Overview
People and their culture perish in isolation, but they are born or reborn in contact with other men and women of another culture, another creed, another race. If we do not recognize our humanity in others, we shall not recognize it in ourselves. (Fuentes 1992)
According to The Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the 2000 federal census, Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic group in the Greater Philadelphia Area, with over 129,000 in the city.(The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 14 June 2007) Puerto Ricans are the largest Latino group with an estimated 91,527 residents. The Mexican population is estimated to have surpassed 12,000 in 2003. Dominicans were estimated at 4,337 by the Census Bureau in 2000. Of the School District's more than 250,000 students, Latino students represent close to 15% of the total population, while African Americans and White students make up 66% and 14%, respectively. (Thornton, 2004) But most African American and Latino students seem isolated from each other in Philadelphia schools, despite the fact that they share common historical and popular cultural connections.
I am the literacy leader and teach 6th grade reading, writing and social studies at Beeber Middle School, located in the West Academic Area of the School District of Philadelphia. Beeber's student population is over 700. Most of the students come from working class families and over 70% of the student body qualifies for free or subsidized lunch. The student body is 95% African American and less than 1% percent is Caucasian. The balance of other students is bi-racially mixed or other ethnic backgrounds. We have a small but growing immigrant population of Latino, Caribbean and African students, and a growing number of Dominican and Puerto Rican corner stores have replaced Asian shop owners in the surrounding community. But while our school remains predominantly African American, the Central East Region of the district has a student make-up that is 72% Latino and 16% African American.
In recent years, my school has been developing an arts magnet program while striving to meet mandates of School District of Philadelphia's Core Curricula Standards which are aligned to the Pennsylvania Department of Education Standards (see appendix 1). Most of my students have minimal exposure to other languages or arts outside of school. However, I have found my students to be fully engaged in learning when they are creating and discovering the power of culture, language and the arts.
My topic draws upon social studies content, music, dance, film, and literature to show the interactions between Latino and African-American culture. The films Mad Hot Ballroom and West Side Story will serve as one entry into exploring how Latin-Caribbean roots in arts and culture are complicated yet interconnected with African-American cultural roots. My students and I will concurrently explore and analyze popular Latin-Caribbean dance movements, music, poetry, historical and current events to appreciate what Puerto Rican, Dominican and African American cultures have in common. I plan to have my students involved in a pen-pal exchange program with sixth and seventh grade students at Hon. Luís Muñoz Marín School, a predominately Latino school located in the Central East Region, where I already have made contact with an interested teacher. To culminate this unit, I plan to have students present multi-media renditions of what they learned about the connections between Latin-Caribbean and African American cultures.
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