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Student Stories
While participating in Changing Worlds’ Literacy and Cultural Connections (LCC) classroom residencies, students are engaged in the art form of oral history--telling stories as a means of conveying and documenting cultural information. Our literacy specialist and teaching artists partner with classroom teachers to lead students through the process that prepares them to interview their family members. Students interviewed parents, grandparents and elders; many of whom are immigrants, migrants and/or non-English speaking. Students learned about their family’s unique experiences and developed an appreciation of their family and cultural backgrounds. The resulting stories are woven together with the artwork created in each classroom to provide an integrated culminating project.
Below are comments about the program and abstracts from stories in the past year by 4th grade students at Whittier Elementary School in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood.
[Look for more stories here soon.]
“As an American Mexican, I am proud that I can speak English and Spanish.
I’m interested in the similarities and differences of my classmates’ cultures. Since some of my classmates are African-American and Puerto Rican, we realized that some of our food made at home is similar.
From the Changing Worlds' activities, I learned to write words that have expression, and I learned about drama, sounds and props.
The Changing Worlds' writing program improved my writing and was pretty fun. One project of interviewing family members was pretty good, because after interviewing my Dad’s mom, I know more about Grandma and what it was like for her growing up.”
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“My family’s nationality includes Irish, Swedish and German. My family is cool. Many of them are in the Army, and went to lots of places.
Changing Worlds gives me a chance to explore different families in Chicago and learn more about their histories. The Changing Worlds’ activities were fun. I acted and did a monologue in the last part. I chose the topic 'Family I Admire.'
I was proud for my family and classmates to see me perform at Changing Worlds. That was the biggest thing I’ve ever done in front of hundreds of people. I was very happy.”
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