critical place of community development in school transformation: The story of the Vaughn family center and Pacoima urban village, The

Teacher Education Quarterly, Fall 1999 by Oppenheim, Matt

We Are the Experts

There was a shift from dependency on outside expertise and resources to the recognition of skills and resources inside the community. Staff believed that they had the knowledge, insight, and ability to serve the community appropriately. They wanted to be recognized as leaders and as equals in decision making. Elsa Rojas, a family advocate, remarked as much at a public presentation:

We don't want charity. We're gonna be part of the process and we're going to become very active in terms of how we can do those things. I didn't speak good English, but we fought, and we said: "We want to be the advocates; we want to become the ones that work directly with other people and we want to make sure that that happens." so we debated back and forth.

Parents at the Center also knew that working within a deficit model, where services were provided by outsiders to people in need, perpetuated a system of dependency that they wanted no part of. They wanted support from outside partners, but wanted to achieve their own success. As Jorge Lara explained:

It doesn't matter how much you spend on our children, it's not gonna make any difference. The only way you're gonna make a difference is by us getting involved, and finding out what is needed and then for you to provide it. So we want to become experts in how we get those resources here. So they said, "Yeah, its no problem," because we knew. We even did the assessment in the community. We know what we need to be successful.

Staff referred to three types of expertise. First was the expertise that developed through years of experience living and advocating for people in the community. There was a unique relationship with residents in the community that was hard to gain by outside professionals. Even before coming to the Center, people engaged in advocacy. Lara would come to the welfare office with his relatives to help them struggle through the system as he had. Because of his special empathy, he was trusted in the community and people in need came to him, where they might not come to an outside professional. Eva Barajas, in charge of food and clothing distribution, elaborated on the importance of this type of knowledge:

In other schools, I think that could be one place were the parents could go, but there are not the persons to give them the welcome! