{"id":3538,"date":"2013-03-30T10:30:04","date_gmt":"2013-03-30T14:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hookedonraw.com\/?page_id=3538"},"modified":"2014-09-19T09:45:10","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T13:45:10","slug":"3538-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/hookedonraw.com\/?page_id=3538","title":{"rendered":"Seven-Year-Olds Lead a Strike"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\n\nhttp:\/\/urbanhabitat.org\/node\/1196<\/a>
\nwww.margotpepper.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Seven-Year-Olds Lead a Strike <\/strong>
\nby Margot Pepper<\/p>\n

For over a decade I\u2019ve been teaching my six-, seven-, and eight-year-old students to strike against me in the classroom. I drew the inspiration from \u201cthe Yummy Pizza company\u201d labor unit1 and my own experience as a teacher and writer. Instead of producing pizzas, students at \u201cPepper Ink.\u201d produce laminated bookmarks of the best poem they\u2019ve written in a year-long study of the genre. This year, however, the experience took a different turn when one of our potential Pepper Ink. workers was forcibly removed from the school.<\/p>\n

Students begin the year in my second grade two-way Spanish immersion class by comparing indigenous and first world points of view on the conquest of the Americas, go on to study Africa, women, and finally civil rights and labor heroes. They engage in internet and library research for their own books, questioning contradicting sources, and examining information critically. They sit in heterogeneous cooperative groups in which they rotate the job of teacher, who is to assist anyone needing help, if the group cannot. They can also file complaints in a box about one another\u2019s abuse of power, including mine. From this process, my students develop a healthy sense of justice and participatory-style democracy. Students often refer to the Doug Minkler poster on our wall, which includes the slogan, \u201cAll of Us or None.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the initial days of Pepper Ink., students typically fill out skills preference surveys and job applications. Next, they interview for one of four positions in our bookmark factory: artist, color-er, glue-er, and inspector. Student observers coach one another on how to improve.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a good artist, only sometimes my mommy helps me and sometimes I don\u2019t like to,\u201d one child responded.<\/p>\n

Hands went up immediately. \u201cJust say you\u2019re a good artist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pepper Ink. workers are typically offered specific jobs and a contract to sign with the terms: bookmarks will be distributed to sell for $2; workers keep one dollar as pay, the other dollar is for class funds toward a party, prizes, or game. After a couple of days, I announce that Pepper Ink. has made, say, $20 towards the purchase of a classroom set of Legos, but now I want more for myself; workers will have to produce twice as much. This means no talking, no getting out of their seats. My supervisors are to issue warnings to violators of company rules and keep workers from striking. Grudgingly, students sign the new contract. Usually, a couple won\u2019t hand it in. It then becomes wonderfully quiet on the floor as Pepper Ink. workers work diligently, silently, sullen-faced. The supervisors prance about, issuing yellow and red warnings, getting the workers increasingly annoyed with their peers\u2019 abuse of power.<\/p>\n

As lunch time approaches, I offer my supervisors an irresistible snack. Popcorn works well; my office microwave flooding the factory with the tantalizing aroma. Responses have ranged from outright defiance and strike threats to secret lunch meetings during which, something akin to a union is formed. With particularly well-behaved students like this year\u2019s, I have to give workers hints, like reading Si Se Puede by Diana Cohn, about the Los Angeles Janitor\u2019s strike, or encouraging them to engage in a tug of war with me over a jump rope in which they all have to join together to bring me down. One year, the students snuck into the classroom and made picket signs out of construction paper, masking tape, and poles made of linked markers or meter sticks. I\u2019ve found it\u2019s best to demote supervisors to a non-managerial position just as we go to lunch, so they will feel a sense of solidarity with workers, instead of terrorizing them into complacency, as nearly happened this year.<\/p>\n

Once workers realize I\u2019m powerless before their united action, they immediately overthrow all class rules. They scream until I surrender. After the class quiets down, I quickly explain that some rules exist to benefit the boss, the others, for the good of all. They ratify each rule anew, and have consistently thrown out the new contract as benefiting only their employer. This year, my second graders decided to rewrite the contract to exclude supervisors altogether, as well as specific job assignments. During the three miserable hours toiling under the contract which drove them to strike, they produced five quality bookmarks. Now, organizing their own labor, they produced twenty in the first half hour.<\/p>\n

Deportation Hits the Classroom<\/p>\n

This year the classroom project took a different turn since the family of one of our top \u201cworkers,\u201d Gerardo Espinoza, was ordered deported by ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Under the law, as a United States citizen, Gerardo could have stayed behind, but for all intents and purposes, he too was deported. My last day as his teacher was on Valentine\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

In the week that followed his forced removal, I saw visible signs of trauma in my students similar to the kinds of fears I had heard expressed after the September 11 tragedy. They began having nightmares and even my Anglo students expressed fear that ICE would come for them next for having been friends with Gerardo and other Latinos.<\/p>\n

