A collaborative partnership between the Department of Communication Studies
at California State University, Northridge and Grant High School.

  Dialoguing Across Differences:

Communicating Common Ground in Los Angeles, CA.

Kathryn Sorrells, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Department of Communication Studies

California State University, Northridge

18111 Nordhoff Street

Northridge, CA 91330-8257

Email: kathryn.sorrells@csun.edu

Phone: (818) 677-2104

Manuscript appears in Communication Teacher, Summer, 2002

Introduction

Principal Joe Walker of Grant High School in Van Nuys told the Los Angeles Times, “What it comes down to is a tradition of fighting between the largest ethnic groups on campus.” [1]  Over the past 15 years, relations between Latino/a and Armenian students have worsened to the point where annual riots have become a tradition.  In an effort to break the cycle of violence and create a school environment where cultural differences are supported, the Department of Communication Studies at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) initiated a pilot partnership with Grant High School. The nationally sponsored collaborative project, Communicating Common Ground, which brings CSUN students in the Communication Studies 356 Intercultural Communication course into the high school to work with 9^th and 10th graders, aims to address escalating racial tension by facilitating dialogue groups and community building activities across ethnic and racial groups.  Communicating Common Ground project is part of a national educational initiative sponsored by the National Communication Association, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Association of Higher Education, and Campus Compact.

Over 150 CSUN students and 500 high school students have been involved in the project since its inception in Fall Semester 2000.  CSUN students facilitate weekly one-hour sessions that address issues such as stereotyping, cultural awareness, immigrant histories and help students develop skills in communication, teambuilding and conflict resolution. During focus groups moderated by CSUN students early in the fall of 2000, Grant teens described the situation as “just the way it is.  There’s always been racial tension and there always will be.”  To challenge deeply imbedded assumptions and to create an environment where relationships across ethnic lines can develop, teams of eight CSUN students and one experienced student leader, lead a variety of ice breaking exercises, small and large group discussions and team building activities.  Utilizing service learning pedagogy, the project seeks to promote collaborative learning opportunities for students and faculty at Grant High School and California State University, Northridge.  A brief overview of the social and cultural topography of the area provides a context for understanding the intercultural challenges and educational resources of this service-learning situation.  The description that follows underscores the need for cooperative educational initiatives and the opportunity for community-based learning.

The Community Service Learning Environment

Grant High School

The San Fernando Valley, located approximately 20 miles northwest of Central Los Angeles, is one of the nation’s most ethnically diverse communities.  With a population of nearly 1.9 million, the Valley is 52% White, 34% Latino, 4% African-American, and 9% Asian Pacific Islander.[2]  If the San Fernando Valley were a city, it would be the nation’s sixth largest.  Grant High School, situated in the San Fernando Valley, is one of the most diverse high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, with more than 32 ethnic cultures represented among the student body.  In October 1999, a long-standing feud between Latino and Armenian students at Grant High erupted into a lunchtime brawl that involved 200 students and resulted in five arrests, 40 detentions and ten injuries.  A year later, a Grant High School 9^th grader shares his opinion of the conflicts, “It’s a tradition.  That’s why they call it the October Riots. They probably schedule it.”[3]

California State University, Northridge

California State University at Northridge, established in 1956, is one of 22 campuses in the California State University system.  With an enrollment of nearly 30,000 students, CSUN is the only four-year institution of higher education committed to responding to the needs of the multicultural community of the San Fernando Valley. CSUN faculty and its student body echo the diversity of its community, with a student population that is 24% Latino, 9% African American and 16% Asian and Pacific Islander.[4] 

The Communicating Common Ground project was initiated in conjunction with an upper division Communication Studies course in intercultural communication.  As the class is a General Education course, the project draws students from multiple disciplines across the university, as well as majors in the Department of Communication Studies.  The course is ideally suited to integrate a community service-learning project given the goals of increasing students’ intercultural communication competence and understanding the impact of social, historical, political and economic contexts on intercultural relations.  Participation in the project is one of two options students have to fulfill the research/engagement requirement for the course.  While a large percentage of the forty-five students enrolled in the course each semester want to participate in the project, some are unable to do so due to scheduling conflicts. 

