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Community Partnerships

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hi my name is Reyes Flores and agriculture teacher here at LA River High School Sonia Sotomayor learning academies summer 2013 I was approached by the principal of Valley River is Coolidge to see what I thought about starting a farm program at the school but my goal from the beginning was to create a program that was a comprehensive working farm had a school run by the Sioux run maintained and built by the by the students of the school overall the main goals were kind of to reconnect students to to their Roots their agricultural roots that we all have is humans and that run especially deeply and recently in the Latino Community it's definitely like a multi-faceted farm so there's there's many components and there's a kind of tivity between all of them so we have we have our livestock we have a garden a vegetable garden where students grow produce that they they take home and share with their families are we have what we call our field cranberry where are larger more seed heavy crops such as corn and garlic and onion are grown on a large scale we have in Orchard area we have a greenhouse where we start most of our produce from it's all those components are connected really kind of a closed loop system or we're trying to make it as close loop as possible we're all all the all the parts of the farm all the facets are connected to each other my name is Abraham for 9 I was mainly in charge of irrigation however I did what I did to help with feeding the animals and caretaking and constructing some of the stuff here the biggest impact the farm had on me personally just the fact that I'm able to not have to sit behind a desk and like actually be active like me proactive in my education experience like the actual labor that goes into actually growing a granola like the Agriculture and taking care of the animals themselves it's much more different than beating it from a textbook it kind of allow students to make that connection to understand the food doesn't just magically appear at the grocery store there's a whole chain of things that happened beforehand and first and foremost is the growing of the food out in the fields and the people that maintain that that care for those crops that that Harvest them and get them on the truck stink to get out to the Mission Center one thing I've been able to see as I interact with the is that you know students come home with stories and they said hey this is what I did today I today I collected I collected the eggs I found egg being laid today or I I harvest of these fava beans and parents connect to that and they say all would I when I was growing up I did those same things and that Sparks conversation and Sparks connections they can create a deeper Bond and connection to people that you know we thought maybe we didn't have as much in common with when I had this class it feels like I'm more of a nature person so I come alive when I have this class like I feel like this is what I should be doing the farm twice this year and the first day I came here which was sophomore year my sophomore year I was mainly focusing on the Construction Group so I built the pigpen and I raised the pigs and chickens and the Ducks and then this year I mainly for sing on the chickens and gardening when I work on the farm I feel very like I feel very happy like I feel like I see things in a completely different manner than before like I would like all the hard work we put in this class has made me the animals I mean I like growing things and I like seeing how my like the stuff I plant grows into like a natural fruit and I can actually eat it but actually like seems like the sheet Francis or the baby birds behind me I like seeing them grow into like the adults and just months most people you know are able to touch the Earth with her hands are their feet you know concrete and cement everywhere so this is this really is a little rural Oasis and and in the city my name is Arturo Romo and I'm the art teacher and graphic arts teacher at LA River School on the Sotomayor campus we teach an intro to drawing class which is called drawing for design which introduces students to wear conditions and also get some ready for the more advanced classes which are graphic design and the last class which is a media Capstone class where students learn how to edit video and create documentaries where they can tell their own story so there's a lot of research that goes into each artwork students share ideas do collaborative research and after a period of research they create their works and sketch form presenters works out the class get feedback for that work from their classmates based on certain criteria and then I'm from that criteria they go on to produce finished works when so Spanish words are produce ideally we present them in the real world tell friend since we have a project in the in our graphic design class where students create a magazine or a Zine which is then displayed at one of the local Zine Fest so it's important that statement work is available to the public and that there were is seen by their community designing and printing a shirt was one of the most exciting experiences and projects for me and it made me feel great and made me feel like I hit something really really good my whole class got to wear it and I wear a lot of my favorite shirts your classes I took here taught me how to carefully critique someone else's work and how to be I got some not so blunt with how I say things to others because I know sometimes you can work really hard on something and then someone tells you that's not good and then you just feel bad when I was resigning the shirt some students told me that they didn't like some aspects of it and other something that they like something so then I could figure out when you get the saying when you have to go so in a way that was very supportive because it shows that your peers can help you further in your projects not only in work but in life you need other people's opinions to get what you want I think because the process is collaborative and the emphasis on the art classes here is on collaboration learn that their artwork exist within a community and it exists for their community and that provides him with the sense of power and agency so that their artwork is interesting assignment but it's actually a process by which they can express their voices and how Community Voices heard often times are just seen as an individual process as soon as this process where an individual artists will produce a work of art by themselves and isolation when in reality that's not really how hard work art is always a conversation with the larger community and students in our program learn that their voices matter because they are part of a community and because they are connected and so in addition to artwork serving the emotional needs of Vince and reconnecting them tell their own feelings and their own agency the artwork also serves the purpose of being an expression of being in community and existing in a healthy way in relation to our communities

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