Stanford University Urban Studies &
Urban Summer Fellowship
Student perspectives of community-engaged learning and research across the United States
​Solution-Based Journalism as a Tool for Change, Fostering Media Connections, Los Angeles8/29/2017 Hi Everyone! As a quick reminder, my name is Marisol Zarate and I have been interning at Fostering Media Connections. We focus on solution-based journalism in child welfare and juvenile justice. This essentially means we report on current issues of injustice in the child welfare system, but we also offer feasible solutions and practices.
This summer has been one of hectic highs and lows, but it has definitely been one of tremendous growth. From the ins and outs of just working in Los Angeles to producing quality journalistic pieces, I have learned so many valuable things that have reminded me to work hard and to stay humble. First and foremost, I have felt so inspired and humbled by the stories of the foster youth and at-risk youth whom I have met. I have never seen as much resilience as I have seen in them this summer. These youth have taught me to keep working hard even when you are at your lowest. My favorite quote from a former foster youth who now has his own course on resilience, was when he explained what resilience meant to him. “You hear that resilience is ability to bounce back, but I don’t believe it is. Here’s why, because if you have nothing but traumatic experiences as a child, what are you bouncing back to? I define resilience as the ability to go through adverse life experiences and still have a sense of hope for a better future, and have a strong belief in your abilities to get to that future. It is the hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel, even when all you have experienced is darkness.” I initially applied for this fellowship because I wanted to improve my writing and learn about juvenile justice. I am thankful to say that throughout these nine weeks I feel my writing has improved and my confidence in my work has increased. Coming in, I was very self-conscious about the work I would produce, but with continuous feedback and experience as well as reading the dense literature, I began to form a sense of confidence and appreciation for what words allow you to do. Meeting with these people made me realize that writing (no matter how eloquent) is a tool, and can have great ramifications. Meeting with different stakeholders in the justice system and learning about the stories of foster youth have given me a passion for advocacy through writing. I definitely think I am going to pursue where journalistic writing may take me. After this summer, I hope to bring back what I learned to discussions in classes. After all the research I have read, I am truly amazed that we have not once have talked about foster care policy or juvenile justice policy in class, and I want to change that. During my time as an undergraduate I also hope to work through the Stanford in Washington program advocating for foster youth and/or juvenile justice policy in some manner. The research I studied on juvenile justice is directly related to what I want to work in for the future. I want to be a juvenile public defender and I hope to use what I learned to better serve youth. I also hope to be able to help influence policy that is more research-based. I am really thankful for the relationships I formed at my organization. The group at FMC is a group of wonderful and supportive individuals. They fostered my growth and pushed me to my potential. They showed me that my words have worth if I believe in the power to say them and/or write them down.
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Hello everyone! To quickly reintroduce myself, I’m Angela Lee and I’ve been working at the National Alliance on Mental Illness at the San Francisco branch this summer. I still have one more week at the office, so I have recently been thinking about the best ways for me to finish up my projects and help the team get a head-start on work for the new fiscal/academic year. In addition, I’ve been taking some time to reflect on my time at NAMI, think through all of the questions that our conversations have raised, and try to figure out concrete ways for me to keep contributing to our cause once I’m back at school.
I worked on a variety of projects during my time with NAMI, focusing primarily on our psychoeducation programs that serve individuals living with mental illness and individuals with loved ones with mental illness. For our Family-to-Family and Peer-to-Peer classes, I helped to prepare for classes, publicize our programs, and conduct analysis on our outcome data to evaluate our effectiveness and report to Mental Health Services. For our high school outreach presentations, Ending the Silence, I helped create promotional materials, conduct data analysis on outcome data, recruit and train speakers, and coordinate with SF Unified School District and local private schools to schedule presentations. I also assisted with more resource projects, including creating a comprehensive publicity document, a new methodology for analyzing outcome data, a compiled outcome data report, promotional flyers and leaflets, an updated resource guide, an updated website, and graphics for our social media accounts. In the later part of the summer, I also conducted interviews with the participants and mentors in our Mentors on Discharge program that pairs recently discharged individuals with mental illness with a trained peer mentor to help ease the transition with emotional and social support. Throughout the summer, I also staffed the Helpline, fundraised for the NAMIWalks 5k, assisted with grants, helped prepare the newsletter, and launched social media advocacy campaigns to fight attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. I also (finally!) learned the names of all the districts near me in San Francisco, figured out my MUNI commute after my go-to stop was suddenly removed, and had the opportunity to hear many perspectives on The City – ranging from idealistic optimism for the implications of the tech boom to anger and sadness because of the gentrification and mass displacement. I think the best way I can encapsulate my summer experiences with NAMI is with our unofficial team motto of “Drop by drop fills a cup.” I’ve learned so, so, so much in my time with NAMI. In addition to learning about the logistical ins-and-outs of working at a nonprofit, I think one of the most important things that I learned is striving to embrace humility, but not complacency. There’s so much going on the world right now, and there’s so many people hurting, and so many problems that desperately need to be addressed and fixed and solved. Mental health, mental illness, suicide prevention and psychological wellbeing are a subset of these problems – and they’re already such massive issues with over 6.1 million individuals in the United States experiencing some form of mental illness and with more than 100,000 Americans attempting suicide each year. And on a more local scale, it hurts to read headline after headline about the suicide cluster crisis so close to home and to school, it hurts to see people pointing from tour busses and taking pictures of mentally ill individuals in the city, and it hurts to see so many people literally stepping over homeless folks on their daily commutes to work without even a glance or flicker of empathy. The need for change is overwhelming, and the work can feel overwhelming. At times, it was so, so hard to be spending hours in the office crunching numbers and writing grants to get money for our program addressing dual-diagnosis, and then go to our support group meetings and hear about someone losing a loved one to an overdose. Although I know that the work is important even if in an indirect way, it sometimes felt like nothing I did was helping fast enough. But something I’ve learned – through many lunchtime conversations, somber or angry or sad or hopeful – is that even though I’m just one person, I am one person in this community that is fighting so hard to do some good in this world. I hope to acknowledge the enormity of the work ahead of us by staying humble, but never becoming complacent by always striving to do the most that I can – one drop at a time. I can’t describe how grateful I am to the people I have met on my team, and the incredible group of volunteers that keeps NAMI running. Whether I was sitting in on board meetings, checking in with support group leaders, discussing logistics with program coordinators, or even just emailing back-and-forth with our high school outreach speakers, I felt struck by how truly wonderful it is to be around such motivated people who genuinely care and genuinely want to help. I might sound like I am exaggerating, but our lunchtime chats with our interns and directors would sometimes be the highlight of my day and the burst of hope to keep me going through a stressful and busy summer. As I start preparing to pack up my things and head back to school, I have been thinking frequently about how I can continue to help continue this work from a distance. In addition to staying updated on mental health advocacy and being involved with groups on campus, I’m going to try to help NAMI with social media and graphic design work throughout the school year. Although I can’t help with on-site resources like support groups and the Helpline anymore, I hope that my efforts will help NAMI help others. Finally, I am looking forward to reuniting with everyone at my very first (walking!) 5k next month for NAMIWalks and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. All small things – but I am hopeful that enough small things will add up and make a difference in someone's life one day. One small step at a time. Best wishes to everyone, Angela Background Hello again, Pablo Haake here (Urban Studies ‘19), taking some time to look back on the past nine weeks living in the Big Apple and working with the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), the City’s engine for economic growth that strives to create good jobs and strong neighborhoods. Like any other (adopted) New Yorker, I’ve been absolutely Non-Stop (if you can forgive the mandatory Hamilton reference). According to my Health app I’ve walked over 250 miles and taken 600,000 steps over the past nine weeks, these steps taking me to all five boroughs (yes, even Staten Island) and almost every neighborhood in Manhattan. I’ve made new friends, experienced beautiful art, started drinking coffee (sort of), surpassed some scary moments, and ridden the subway more times than I could count. At the heart of my experience has been my time at NYCEDC, where I’ve been grateful to have be treated less like an intern and more like a full member of the team, and where I’ve been exposed to myriad aspects of urban economic, governance, and social issues. My Role at EDC this Summer I’m on EDC’s newly-created Partnerships team, which is in charge of managing EDC’s relationships with folks in the private sector, academia, and other local, state, federal, or foreign government entities. My specific focus is international business development strategy - essentially determining the best ways to attract new companies and jobs to New York City. EDC takes a very proactive approach to investing in certain sectors of the economy in order to create new jobs. The Mayor’s Jobs Plan, which called for the Partnerships team, clearly outlines how NYC intends to create 100,000 jobs over the next ten years through public investments in sectors like cybersecurity, virtual reality, fashion, freight, and more. This kind of strategic thinking and planning has closely guided the projects I’ve led during my internship. Project Work My first project was to survey all the international consulates, trade offices, economic missions, etc. located in New York City, which is a long list due to the UN headquarters. The goal of the survey was to find out what kinds of support services (i.e. funding, introductions to lawyers, accelerators) these offices offered to companies either wanting to expand from their home country to New York City, or from NYC to their home country. I ended up getting 55 submissions from 33 different countries, and a lot of very useful data that can point us in the right direction in terms of who we can coordinate efforts to build international “pipelines” of business development with. Next, I led the drafting of a MOU (memorandum of understanding), a non-legally binding agreement cities often sign with each other to declare a joint collaboration. The model agreement I drafted will be used as a template for any agreements New York explores entering with other cities around the world. This MOU covered how New York can work with partner cities to promote mutual economic development and innovation. I was tasked with coming up with a list of potential first MOU partners, and used background data and research to compile a list of 20 priority cities and 20 priority countries for partnership. Our first official meeting to discuss entering into a formal agreement is at the French consulate next week, and I’m working hard to create a draft agreement specifically for this meeting. Other potential partners include Berlin, Cape Town, and Israel - so keep your eyes peeled for big announcements over the next year! I’m getting ready to present my main projects next week (my last week) to EDC’s leadership, so they know what our strategy is going forward, and it’ll also be a good chance to go over all I’ve worked on and establish how it will support EDC’s work well into the future. Reflections Overall, the experience has been incredible. The people at EDC are awesome - it’s a very young and diverse crowd, reflective of New York, and they’re all super passionate and driven about their own particular area or focus. My supervisors have carefully guided me, each with their own unique style, and have provoked a lot of questions for me about the future. Could I see myself doing this kind of work someday? It’s definitely exciting and fresh to be working with a unique organization that drives economic growth for a city like New York, but I don’t think I would be doing work exactly in this capacity...what I did learn is that I love strategic problem-solving and working internationally, so that is really useful to future plans. I also think working more in the private sector could be a great way to gain skills and set aside some savings initially, but ultimately I want to work in a social impact field where I feel like the work is exciting and cutting-edge, but that the impact is real, tangible, and unambiguously progressive. This summer is a great start towards winding my way to that place eventually, and I want to thank everyone who supported me and made it possible. What a summer, thank you!! Some of my coworkers and I witnessing the eclipse! I'm in the blue on the bottom left. (I was mostly kidding about looking directly at the sun)
Since my last reflection a few weeks ago, there have been some exciting changes here at Year Up Los Angeles (YULA). To start, YULA’s first class of students officially graduated! As a reminder, Year Up is a one-year program in which young adults participate in six months of professional and technical training (referred to as the “learning and development” phase) followed by a six-month internship at corporations like Hulu, Kaiser Permanente, and Snap Inc. The Los Angeles branch only opened last summer, so graduation was a pretty big deal. Representatives of Year Up branches across the country traveled to YULA’s offices at West Los Angeles College to celebrate class 1’s successful completion of the program. We even welcomed some Year Up alums from the Bay Area branch to help facilitate the ceremony and offer students a glimpse into life after Year Up. Some of the class 1 graduates received job offers from the companies at which they interned, while others are in the process of applying to full-time positions or plan on continuing their education at a four-year college.
Meanwhile, the members of class 2 recently transitioned from their learning and development phase into full-time internships. Compared to class 1, I spent a lot more time getting to know class 2, especially the ambassadors, a group of students selected to serve as official YULA representatives for both ensuring the current class’s needs were being met and recruiting new students for class 3. Seeing the passion the ambassadors had for the program inspired me to put 110% into my efforts with the admissions team. Over the course of the summer, I worked with three other YULA staff members to find, engage with, and ultimately enroll candidates for class 3. Along the way, I reached out to potential students, facilitated in-person and online information sessions, conducted interviews with interested individuals, created reports on those interviewees, and presented my findings at biweekly admissions meetings. Looking back, it’s amazing how many students we were able to move through the admissions pipeline in a matter of weeks. At the beginning of my internship, we weren’t even halfway to our goal. Yesterday, as we kicked off the first day of orientation week for class 3, we welcomed around 55 students hoping to gain professional training in IT business. It’s YULA’s biggest class to date, and I’m proud to say I was a part of putting it together. There ware definitely some aspects of the admissions process that I won’t miss, like logging data into Salesforce or having people hang up on me while I gave them information about the program. However, on the whole, I really enjoy my day-to-day work on the admissions team, mainly because it’s so focused on ensuring the students receive the support they need. One of my goals for the summer was to gain a better understanding of the target population Year Up strives to serve, and I feel I’ve accomplished just that with my work in admissions. Quiz any staff member about Year Up’s goals and founding principles, and they’ll undoubtedly mention the opportunity divide between disenfranchised young people in need of job training and companies in need of skilled employees to fill midlevel positions. Before I came to YULA, I wasn’t aware of the specific challenges young adults in Los Angeles faced that prevented them from getting to the next level in their professional or academic careers. Having now interviewed a variety of students from diverse backgrounds, I feel more informed on the types of issues these young people are experiencing. I also learned more about how Year Up helps students overcome the “outside noise” in their life and succeed in their classes and workplaces. Much of this knowledge has come from my frequent collaborations with the student services department, a group of social workers who help students respond to risk factors in their personal lives. With the help of the student services team, I’ve connected students to resources for housing, transportation, and childcare. In my final three weeks at YULA, I hope to branch out beyond admissions and work with different departments. For example, many of our students struggle with finding business attire, a requirement for all Year Up participants. If I have extra time over the coming weeks, I’d like to put together a resource sheet for students as well as organize the clothing donations our student services team recently acquired. I’d also like to engage more closely with our program managers, two staff members who oversee curriculum planning and staff coaching sessions. I've already learned a lot from them about how they come up with the agendas for events like pre-orientation and our weekly Monday morning kickoff, but I'm interested in hearing how they decide on the topics they cover in their Career and Internship Development Readiness (CIDR) course. At the same time, however, I know my supervisors and the rest of the admissions team have already started recruitment efforts for class 4. Once orientation week wraps up this Friday, we'll debrief on our most effective outreach strategies from the last cycle before getting back to promoting YULA to a new group of potential participants. I feel very fortunate to have spent time working at a nonprofit that emphasizes student accountability, promotes cultural diversity, and provides a “hand up” rather than merely a handout. My conversations with students from classes 1 and 2 have made me realize just how much the Year Up program has the potential to change a young person’s life. Looking ahead, I hope to continue to do work with education-focused and youth-oriented organizations like YULA. Although I’m not sure if I want to enter the nonprofit sector after graduation, I definitely want to continue engaging in service that helps opportunity youth get access to opportunities for employment and higher education. I also plan on staying connected with the friends I’ve made at YULA (and possibly even coming back to visit for class 2’s graduation this January)! ~ Olivia Fritz Hello Again!
Wow! I cannot believe that my summer with the DeKalb Community Service Board has come to a close. It really seems like just yesterday I arrived. As a reminder, the DCSB is a community mental health platform that services low income individuals on the East-side of Atlanta. Specifically, I was working with PEIP (Prevention and Early Intervention Program) to build a platform to prevent those showing early warning signs of psychosis from transitioning into a first episode. Shortly after my last post, I got a chance to sit down with some leaders from a local community inpatient mental health facility. I will take a moment to mention that the DCSB offers outpatient counseling, psychiatry, and case work. Therefore, once patients are discharged from inpatient (live-in/overnight) facilities they depend on outpatient services such as our own to reintegrate into society and their old lives. In the past years, the connections between the inpatient and outpatient facilities have become strained or broken. It was really powerful to be present while these bridges are being rebuilt (especially when thinking of the positive outcomes continuity of care has specifically for mental health patients). I look forward to seeing this effort progress beyond the centers we are in contact with. I hope better patient outcomes in the future help to convey the positive results possible through collaboration and teamwork. I was also present for a drastic restructuring of PEIP as it moved from mainly Early Intervention (first-episode patients) to a Prevention (before first episode of psychosis) focused model. The prevention patients taken into the program averaged a few years younger than the first -episode patients and it was interesting to see the differences in their course of illness. This also offered me an opportunity to watch the progression of the illness from negative and cognitive symptoms (social anhedonia, lack of motivation, sudden drop in academic performance, and inattentiveness) to the onset of positive symptoms (often auditory hallucinations and delusions). One is only considered psychotic when they loose perspective on the positive symptoms and begin behaving in reaction to them. Over the last couple weeks, I was also able to complete my academic project on the sex based presentation differences in schizophrenia. Before starting the project, I was honestly unaware of how common sex based mental health presentation differences are. Interestingly enough, women often experience a less severe course of illness than their male counterparts. From fetal durability to hormonal imbalances and societal expectations, researchers far and wide have attempted to explain why this complex illness has such pronounced sex differences. Personally, I was a big fan of the estrogen hypothesis which states that natural estrogen production can lead to greater regulation of neurons in the central nervous system (even in men). I was also very interested in the ways that expected gender-roles can impact the recovery from first episode of psychosis. For example, in many Western individualistic societies, men are expected to be independent and accomplished while women are more welcome to depend on their families for help. Therefore, when a man turns to his family for long-term support, the family is less likely to be receptive than of a female counterpart requesting the same assistance. It was honestly just a treasure chest of really interesting stuff. Of course Dr. Shapiro was working alongside me the whole way, helping me to grow and ask more questions about the topics I was researching. Looking back, even though the summer had some pretty stressful moments, it was very fulfilling. I know I will not be able to follow the patients I met to the completion of their treatment, but I can find some solace in the fact that I was part of their journey. The question now becomes; how do we increase to number of people willing to come through the doors of the CSB? How do we de-stigmatize mental health so more people are willing to come forward and say they need help? Some illnesses are easy to see, others, such as mental illness, are not always so obvious. This position really helped me to look forward and think about where I want to go next in life. I definitely do not want to leave the community health field without a warrior to protect its clients. The structure as a whole was completely new to me, and I am glad I got to see it up close and personal. I hope everyone else had a summer as enlightening as my own! In Peace, Mauranda Upchurch I walk past this painting of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. multiple times a day at the ACLU San Diego office. It seemed an appropriated way to set the stage. I’d love to write about the report on policies and practices regarding the treatment of immigrant communities I’ve been compiling, or the calls I’ve been making for the Deported Veterans project, but Charlottesville happened. And shortly before, the ACLU of Virginia went to court and argued that the white supremacists should be allowed to protest the removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee in Emancipation Park (the presence of such a statue in a park thus named emerges as a contradiction of the most absurd variety) and not, as the city would have it, in a larger park a mile away. The judge found the argument compelling and, well, we know how the rest of the story goes. Who can say if events would have turned out differently had the protest been relocated to a larger space; more concerning for me, the staff here at the ACLU of San Diego, and the rest of the country, was the fact that our partners in Virginia represented the organizers of the rally and for a brief, eternal moment the ACLU stood behind Neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. In their first breath of response, some might defend the ACLU for its principled defense of free speech. But those who think the conversation ends there, seem to not grasp the whole picture. First off, the image of the gun-toting, armor-clad white supremacists is seared into my mind. One can hardly imagine that a Black Lives Matter-led protest would be met with the same level of police restraint had they taken the streets armed in such a fashion. So before we even address the odious content of the message that the white supremacists were intent on delivering, there is the question of how that message is delivered. Moreover, when it comes to “free speech,” we need to talk about how the racism embedded in this nation’s institutions affects who gets to exercise that right. Even without a sympathizer in the Oval Office, white nationalists benefit from a certain level of power and privilege in virtue of the very injustices they seek to perpetuate. To help put this into focus, given that the first amendment is intended to promote the advancement of democratic and egalitarian values, its abuse by the tiki torch tantrum troupe is like a vacuum cleaner that belches soot and sludge on carpet that is already so splotchy it looks like a 3rd grader’s attempt at abstract impressionism. Now, this is not to say that the white supremacists should be denied the right to peaceful assembly; but rather that the ACLU does not need to expend its time and resources defending that right. Blind adherence to principle will do far less for the cause of racial justice than careful consideration of its application in the context of hierarchies of power and privilege that have persisted in this country for too long. The claim that racial equity is not achieved through strict and consistent application of principle across all cases is not a new one. Its validity has been acknowledged in arguments supporting affirmative action and reparations (for the injustices of slavery, Jim Crowe, housing discrimination and so forth), and its importance to this conversation surrounding free speech cannot be understated. In deciding whether or not to advocate on behalf of the white supremacists, it at first appears that the ACLU is forced to choose between a principle of free speech and one of racial justice: that our guiding morals have led us into some kind of genuine ethical dilemma. However, I think that apparent contradiction can, with careful thinking, be resolved. But first, I want to make it perfectly clear that I am speaking solely from my own perspective and not on behalf of this organization. The key, I think, for the ACLU, when white supremacists come knocking on our door the next time, is to pay close attention not just to the action that we choose to take, but also to the reasons we give ourselves for taking that action, so that we avoid incurring a kind of hypocrisy when it comes time to hold fast to our principles down the line. A bit more on this: It would not suffice to say that we will not advocate for these people simply because we do not agree with them. Though that is certainly within our rights as an organization, it gives us little credibility when it comes time to defend the civil liberties of the groups whose efforts we support. On the other hand, it would not suffice to support these people simply on the grounds that free speech must be defended consistently and indiscriminately. Though in the past we have advocated for free speech groups with whom we disagree, a decision on the aforementioned basis alone fails to recognize the context and consequences of that support at such a time as this. Furthermore, it leaves us without any kind of answer when the communities of color with whom we work ask us, “Why should we trust you? You represented the Klan.” So, in order to best honor our commitment to justice on all fronts and the democratic and egalitarian ideals upon which this nation was founded, we must provide reasoning that is grounded in a recognition that when it comes to free speech the playing field is not even. As an organization that stands in defense of fundamental rights, we are called to address the inequities of today that arise from the deprivation of those rights yesterday. And so we will go to the defense of those who need us, those whose voices are threatened to be drowned out by raving calls for “blood and soil.” White supremacy does not need the ACLU. We stand for those without privilege and without power, and the day white supremacy* has none of those things is the day that this organization will no longer need to exist. And right now, that day seems a long way off. In Solidarity, Sebastian Green *I'm taking some liberties here. It goes without saying that the fight for justice necessarily must go beyond racial justice. I fully acknowledge the intersectional nature of this work and I don't mean to diminish the importance of efforts combating injustice with regard to sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, poverty, and/or religious discrimination (and so forth). Just as Chilean slang is finally making its way into my Spanish it is almost time for me to go. It will be a bittersweet transition, but one I will take a lot from. My time with ALDEA has been very much unique and has really helped me rethink ways one can get involved with the things they care about. It is a small and interdisciplinary collective with strong viewpoint but a flexible trajectory. They take advantage of what they come across and do what they can to keep growing and contributing. I also have come to appreciate how they reflect on the ethics and efficacy of their work situating themselves within the larger non-profit network. It is a special way to work that inspires me to not be confined by formalities and be creative with how I approach my career. To think of general goals and be creative with how I reach them, rather than just find an organizational latter to climb.
Being a small group with a lot of motivation, I found myself taking a big part in different projects of different sorts and scales. I was able to work on proposals, executions, and reflections - a very fortunate variety considering my short time in the fellowship. I worked in three cities - Santiago, Valparaíso, and Constitución, giving me a better understanding of urban issues on varied stages. The topics themselves were broad - from designing educational interventions in a cemetery to conducting youth activism workshops to designing and building a public space with a community of neighbors - I got to learn a lot about unique scenarios where urbanism, architecture, and education come into play. Many of these projects come from personal backgrounds of the distinct actors in ALDEA (an old friend, an old hometown, a previous partner) which really shows what you can do by accessing your own rich personal context for opportunities to get involved. Another valuable aspect of my fellowship was being in Santiago itself. It is very much a different scene than the US or Mexico, my countries of origin, which means there is a lot to learn from and reflect on. Chile's history, like of any place's, is a conflicted one especially in the context of Latin America. One can definitely feel the legacy of the rightist Pinochet dictatorship (which with US support in many ways "Americanized" the economy) as well as tensions from a historical (and within its youth very much ongoing) Latin American leftism. Like in the US there is no free education or healthcare, but social housing programs are far more developed than America's. Urban segregation, like is typical of Latin American megacities, is very much in place. The reality of very "gringo" upper neighborhoods is a world of its own compared to its middle class center or low income peripheries. Many of these tensions show a complication of the meaning of progress, where modernization is not always correlated with betterment. I also reflect on the legacy of American social, economic, and urban policy trends as they become associated with wealth abroad (whether it be Chile or Mexico). I come back to the US more critical of the space it takes up in the world, the influence it leaves, and the myth of its exceptionalism. I had just completed my second summer at Breakthrough Twin Cities! For a quick reminder, Breakthrough Twin Cities is a college access program that provides summer academic programing for 7th to 9th grade students, and I taught two 9th Grade Literature Classes! I’ve been back home in Kansas City for the past few weeks, and it feels weird not having anything to do, especially with how busy every single day of Breakthrough was. But I’ve had a lot of time to reflect, and I will be sharing some of those thoughts here. It was a very tough summer with many challenges, but from those challenges, I’ve been able to grow a great deal and realize other areas that I need to improve on.
The biggest place I’ve seen improvement from my self is just my confidence in the classroom. Last summer at Breakthrough, I had no teaching experience and was so nervous pretty much every single day. This summer, I felt so much more confident, which not only helped my mental health and nerves, but also made me a much more effective teacher, as I was more adaptive and held higher standards for my students. My ability to lesson plan has also greatly improved—with experience, I have a much better idea of what works and engages students and what doesn’t, and general I found that my classes went much better this summer than last summer. This summer, I also had the great opportunity to go camping for the first time! I was out for about a week camping with my students as part of the program, and we canoed! It was great fun, and I would love to go out on trail again. Though I excelled in certain areas, I definitely need improvement in others. This summer, I focused primarily on improving my ability to design classes—I was doing research for my Honors thesis specifically on comparing two pedagogical styles, so my attention was mostly devoted to what happens inside the classroom. I’ve done great work in this regard, and I’m very proud about that. But because I was so focused on what happens inside the classroom, the essential aspect of teacher/student relationships kind of fell to the side. I still made meaningful connections, but because that wasn’t my focus, I could tell that feel to the side a bit. This also occasionally hindered my ability to think of some of my students with an asset-based mindset. There were many challenges regarding student behavior over the summer, and I could have done much better if I reached out to the students more and developed a more caring relationship with them. Focusing how I build student relationships will be my focus the next time I have a teaching opportunity. And after Breakthrough, I know they’ll be another teaching opportunity. I still have great resolve to be a teacher, and it’s still very important to me that I work with underresouced students and do everything I can to show them that I believe in them. I’m very excited to take what I’ve learned from this summer and write about it in my Honors thesis too! Even though I’m quite sure that I will not be returning to Breakthrough for a third summer, I could not be more grateful for Breakthrough for the opportunities it has given me. I’ve had the privilege to meet so many amazing students and teachers, and I can’t think of a more formative program for me. It is through Breakthrough I realized my passion for teaching and serving underresourced students—I want that passion to fuel me throughout my life. Hello! Just to quickly re-introduce myself, I’m Flora, a rising junior, working at the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (AEMP). I have one more week left at the AEMP, so I have been wrapping up the projects I have been working on this summer. One of the projects I worked on was the Dislocation Project, which is documenting the Black Exodus out of San Francisco through different perspectives, such as environmental racism, art and culture, and redlining. I focused on education, looking at demographic data of the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) from the past half-century. To gather this data, I had to go to the History Room in the San Francisco Library and go through boxes of files since the information I needed was not digitized. With this data, I have been creating various maps, such as the sending/receiving schools during the busing period in the 1970s, asthma rate and the Black population in SFUSD schools, and a timeline of how the Black population percentage has dramatically shifted over the past 50 years. Through this project, I appreciated getting a taste of the whole process of gathering data to cleaning/manipulating the data to finally mapping and visualizing it. Another project that I have been working on is creating a story map of subsidized housing in San Francisco. In the story map, there are definitions and explanations of various kinds of subsidized housing (ie. public housing, project-based Section 8, housing choice vouchers), data in the form of maps, charts, and infographics, news about the federal budget cuts on housing, and an oral history. This project is in collaboration with the Eviction Defense Committee (EDC) to provide this resource for their clients as well as other people who want to learn about this convoluted system. Through both the Dislocation and Subsidized Housing projects, I worked a lot with data in various forms. Since the AEMP does work on both data and narratives, I had also hoped to be able to get a taste of the narrative side by conducting an oral history. Unfortunately, because the AEMP was not actively working on any oral histories this summer, and because I was preoccupied with other data projects, I did not take the initiative to try to find someone to interview despite getting trained to conduct one. I figure, though, that I would still be able to take these skills and have a conversation with someone, perhaps someone that I know personally, informally to hear their stories and thoughts about displacement. Apart from the data and mapping work, something that I had not anticipated coming into the summer but something I greatly appreciated was attending various actions. Over the course of the summer, I have been to three different city halls (in San Francisco, Oakland, and Fremont) and supported stricter owner move-in regulations, community budgets that favor housing over policing, and rent control. Going to the Fremont city council meeting was especially eye-opening because it was the first time I saw so many people so vehemently opposed to rent control. Many of the small landlords showed up to testify against rent control. In San Francisco and Oakland, already with rent control, many of the people who testified in front of the supervisors and city council were tenants who shared their personal stories about displacement or threat of displacement. I appreciated seeing these different cities and when each one is at in regards to housing policy. Another thing that greatly contributed to my experience was the environment and