In the first three weeks of each semester, students participate in orientation sessions that cover a range of issues relevant to the project.  General information about the school, history of the project, goals of the project, as well as specific instruction on how to facilitate dialogue groups and training on working with adolescents are given (Stern La Rosa & Bettmann, 2000).  The content areas covered in each session at the high school, for example, stereotyping, cultural group identity, and conflict are discussed in depth during class periods prior to working with the high school students and are supplemented by the course textbook, Intercultural Communication in Context (Martin & Nakayama, 2000).  Students involved in the project are required to write field notes each week recording their assessment of what the high school students have learned, what they have learned and how their learning relates to and is informed by the theoretical foundations of the course.  In addition, students write a six to eight page reflection paper at the end of the semester articulating what they have learned from the project and how their practical experience informs and advances their understanding of intercultural communication

Project Goals

The Communicating Common Ground project has three interrelated goals.  The central aim of the partnership between CSUN and the Department of Communication Studies is to create a school environment where ethnic and racial differences are experienced as positive resources rather than as sources of conflict.  The community service learning project attempts to disrupt the patterns of violence by offering alternative possibilities for intercultural interaction.  By facilitated dialogue and relationship building sessions, the project serves a second purpose, which is to provide a site for CSUN undergraduate students to translate the theory they learn in the classroom into practice and to develop their intercultural communication skills.  The project also serves to empower students—both university and high school students-- to contribute in meaningful ways towards creating a more equitable, socially responsible society.  The third goal of the project is to develop a model that can be used in other locations in the U.S. to create multicultural school environments where the benefits of a culturally diverse community are fostered.

Project Description

In a typical classroom at Grant High School, 75 % of the students were born outside the U.S.  The sessions attempt to drawn on the strengths and benefits of the diversity that students bring in terms of culture, language, history, and socio-cultural positions.  Simultaneously, the experiences are designed to weave connections and articulate commonalties across ethnic groups based on similarities in the students’ migration stories and experiences as teenagers in the world today.  For seven consecutive weeks, teams of approximately eight CSUN students work with three different Grant High School World History classes on a range of topics related to intercultural communication.  A brief description of each session follows.  For a more detailed outline of each session, please see the project website at: http://www.csun.edu/coms/grant/index.htm

            The first session includes an introduction to the project, project goals, an icebreaking exercise and small group discussion.  The ice breaking exercise requires that Grant students interact with everyone in the classroom.  Despite the fact that they have been in the classroom together for at least a month, many students have never talked to each other or interacted with others outside their ethnic/racial group.  Grant students are then divided into small groups where CSUN students facilitate discussions within the group about effective and ineffective communication skills.  After generating a list of characteristics and behaviors that fit in each category, Grant students are asked to utilize positive and effective communication skills as they begin to discuss the issues of ethnic tension at the school.  Grant students are lead through a set of questions that are designed to gain their interest in and ownership of the project.

            The topic of the second session is stereotyping, why people stereotype, and how to challenge stereotypes.  Following a teambuilding exercise and general introduction to the topic, students are divided into small groups based on gender.  The young men generate and record on paper stereotypes about boys/men and the young women about girls/women.  Small group and large group discussions reveal the inaccuracy of the stereotypes.  From there, the session moves to stereotypes about ethnic groups.  Students are asked to record stereotypes about their own group.  For example, Armenians write down stereotypes about Armenians, Latino/as about Latino/as.  This process avoids the sense of being labeled or stereotyped by others and moves the dialogue forward in countering misconceptions.  Students are also asked to discuss why people use stereotypes, what the impact is and most importantly, how to challenge stereotypes.  By writing down their responses and then vocalizing them to the group, both CSUN and Grant students are able to learn from strategies and skills for unmasking the destructive nature of stereotyping.

            Sessions three and four are devoted to an exploration of cultural background and identity.  Grant students are given art materials to create a collage of their understanding of their culture.  Students are encouraged to use their imaginations and creative abilities in constructing their sense of identity (Greene, 1995).  CSUN students assist the high school students in formulating their understanding of culture and representing their culture visually.  The process of developing a visual depiction of their culture requires them to consider the multiple cultural influences that operate in their lives.  As mentioned earlier, about three-quarters of the students were born outside the U.S. and continue to be influenced in significant ways by their country/culture of origin.  Yet, all students share the influences of the dominant U.S. culture and are shaped by youth and popular culture. 

During the fourth session, students present their culture collages to the class.  In addition to sharing their background and the dynamics that influence their lives, the assignment offers an opportunity to develop public speaking skills.  The confluences of multiple cultures, evidence of bicultural and multicultural identities, as well as details of cultural group histories emerge from the assignment.  Both CSUN and Grant students remark upon the similarities shared by the students in the class, as well as the differences that shape their unique cultural identities.  In their book, Contemporary Art and Multicultural Education, Cahan and Kocur (1996) offer excellent examples of how to integrate art into the curriculum to develop multicultural perspectives.

            Session five focuses in greater depth on students’ personal and cultural histories.  Students complete a homework assignment that requires them to interview their parents about when they came to the U.S., why they came here, what were their reasons for leaving their country of origin and the challenges they have faced here in the U.S.  Some students have been in the U.S. for many generations while others have recently arrived. Selected readings from A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki (1993) and A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn (1995) provide insightful background for students to understand the issues and struggles of various immigrant groups.  During the in-class session, students interview each other and then present their partner and her/his story to the class.  CSUN students model the interviewing and presentation process and connect ribbons from all countries of origin to Los Angeles on a world map.  The session teaches interviewing, public speaking and research skills, as well as offers a collection of stories that illustrate both the common themes and distinctive background of students in the class.  More often than not, the students notice the similarities they share with their classmates despite the fact that they come from vastly different geographic regions of the world.

