Little Village Immersion Experience

This week, we had the opportunity to listen to guest speakers from Little Village and Little Village School in Chicago, IL. This was a truly great and informative experience. One of my main takeaways was the importance of empathy based, social emotional learning. This stuck out to me because I want those special bonds with my students and to teach in a school that ensures their comfort. The presenters gave a few examples of what this looks like, and it again emphasized my desire to be apart of such a community. Another key takeaway for me was one of the speaker's discussion about some of the unfortunate circumstances in Little Village; for instance, those involving the current pandemic. Little Village is one of the neighborhoods in Chicago that are often overlooked by the city and therefore not treated fairly by the institutions set in place. However, despite this, the speaker also shared photos and facts about the Little Village community that really emphasized its character and importance. There are such strong bonds among this neighborhood that I admire and they were interesting to learn about. This is a more general takeaway, but I also appreciated hearing from the teachers on Tuesday about how much they love their job and the age group. While they mentioned some stressors, they really drove home about how special middle level students are and why this makes it worth it. I always love to hear this from people who are actively teaching these age groups because it reminds me of why I chose to pursue this career. Their presentation overall excited me and I would love to somehow keep in contact with them and ask them more questions!

A connection between their presentations and something we discussed in class is the 18 Characteristics of Middle Schools assignment. This reminded me of Tuesday's Zoom because the structure they described aligns with many, if not all, of AMLE's listed traits. Many of these guidelines emphasize a welcoming environment and community collaboration, which was made more than apparent by the presenters. In addition to this connection, I also noticed that their school was almost entirely students of color, particularly Hispanic students, with only one white student. Our discussion about bias and stereotypes comes into play here because I can imagine someone entering the school from a different area may have pre-conceived notions or biases about the community. This was somewhat addressed in the MEX Talk video played at the end of the meeting, where the speaker listed many stereotypes about the community, but shed them in a positive light. This neighborhood is proud of who they are despite any odds, which is exactly how it should be.