Identity & History: Reflecting on Fil Am History Month

October is Filipinx American HIstory month. Bayan Scholars investigated various historical topics, themes they had rarely explored, if at all,  prior to joining the Bayan Learning Community. 

This blog entry is the second installment of student responses to Pilipinx American History Month activities at Southwestern college as well as coursework in our Bayan classes. These responses tended to be more about internal, psychological issues as opposed to the more historically inflected responses from the first installment, Reclaiming History. 

These particular responses demonstrate the complicated relationship between history and psychology. They begin to uncover the nuanced and often hidden ways material history can condition one's sense of self. While Bayan scholars (students and faculty alike!) recognize that identity is not reducible to history and material conditions, we are beginning to appreciate the complex connection between the past and personality.

Moreover, you can see from several posts that these scholars are making connections between their personal lives and the curriculum. They use their academic identity to explore their personal identity, which is in line with the project of humanizing their education (see see entries "Summer Retreat Part I, Part II and Part III for background on how "rehumanizing our education" fits into Bayan's project). 

To collect student reflections, we used the online bulletin board application Padlet. To magnify an entry, float your cursor over the upper right-hand corner of a particular post and click on "expand post".  We welcome your comments! 

Summer Retreat, Part II: What's Decolonization got to do with it?

Note: This post is part two of a three-part series about a mini-retreat we held to discuss the principles of and plans for the Bayan Learning Community. See here for the first entry. Third entry is forthcoming!

During the first part of our Summer 2018  mini-retreat, we agreed on a few preliminary understandings of what it means to have a “dehumanized” class (see link). We took it as axiomatic that Bayan folks want (and deserve!) a rehumanized learning environment. The purpose of this section was to establish, or at least  identify, what about Pinoy/Pinay experience and education is dehumanizing.

We had a brief mini-lecture to review how two other racial/cultural groups experience dehumanization and objectification in the United States. We recalled the objectification that African Americans faced included slavery, slave codes, lynching,  and Jim Crow. Those issues morphed into issues that animate the Black Lives Matter movement. This ongoing legacy of dehumanization is what programs like UMOJA seek to remedy.

Summer Retreat, Part I: Live Learning

A small but mighty group of nine Southwestern College students and three faculty members  met today for a “mini-retreat” to support the ongoing development of Southwestern College's Bayan, the Filipino/a American learning community. This learning community consists of linked English and Personal Development courses that meet for a period of one year. We’ve been in existence for several years, with a fairly general vision: to support Filipina/o American students transfer to a four year institution. We modeled ourselves after Puente and Umoja, two statewide bodies, devoted to increasing retention and transfer rates of Latinx and African American students respectively. Bayan, like Puente and Umoja,  is open to students of all races and culture.

This blog post is the first of three (3) entries that record what happened at our retreat. After reading each entry we hope get feedback from Bayan and friends of the program to help us strengthen our program.

The purpose of our mini-retreat was to begin a deeper conversation about Bayan principles and values. While we have worked under some general guidelines (instituted by faculty), we believe it’s time to be a bit more deliberate and intentional about our purpose - and to figure out the principles that distinguishes us from the other campus programs and from the other multicultural learning communities. Just as important, we wanted to extend this discussion to include student voices.