Learning with the City: Establishing a Culturally Sustaining School-University-City Partnership

Abstract

San José Y-PLAN connects San José State University (SJSU) faculty, undergraduate and graduate students with area youth and civic partners. This chapter describes an emerging partnership between UC Berkeley, SJSU, the City of San José, and East San José middle and high schools as they adapted the Y-PLAN model to strengthen connections between systems that regulate students’ current realities and possibilities for the future. We analyze how the Y-PLAN methodology, which has operated with great success for years in urban, progressive cities, intersects with the context of a predominantly Latinx community of the third largest city in California. Specifically, we examine (1) street design as social justice work: how the Y-PLAN methodology enabled our community of practice to gain understanding of how our quality (and inequality) of life is shaped by city planning and how we can participate to make those processes representative of community needs, (2) linguistic capital and planning: how our community of practice leveraged existing competencies and developed new linguistic capital through this process, and (3) Higher education as a connector of cities and schools: what unique affordances a regional state school can bring to serve as an integrated resource for the local community.

Our group of almost 40 people poured out of the school building onto Green Rd. After spending the morning learning new terms like “flashing beacon,” “bollard,” and “ladder crosswalk,” the eighth-grade students of Ms. James’ class set out to view the busy street in front of Escuela Paolo Freire (EPF) with new eyes. As their surveys of the local community would later reveal, everyone in the neighborhood knows that Green Rd. isn’t very safe. Their job today was to imagine with their clients from the Department of Transportation (DOT) how Green Rd. could feel with the right improvements.

As the narrow sidewalk forced students to spread out, and the noise of the traffic surrounded us, it quickly became clear that students were going to have trouble hearing Jane and Amy as they pointed out different features of the street and to share their own ideas about what makes them feel safe/unsafe. Fortunately, our team of nine adult partners quickly mobilized to adjust. I (Ellen) jumped up on a nearby wall halfway down the line to repeat information being shared at the front of the group by Jane and asking students for their ideas. Amy (City of San José Department of Transportation—DOT) followed suit in a different location. Yasmeen, a San José State University (SJSU) MA student who had been working with the class all semester, walked along with students repeating this process in Spanish.

Our partners from the UC Links Office were there to observe, but they quickly merged with the group. Mara chatted with Ms. James to learn more about her motivation as a teacher to engage her students in this Y-PLAN (Youth-Plan, Learn, Act Now!) project, Karla and John chatted with students in Spanish and English about how this street looked and the way people drive compared to what they’ve seen in Mexico or Colombia and other countries from which they and their families immigrated.

As we walked, students pointed out the narrow and faded bike lanes, the lack of speed limit signs and the way the cars ignore existing signs, and the fact that (in spite of years long drought and lack of tree canopy in this busy urban area) trees had not been trimmed and were covering stop signs and pedestrian crossing lights. As we looked across the busy intersection of Green Rd. and Twin Rock Blvd. to the local public library, the students noted that they didn’t think the crossing light gave enough time for their little siblings or elderly abuelas to cross safely. (Observation field notes, March 18, 2022)

Introduction

As the Berkeley Y-PLAN chapter in this volume details (Chap. 15), Y-PLAN (Youth-Plan, Learn, Act Now!), as a program to center youth voices in the design of safe, caring, and joyful cities, has existed for more than 20 years (McKoy et al., 2021). The San José Regional Hub, however, began in 2021 as a new branch and iteration of the model. In an era where educational initiatives face continuous pressure to distill core practices to be scaled up with consistent and predictable outcomes, we (Ellen, Yasmeen, and Amrita) argue for a situated and place-based approach that recognizes educational practices are necessarily transformed by their local social contexts. In this chapter, we employ a case study of Ms. James’ eighth-grade class experience with Y-PLAN as a mechanism for illustrating a place-based approach to growing a regional partnership to center youth voices in the design of safe, caring, and joyful cities.

As a scholar, my (Ellen’s) work in youth civic engagement and civic education has consistently been guided by the question, “How can we best support young people to become effective, ethical, and empowered advocates for themselves and their communities?” Research on best practices suggest youth need opportunities for socio-political critique or to ask why our society is the way it is and what it should be, for building connection to a collective identity or identifying who is in the community and who we might be collaborating or negotiating with to solve collective problems, and development of a sense of agency having experiences that reinforce for youth that their voices matter and they can make a difference (Flanagan, 2013; Ginwright et al., 2006; Kirshner, 2015). In this large, and multidisciplinary field, the theoretical models and programs tend to vary in terms of starting points (e.g., starting with learning about systems as they exist and then moving on to examine how they can be better vs. starting with learning about public problems that students have direct experience with and the systems that regulate them) and degree to which they emphasize different components (e.g., individual critical thinking and agency vs. collective knowledge construction and efficacy), but the broad principles frequently hold.

However, the question of what these experiences look like is heavily shaped by the local context and the positionalities of the youth and adult partners within that context. In this chapter, we examine the ways in which the Y-PLAN methodology, which has operated with great success for years in urban, progressive cities like New York City and Oakland, CA, intersects with the context of a predominantly Latinx area of the third largest city in California, San José. Specifically, we examine (1) planning as social justice work: how the Y-PLAN methodology enabled our community of practice to gain a better understanding of how our quality (and inequality) of life is shaped by city planning and how we can participate to make those processes more representative of the needs of the community, (2) linguistic capital and planning: how our community of practice leveraged different kinds of linguistic capital and developed new linguistic capital through this process, and (3) higher education as a connector of cities and schools: what unique affordances a regional state school can offer as integrated resources for the local community.

Program Context

As seen in Fig. 14.1, the “site” of our work with Y-PLAN spans several institutions and locations in San José. Indeed, a major emphasis of the Y-PLAN methodology, as is described in detail in the Berkeley Y-PLAN chapter in this volume (Chap. 15), is to help make visible the interconnections between the cities, universities, and schools and to help students see their most immediate and local lived environment as part of a network of systems and neighborhoods with varied, and often systematically inequitable, access to the resources that help them thrive. Indeed, as Amrita Deo, an SJSU MA student and passionate advocate for first-generation college students, describes in the section “Seeing Street Design as Social Justice,” our goal was to invite students to critically examine their local built environment, imagine better for their community, and identify opportunities to work with the city to make that better environment a reality.

Fig. 14.1

Site description

Key Idea: Seeing Street Design as Social Justice

As described in the chapter by Buss and McKoy (Chap. 15), Y-PLAN’s methodology brings together youth, planners, and civic partners to engage with one another as equal partners to address or bring light to important matters in communities that have been overlooked or not given priority to. It helps create a bridge between civic partners and the youth who are living in historically marginalized communities to bring real issues and solutions to the surface, all while providing youth with real-life experience with leadership, critical thinking, and technical skills that complement their academic curriculum, which they will use beyond a classroom setting. Over the years, students, educators, and civic partners have helped develop Y-PLAN’s five-step methodology and program to what it is today. This approach challenges the policies and practices that have shaped the inequities that impact marginalized communities and creates space for youth to recommend important changes for their communities now and for future generations.

By partnering with youth living in these communities, we recognize they are experts on what their community needs are, and can bridge the gaps from generations of mistrust between government and historically marginalized communities. Additionally, by having youth participate in Y-PLAN in eighth-grade, it helps develop leadership, critical thinking, and technical skills in preparation for high school. Skills which students from historically marginalized communities often do not gain until they are well into high school, and sometimes even college. Y-PLAN helps address not only gaps in community planning, but also within the education system itself. In this case study, the DOT clients were appropriate because Green Rd. was on the schedule to be updated and revitalized as of 2023. In 2022, students were asked to conduct research to weigh in on this process so that they can help their community have a say and tell the city what would make this busy speedway in front of their school feel like a place where they are safe to walk and be on their bikes, scooters, or skateboards.

In my (Ellen) decades of asking teens and young adults, “Are there any problems or issues in your community that you are concerned about?” the youth I speak to always have had something to say, and I can’t remember a single young person saying, “Yes, I’m really worried about street safety.” Discovering how the decisions a city makes whether to apply paint, build stop lights, or build bike lanes can be a social justice issue was a process. When Yasmeen first posed the questions to students as to whether they feel safe on Green Rd. and why or why not, the responses were mixed. Some students referred to the fact that cars do not obey the speed limit or do not always stop when people are crossing the street in front of the school. But in line with the well-established research findings that early adolescence (ages 12–14) is a time where young people want to push for and establish their autonomy (Steinberg, 2023), some of the more vocal members of this group made comments asserting their capacity to manage the danger and lack of need for assistance.

