Pedagogies Beyond the Classroom: Reflections on Community-Engaged Scholarship

Author: Lucha Arévalo, Río Hondo College

Critical educators of color who have long been entrenched in the enduring struggle to create, expand, and preserve the integrity of ethnic studies as an academic discipline and a political project are used to working with little to no resources, institutional barriers, and outright attacks. These challenges are heightened for those of us who teach in the community college system, as we navigate heavy teaching loads with large class sizes, service expectations on and off campus, and, dare I say, the daily work of keeping our departments afloat when there are often too few full-time faculty members to manage it all. This reality immediately struck me when I started working at Río Hondo College in the fall of 2019 as the only full-time faculty member in the Chicanx and Latinx Studies Department. As an untenured faculty member, I questioned whether I would ever be able to pursue my research inquiries and publish when these were not requirements for tenure.

This changed in 2022 when I became one of the recipients of the Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship, which allowed me to take a class project and expand it beyond my classroom. The class project, ¡Nuestros Cuentos Cuentan! (“Our Stories Count and Are Telling!”), celebrates diverse students’ imagination, creativity, perspectives, and lived experiences through playful storytelling. The fellowship enabled me to publish my pedagogical writing and reflections on this class project as scholarly research praxis for the open access Ethnic Studies Pedagogies Journal in 2023. In this essay, I build on that work by documenting the public-facing aspects and organic forms of community engagement that emerged from my class project to highlight an example of what community-engaged scholarship can look like in higher education.

Community-engaged scholarship can take a variety of forms. I highlight the unique cross-campus collaboration between my department, the library, and the child development center. I detail the pedagogies (teaching and learning) beyond my classroom walls, showcasing the bridge-building solidarity work within my institution and between departments, a bridge that welcomes and uplifts the public’s engagement. This mutually beneficial partnership resulted in an exchange of knowledge and resources that contributed to problem-solving benefiting the college campus and the public good by creating physical and virtual spaces accessible to the public, all while upholding the college’s mission of anti-racism, social justice, and equity.

From Teaching to Community-Engaged Scholarship

¡Nuestros Cuentos Cuentan! is a project I created for students in Introduction to Chicana/o/x Studies (CHST 101), a course that introduces students to historical and contemporary issues that impact Chicanx and Latinx communities. Students engage in the interdisciplinary study of race, racism, and power in the United States and grapple with anti-racist and anti-colonial issues, practices, and movements that aim to build a just and equitable society. For a Hispanic-serving institution that serves large numbers of minoritized populations, a course such as CHST 101 provides students with academic tools to explore and affirm their intersectional identities and lived experiences.

This project is part of a creative and critical race literacy curriculum centered on empowering students to create the anti-racist stories and illustrations they wish would have been introduced to them as children and, in doing so, explore the healing power of art and storytelling. This project culminates with the production of children’s picture books written and illustrated by each student. This final class project provides a creative outlet for students to tell their stories in an academic setting while strengthening their academic confidence to excel as scholars. Furthermore, the act of creating a children’s picture book is a political act—while some schools ban anti-racist books, my students create more of them.

After collecting hundreds of children’s picture books produced by my students, I began thinking of ways to share their literary works for public audiences to enjoy. The faculty fellowship gave me the support needed to collaborate with our campus library and the child development center to share my students’ anti-racist scholarship and promote anti-racist children’s literature in general.

Pedagogies Beyond the Classroom

The State of the Library’s Tree House

The library’s strong commitment to anti-racism and social justice in the realm of children’s literature was already well established when we began brainstorming how my students’ literary works could become a part of its collections. When I introduced the idea of creating a family-friendly children’s literature area to feature my students’ picture books, I was quickly humbled to the fact that there was already a designated space in the library for young readers named the Tree House. Unless an individual knew of the Tree House, they were likely to miss it, as there were not any indicators to signal to the public the existence of the designated space, which looked like any other part of the library (fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Río Hondo College Library’s Tree House during the pandemic, March 30, 2022. Photograph by Arévalo.

This sent me down a rabbit hole researching the history of the Tree House. I learned that before the building opened in 2009, architects colloquially referred to that space of the library as “the tree house” because the architectural design caused the pillars to resemble one. The library then adopted that name as the official name of the space. Once the new building was completed in 2009, part-time librarian Monique Delatte worked closely with the child development center and Child Development Department to secure external grants to create a children’s corner in the Tree House. These efforts led to the design of a preschool curriculum incorporating weekly story time at the Tree House and involving students from the Child Development Department.

The child development center serves the youngest student subpopulation on our campus—preschool-aged students (two to five years old), who predominantly come from low-income families. This population of students, referred to by the child development center as “little roadrunners” after the college mascot, is often overlooked and underresourced by the college. The child development center’s heavy reliance on external grants to function makes it challenging to go beyond the center to provide spaces or activities for its little roadrunners. Hence, the partnership between the child development center, the library, and the Child Development Department was much needed to create the Tree House and its programming.

