The Border Project – Fund for Teachers

FELLOWSHIP RATIONALE AND PURPOSE:
As a team of humanities teachers, our proposed fellowship will assist the construction of a new learning expedition that investigates the visible and invisible divisions established by personal and international borders. We have chosen to focus our attention on the U.S.-Mexico border from the Sonoran region to the metropolis of El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. This section of the 2000-mile border is unique because rich contrasts exist between culture, terrain and population. In the western section of our research area, many organizations either aid the survival of immigrants or inhibit the opportunities of these people to cross into America through the Sonoran desert. On the eastern edge of our scope, two countries overlap and interact on both sides of one the busiest urban border crossings in the world.

The research goal of our fellowship is to experience the multiple perspectives of the border region. Each of our Humanities team members will collaborate in curriculum crossover during our three investigations to help answer six guiding questions. Our bilingual Spanish instructor will facilitate interviews with Mexican individuals and organizations to enhance the international perspective of border issues. Our history instructor will examine the conflicts unique to the U.S.-Mexico border in the context of root causes and present issues. The Language Arts instructor will consider the many activist perspectives of American organizations and individuals through interviews and participation. These different investigations will run concurrently throughout the fellowship, as each instructor focuses on their tasks within the group dynamic.

Because we believe in the tremendous depth of learning through expeditions, our research will implement the concepts and utilize the language of learning expeditions.

The following guiding questions of our research will also scaffold the student expedition next fall:
1.    What is a border?
2.    What creates conflict around borders?
3.    What are the current conflicts and issues of the U.S.-Mexico border?
4.     How are opposing beliefs developed around these conflicts?
5.     How do opposing beliefs reinforce and perpetuate border conflicts?
6.     How do these conflicts and issues affect the global community and therefore our community?

Borders manifest themselves in many ways. People always have obstacles to overcome, a wall to climb or daunting odds to prove wrong. Opportunity often lies on the other side of the border. The U.S.-Mexico border is a volatile example of a border with many faces. From well-funded humanitarian projects like No More Deaths to faceless individuals bringing water to lost immigrants in the desert, border issues promote human rights activism. From quasi-vigilante groups patrolling the American side of the border to voters across the political landscape, border issues also promote a sense of patriotic hegemony that spreads far from the U.S.-Mexican border. Why do these divides exist? Obvious political, economic and environmental chasms exist between the countries and few solutions are offered aside from constructing a wall along the border. Yet, in some way, every person is challenged to remake borders they construct each day in their psychological, emotional and neighborhood contexts.

Gloria Anzaldua, a Mexican American feminist poet claimed, “The U.S.-Mexico border is a wound where the Third World grates against the First and bleeds…The lifeblood of two worlds merge to form a third country–A Border Culture.” Our research will attempt to keep one foot in each world creating a common ground for all people involved in this struggle. This will be of vital importance to our student population who face the challenges of grating worlds each day.

TEACHER GROWTH AND LEARNING:
As the humanities team for an EL school, we work closely together in planning and implementing interdisciplinary expeditions and team teaching within the classroom. This experience will provide opportunities for us to grow as a team while improving our abilities in shepherding quality student experiences. As individuals, we expect to experience growth on many profound levels.  Developing firsthand experience around complex and controversial issues that we expect our students to grapple with brings more validity to our teaching. We expect to improve our own abilities in understanding opposing views and present them without bias to our students for their examination.

Within each school year we ask our students to undertake many challenges for their own personal growth, one being a seven-day backpack trip over a twelve thousand foot peak, thus taking them out of their comfort zone to persevere and accomplish something they deem personally impossible. Our experience of trekking the Sonora desert in the heat of summer will allow us the same experience, thus improving our understanding of and our ability to guide our students through such a challenge.

Finally, we expect to bring primary source materials in the form of video taped and recorded interviews, pamphlets, articles, our own journals, and water and soil samples (for use by our science teacher) from the regions into our classrooms to better enhance our curriculum. Contact information retrieved will allow students an opportunity to communicate with those who actually experience all sides of these complex issues. Students will use these contacts to engage in further inquiry and develop deeper personal understanding. In addition they will have the benefit of developing simulations with roles based on individuals participating students can interact with.  Teaching from such a personal experience will make us stretch ourselves as teachers and deepen our ability to connect with the subject and thus our curriculum and students.

STUDENT GROWTH AND LEARNING:
We will embark on our new semester-long fall expedition, through which students will examine both personal-inward and state-international boundaries in an effort to create solid understanding of current policy and develop their own informed opinions regarding the topic. This fresh expedition will include every content area supported by the compelling primary resources we collect and create during our fellowship. Additionally, the Borders expedition will allow students to fulfill many of the school’s Expectations of Student Proficiency required for passage from their sophomore to junior years, and to graduate as a senior.

Focusing on the U.S.-Mexico border and using our fellowship research as primary resources allows our students to come as close to the actual experience without taking them to the border. By creating long-lasting connections through collaboration with individuals and organizations that we interview, students may further our research through mail, email and phone conversations with these contacts. Our primary resources, including specimens, maps, and water and soil samples will be added to our resource center for future learning.

What is happening around the U.S.-Mexico border is one of the most vital issues we face today. Connecting the lines between social, environmental, and political issues surrounding the border enables students to inform their perspectives of ‘us’ and ‘them’, and bring them closer to understanding the global ‘us’. By providing students with first-hand accounts of the issues surrounding the U.S.-Mexico border, they will be able to discover and articulate their own opinions concerning these issues and defend their claims with solid arguments, rather than un- or misinformed opinions. As a final product, students will create a documentary using the footage of our fellowship as well as their own additional research and video footage.

BENEFITS TO SCHOOL COMMUNITY:
As our school is in its second year, the opportunity for staff fellowship and development will provide a cohesive learning and working atmosphere as well as improvement upon the concept of teamwork, which we stress for our students. In addition, our experience can benefit other content teachers through the resources we retrieve such as statistics, water and soil samples, and evidence of the border’s environmental impacts. We’ll incorporate a workshop to share our experiences and personal discoveries. This enables us to collaborate in planning this expedition with the other teachers and support staff.

As a community that is predominantly Hispanic, our history is richly infused with immigration from Mexico. We expect our border expedition to foster greater understanding of ourselves as community and the borders that exist within us. Through the resources we will gather, our students will participate in deep examination of issues that affect their lives in a very profound way.

Character formation is integral to our curriculum. Core subjects are infused with ethical content. Graduates are prepared to be responsible and capable global citizens able to articulate a coherent moral philosophy. Not only will this expedition enhance this goal, but also the experience, as educators, will help facilitate this component of our school mission.