Our task then became to both focus and widen the lens that students used to observe their surroundings. Widening the lens included asking students to not only consider whether they feel safe, but whether they would feel comfortable with their younger siblings or elder relatives or those with motor-related disabilities crossing the street. Widening the lens also included learning in the meeting with DOT about the bigger problem of pedestrian fatalities in San José, that the street in front of their school was one of the streets where these incidents happened more frequently, and that pedestrian fatalities is not something that everyone has to deal with outside of their school. As one student asked during this meeting, “Why is it that the street in front of our school is so busy and not other schools?” (Observation field notes, March 18, 2022).

Focusing the lens included leading students to look more closely at the street in front of the school through a street design perspective. The natural human tendency to adapt to our surroundings is useful, but at the same time, critical imagination and hope are crucial for envisioning not just what is but what should or could be (Garcia & Mirra, 2021). The students in Ms. James’ class had a few opportunities to focus their lenses. Yasmeen first led them on an initial investigation to look closely at the road to identify features that increase safety and features that challenge safety. Students created visual representations of the streets and began to focus on specific features like protected crosswalks, obscured signs, narrow bicycle lanes, etc. (Fig. 14.2).

Fig. 14.2

Student site map

From there, students spent additional time sorting their information into a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis and formulating questions to ask the DOT clients.

Further focusing of the lens happened during a site visit, where the clients came out to share additional information with the students and clarify what they needed community input on. During this phase, representatives from each partner in the project (SJSU, EPF, DOT, and University-Community Links [UC Links]) were present. As students repeated and extended their analysis of Green Rd., this time they had additional information gathered during Step 3 of the Y-PLAN methodology, “Into Action.” They had seen examples of what bike lanes could look like, what roads look like when people feel safe to walk on them, and additional options for slowing traffic, making space for people, and improving the experience of safety. In this site visit, students looked more critically at the narrow bike lanes, narrow sidewalks, faded crosswalks, and minimal traffic calming measures and, with the support of our learning community, started to come up with ideas of changes that could make Green Rd. feel like a street and a place they would want to walk, ride, or roll on.

By the end of the semester, we saw this scaffolding of learning to read the city through an urban planning lens (McKoy et al., 2021), lead students to more naturally see street design and safety as not just a fact of life, but as a set of conscious decisions made by people with power to shape the quality of their environment. In their final presentations and end-of-year reflection focus groups, students demonstrated their growing awareness of street design as a social justice issue. For example, Alejandro noted, referencing the graph in Fig. 14.3,

I have seen a lot of people that do not feel safe in the streets like other roads, even though the graph shows that they don’t feel safe. The roads are rushed (busy streets). I think our experience helps us learn more than just the streets but how to protect them and the people in San José. (Student Focus Group, May, 2022)

Mariana echoed that the process “helped me view the community from a different perspective and the things that can be improved in my community” (Student Focus Group, May, 2022). In their observations as they carried out the work, their preparation of their final projects, and as they presented, students repeatedly stressed that the very road that houses two schools, a youth center, a library, a senior center on one-side and is lined by residential family homes on the other is a road that 89% of people do not feel safe walking on, especially at night.

Fig. 14.3

Student survey findings

As we will discuss in the next section, students did not simply stop at pointing out the lack of walkability and safety on the road they navigate every day to attend school. They leveraged their linguistic capital as native and/or bilingual Spanish speakers, paired with their expanded urban planning vocabulary, to invite in the voices of their local community and to advocate for a design that will make Green Rd. more than a busy thoroughfare.

Key Idea: Building and Extending Linguistic Capital

As a bilingual charter school, the Escuela Paolo Freire community was uniquely positioned to invite more community voices into the planning of improvements to Green Rd. Of particular relevance is the school’s explicit recognition of “Community Cultural Wealth” (Yosso, 2005). In the first iteration of the DOT project, we (Ellen and Yasmeen), worked with an adult high school night class made up of some of the least represented residents of San José—recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America who are still becoming comfortable expressing themselves in English. Building on this initial effort, the eighth-grade students in Ms. James’ English Language Arts class joined in the effort to add their youth voices and concerns. As Jane and Amy from the DOT noted, decisions made about safety design improvements are made through a combination of traffic studies but, “engineers are also encouraged to seek community feedback, through meetings with residents/businesses and through mail outreach, where the community is encouraged to provide feedback on a proposed change,” (Partner Focus Group, May, 2022). However, Spanish-speaking residents who work long hours or may not be able to attend meetings and youth perspectives are more challenging to access through these mechanisms. They noted, “Working with students gives DOT insight into how a particular safety design might impact the community, possibly in ways that might give DOT reason to rethink a design” (Partner Focus Group, May 2022).

In this project we were able to see how the Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005) that students brought to the Y-PLAN project enhanced this process. Specifically, at play in this project were in the form of “the intellectual and social skills attained through communication experiences in more than one and/or language style,” (p. 78) and familial capital in the form of kinship ties and commitment to nurturing extended family as a way of “maintaining a healthy connection to our community and its resources” (p. 79). Throughout the semester, we saw students integrating new urban planning terms into their linguistic repertoires. As I (Ellen) walked into class to help students learn to use Google Forms to design their survey, I noticed students chatting in Spanish, punctuated by terms like flashing beacon (field note, April 18, 2022).

Using their linguistic capital, students integrated these ideas into their surveys to the community, contributing survey items in English and in Spanish and using pictures to convey words that are not familiar to many. However, certain technical street design terms like, “mountable rubber speed humps,” mean little to native English speakers, and translations into Spanish would not bridge the gap. Integrating pictures to illustrate the concepts allowed them to communicate more effectively and gather community input (Fig. 14.4). Drawing on their familial capital, students were able to share these ideas with adults in the community and gather feedback using their networks to collect over 100 surveys with input on the desirability of these different options for improving street safety.

Fig. 14.4

Student survey findings showing use of translation and pictures to convey meaning

While students learned new vocabulary and translated concepts for their community to gather input based on what they learned from DOT about their options for improving street safety, the use of open-ended questions asking the community for input also allowed students to bring new ideas to the DOT. From the closed-ended survey responses, DOT learned during student presentations “students and their families ranked speeding and failure to stop for pedestrians (particularly EPF students crossing Green Rd) as the top safety issues for the community,” (Partner Focus Group, May 2022). However, the inclusion of the open-ended question revealed something that was surprising to the DOT clients was “that the community largely supports use of speed enforcement cameras, which has been the subject of debate across California.” The suggestion of speed enforcement cameras came up in multiple responses to the open-ended question about improving street safety. Due to concerns about surveillance, speed-enforcement cameras are a controversial topic in California, often for social justice reasons, and as a result were not included in discussions with students about options for improving street safety. At the same time, hearing from members of the communities most highly impacted added nuance and complexity to the debate. Ultimately, “the students’ concerns and ideas became part of the discussions among various DOT engineers and planners” (Partner Focus Group, May 2022).

Key Idea: Growing an Organic Partnership

When I (Ellen) was first approached by the Y-PLAN founder to lead the San José Y-PLAN hub, I was intrigued but also had some hesitation. As a tenure-track assistant professor, I had spent the last several years building my research portfolio and reputation as a scholar of youth civic development and engagement, with a specific focus on understanding and educating for digital media in the era of social media. Taking on a new program rooted in the principles of urban planning on top of my other projects presented some risk. Y-PLAN required expertise outside of my department and took time away from projects that were “mine” and illustrative of the expertise that I was known for as a scholar. Furthermore, ethical community-engaged research necessarily requires prioritizing benefit to the community (Mikesell et al., 2013), which typically requires spending time building relationships and prioritizing responding to shifting priorities. Thus the research that comes out of such partnerships often begins as exploratory and takes time to evolve into studies guided by well-formed and also community-informed research questions and structured data collection.

However, what ultimately caused me to jump at the chance was what I saw could be a new leadership and career development opportunity for the SJSU students with whom I work. As you will see in their own words in Chap. 11, my co-authors, Amrita Deo and Yasmeen Ramos, MA students from my department, brought interests, backgrounds, and experiences that were incredibly valuable for working with low-income and/or multilingual students growing up in urban environments. Because the CSU system is designed to serve California and SJSU is designed to draw in a regional population, the students in my department reflect the surrounding community, and like much of San José, a high percentage of SJSU students are multilingual, students of color, and/or first-generation college students from low-income communities, often with ties to the very neighborhoods we work with. These students frequently exhibit ganas or will to persist and overcome challenges that have been identified as an important factor in college success, particularly for undocumented Latinx college students (Contreras, 2009). Building on this concept, O’Neal et al. (2016) found for first-generation documented and undocumented college students, the concept of “ganas” derived from relationship-based factors such as a desire to build on prior generations’ sacrifices or to give back to the community and others who can learn from their experiences. Thus the partnership with EPF was positioned as not only an opportunity for SJSU students to benefit EPF, but an important opportunity to engage SJSU students in meaningful opportunities to build their own skills while supporting others.