This initial collaboration created a space that is welcoming to the little roadrunners and children not enrolled in the child development center. The Tree House became one of the most popular areas in the library for families and students of all ages to enjoy. Over the years, however, the original carpet and furniture became worn down. When they were taken out, they were not replaced. The Tree House was further devastated by several factors. The librarian who had spearheaded these efforts secured a full-time position at another college, the external funding they had relied on ran out, and these conditions worsened with the COVID-19 pandemic. It became clear that these partnerships were difficult to sustain without ongoing resources. When I initiated my faculty fellowship in 2022, I did not know the history of the Tree House. Yet there I was, more than a decade later, replicating a similar model of community-engaged scholarship, demonstrating that these cross-campus collaborations, when well-resourced, are essential to creating and sustaining equity-centered spaces such as the Tree House.

Redeveloping the Library’s Tree House

I attribute the successful redevelopment of the Tree House to my collaboration with the dean of the library, Mike Garabedian; the full-time librarian Claudia Rivas, who oversees the young readers’ collections; and Cindy O’Neil, the director of the child development center. This was a mutually beneficial partnership, as we all had a vested interest in creating a space welcoming to students of all ages, families, and the larger public served by the college. Our collaboration was a natural and organic relationship that fostered communication between the library and the child development center. The child development center communicated their specific needs and requests, the library was committed to meeting them, and I stretched my fellowship money when necessary to execute the redevelopment plan. The redevelopment of the Tree House included areas of improvement that required some level of research or application of expert knowledge beyond what I could offer as a faculty member. Whether we were making decisions on the color scheme for the space or creating a list of new anti-racist children’s book titles to add to the young readers’ collection, essential to our collaboration was our ability to lean on each other’s expertise and outsource for it when our knowledge was lacking. The expert knowledge generated through our collaborative process was used to directly inform our efforts to redevelop the space.

My involvement as a faculty member in the redevelopment of the Tree House did not go unquestioned. Everything was falling into place until an administrator repeatedly questioned my role as a faculty member doing this work. As an untenured faculty member, I thought this work would be celebrated instead of harshly scrutinized. This was all put to rest when my division’s dean, the dean of the library, and the director of the child development center came to my defense. It was then that I witnessed the relationship of trust we had cultivated through our yearlong collaboration in action and realized how important it is to form authentic relationships of care in community-engaged scholarship where many stakeholders are involved.

The success of this collaboration stemmed from our genuine desire to share information and resources and create a shared vision for the Tree House. If a problem arose, we worked together to support each other in finding a solution, such as the time when the child development center expressed the need to access technology for story time guest speakers to join virtually. The library and child development center staff members never made me feel out of place as a faculty member for contributing to the library or child development center. Instead, I was continuously made to feel like a critical part of the work we envisioned.

Bringing Back Children’s Story Time at the Library’s Tree House

We worked tirelessly the summer before the start of the 2023–24 school year to make the grand unveiling of the Tree House an event memorable to the little roadrunners, their families, and the campus community members who were expected to attend. This event kicked off Hispanic Heritage Month and landed on International Literacy Day. Our event’s success was beyond what we had initially imagined. The story time segment included a read-aloud of the bilingual book Mommy, Tell Me Why I Am Radiant / Mami, ¿dime por qué soy radiante? (2017) with International Latino Book Award–winning author Sandra Gonzalez, who is a child development practitioner with over twenty years of experience in the field and the founder of the publishing company Skillful and Soulful Press (fig. 2). The illustrator of the book, Reynaldo Mora, provided an art gallery walk segment with a behind-the-scenes look at artwork, sketches, and an overview of the process of book publishing (fig. 3). This book was specifically selected, as Sandra had coauthored it with her daughter, Julia Rae Rodriguez, and her husband served as the illustrator. This was a reminder to my students that our families can be part of the scholarship we produce. It was particularly meaningful because Sandra and Reynaldo are both alumni of the college. They had been invited back to their alma mater as community scholars and partners in the planning of the event as opposed to merely guest speakers.

Fig. 2. Story time at the Tree House, September 8, 2023. Photograph by Arévalo.

Fig. 3. Setting up the art gallery walk at the Tree House, September 8, 2023. Photograph by Arévalo.

