Entry Questions

What has been your experience at Baruch College/ CUNY thus far?

Do you feel included and well-represented within the space and the curriculum? What about the communities you belong?

Do you think Baruch and CUNY promote Black-Latine-affirming spaces? Why? Why not?

What type of classroom engagements (activities, assignments, lecture style, sources, materials, events, etc) do you prefer?

How could the institutions increase and even center the study of our saberes (knowledges)?

Historical/ Institutional Context

SEEK Program (Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge): It is self-defined as a “program designed to meet the needs of students who are considered to be economically disadvantaged and academically underprepared.”

Historically, who have been the students who are “economically disadvantaged and academically underprepared”? Why?

SEEK students may receive educational Stipends to cover the multiple costs of education.

Reed defines it as:

.”A nucleus for counteracting the institutional inequities entrenched in… segregated admissions, Eurocentric curriculum, and value systems, and colonial relationship to (marginalized neighborhoods)” (70)

.It employed a cohort of radical thinkers, word creators, and educators to teach writing classes to Black-Puerto Rican-Latine youth.

Written Discussion

Step 1: Writing

Discuss the teaching/ life perspectives and practices that appeal most to you from these Afro-American writers-educators? Why? How do they intersect with (Afro) Puerto Rican-Latino communities? Go into details referencing Reed’s text.

Groups 1 and 2: Toni Cade Bambara (Pages 62-64)

Consider these practices: Community Scribe; Pan-African Speaker’s Corners and bookstores as “outside universities”; learning in daily community spaces, aka studies on the streets.

Group 3 and 4: David Henderson (Pages 64-67)

Consider these practices: Multiethnic poetry, theater, and performance collectives; playing and discussing pop music; unsanctioned forms of writing; avoiding grammar corrections; allowing tangents and personalized interests; reading large doses of Black poetry; promoting non-verbal learning and disability-attuned learning; barrio/hood-communications and solidarities

Group 5 and 6: June Jordan (Pages 67-70)

Consider these practices: engaging themes of housing and living conditions; critiquing Black separatism, proposing coalition; understanding the street as a learning field; writing poetry and newsletter, listening to music, and going on field trips with Black-Puerto Rican-Latine youth; encouraging children’s autonomy in their writings.