor difference, today I’m actually working to make this world “a little less ugly, a little less inhumane” as Freire used to say. It has transformed my reading of it, but I’m just starting maybe I’ll tell you more about it latter as I go along. I actually wanted to share this part of actually working towards change.
It is probably unnecessary to say I have no clue how to tell you what I want to say, there is just so much, so bear with me.
After reading Freire it made me realize how much I appreciate growing and learning with you (the IC, ESI and Esther’s home) because of many things but one important thing is reviving hope that we can change everything. I had became distrustful of people claming they were changing the world, forgetting how much we have transformed it in just over 100 year (for example). As am writing this I realize that my distrust has to do with the claim that through The Perspective, that through knowing we can in fact change the world. This has caused so much harm in the world, in Mexico and even personally. So isn’t the ESI approach a way of knowing, it a difficult question I yet don’t understand fully, I wont talk about just now but can say this, today I got a visit from an old friend, we met about 4 years ago during a drum circle, we had a conversation regarding creating community and how it has been a struggle, I was thinking about my work at CASA, he was talking about creating a creative collaboration with other artists, and as it turns out some colleges had in the past collaborated with him and our selves were talking about collaborating. As we were talking I almost was about to say, “How much things have changed in the last 4 years” but stopped and then said “How much WE have been able to change thing over the last 4 years”. I’m not clamming that both of us have done the changing, but that WE, himself and his colleges, my self our community. We are now doing thing that were not possible 4 years ago, where we where struggling to learn to play drums, I was struggling to adjust my self to working at the University I dreamt of doing community work but had no idea of how to do it, my fried was trying to find people he could work creatively with, and now, through totally different paths we come to be involved in doing community work with youth, and so we know cannot only play drums together, we can now record albums created by youth, we can create workshop about comics that reflect life at Juarez, and so many other things. In just 4 years WE have created conditions where we can do things unimaginable before. And it wasn’t by reading the “7 steps for successful community building” or “Community building for dummies”, it was our growing and playing and creating community, it was participating creating with our groups which is not a “let all hold hands” kind of thing, but a huge struggle, of us at times having now ideas what we where doing, of people leaving our community, of finding ways of continuing our work even when the conditions don’t exist for it.
I’m really proud of our growth this past year, after coming back to Juarez I been working with so many works, at times doing the Wosh almost daily, as well as so many other games and conversations. I want to talk more about this later, because I’ve found this process challenging, but for now I’ll just add that in additions to changing how I go around and about doing workshops and talks, I also deeply and passionately know we are making a difference. This past Friday we concluded our week long “training” sessions with our volunteers for the summer camp, which will start at Monday and 3 weeks. On Thursday I have a short but passionate speech that even surprised me, not because of what I said but because of the passion while saying it. I told them that the week of hard work and the next 3 weeks of hard work to follow effectively demonstrate that young people in our city are not just trouble makers, and that WE are in fact creating a summer camp that stands out from most other camps in the city, not just because of the exiting games we will play, not because of it affordable const, not just because our intention goes beyond entertaining kids for a couple of hours but because of it’s spirit, the recreating of our community so that it is natural for youth and children to play and create together, and that is saying a lot!
After sharing this I’m more confident about teaching the community education class!