structure of the AEMP. The organization is volunteer-based; members of the AEMP work on projects on the side in addition to their day jobs. Because of this, I can see how passionate and dedicated these people are about the work of the AEMP. In the future, I can definitely see myself coming back to the AEMP to help out with projects, especially since it is so easy to come in and out of the organization. With Slack, I will be able to stay in touch and keep up with the projects that the AEMP will be working on. I will definitely keep up with the Dislocation Project, which is set to be finished in April, and will hopefully be able to attend some of the events showcasing the project. Later this week, the other interns and I are presenting the work we have done this summer and giving a mini-training on the mapping skills we have gained for people who are interested in learning. This would also allow people to learn and to see where we are at in our various projects so that other people could pick up where we left off. Even though I knew about gentrification in the SF Bay Area, having grown up here and taken classes in school about it, this summer has taught me so much about communication (through storytelling and data visualizations), action (through organizing for city council meetings and other demonstrations), and persistence, in addition to the data skills I gained. I will miss working at the AEMP and the people that I have gotten to know this summer. - Flora Wang Here is a picture with some of the other interns during an ice cream run, a block away from our office in the San Francisco Tenant's Union- I'm the second on the right. :)
As it draws to a close, a big summer in Los Angeles hasn't fully formed into a single narrative, so excuse the scattered nature of this entry. Since June, I have worked in the Mayor's Office of Economic Opportunity (MOEO), in the Housing Policy team. From this experience, a few things stick out:
Tomorrow, one of our big projects, the affordable housing linkage fee, which will (god willing) serve as L.A.'s first permanent source of affordable housing, comes to its first vote before the Los Angeles City Council. Though my work on it is vastly outweighed by that of my supervisor, colleagues, and even other interns that came before me, I'm honored to have played some, small role in creating the change that L.A. so desperately needs. Having worked previously in the federal government, I was often frustrated by the overwhelming inertia of work on that level. Bureaucracy stifled ideas, and minimal changes required maximum effort. I was lucky in many senses: to have been able to find work in a local government, to have my hope that it would prove more fulfilling validated; to get a grant from Stanford, which made unpaid work possible; to have found a place and a time where I could be useful and feel useful; to have colleagues and a supervisor who were infinitely patient; to work for a Mayor whose vision aligns with mine; to be able to work in Los Angeles, the 2nd largest American city, on an issue near and dear to my heart. The list goes on. This city has a quality I'd on lazier occasions describe as ineffable. After a few months here, I can see how its status as an immigrant city came to be. It's hardly the caricature: of celebrities at Starbucks, endless traffic, millennials competing for attention at the expense of any sincerity... - though you can find those things here. What sticks out to me instead is the light and heat that descend indiscriminately into street and home, the odd walkable neighborhood and the public transportation (among the most accessible in the U.S.), and the scale of it all -- 88 cities make up LA County, and countless communities make up LA. It's an ambitious, awing enterprise, unlike anywhere else I've been. Of course, every summer (and city) has challenges. Transitioning from home to full-time work and Adult Living can prove difficult in the first weeks, before you've established a rhythm. So can losing proximity to the friends who are usually so important to your daily life. But that's what I've come to understand these working summers as: previous of adulthood, in all its freedom, hardship, and novelty. I'm not coming from this summer with all the answers about how to adult, or how to spend my next few years, but I willfully dedicated myself to coming closer to them. I networked (serious shoutout to everyone who helped me/met with me!) and got a much better sense of the work I'd like to find after this senior year. I did my own research about the companies and jobs that would land me back in Los Angeles. I was reminded that folks, who have it together now, wandered, and that's totally fine. I cooked! A little. I commuted for over an hour each way every day. I met up with friends for brunch. Little by little, a portrait of what my life after college might look like has appeared. Finally, two tips for future interns, who are also figuring it out: 1. Ask people! Most of the professionals I've spoken to have been more than willing to tell their own story, explain their work, share their advice, listen. As long as you're polite and respectful of people's time, don't be afraid to cold email. 2. Try something else! When I think back to my previous internships, my chief regret was winding up in so many similar positions (though they were all well worth it individually). That's why I'm so thankful I did something different this summer. I now know that, for the near future, I'd much prefer working at a city government level to working in the federal government. In work, as in life, there are some things you can't control, others you can. I was blessed with a thousand lucky coincidences this summer, including a great supervisor and good work. But I also come from this summer dedicated to continuing happily the adventure, wherever it takes me, into adulthood. Thanks for reading and don't be shy about reaching out. |
AuthorThis blog is authored by Stanford University students engaged in summer fellowships through the Cardinal Quarter and the Program on Urban Studies. All writings and thoughts belong to the Fellows and do not represent the opinion of the sponsoring programs. Archives
September 2018
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