Community Learning
Community Learning Theory and Practice
K45.1402 4 CR T 9:30-12:15 René Poitevin
This course looks at the theory and practice of community learning through current debates, case studies, and class presentations from leading practitioners in the field. Specifically we will look at how participatory action research, service learning, community mapping, and popular education are necessary conditions for successful university-community collaborations. We will look at, among other theorists, Paulo Freire, Bell Hooks, David Kolb, and Ken Reardon. Students will also have the opportunity to collaborate with community organizations (about 5 hours per week). This course is an ideal introduction to community learning at Gallatin. No previous community work experience required.
Mapping for Social Change
K45.1420 4 CR R 9:30-12:15 René Poitevin
permission of the instructor required.
The goal for this course is to learn how to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the state of the art in mapping technology, as a tool for community empowerment and public policy analysis. Among the specific skills we’ll learn are how to geocode addresses, and how to do spatial analysis to measure whether communities needs are being met or not. And last but not least, we will also learn how to use census data to map the racial and income composition of NY neighborhoods. The semester ends with a closer look at the uses and limitation of GIS for helping communities mobilize to improve their day-to-day lives and to enhance their capacity to influence over time the future trajectories of politics, markets, and civic life.
Equal Exchange:Arts-Based Collaborations with Immigrant Youth
K45.1455 4CR T 3:30-6:10, R 3:30-4:45 M. Bowers
with the exception of the first three classes, Tuesday classes meet on-site in Brooklyn; Thursday classes and the first 3 Tuesday classes will be held at NYU. Students who register for this course should not schedule anything after 2:30 on Tuesdays.
This course looks at the intersection of art, culture and identity by bringing together NYU students and immigrant high school students to collaborate on the creation of original, inter-disciplinary performance work. Students will work on-site at the Brooklyn International High School (BIHS) which has a student body from 43 different countries. The course will focus on the development of arts based techniques using movement, creative writing, oral history, music, and theatre to create an open dialogue in a multi-cultural setting. NYU students will learn how to transmute this dialogue into theatrical forms as we work toward a final performance. Thursday class will be spent discussing readings and planning our work with students at BIHS. We will think and talk about how culture and identity are both influencing and influenced by the matrix of social forces operating in society. Final independent projects may take the form of chap books, videos, musical compositions and/or specific collaborative projects with BIHS students. Readings will focus on the role of artists in mediating community interactions, community arts practices and the use of the arts for social change. Readings may include Theatre of the Oppressed (Boal), Community, Culture and Globalization (Adams and Goldbard), The Laramie Project (Kaufman) among others.
Immigrant Rights
K45.1456 4 CR T 6:20-9:00 Sarumathi Jayaraman
In the last twenty years, immigrants from an ever-increasingly diverse set of countries continue to flood the United States to find work to support their families, as the federal government simultaneously strips these immigrants of their rights as workers and residents of our nation. This course will outline basic immigration patterns in the last century, fundamental changes in the law that have affected these immigrants, including the drastic changes implemented after September 11th, and the ways in which immigrant workers are organizing in the workplace and elsewhere to sustain rights they have and win even more. As field placements, students will be working with immigrant workers’ centers that organize immigrant workers in different industries citywide.
Literacy in Action
K45.1460 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Paul Jurmo
This course combines volunteer work in New York City adult literacy and English as a second language programs with an academic introduction to the philosophy, history, and current issues of basic education. Students will work as volunteer teachers of reading and writing at such institutions as the University Settlement, Union Settlement, and Fortune Society. In class they will read about and discuss such key issues as which “basic skills” U.S. adults now need, which adults lack these skills and why, the implications for our economy, families, communities, and democracy, the instructional approaches developed for adults, and the steps that might be taken to build support for high-quality, adult, basic-skills programs. Throughout the course, students will relate such issues to their own on-site experiences in class discussion and role-playing, and create a portfolio of writing that includes on-site observations, lesson plans, reflections, and a final analytical paper. Readings may include Making Meaning, Making Change (Auerbach), Bringing Literacy to Life (Spruck Wrigley and Guth), and Whole Language for Adults (Cheatham, et al).
Policy, Community and Self
K45.1466 4 CR W 6:20-9:00 Eric Brettschneider
Intended to introduce policy, this course will include an internship at a policy and /or advocacy organization. Community building, service integration and child welfare will be featured in readings, discussion, and internships. Through examples such as ethnic matching placements in foster care, zero tolerance approaches to drug abuse, or public financing of political campaigns, students will come to understand how government, schools, gangs, religious institutions and families can, with varying degrees of explicitness and formality, all make policy. Students will at the course conclusion be able to: identify policies within their lives; argue all sides of a policy question; appreciate the importance of evidence; and distinguish implementation from formulation. Readings will include Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam, and The Lost Children of Wilder, by Nina Bernstein. Students will be helped to connect meetings they attend and the policy concepts taught and discussed in class. The goal is to leave no student unaware of the importance of policy in their own and their community’s life. The course will focus on policies that are empowering. Assignments will include and internship journal.
The Neighborhood Project
K85.2480 4 CR W 6:20-8:20 David Moore
this graduate course is open to advanced undergraduates with the permission of the instructor.
Students in this course will both survey and participate in a variety of models of community-based action: traditional social service; grass-roots organizing; political movements, etc. Each student will work (about a day a week) in a community organization, doing anything from after-school programming to policy formation, from action research to direct service. We will read classic works in community studies (e.g., Tönnies, Park and Burgess, Bellah) representing competing theories of community formation and improvement, as well as writings on the varied approaches to community work (e.g., Alinsky, Delgado, Mondros). We will debate issues related to race and class, political strategy, and social change. Students will intensely examine their community settings through the lenses of the more theoretical readings—and vice versa—in an effort to understand the relationship between theory and practice in community work.
