By Desireé R. Melonas Our second summer workshop took place July 28 & 29, on the campus of Spring Hill College, located in the Spring Hill neighborhood of Mobile, AL. The inaugural workshop was held last summer around the same time, and, while both generative and exciting, it left our leadership team teeming with ideas for how we might organize and revise subsequent workshops, where necessary. We knew, for instance, that we would keep intact the format of the workshop. Recognizing the clear benefits of genuinely collaborative work—one that strengthens and expands our Community of Practice (CoP)—we organized this year’s working groups, again, by placing together: teachers (those from Mobile County Training School, Vigor High School, Blount High School, and Barton Academy), with both researchers, and community partners. Given that it worked so well before, we saw no need to change that aspect. We did, however, make important modifications to the schedule. On that note, one of the things the CoP model stresses is the importance of feedback, that is, providing opportunities for stakeholders to express and be in conversation with one another about the CoP itself, to collectively reflect on its form and the extent to which it enables the group to adequately realize its shared goals. In the spirit of partnership, then, several of our CoP members at the end of last year’s workshop proposed that we allot more time for brainstorming and collaborative interaction, in other words, for practice. In response to that feedback, we developed a workshop schedule that structured in more time for joint work which is critical, especially since it is our aim to help establish curricular interventions that reflect the wide range of knowledge, variety of expertise, and the depth of resources embodied in the collective. It was therefore important for us to set the conditions for that to happen. It was into this deeply collaborative, responsive environment that I had entered. This summer was my first time attending the workshop, in-the-flesh. I had the misfortune of getting COVID in the close-lead-up to last year’s workshop, and so my mediated “attendance” consisted of being projected on a screen as a talking head in a pre-recorded, video-embedded, PowerPoint presentation. I thus experienced this year’s workshop as a newcomer, of sorts. I was also the designated camera person on the first day, and I must say that there is something about moving around, capturing images of folks that gathers space and time together in a unique way. I found myself looking and listening more intently to the overlapping exchanges throughout the event room; I wanted, as best I could, to capture in photographs the dynamism, care, synergy, support, and genuine interest in learning from one another that characterized our coming together. I am not sure how well I accomplished this, but what I will say is that walking around the room, weaving in and out of groups, allowed me to witness so much of what was being co-created in and expressed through our gathering. Below are a couple of my brief observations: First, Dreaming and visioning are contagious. One of the most energizing parts of the workshop was witnessing and participating in conversations that seemed to brim with ideas about how best to encourage students to embrace a citizen-scientist attitude. It was common, for instance, to see one group member present an idea, then another respond by adding something to that, and then another, inspired by the group members’ contributions, insert in to the mix their suggestions. This was a pinging back-and-forth of ideas, resources, and visions, a vortex of creative energy whose limits did not end at close of the day’s sessions. I can recall a moment on the morning of the second workshop day that exemplifies this. Just as the groups reconvened for the first time that day, Dr. Ted Atkinson, a retired pediatrician and soon-to-be master gardener, barely able to contain his excitement, pulled out his padfolio and exclaimed to my group, “Yesterday’s workshop had me scribbling ideas on my pad once we all left!” He then proceeded to share his insights which then gave way to even more brainstorming amongst our group members that included ideas for expanding our sphere of community partners, starting a student-led podcast series, and teaching students how to teach the community about medicinal plant-life. I witnessed this sort of vibrant exchange take shape in another group when Mrs. Holloway, an Mobile County Training School (MCTS) teacher, shared her vision for using her classroom’s aquaponics set up to generate food for her students and surrounding communities, as well as to teach them about sustainable micro-agricultural practices and alternative economies. Her remarks were soon followed up with “Yes, that makes me think of [X]!” or “Have you thought about how we might also do [X]?” or “Oh, now that you mention that, something like [X] might work, too!” There was a clear, productive, and vibrant contagion effect at work. Dreaming and visioning begot even more dreaming and visioning. Second, The notion of usable/usability is often a matter of perception. There are times when others’ claims about what is useable/unusable may impair one’s capacity to imagine what a space or thing can be or become. Indeed, Ms. Ray Richardson, the city of Mobile Environmental Manager, reminded us all of that when sharing some of her work on helping to facilitate the revitalizing of what are referred to as brownfield sites, which are unused or underutilized spaces often made so by pollution and contamination. At a fundamental level, her work involves reimagining space, and problematizing narratives that rigidly circumscribe its use-value. With the right vision and the necessary gathering of resources, the unused/unusable can be transformed into something usable and vitalizing.
All of that said, a core part of what our collaborative work is meant to do is to help inspire a new vision among students, that is, for them to look at things and places with fresh eyes for how they might be used in ways that promote individual and community well-being, even when it may not appear that way at first. One lesson plan, for example, helps students understand how food scraps can become compostable material that then nurtures the development of new life, in different forms. Another lesson asks students to examine how an unused plot of land was transformed into a healing garden, and to consider the varied ways the plants grown there can be put to use. Yet another lesson focuses students’ vision on how an open space could become a site for a future community farmer’s market that features produce grown by MCTS teachers and students. Finally, another idea for a lesson centered on introducing to students the ways that sewage—literal refuse—tells a story about a community’s health, which is to highlight that sewage can be used as a diagnostic for addressing communities’ needs. It is clear that combatting climate change issues and addressing environmental injustice, to a large extent, requires embodying a spirit of resourcefulness, that is, using all we have to both mitigate their impacts and to chart a different pathway to a more livable future. As I see it, then, these curricular lessons are not just about imparting new skills in and developing new competencies among students (though, this is super important!). But we are also hoping to fundamentally encourage the development of a critical consciousness, one where they more readily and consistently reflect on how they might make use of things and spaces—some of which may have been rendered unusable—in order to help the environment. I can say that my vision was expanded during this workshop. It is our hope that through participating in these lessons that the students will experience a change in their field of vision, too. Really, our future depends on it. I am looking forward to seeing what this coming academic year brings, and witnessing the ways students’ relationship to both learning and the environment might take form differently, and for the good. It will be an awesome thing to see our collective visions come into being!
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AuthorThis is a collaborative blog with multiple authors from our community of practice focused on the community of Africatown in Mobile, Al. Archives
August 2023
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