We had a multigenerational audience in attendance. While our targeted audience was the child development center’s little roadrunners, we were intentional about ensuring that faculty members, staff members, students, and families from the public felt welcome. For example, the flyer stated in all caps, “ALL ARE WELCOME.” Child development faculty members attended and even invited their students to attend. The little roadrunners’ parents and guardians served as volunteers, along with students from my CHST 101 courses. The event’s impact was captured in the written reflections shared by my CHST 101 students:

From start to finish, the event truly captivated what the heart of the Chicanx/Latinx community means in general—from the amazing diversity of everyone who attended the event, laughing together, and most importantly learning together as well. (Student 1)

As they read the book, not only were they reading it just to read it, but they had this passion like they were inspiring the children. This passion, as the authors spoke, was unlike any reading I have heard; it was like every word was from the heart and soul where it was meant to inspire, not just be a book. (Student 2)

All of this makes the Chicano community proud because there are not many writers who come down to the community and offer their services as they did. This makes children believe that no matter their background, they can accomplish their goals. The writer and illustrator both came from families who did not read or write, so they are teaching the young generation that writing and reading are important to their lives. (Student 3)

What I learned from Sandra is how to truly show my kids to be proud of our skin color and to be radiant—how to show my kids how proud I am of them, how much I love them, and to write a book with my kids. It is very important for us to read to our kids. In my house growing up, my father never showed me any form of affection, attention, or let alone read to me. As a first-time father, I see how important it is to read to our kids and how it builds up joy and confidence in them. What I learned from Reynaldo is that it is never too late to go back to school. Reynaldo went back to school after over twenty years, just like I did. It is never too late to go to school or to come back after many years. (Student 4)

My students’ reflections remind me that children’s books are not just for children. Children’s books can be enjoyed by anybody and often carry important lessons for adults, such as community college students who have families of their own and who often find themselves seeking sources of inspiration and hope to continue their education.

The Tree House reopening celebration served many functions. It created awareness and enhanced the visibility of the space. My CHST 101 students in attendance gained confidence in producing their own children’s picture books. In the process, we strengthened our existing relationships and gained new community partners such as Skillful and Soulful Press. Establishing a partnership with an independent publishing house based in the same city as the college creates future opportunities for our campus community. For example, the publishing house might offer workshops on publishing a children’s book, an aspiration that many students gain after producing their books for my class. Since the reopening of the Tree House, the library has successfully carried out a monthly children’s story time. I was inspired to integrate a scavenger hunt activity into my curriculum for students to engage with the space and read children’s books. My students’ engagement with the Tree House will now be part of their academic success in their class project. Most of all, I was reminded that ¡Nuestros Cuentos Cuentan! serves Latinx students at an institutional level thanks to the fellowship granting me the opportunity to extend this work beyond my classroom.

Showcasing Students’ Literary Works for the Public Good

My collaboration with the library played a central role in the public showcasing of my students’ literary works. Throughout the fellowship, the library assisted me in creating an online archive and incorporating a physical display of their books in the Tree House.

The idea of creating a public online archive seemed like a daunting task until I witnessed librarian Claudia Rivas create one for her campus zine project. She assisted me in replicating that model by creating a library research guide (“libguide”) that can be found publicly on the college website. One of the key features of this libguide is that the public can access it, including current students who can look at the works of former students for inspiration. The archive was launched in 2022 when I began asking students’ permission to use their works. The copies of the children’s picture books that live in the online archive are the digitized versions unless an e-book was created. Additionally, the library donated one of its unused magazine shelves to display physical copies of my students’ books in the Tree House area (fig. 4). The members of the campus community and the public who visit the space can hold the physical copies and see that there are many ways to create a children’s picture book.

Fig. 4. ¡Nuestros Cuentos Cuentan! at the Tree House, September 8, 2023. Photograph by Arévalo.

The fellowship allowed me to start this work, but the challenge now is continually updating the online archive at the end of each semester, when I receive, on average, three hundred new books from students. Similarly, the labor of selecting and changing the books every semester for display on the library’s shelf takes time that I struggle to find. This interactive display has an everlasting impact on the students who wrote and illustrated the books and members of the campus community who engage with them. The display and online archive offer opportunities for the public to engage with anti-racist scholarship, while my students’ commitment to lifelong civic engagement for social change is deepened as they are validated as scholars.

Closing Reflections: A Call to Sustain Community-Engaged Scholarship

As a teacher-scholar-activist in the community college system, I am committed to my college community, and I strive to model what it looks like to actively engage in the anti-racist and social justice issues, struggles, and movements I teach about in my classes. The example of community-engaged scholarship presented in this essay was a natural fit for me, as it was about bringing communities together, collaborating, sharing resources, problem-solving, and creating positive social change that aligns with our common interests and shared values. The fellowship allowed me to initiate and execute an organic model of collaboration and community engagement that will continue to contribute to the public good and affirm the college’s mission of anti-racism, equity, and social justice—at least, so long as the work is sustained.

While college staff members and community partners are willing to sustain our relationships and collaborations, providing upkeep for physical and virtual spaces and creating programming that engages the public, it is increasingly challenging to do so without financial support or release time to do it. Funding earmarked through grants or fellowships cannot sustain long-term success. The grants from 2009 created the library’s Tree House, and the fellowship I received in 2022 led to its relaunch. The community college system can live up to its promise of putting students first when faculty members are supported in their commitment to community-engaged scholarship. Unless there is a strong financial commitment to supporting the collaborations that produce community-engaged scholarship, in another decade, we will repeat the same cycle of having to get the gears going again while failing to reach our highest potential.