Augustus Hawkins Team Professional Learning Activities
Overview of the conferences and workshops we participated in to enhance our understanding of and abilities to utilize various tools and practices that support student geospatial awareness, narrative building, and civic engagement.
TIIP Summer 2011
We realized as a teacher team that we would need to build our own knowledge and skill sets around narrative development, critical geo-literacy, and student agency to feel confident enough to adequately facilitate students in the type of authentic community inquiry based instruction. We decided to create learning experiences for ourselves that would put us in the position of learner again, so as to fully immerse ourselves in the types of experiences we wanted to provide for our students.
Visual Narratives Course
Our first summer training consisted of a two week long workshop dedicated to creating authentic narratives using visual media. Our students gravitated to this medium on their own because they wanted to produce mini-documentaries that told the stories of their research, and present the issues that mattered to them in a way that was accessible and digestible to their peers. Yet, upon reflection of the student work that was produced and the process they underwent to create student media, we realized that we did not have the knowledge base to really facilitate a successful process that truly emphasized the very impactful art and science of storytelling through visual media i.e. photographs or film.
UCLA Graduate Film Student and talented filmmaker maker Daye Rogers helped to take our team through the process of creating visual narratives. This workshop including everything understanding narrative arc from a story tellers perspective, the elements of story, visual techniques (i.e. framing, shot types, etc.) and editing video and sound. One of the most important educational walkaways was understanding that in order to help students through this process we would have to teach all of these things in very strategic and thoughtful ways, and that understanding story, more than understanding visual media technology, was at the heart of it all. (Click here to connect with our team on Google+)
The image above from Google+ is an example of how we shared our homework on Google+ and our feedback from Daye.
Arc GIS Training
Our next summer training ramped up the rigor even more. We were able to collaborate with Professor Leobardo Estrada of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He was able to help arrange a 6 day intensive introduction to GIS workshop, instructed by his recent graduate assistant, Nic Jay Auston. The focus of the workshop was foundational understanding of the use of GIS technologies, specifically ArcGIS and the creation and application of geospatial data. This work was critical to deepening our own understandings as Geography and Social Science teachers, around the
tools and methodologies of critically understanding people, places, and
the stories contained within.
School Year 2011-12
These summer trainings reinvigorated our team with the confidence to go in to the school year with a new instructional approach for all grades 9-12. We were committed to having our classroom practice reflect the new pedagogical and technical frameworks that we had recently learned.
We had success engaging students with narrative building, 
examination of local community histories, and contemporary narratives. The use of media, mobile technology, and out of classroom experiences helped to draw students in and spark their curiosity. Yet there was still a real struggle in encouraging and cultivating genuine student agency.
In December, we journeyed to Washington DC to attended NCSS - the National Council of Social Studies Conference. There we networked with other Social Studies professionals. Were were particularly inspired by practices focused on portraiture, primary source document use, and work with local archives. When we returned, we shared our new resources with our department members and worked to incorporate those three elements in our courses.
We turned inwards towards our own expertise, networks, and past experiences. We realized that students do not often feel empowered in traditional classroom spaces as much as they do outside of school. It behooved us to bring in organizations and opportunities to connect kids beyond the classroom walls. We see that youth voice has power in collective spaces, and that young people historically drive social movements. They do so just by nature of being kids living out their real stories.
Throughout the course of the year, students were introduced to organizations such as the Community Rights Campaign, Community Coalition, and the Council of Youth Researchers. These organizations helped students engage in meaningful inquiry into issues where they wanted to affect change, whether they be school discipline policies, district, or citywide policies that affect young people.
In the end, the learning that happened in our classrooms would not have been as powerful if not for the augmentation these collaborations made possible. Students were able to examine their neighborhood at the nexus of historical and contemporary oppression and resistance. Utilizing observation tools, field trips, and theoretical frameworks that allowed students not only to deconstruct but be part of a response, part of a dialogue helped them to see the power in their voice.
Our 10th and 11th Grade World and US History 
students experienced a curriculum that required an examination of geospatial implications of historical trends as well as the extraction and creation of both dominant and counter-narratives rooted in the California State Standards for Social Studies. Our team wanted to ensure that the approach of teaching Social Studies with geo-spatial awareness, narrative analysis and creation as well as civic empowerment were incorporated in all Social Studies courses. So what began as a focus on a 9th grade course evolved into an entire Social Studies program for all students.
2012-2013: A New Beginning
Having a few teachers dedicated to encouraging student civic engagement is a lot different that having an entire school, let alone three, support this type of work at its core. Yet this is now the context within which our TIIP team works. This type of instruction is not only structurally supported at Augustus Hawkins, it is encouraged on all levels. This year we had students, parents, and teachers from all 3 small schools on our campus involved in several different community and political events.
Before our doors even opened, our entire staff was provided a summer training on the importance of organizing within our communities and the relevance of the community school and its staff. Our school has been fortunate enough to partner with One LA, a community organization that focuses their organizing on building broad based coalitions to build relational and political power for its constituents.
In promoting this type of civic engagement for both our staff and students, we are seeing a campus culture that is truly about connecting the community and its hopes and struggles for progress with the work equity and equality within the classroom. This is the counter-narrative we have been working towards in South Central Los Angeles.
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