As I look back on my time in Chicago, I find myself wistfully recounting my experiences with the Puerto Rican Cultural Center and in the Northwest Side in general. Not to be maudlin, but the portion of Carl Sandburg’s Chicago that reads “show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive…
Field Sites
My work in Chicago was spent in an interesting limbo between the Puerto Rican Cultural Center proper, and various educational institutions under the broad network of Chicago Public Schools (or CPS). Being that I was commissioned by the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, an independent organization, to conduct research at the public CPS institutions, this gave…
The Right to the City
Upon receiving the summer syllabus, it seemed so fitting that one of the prompts for the Gallatin Global Fellowship in Urban Practice blog posts invoked David Harvey’s iconic “Right to the City” piece from the New Left Review. Given that I have spent the summer working with the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, a group whose…
Interview With Marcey Sorensen (Principal of Roberto Clemente Community Academy)
Attached is my June 23rd interview with Dr. Jimmy A. Lugos, the principal of Harriet Beecher Stowe Elementary School in Humboldt Park, Chicago. This was the first interview I conducted this summer, and I’m only including it here because it’s the only file that was short enough to post on WordPress. Regardless, I think it is…
Principal Interview (Freebie)
In recent weeks, I have spent my time in Humboldt Park interviewing principals of local public schools about how gentrification in the community has taken its toll on educational institutions, as well as how they feel about the Community as a Campus initiative. I’ve also attended some meetings featuring local educators talking about the CAAC…
Community as a Campus Manifestos
For my research on the Community as a Campus initiative in Humboldt Park, I have mainly been relying on two resources: a document outlining the 5 year plan of the initiative, and more user friendly Prezi about the project, created by a woman named Wendy Thomas (https://prezi.com/bay4kn8w7d7b/community-as-a-campus-2/#) The 5 Year Implementation Plan was the first…
Community as a Campus Map
For this week’s assignment, I have mapped out all of the locations of schools participating in the Humboldt Park Community as a Campus initiative. The complex initiative which seeks to (amongst other thing) form a unified base of “feeder” elementary and middle schools in the community. They’re called “feeder” schools because they’ve historically sent students…
Assignment #2
For this week’s assignment, I have chosen to use one of my two “freebie” tokens, solely because I feel it is important to describe the happenings of the previous two weeks in vivid detail. In the last 14 days, I’ve been a witness to remarkable feats of organization and community unity, bouncing back and forth…
Assignment #1
Prior to coming to Chicago for the Gallatin Global Fellowship in Urban Practice, my explanation of what I was doing over the summer would oftentimes be met with confusion and concern by friends and family friends. The confusion stemmed from the fact that I, a white person with virtually no ties to Puerto Rico, was…
