Printer-friendly versionLetuka Mosia has a unique schedule.
Aside from the traditional math and science classes, the sixth-grader is learning Chinese, Spanish and Nahuatl, an indigenous language.
Learning languages comes easy and is one of the main reasons he’s excited about going to school at Semillas del Pueblo, Letuka said. “My teachers are relaxed and easy going. I like my school.”
That excitement is what will likely keep Letuka and his 499 classmates in school through high school graduation.
Semillas del Pueblo, an internationally-minded and culturally relevant East Los Angeles charter school, teaches its predominately Latino students in four languages.
Marcos Aguilar, the school’s executive director and founder, said the school’s curriculum is rigorous and prepares students for college. Further, the school seeks to cultivate wise, community-engaged and internationally minded youth who can become leaders in their communities.
It’s the culturally relevant curriculum that is the school’s major asset. It helps the students, most of whom are Mexican or Mexican American, to not feel alienated like they have through curriculum offered at most public schools, Aguilar said.
“We want them to see their mother language as an asset rather than a disadvantage,” he said. “We provide an enriched educational experience. Our goal is to prepare them for life.”
And as excited as Letuka is to go to school, his mother, Valerie Hernandez, loves that she never has to force her son to go to school.
That balance of love and learning came under attack several years ago, starting with Los Angeles radio host Doug McIntyre’s comments about the school’s curriculum as racist and separatist. Then came a bomb threat and school evacuation.
At the time, Letuka was in first grade.
“He didn’t understand why anybody was bashing the school that he loved so much,” Hernandez said. “It was very difficult for me to explain to him what was going on.”
Parents, teachers and administrators worried about the effect on the students.
“It terrorized our children,” said Aguilar. “But despite the financial, emotional challenges we were able to come back with a much stronger school.”
The K-12 school opened in 2002 using a bi-cultural, bilingual curriculum, recognized by the International Baccalaureate.
“The school is a call to action for educational equality and inclusion,” he said. “We wanted to provide equitable education.”
Aguilar filed a lawsuit against McIntyre and the radio station for defamation. In January 2009 an out-of-court agreement was reached.
Today, despite the controversy, bomb threat and court battles Semillas del Pueblo is stronger then ever, Aguilar said.
“Our case was to not allow slanderous jokes and comments to be dismissed as harmless,” he said. “Our students were able to rise above the hate thanks to our community support and the resilience demonstrated by parents and educators in our school.”
Hernandez describes Semillas del Pueblo as a great school for her son, who is half South African and Mexican, for several reasons. First, she wanted her son to have a culturally inclusive educational experience and he needed a school that was recognized internationally. Her son is planning to go to high school in South Africa, where his father lives.
“I liked the cultural aspect, languages and the indigenous curriculum,” she said. “I didn’t learn much about my culture until I got to college. I felt cheated. I started to see the shift in my consciousness as a woman of color once I took those classes. I wanted him to learn about his culture and he be proud… he is proud.”
Zamudio is a journalist living in Los Angeles.
Comments
"Culturally-relevant
"Culturally-relevant curriculum" that helps students not feel "alienated." I suppose that really begs the question of... which culture? Relevant to the culture of... middle-class urban Mexicans? The culture of... rural Mexico? Mexicans who're descended from the native peoples who work on farms? There is no more a "Mexican culture" than there is an "American culture" or an "Asian culture"; culture varies from place to place, sometimes even in the same state and certainly in the same country. The culture of Georgia isn't the culture of New York which isn't the culture of Texas which isn't the culture of Utah or California or Alaska. Thus, it seems to me, calling ANY curriculum "culturally-relevant" is nonsense unless you have a school only for Mexicans of a certain cultural background--which is definitely not the case with this Academia Semillas del Pueblo Xinaxcalmecac (which, apparently, means "Seeds of the People's Academy").
Also, in what way are students of a predominantly Latino population "alienated" in a school without "culturally-relevant curriculum" that is not "internationally-minded"? The various cultures in America, especially in a famously race-sensitive state like California, encompass all peoples of all colors and backgrounds from a Orthodox Finn to an Algerian Muslim to a Spanish Moor to a third-generation Roman Catholic Chilean who's become indistinguishable from the 9th-generation scion of a Mayflower immigrant. Moreover, "alienation" is a totally normal component of education; at some point, kids will stop and wonder who exactly they are and where exactly they fit. Even in an "internationally-minded" school, the child of a South African and a Latino (which I suppose Valerie Hernandez is, given her surname and the implication that her culture is different from an American culture) has to decide whether he wants to embrace his mother's culture or his father's culture or both or neither... which is, again, all part of growing up that no amount of sensitivity or cultural relevance can negate. So, assuming that preventing alienation entirely is even POSSIBLE, how does "Seeds of the People's Academy" do a better job than any other school picked at random?
And by the by... is a conservative-leaning conservative talk show host REALLY all that out of line to be concerned about a school official in an American school stating that "ultimately the white way, the American way, the neoliberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction"? Just wondering.