Through my work with Y-PLAN, I have connected to the UC Links network and found that the principles behind UC Links align with my priorities and those of my department, college, and university. (See https://uclinks.berkeley.edu/ for more information about the global UC Links network.) While this chapter focuses on my work with Y-PLAN, UC Links’ attention to building a long-term sustainable university-community relationship in which undergraduate students work collaboratively with K-12 young people and engage in digital, civic, and STEM learning activities reflects the same umbrella of priorities in my own work. Joining a community of practice with faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students, and community partners from across California and around the world has provided me with invaluable inspiration and practical strategies for building a sustainable partnership.

Thus, the final insight from this case study has been on the importance of building partnerships organically in a way that is responsive to the needs of university students and partners, rather than just me as a faculty researcher. What has happened as I have pursued working with Y-PLAN alongside my work with two other initiatives, and with faculty from Urban Planning and Science, is an unexpected emergence of a network of mutually reinforcing projects. Teachers who participate in an initiative that I consult on (Diversifying STEM) are often eager to understand how they can inspire students to take action on the issue of climate change. High school humanities teachers that I work with to develop civic action projects are often looking for opportunities to connect their students with authentic audiences. The undergraduate and graduate students I work with want to build professional experience, form relationships with each other and faculty, and have a chance to ensure all of the navigational capital they’ve gained as first-generation college students won’t just end with them. As I have followed projects along independent tracks, I have found opportunities to weave them together situating my work under the umbrella of sustainability, as defined by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, n.d.), and working toward a college campus sustainability summit that all of my K-16 partners can participate in.

Discussion: Reimagining Education by Expanding the Perspectives, Voices, and Physical Spaces Where Learning Takes Place

Growing a slow and organic partnership that centers the interests of students and community partners is often in tension with the demands of “original” independent work and scalability that typically marks academic success. As a newly tenured scholar, I’ve experienced the urge to do something big, to scale up, and to show my productivity through quantity and original work. From that perspective, working with Y-PLAN was contraindicated. I am working on other projects to create curricula with teachers related to my research on digital media and civic education. If I want to scale up or land the big grant, the logical thing to do would be to choose one curriculum, get as many teachers as possible to use it, and to test its impact on measurable outcomes. Instead, I’ve followed my heart and showed up in educational spaces where I think I can contribute to meaningful work that all fits under my professional guiding question, “How can we support young people to advocate for themselves and their communities to build a more just and sustainable society?”

I have been able to take the risks in part because my work is situated within a department, college, and university that is invested in the local K-16 pipeline, community-engaged research and learning, interdisciplinary work, and scholarship of engagement. As a result, I have support to create a new course with Urban Planning to support Y-PLAN as well as faculty partners to lend Urban Planning expertise, and such interdisciplinary work has been explicitly encouraged by SJSU’s strategic plan. Additionally, the college and department culture of community-engaged research and learning provides multiple courses in which there is an expectation of undergraduate students to volunteer with community and school partners. Finally, the new addition to explicitly recognize “Scholarship of Engagement” as a category in the guidelines for tenure and promotion evaluation are supportive of faculty who wish to spend the time growing deep and authentic partnerships with the community and facilitating our undergraduate students to do the same.

While community-engaged work like Y-PLAN is time and labor intensive, it has yielded personal and professional rewards. My close attention to the needs and priorities of EPF and the teachers I have partnered with has led to an expansion of teacher participants. In this current climate of teacher burnout and retention challenges, I see how much more easily I can gain investment and cooperation from teachers to try new things due to the quality of relationship we have built. As I have brought students and civic client partners to campus, the value of my work for enhancing the reputation of the college with the community and inspiring students to consider SJSU and the College of Education was reflected by the positive comments and offers of support to continue this work. Perhaps most importantly to me, the slower relationship-driven approach has resonated with the Latinx and first-generation university students I have worked with as well as my educational partners. As SJSU is a designated Hispanic Service Institution (HSI), using culturally sustaining practices in our teaching and research is encouraged and seen as an important strategy for ensuring student success.

Finally, by engaging in this work within a supportive network of academics, community partners, and students through UC Links, I have been able to grow as a scholar, mentor, and community-engaged researcher. The network simultaneously provides practical support in sharing of practices and strategies to manage labor-intensive projects, social support, and inspiration to persist in this work, and theoretical and methodological inspiration.