Education
Castlemont High Students Prepare for Trip to Vietnam and Cambodia
Everyone loves a field trip; museums take on new appeal to those who might not visit them otherwise; historical sights and trips to City Council meetings are very attractive to most students and often have a lasting impact on students.
Castlemont High School Economics and Government teacher Jonathan Guy is pushing this kind of hands-on experience to a higher level with his effort to take 35 students to Vietnam and Cambodia for two weeks after a similar successful trip last spring to China with a group of 16 boys.
Students chose these locations after studying a map of Asia and the Middle East.
Guy himself has lived in China and speaks Mandarin, at about a “6th or 7th grade level,” he says.
His wife has family in Cambodia. He first developed an interest in China when taking a Chinese history class while attending Cal State East Bay. He began teaching Western Culture in Beijing at the Anhue University College of Economics, spending three years there before returning to the Bay Area.
After taking a job in the Oakland Unified School District, the idea came to him to take students abroad to a place he knew well. But beyond that, Guy said, he felt students needed more than just a chance to travel.
“When I was growing up (in Pittsburgh), I had role models,” but some of his friends, whose fathers were absent, died violently or wound up incarcerated, he said. “I felt that students needed to step up their game. What better way to do that than having an experience abroad?”
With that in mind, he created the Pacific Bridge Club, (PBC) to “use community events, culture building, and traveling as avenues (to allow) our youth to have a foreign experience of traveling to developing countries so that they can return with a different outlook on life to improve their lives and our communities,” according to the group’s mission statement.
After the trip to China last spring (2018), he saw almost every one of the students who went on that trip change in positive ways. Guy said he saw a certain wisdom emerge.
To participate in the club, students must maintain a minimum standard of behavior throughout their classes; including no more than three detentions in one semester, remaining on track to graduate and maintaining a minimum 2.0 average, as well as refraining from oppressive language and attending meetings.
The meetings begin with a setting of the norms, around respect, attitude and focus; as students read each one aloud. The day this reporter met with them, almost all were wearing their pink cancer awareness Tshirts that are part of the work of the PBC; to each month raise awareness about a different social issue or cause.
The overseas trip is the culmination of a nearly year-long program of discussion, community engagement projects and mandatory meeting attendance every Tuesday and Thursday.
Students must demonstrate they can work together. Since beginning in August, students have worked on raising awareness for sickle cell anemia, police brutality and cancer.
Some of the young people have never been on an airplane or out of the U.S.
On the trip last school year, students were chaperoned by other staff, including Assistant Principal Michael Scott, Digital Arts teacher Nathan Burks and Restorative Justice coordinator Frankie Navarro.
Students were encouraged to be on their best behavior. They were asked: “Who are you representing?” How does it reflect on your family?”
Angela, a senior at CHS, said her main reason for wanting to be part of PBC is because I think it’s important for young people to be a part of something bigger themselves, and helping other people.”
Another girl, Monday, also a senior, said, “I’m a new student at Castlemont; before I came here, I was getting in a lot of conflict and trouble; Mr. Guy told me about the opportunity, what they do and why and how they do it…It just really inspired me to do something positive with my life.”
Senior JP (John Paul) mentioned both the China trip and a subsequent trip to visit family in the Philippines. “I came back with a deep sense of humility,” he said, referring to where his grandmother lives not far from homeless encampments of entire families.
Senior Rufino, who went on the China trip noted that his travels “changed my perspective on how people act; respect is seen differently in different cultures, it made me think about things, treating people with more respect.”
For more information or to support the upcoming trip of Castlemont High School students to Cambodia and Vietnam, go to Pacific Bridge Club or Mr. Guy’s Classroom
Activism
LIVE! — TOWN HALL ON RACISM AND ITS IMPACT — THURS. 11.14.24 5PM PST
Join us for a LIVE Virtual Town Hall on the Impact of Racism hosted by Post News Group Journalist Carla Thomas and featuring Oakland, CA NAACP President Cynthia Adams & other Special Guests.
Thursday, November 14, 2024, 5 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. PST
Join us for a LIVE Virtual Town Hall on the Impact of Racism hosted by Post News Group Journalist Carla Thomas and featuring Oakland, CA NAACP President Cynthia Adams & other Special Guests.
Thursday, November 14, 2024
5 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. PST
Discussion Topics:
• Since the pandemic, what battles have the NAACP fought nationally, and how have they impacted us locally?
• What trends are you seeing concerning Racism? Is it more covert or overt?
• What are the top 5 issues resulting from racism in our communities?
• How do racial and other types of discrimination impact local communities?
• What are the most effective ways our community can combat racism and hate?
Your questions and comments will be shared LIVE with the moderators and viewers during the broadcast.
STREAMED LIVE!
FACEBOOK: facebook.com/PostNewsGroup
YOUTUBE: youtube.com/blackpressusatv
X: twitter.com/blackpressusa
Art
Brown University Professor and Media Artist Tony Cokes Among MacArthur Awardees
When grants were announced earlier this month, it was noted that seven of the 22 fellows were African American. Among them are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit. Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the third in the series highlighting the Black awardees.
Special to The Post
When grants were announced earlier this month, it was noted that seven of the 22 fellows were African American. Among them are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit. Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the third in the series highlighting the Black awardees. The report below is excerpted from the MacArthur Fellows web site.
Tony Cokes
Tony Cokes, 68, is a media artist creating video works that recontextualize historical and cultural moments. Cokes’s signature style is deceptively simple: changing frames of text against backgrounds of solid bright colors or images, accompanied by musical soundtracks.
