Martineztown
By Aaron Martinez
“Hoy estudiantes, vamos a aprender sobre galaxias,” Vanessa Apodaca tells her audience of seven small children at the Santa Barbara/Martineztown Learning Center in Albuquerque. After a flurry of instructions in Spanish, Apodaca switches back to English to ensure that every child understood.
“Does everyone know that we're learning about galaxies today?” Apodaca asks to the room full of children, who all nod their heads.
In addition to expanding the children's knowledge of science and nature, Apodaca's dual-language galaxy lesson is also an exercise in bridging cultures.
“Some of these kids have parents who are still learning English,” Apodaca says later in an interview. “Now they can tell their parents about galaxies in two languages.”
The center is a free after-school program for students from nearby Longfellow Elementary School and Jefferson Middle School. It provides them with a safe place to get help with homework, socialize with classmates, and participate in unique literacy activities.
As a part of the Albuquerque Community Learning Centers Project, the center is the product of partnerships among the Albuquerque Public Schools, the University of New Mexico, and the surrounding community. The project is funded by state and federal money in the form of a 21 st Century Community Grant, designated for after-school initiatives.
Historical Roots
Located in the historic Santa Barbara School, the center represents years of hard work by the Santa Barbara/Martineztown Neighborhood Association. After realizing their children were scoring below district averages and dropping out of high school at discouraging rates, the neighborhood residents sought a place where they could focus community efforts to increase literacy.
In May of 1989, the neighborhood residents succeeded in finding a place for their community learning center by announcing plans to renovate the historical school at 1420 Edith NE.
As chairman of the Neighborhood Association, Robert Romero played a crucial role during the initial grassroots movement to convert the school.
“We first wanted a place for our kids to go after school,” says Romero, who is also a member of the community partnership team and coordinator with Jefferson Middle School. “Now we're looking at a place that holds the future to our community and our way of life.”
Romero says that an essential part of the curriculum for the center is the history of the surrounding neighborhood.
A large portion of that history is on display within the building. The walls of the main hallway inside the center are adorned with dozens of framed photographs and manuscripts that tell the story of this 156-year-old community.
Originally a farming community, the entire Santa Barbara/Martineztown neighborhood is a cultural resource which Veronica Apodaca, the center's site facilitator, draws for curriculum ideas.
“We've had gardening projects at San Ignacio Church and lessons on community water use where the old acequias used to be,” Veronica Apodaca says, referring to hundred-year-old ditches used by the farmers to irrigate their crops. “By educating the children about the community, their cultural roots can take hold and they can branch out from there.”
Another unique feature at the center is the use of visual arts to tell the history of the neighborhood.
Painted on a wall next to the center's garden is a large mural depicting the evolution of the community from a few farm fields to a metropolis. The mural is an educational resource because it teaches the children about sustaining cultural roots in the face of industrialization.
Part of sustaining those cultural roots involves using Spanish to teach the children about their history.
“Spanish is the language of our ancestors,” Romero says. “Our community represents a culture, and one of the ways we preserve that is by speaking Spanish. We encourage our children to be at least bilingual.”
The Power of Two Languages
Every afternoon Monday through Thursday, about 20 children from Longfellow Elementary School board a school bus to ride less than a mile down the street to continue their education at the center.
The bilingual approach at the center extends Longfellow's dual-language immersion program, where students begin kindergarten and first grade with 90 percent of instruction in Spanish and 10 percent in English.
It's an appropriate model considering 84 percent of Longfellow students are Hispanic. By comparison, the state average is 52 percent Hispanic students in elementary classrooms.
The program continues through fifth grade when the students receive half their instruction in Spanish and half in English.
Gustavo Reyes is a bilingual third-grade teacher at Longfellow, who also serves as a literacy mentor for the center. He says it makes him proud to be involved with community literacy efforts in the neighborhood he grew up in.
“It's a great honor to continue a language and culture,” Reyes says. “There's a generation of our people out there who suffered from earlier educational models and lost their ability to speak Spanish. Their grandparents were condemned in school for speaking it, and now this generation stands to reclaim their legacy.”
Both Vanessa Apodaca and Veronica Apodaca, who are sisters, went to Longfellow and remember how Spanish classes weren't emphasized in the curriculum.
“I have to relearn Spanish right now because the school system failed me,” Vanessa Apodaca says. “It's great, though, because there are kids at our center who are still learning English, so they help me with Spanish and vice versa.”
One of those students is Elizabeth Cabral, who at 11 years old has already realized the power of two languages.
“I can get a better job and more money,” she says. “It's also nice to talk to people who don't know English.”
Community Mentors
The basic formula behind the center is that by connecting community members with each other, a group identity can form and neighborhood issues become of cultural importance.
The university staff members reflects the racial makeup of the neighborhood, and if the children see them being successful, it encourages them to do the same, says Kiran Katira, director for the UNM Service Corps since 1998.
“It shows the children who cares about them,” Katira says. “The hope is that when these children grow up, they will remember how important heritage is and how important it is to give back to your community.”
Realizing how important his culture is, Joaquin Griego is making a career out of giving back to his community.
Griego worked as a Service Corps member at the Santa Barbara/Martinez Town Learning Center for two years before becoming the site's facilitator for four years until Veronica Apodaca took over the position in 2004.
“It was an amazing experience to expand the notion of community and literacy in that neighborhood,” says Griego, who is now the program coordinator for New Mexico Civic Engagement, which is also a project under the UNM Community Learning and Public Service Project.
One of the activities Griego organized as site facilitator was taking the children on field trips to visit UNM so they could explore the campus and learn about college life.
“We'd visit campus groups like El Centro de La Raza where they could do activities and interact with UNM students,” Griego says. “It shows these kids that there is a life for them at the university level.”
During a part of his time with the center, Griego worked with the children to develop a small plot of land near the center. Griego recalls how one time an unfortunate incident turned into a culinary learning experience.
“We had pumpkins growing in our garden and somebody smashed a couple of them before we could pick them,” he says. “We ended up gathering all the pieces and teaching the kids how to make pumpkin pie.”
Griego says that the gardening projects also provide a spiritual element for the children, something he says is essential to building a strong community.
“Through gardening, the children can connect with their ancestors who relied on farming for survival,” Griego says. “What it teaches them is beyond science and history lessons.”