The Dominican Experience: Learning with Community
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Service-Learning is an educational approach that integrates meaningful community engagement with academic curriculum emphasizing critical reflection and analysis. Through partnerships with community organizations and schools, students have the opportunity to learn about the lives of others and the larger contexts and root causes of issues that ultimately impact the well-being of all. Service-Learning embraces the principles of reciprocity between all parties — the community partners are co-educators, faculty and students are engaged citizens, and the academy becomes an active member of the local and global community.
COMMUNITY PARTNERS 17-18
Community Partners: Our Co-Educators! The list below represents the schools and organizations that we work with an ongoing basis to create partnerships that nurture respectful relationships and mutual benefits that lead to deep and meaningful learning experiences for Dominican students. Our partners are incredible! None of this could happen without their tireless generosity and willingness to guide and mentor Dominican students while, together, we continue to navigate, negotiate, and celebrate the complexity of our shared goals.
A huge THANK YOU to our community co-educators! For more information on our community partner organizations and their programs, go here.
SERVICE-LEARNING HIGHLIGHTS
We Are Proud of Service-Learning Graduates
As the Spring 2018 semester ended, many new Dominican graduates entered a new phase of their lives with service-learning as an important part of their college experience. For a few, the community participation was not only central to their education, but led to work opportunities and scholarly accomplishments.
Congratulations to Michael Gomez (top left), Sierra Najolia (top right), Jelaine Cunanan (bottom left), and Cristina Cummings (bottom right)!
Lynn Sondag on Sabbatical: The Critically Reflective Practitioner Never Takes Leave!
We asked SL Faculty Lynn Sondag to tell us a bit about her time away from the campus and we received this beautiful reflection that also expresses the principals of cultural humility: Life-long learning/critical self-reflection, identify and challenge power dynamics/create respectful partnerships , institutional accountability (to uphold these principles):
“As an artist I value the ways craft, beauty, and the creative process connects people with ideas, places and one another”
Partner Update: Osvaldo Palomares Leaving Next Generation Scholars for Medical School
It has been wonderful to collaborate with Osvaldo Palomares the past few years that he has been working at Next Generation Scholars (NGS) as the Director of Community and Family Engagement. He has been accepted to medical school in Chicago and will start next fall! While we will miss him, we are so happy that he will be continuing his medical education and working towards his goal to become a doctor.
SERVICE-LEARNING ACTIONS, CONNECTIONS, AND REFLECTIONS FROM THE COMMUNITY
“The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. ” --James Baldwin
Karla (right) with Emma Gonzalez at the Latino Community Foundation Gala this May. Karla received an invitation from the Bay Area Gardeners Scholarship Foundation. Emma, a youth activist of Community Coalition who captured the world’s attention at the March for our Lives Rally on Washington D.C. received the Youth Trailblazer Award.
Karla Hernandez Navarro: Critical Consciousness in Action
Karla Hernandez Navarro’s commitment to community is palpable. From CLQ 3290/3291The Other: Shaping the Future in the Midst of Difference, Karla’s passion grew as she gained more analytical tools to better understand the societal issues that impact immigrants in the U.S. As Karla says, “Once you see the processes of Othering, you can’t un-see them.” This understanding extends to her personal experience and the ways in which her identity is a source of strength to her even as she realizes the ways in which she can often be marginalized due to stereotypes and assumptions about her gender and ethnicity.
Iris Brito Stevens: Humanity in Action
Parents and children of Parent Services Project Apprendiendo Juntos — Iris is in the middle with tulips.
Iris Brito Stevens is a Dominican Adult Degree Completion Humanities and Cultural Studies major who was enrolled in PHIL 3520: Self, Community, & Service this semester. Iris, a photographer and activist, fully embraced the opportunity to critically self-reflect, engage with complex intellectual concepts in connection with her weekly commitment to Apprendiendo Juntos, a program offered by Parent Services Project (PSP). In her final integrative paper, Iris articulates:
In my community partnership with PSP, embracing others, allows for an interconnectedness that is so much broader than what I think I know, and opens me up to the larger more empathetic understanding of the lives and stories of the people I partner with. It means that I must come together with them not as helper or a fixer, but as a partner in an equitable relationship where we all learn from one another. This has motivated me to think critically about myself, and my own life, and to examine the roles and conditioning that I may be unconscious of, in order to understand how I am a part of these structures of marginalization that hold these families in place. It has given me clarity about my own privilege, and the responsibility I have within this community and society at large as well.
Mariah Ashby: Honoring the Roots, Speaking the Truth
On April 26th, Mariah Ashby had the opportunity to attend the opening of Equal Justice Initiative Peace and Justice Museum and Lynching Memorial. In this excerpt from her final paper for PHIL 3520: Self, Community, and Service, Mariah shares her perspective on this experience within the context of what she learned throughout the semester:
In The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action Audre Lorde writes, “the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger.” Lorde highlights how our voice is our power and if speak up and address our past then maybe this can be a turning point for reclaiming our peace and our dignity as a race, and as a nation.
Mariah in the Equal Justice Initiative Peace and Justice Museum and Lynching Memorial
Christina Alejandrino: Shift in Perspective
Nursing student Christina Alejandrino worked with Next Generation Scholars (NGS) for required English writing course ENG3400: Advanced Writing and Research. She shares how the experience has shifted her perspective on education:
NGS has changed my perception of educational guidance and instruction, which, as of late, has become mechanized and indifferent to the needs of students. Teachers are expected to teach group after group of students in a very limited amount of time.... Unintentionally, some students are left behind for a number of reasons, possibly because they are unable to understand the way information presented to them or are distracted due to circumstances at home.
More Reflections from Students, Community Partners, and SL Staff
We thought we'd share a few highlights from the the semester-end Service-Learning Symposium, and a word from SL staff Jenny Bray!
Daeja Tillis (center) presents her key learnings in the community alongside Michael Gomez (left) and Alysa Ramos (right).
UPCOMING SERVICE-LEARNING EVENTS
Theater of the Oppressed Workshop
We are excited to invite Jiwon Chung back in Fall 2018 to offer the Theater of the Oppressed workshop as an 1-unit course. This workshop uses art and theater as method for engaging with social justice issues, while developing creativity, insight, and critical intelligence to address these challenges. Click on Read more for course information and meetings times.
Service-Learning Faculty Development Workshops
Interested Dominican faculty members are welcomed to join us in the 4-session Service-Learning faculty development workshop in Fall! For dates, session topics, and testimonies, please click on the Read more button below. Contact julia.vanderryn@dominican.edu for more information.
Apply for Fall 2018!
Community partners and friends, who are not officially enrolled in Dominican but interested in obtaining a certificate in Community Action and Social Change, are encouraged to apply. Fall semester will start on August 27. Some scholarships are available.