Cokes was born in Richmond, Va., and received a BA in creative writing and photography from Goddard College in 1979 and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1985. He joined the faculty of Brown University in 1993 and is currently a professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media.
According to Wikipedia, Cokes and Renee Cox, and Fo Wilson, created the Negro Art Collective (NAC) in 1995 to fight cultural misrepresentations about Black Americans.[5]
His work has been exhibited at national and international venues, including Haus Der Kunst and Kunstverein (Munich); Dia Bridgehampton (New York); Memorial Art Gallery University of Rochester; MACRO Contemporary Art Museum (Rome); and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (Harvard University), among others.
Like a DJ, he samples and recombines textual, musical, and visual fragments. His source materials include found film footage, pop music, journalism, philosophy texts, and social media. The unexpected juxtapositions in his works highlight the ways in which dominant narratives emerging from our oversaturated media environments reinforce existing power structures.
In his early video piece Black Celebration (A Rebellion Against the Commodity) (1988), Cokes reconsiders the uprisings that took place in Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, and Boston in the 1960s.
He combines documentary footage of the upheavals with samples of texts by the cultural theorist Guy Debord, the artist Barbara Kruger, and the musicians Morrisey and Martin Gore (of Depeche Mode).
Music from industrial rock band Skinny Puppy accompanies the imagery. In this new context, the scenes of unrest take on new possibilities of meaning: the so-called race riots are recast as the frustrated responses of communities that endure poverty perpetuated by structural racism. In his later and ongoing “Evil” series, Cokes responds to the rhetoric of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror.”
Evil.16 (Torture.Musik) (2009–11) features snippets of text from a 2005 article on advanced torture techniques. The text flashes on screens to the rhythm of songs that were used by U.S. troops as a form of torture.
The soundtrack includes Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Britney Spears’s “… Baby One More Time,” songs known to have been played to detainees at deafening decibel levels and on repeated loops. The dissonance between the instantly recognizable, frivolous music and horrifying accounts of torture underscores the ideological tensions within contemporary pop culture.
More recently, in a 2020 work entitled HS LST WRDS, Cokes uses his pared-down aesthetic to examine the current discourse on police violence against Black and Brown individuals. The piece is constructed around the final words of Elijah McClain, who was killed in the custody of Colorado police. Cokes transcribes McClain’s last utterances without vowels and sets them against a monochromatic ground. As in many of Cokes’s works, the text is more than language conveying information and becomes a visualization of terrifying breathlessness. Through his unique melding of artistic practice and media analysis, Cokes shows the discordant ways media color our understanding and demonstrates the artist’s power to bring clarity and nuance to how we see events, people, and histories.
California Black Media
On Your November Ballot: Prop 2 Seeks to Modernize Public Education Facilities
Proposition 2 would authorize the state to issue $10 billion in bonds with $8.5 billion dedicated to elementary and secondary educational facilities and $1.5 billion for community college facilities. If approved, the proposition will make changes to the formula used to determine the amount each district is required to contribute to be eligible to receive state funding from the bond revenue. It would also require the state government to cover between 50 and 55% of construction project costs and 60 and 65% of modernization project costs.
By Edward Henderson, California Black Media
Proposition 2 would authorize the state to issue $10 billion in bonds with $8.5 billion dedicated to elementary and secondary educational facilities and $1.5 billion for community college facilities.
If approved, the proposition will make changes to the formula used to determine the amount each district is required to contribute to be eligible to receive state funding from the bond revenue. It would also require the state government to cover between 50 and 55% of construction project costs and 60 and 65% of modernization project costs.
Supporters argue that the money is critical for making safety improvements in schools, as well as modernizing science labs, performing arts spaces and kindergarten classrooms. School districts in lower-income areas have no other way to pay for these improvements.
According to the Public Policy Institute of California, 38% of students attend schools that don’t meet the state’s minimum safety standards. The research shows that schools with sub-standard facilities tend to have students with lower attendance rates, lower morale and lower overall academic performance.
California Black Media spoke with a Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) spokesperson on why she believes it should be a YES vote on Prop 2.
“Measure US, Los Angeles Unified’s Local Public Schools Safety and Upgrades Measure on the November ballot would provide $9 billion to upgrade Los Angeles public schools for safety and 21st century student learning and college and career preparedness. The average annual cost to property owners is estimated at 2.5 cents per $100 of assessed (not market) property value. The Los Angeles Unified Board of Education adopted a Resolution on October 22 to support Los Angeles Unified’s Measure US, and State Propositions 2 and 4,” the spokesperson said.
Opponents argue that the state should include school repairs in its regular budget instead of putting the burden on taxpayers. Opponents also argue that the proposition would not directly impact students. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is on record as one of the organizations opposing the proposition.
“Proposition 2 is $10 billion of bonds, new state debt, to pay for school facilities. It is almost certain to result in higher property tax bills, because school districts must provide a ‘local match’ of funds in order to receive money from the Prop. 2 state bonds. That will lead to districts issuing new local school bonds, which are paid for by adding new charges to property tax bills,” said Jarvis.
Opponents also have voiced concerns about what they view as an inequitable distribution of funds. They believe that lower-income school districts should receive a greater share of the state’s sliding scale for matching funds.
“Enrollment is declining in both K-12 district schools and community colleges and the declines are projected to continue. But Proposition 2 commits California to pay an estimated $18 billion, including interest, for school buildings that may not even be necessary. Vote no on proposition 2.”
A “yes” vote gives approval to the state to issue $10 billion in bonds to fund construction and modernization of public education facilities.
A “no” vote will prohibit the state from issuing $10 billion in bonds to fund construction and modernization of public education facilities.
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