One More Mountain to Climb

Dr. June Henton is being honored as a Champion of Change for strengthening food security. 

Who would believe that after more than 25 years as a Human Sciences dean at Auburn University that I could still be inspired by one more mountain to climb? In December of 2003, I found myself inspired to take on one of the biggest challenges the world faces still today - how to work towards solving the problem of hunger on a global scale. It all came about when a friend who was consulting with the UN World Food Programme (WFP) asked if I we might be interested in working with them on a Student War on Hunger Campaign being developed by WFP.

On a personal level, my colleagues and I were very concerned about world hunger, but we knew that a personal passion for the issue was not enough. The partnership with WFP came about out of a university task force on sustainability. As students at the meeting talked about sustainability, they seemed to know all about environmental issues – global warming, green buildings, climate change, and recycling. But I heard nothing about the human issues affecting sustainability, such as hunger and poverty, education and healthcare, overpopulation, and access to markets. So we started “Auburn’s War on Hunger,” which opened up that dialogue, framing hunger as a critical sustainability issue and launching a higher education movement that has subsequently spread throughout the world under the banner of Universities Fighting World Hunger (UFWH).

Bringing Fresh and Healthy Food to East Lake

Rev. Sally Allocca is being honored as a Champion of Change for strengthening food security. 

In my 20 years in the East Lake neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama, I have had the opportunity to talk to seniors and others in the area about childhood memories of a vibrant, living community: walks to the corner drugstore, fresh food at local markets, movies at the area theatre, and boat rides on the lake in the park. As a late comer to this neighborhood, my experience began with loss of infrastructure- churches and stores moving to greener pastures, burned out houses, and a reputation of crime, drugs, and blight. Churches that remained in the area and various social service agencies sought answers and resources, but were met with a lack of funds, aging congregations, and constituents moving out of the changing, declining neighborhood. The neighborhood faced a 25% poverty rate, mounting crime, and an extremely negative public perception.  

Eight years ago, a group of committed neighborhood and church volunteers and I dreamed up Promoting Empowerment and Enrichment Resources (P.E.E.R., Inc.), an organization defined by its name to work with, and not simply on behalf of those in our community. This group began the uphill climb of seeking funds, gathering resources and information, and listening to the voices of the people in the neighborhood. We struggled to find our niche, initially helping people do their taxes, hosting health fairs, and coordinating an after-school program. But soon, we settled on health initiatives specifically in the area of access to fresh, healthy food. We figured, EVERYBODY EATS, so this would be a way to connect everyone to a common goal and resource.

I Love You Too Much to Let You Fail: A Path to Transformational Change

Vanessa Lugo is being honored as a Champion of Change for her service to education.

There are no words to adequately express how deeply honored I am to be receiving the Champions of Change award. As a Hispanic female, a child of immigrants, and an English language learner, I feel that my entire life I have been preparing to engage in this work in our community.

Upon graduating from UCLA in 2010, I entered the profession of teaching through Teach for America; an alternative licensure program founded by Wendy Kopp, whose mission is to place high achieving college graduates, as teachers in our highest need schools. I was placed as a bilingual educator, meaning I could be hired as anything from a Pre-K teacher to a high school Spanish teacher. I will never forget my first and only teaching interview with the staff at Cole Arts and Science Academy. It lasted for about fifteen minutes over Skype. It was the last question and my answer to that question that changed my life: Why should we hire you over anyone else? My response: I see myself reflected in the students that I will be teaching. I grew up in a low-income neighborhood and I received free lunch at school. My parents are immigrants from Mexico and when I began school they did not speak English and neither did I. I want to demonstrate to my students and families that—there are no limits to what they can accomplish. Querer es poder.Where there is a will, there is a way.

In my classroom grassroots transformational change has revolved around the idea that a student’s background and culture should be an asset in the classroom. It should never be considered a barrier to success. This mindset has illuminated my path in education both in and outside of the classroom. In my practice as a bilingual educator my belief is carried out in viewing and using my students’ and families’ native language as a sacred tool to learn English and in English. It has helped increase student engagement in my classroom by ensuring that the lessons I teach my students are reflective of who they are racially, culturally and linguistically. As a first year teacher, this began as simply making sure the classroom environment was representative of the students in our classroom as well as being intentional about the texts that I selected for our read aloud, making sure that they reflected my student’s cultures and their interests. When I saw how much more my students enjoyed the books that had characters that looked like them, I was motivated to make my curriculum student-centered. I began to design more learning experiences that affirmed the diversity within our classroom incorporating students’ native language, musical interests as well as favorite foods. In order for students to value and see their background and culture as an asset—we as educators MUST see our students’ cultures and backgrounds as assets.

Culture and background can only be seen as an asset when, as a nation we cease to look at our students and families of color from a deficit perspective. I have seen first hand the tragic effects of sympathy and excuses for why students cannot learn. I believe that this is part of the problem in our education system today. Sympathy and excuses must stop. As a nation we must come to terms with the fact that our kids and families do not need our sympathy. Let us vow to take an asset-based perspective, seeing our students and families for who they are: strong, intelligent, and capable human beings with rich, vast, and varied life experiences. In my time as an educator and my lifetime as a student I have found that the key to success in school lies in building solid, positive relationships with students, families, caretakers and the community at large and maintaining high expectations for all regardless of circumstance. Our students and families need to know that we love them too much to let them fail, the future of our nation depends on this. To do this, we must know who our students are and what their hopes and dreams are because if we cannot motivate them and inspire them, how do we expect to teach them?

Outside of the classroom my work in education has revolved around systemic transformational change, in the realm of teacher education and support. As a Teach for America corps member I felt that the program’s programming around diversity, community and achievement left much to be desired especially since the students we were about to teach were children of color. As a result, I have spent the last two years working with Teach for America to increase corps members understanding of our students of color and our English language learners. This past summer I worked as a corps member advisor, partnering with twelve promising new teachers from Hawaii, Northeast Ohio, Indianapolis, Colorado, New Mexico, and Phoenix to support them in developing the skills they will need to feel prepared to enter their classroom this fall. Additionally, I worked closely with an amazing team of our fourteen staff members charged with the task of facilitating a series of sessions on diversity, community and achievement. The sessions explored topics of race, class and real and perceived lines of differences, all topics that are pertinent to both new and current teachers in the landscape of our public schools.  

In my work, my goal is to be more than a mouthpiece for those who often feel powerless—my goal is to empower them so that they feel the confidence and exuberance to share their stories, their hopes, and their dreams.

Vanessa Lugo is a teacher at Cole Arts and Science Academy in Denver Public Schools