As the year comes to a close, we are excited to share news about this season’s college application process and the promise of culturally-responsive mentorship. We also celebrate the power of the arts to map students’ identity and community and share news of our work to support the California Community Schools Partnership Program. Thank you for reading!
In the spirit of community, we wish you and your loved ones a very joyful holiday.
Mapping Identity and Community at the Hammer Museum
On December 8th, the Hammer Museum hosted the 2023 Culmination Presentation of the museum’s annual partnership with Horace Mann UCLA Community School. This event marked the conclusion of a vibrant fall semester of partnership that involved two 10th grade English classes. Students worked with teaching artist Maria Maea and Hammer Museum staff to explore the museum’s Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living exhibition. Over the course of the fall semester, students worked closely with Maria to develop their artistic practices, met with two guest artists to learn about diverse techniques, and visited the Hammer Museum twice to engage with the exhibition. The students’ final project was an artwork that represented a personal map, either of themselves or of their communities. Students’ artworks, diverse in medium and in content, were all displayed in the Hammer Museum’s Lab classroom space on Friday December 8th and on Saturday December 9th.
Class of 2024 Prepares to Transition to College
November 30th is a milestone. It’s the deadline to apply to California’s public four-year universities. This year, most students at the UCLA Community Schools successfully completed their applications, supported by college counselors, teachers, university partners, community members, and their families. More than three-quarters of Mann UCLA Community School Seniors and almost all UCLA Community School Seniors applied to California State University (CSU) campuses. Almost half of Mann-UCLA Seniors and three quarters of UCLA-CS Seniors applied to University of California (UC) campuses. Alongside this good news, UCLA Community School was honored by the College Board with an Advanced Placement Gold Access Award, a distinction earned by only 6% of eligible schools in the United States and Canada.
UCLA undergraduate mentors have been supporting these promising students to transition to and through college. In this new Research-Practice Partnership Brief, read about their efforts to co-design, teach, and study a culturally-responsive college transition curriculum to support first-generation students’ development of college navigation knowledge and skills. As visualized above, students articulated the familial, linguistic, resistant, and other forms of community cultural wealth needed to sustain them on their college journey.
California Community Schools Highlights
The UCLA Center for Community Schooling, in partnership with Alameda County Office of Education, National Education Association and Californians for Justice, serves and supports California Community Schools Partnership Program grantees across California, as the State Transformational Assistance Center.
Read our Annual Reflection Report that details who we are, how we work, our accomplishments in 2022-2023, and our plans to support grantees across the state in 2023-2024.
Mark Your Calendars
Join community school practitioners, researchers, partners and advocates at the 2024 National Community Schools and Family Engagement (CsxFE) conference in Atlanta from May 29-31!
We are looking forward to the 2024 EMPOWER Summit! Convened by the State-Transformational Assistance Center, the summit is a two-day event open to California Community Schools Partnership Program (CCSPP) grantees, Regional Technical Assistance Centers, educators and community members who serve community schools. Join us in Los Angeles from June 13-14
Check out the Latest Issue of Community Schooling
Community Schooling is a publication of the UCLA Center for Community Schooling, featuring multimedia public scholarship to inform the collective struggle for democracy, justice and public education.
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