            The sixth session begins with a enactment by CSUN students of a typical conflict or fight scene at Grant.  The dramatization grabs the Grant students’ attention as they are not aware that it is a mock fight.  The ease with which they accept it as really happening suggests how normalized fighting is at the school.  Before the mock fight moves to violence, a CSUN student facilitates a discussion with the students on why it has happened and what options there are other than violence.  The mock scene is then re-enacted with various solutions offered by the Grant students.  Utilizing theater techniques developed by Brazilian dramatist Augusto Boal (1992), CSUN students lead the high school students through a process of developing solutions to conflict scenarios that come from their experiences at the school.  The intention of the session is to challenge students to think differently about conflict and to embody alternatives to violence.

            The seventh session addresses issues of empowerment based on the work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1998).  Grant students are asked to fill out a questionnaire as preparation for a discussion about where and when they feel they have personal power in their lives and where and when they feel disempowered.  The students often articulate feeling a of lack of power in their lives and a sense of being controlled by society, institutions, and those in roles of greater power.  Through facilitated dialogue, the session re-frames the issue of power to focus on the ways they can take responsibility for themselves and can create change in their lives and the environment around themselves.  At this point in the curriculum, we revisit the questions of how they can contribute to making the environment a more positive one at their school.  These exercises and discussions reinforce their role in creating their current situation and their future.

The eight-week curriculum culminates the project each semester with a field trip to Cal State Northridge, which exposes the high school students to the opportunities of higher education and offers them a chance to develop their future goals.  At the end of one of field trips, a Grant student remarked “So, you really meant it when you said you didn’t fight here.”  Breaking the pattern of violence often requires an experience of alternatives.  CSUN students are working together with Grant students to proactively visualize and embody a different world.

Project Assessment and Outcomes

Thus far, the project has proven to be a valuable experience for both CSUN students and for the Grant High School community.  The success of the project, on an immediate level, is marked by the fact that no riots or violent outbursts have occurred since the beginning of the program in the Fall Semester 2000.  As the goals for the project include learning objectives for Grant High School students as well as learning goals for CSUN students, the assessment of the project is multifaceted. 

Outcomes for CSUN students are monitored and assessed through observation, analysis of field notes and reflection essays, and through pre/post surveys.  CSUN students consistently report an increase in their level of engagement in the course content as a result of their participation in the service-learning component of the class.  This self-declaration by students is supported by their overall performance on course requirements including exams in comparison to students who do not participate in the project.  Assessment of students indicates a more thorough degree of understanding of the conceptual and theoretical issues related to the course as a result of applying their knowledge in the high school setting. Their role as facilitators and mentors required them to translate theory into practice and go beyond their classroom understanding of the material.  CSUN students’ responses on various assessment instruments indicate an improvement in their intercultural communication competence, public speaking skills, facilitation skills and leaderships skills.  Students also report that participation in the project increases their level of self-empowerment and gives them a sense of satisfaction by contributing in significant ways to social change. 

The learning outcomes for Grant High School students are assessed through pre/post surveys of participating students and through observation.  Students report an increased level of respect for each other and an improved understanding of others’ cultures and their own.  In narrative assessments, students indicate they have learned skills for dealing with conflict and gained alternatives to fighting. 

Various indicators including attendance at school, students’ interviews and surveys suggest that one of the most beneficial aspect of the project for the Grant students is the mentoring role CSUN students play for them.  Grant students frequently remark how surprised they are that someone cares about them.  Many CSUN students comment that working with the Communicating Common Ground project has offered the most powerful learning experience of their educational careers. By creating a cycle of empowerment—student to student—the project can break the tradition of violence.  As bell hooks (1994) reveals in her inspiring work Teaching to Transgress, engaged pedagogy leads to education that is a practice of freedom.

References

            Boal, A. (1992). Games for actors and non-actors.  London: Routledge.

            Cahan, S. & Kocur, Z. (Eds.). (1996). Contemporary art and multicultural education.  New York: Routledge.

            Freire, P. (1998).  Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage.  Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

            Greene, M. (1995).  Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, arts, and social change.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

            hooks, b. (1994).  Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom.  New York: Routledge.

            Martin, J. N. & Nakayama, T. (2000).  Intercultural communication in context.  Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.

            Stern-LaRosa, C. & Bettmann, E.H. (2000). Hate hurts: How children unlearn prejudice.  New York: Scholastic.

            Takaki, R. (1993).  A different mirror: A history of multicultural America.  Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

            Zinn, H. (1995).  A people’s history of the United States.  New York: HarperPerennial.

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