Drawing on all the lessons I\u2019d taught them based on my decade of work with California Poets in the Schools, the students wrote moving poems in Spanish about and for Gerardo. Then, with the help of John Oliver Simon\u2019s Poetry Inside Out program, they translated them to English for Pepper Ink.\u2019s bookmarks. The art work they produced for these colored, laminated bookmarks surpassed anything ever produced at Pepper Ink. I, in turn, wrote a letter trying to convince a judge to allow Gerardo to stay. My letter was translated into Spanish and was published in newspapers and circulated on the internet.<\/p>\n

Before long, the story of Gerardo\u2019s unjust disappearance, along with his older brothers Felipe and Jos\u00e9, hit other media, including the San Francisco Chronicle. This fostered an outcry of community support. Aided largely by Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action and with the help of Le Conte Parent Teachers Association President Cary Sanders and the Berekely Federation of Teachers, we organized a large immigrant rights teach-in. Parents, teachers, labor activists, and city officials packed the Rosa Parks multi-purpose room. My students performed the poems they had read for Gerardo and recited quotes by Cesar Ch\u00e1vez and Rosa Parks.<\/p>\n

We sold so many of their beautiful Pepper Ink. bookmarks that we raised 300 dollars for the Espinoza family. We raised yet more when two of my students joined me for a talk about Gerardo in honor of Cesar Chavez before a panel which included the Berkeley Mayor and labor leaders. I called the Espinozas with the good news. They seemed to take some solace in the fact that their tears have been the seeds germinating a reinvigorated immigrant rights movement in Berkeley.<\/p>\n

Our teach-in and pressure from the community culminated in Berkeley\u2019s strengthening its City of Refuge resolution, the teacher\u2019s union approving a resolution to educate and protect immigrant school parents, and our raising over $1000 for Gerardo. Then Flavio Lacayo and Univisi\u00f3n came to our classroom to film a special on immigrants, which aired in July. Our collective statements on the television drove home to many the injustice of United States immigration policy.<\/p>\n

On the last day of school, reminiscing about the year, Flynn Michael-Legg spoke up, almost in verse, to share his thoughts with the parents we had invited to join us in a farewell. \u201cI feel powerful. Small doesn\u2019t matter. Big doesn\u2019t matter. Your voice matters. Birds can fly and so can I with my voice!\u201d<\/p>\n

Wounded Little Bird<\/strong>
\nBy Flynn Michael-Legg, age 8<\/p>\n

Gerardo,
\nYou are deeply wounded
\nlike a little bird falling
\ninto the depths of water.
\nYou can\u2019t breathe.
\nYou try to reach the surface to breathe
\nbut can\u2019t.
\nPoor little bird,
\nwhen are you going to fly and make a new rainbow
\nfor me again?
\nWhen the water has swallowed you,
\nthere will be no songs in my heart.
\nPoor little bird,
\nPlease don\u2019t forget me.<\/p>\n

Little Angel
\nBy Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez, age 7<\/p>\n

I met him as a silver sun shining with the stars.
\nI knew him furiously defending his family with love.
\nI knew him marching and fighting with his words.
\nI knew him like an upside down \u201cu\u201d with two dots inside
\nI knew him escaping from the guns of la Migra.
\nI knew him walking in a field without flowers.
\nI knew him playing like an angel,
\nflying without love nor peace.
\nI knew him crying at the border
\nbecause he wanted to be with his friends.
\nI knew him saying, \u201cI am a wall of shade
\nthe corn of a sick eagle.\u201d
\nI knew him rising from the dark peel
\nwhich falls from the rising moon.
\nI knew him riding a horse holding
\nthe flag of Cesar Ch\u00e1vez
\nI knew him united with the Latino race
\nfighting for our freedom.<\/p>\n

Margot Pepper is a Mexican-born writer published frequently in journals such as Utne Reader,
\nMonthly Review, Z-net, Counterpunch, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. You can find links at:
\nwww.margotpepper.com<\/a>. The poems above were created in Margot Pepper and Regina Maradiegue\u2019s 2nd grade
\nSpanish Immersion Class at Rosa Parks School. Poet Teachers: John Oliver Simon and Margot Pepper.<\/p>\n

1. \u201cYummy Pizza Company\u201d written by Bill Morgan, Sam Frankel, Fred Glass, Phyllis Chiu, Tom Edminster, John McDowell, June McMahon,and Linda Tubach, a committee of the California Federation of Teachers.<\/p>\n

By permission of author.<\/p>\n


\nBack to Freedom, Justice, Democracy and Activism <\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

< http:\/\/urbanhabitat.org\/node\/1196 www.margotpepper.com Seven-Year-Olds Lead a Strike by Margot Pepper For over a decade I\u2019ve been teaching my six-, seven-, and eight-year-old students to strike against me in the classroom. I drew the inspiration from \u201cthe Yummy Pizza company\u201d labor … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":1313,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3538","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hookedonraw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hookedonraw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hookedonraw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hookedonraw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hookedonraw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hookedonraw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3538\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hookedonraw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hookedonraw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}