Photos and story by
Mindy Pines
Approximately fifty UESF members from all over the district gathered at Mission
High School on Thursday, February 7 to learn about Cesar Chavez -- the man,
his life and the movement he built. They also developed and shared lesson
plans so that they could impart this knowledge to their students.
Made possible by a grant from the Governor's Office on Service and Volunteerism
(GO SERV), this all day conference focused on how to integrate lessons about
Cesar Chavez's values and accomplishments beyond classroom curriculum and
into the larger community. It was co-sponsored by UESF, California Federation
of Teachers, East Bay Conservation Corps and Oakland Museum of California.
Fred Glass, Communications Director of California Federation of Teachers
(CFT) showed the farmworker portions of "Golden Lands, Working Hands,"
his video of California labor history, produced by CFT, and distributed tapes
of those portions to participants. He stressed the need to teach about labor
history and unions. "Unions," he said, "are a tool created by and for
working people so that they could have power... and can be used well or badly, or not at all."
Need to establish more community
Citing a need to establish more community within her own classroom, Mardonia
Samson, fourth grade teacher at Charles Drew Elementary School said that
she learned a lot more than she expected, particularly as far as labor in
general and "workers' needs to speak up and make their organizations
work." She was confident that she could use what she learned to build the community she desired.
|
Lisa Bishop, Paul
Revere ES (above), Jamilah Campbell, Cesar Chavez ES (far left) and Ramon
Martinez, Junipero Serra ES, plan how to implement one of many lessons provided
at event. |
Partipants broke into grade level groups: elementary,
led by Amy Whitcomb and Bill Morgan, both members of UESF and CFT's
Labor in the Schools Committee; Middle School - Hene Kelly, Parkside;
and High School - Patty Litwin of United Teachers Los Angeles and the Collective
Bargaining Education Project. They reviewed lesson plans, read stories, did
role-playing activities and more so that they could immediately relate what
they learned to their students.
Need heroes
Anne Bjornson, a social studies teacher at A.P. Giannini Middle School wanted
to learn more about Chavez because, she said, "Kids have a desperate
need for great heroes beyond those of pop culture. They need to know about
great achievements in struggles for justice... about all of the courage and
hard work that has gone on before them." She wanted to use the knowledge
and materials she acquired to help her "students connect Chavez to their
own lives."
Hene Kelly (above
in red) directs lesson on stoop labor in the middle school section. Melinda
Martinez of Balboa High (right); Ana Slavicek of Lowell High |
 |
Melinda Martinez, English teacher at Balboa High,
gained ideas to implement immediately as her students are now reading John
Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. She wants to tie in what she knows about
Chavez and to implement service learning to foster community-building and
an appreciation of workers' rights.
Include students in community
"The Cesar Chavez service learning curriculum is a great way to include
students' voices in the school and community experience," asserted William
Carpenter of Enola D. Maxwell Middle School. He intends to "use labor
history as the catalyst to bring the study of ancient civilizations to a more
concrete level."
Resources to share
Have you any teaching resources to share? Web resources for teaching about labor history
and Cesar Chavez are in the Social Studies section
in the Teaching Resources section of this
web site. Many of the resources presented at the Chavez workshops are available
through CFT's Labor
in the School Committee.
Legislation that created the GoServ grants which funded this conference mandates
that schools devote
some part of Chavez's birthday, March 31, or thereabouts if on a weekend,
to teaching about the values of Chavez and about farm labor history. April 1 is
a district holiday in his honor.
We'd like to know if you use any of these resources
in your classroom and how they worked. If you have any lesson ideas or resources
to share, please contact our webster.
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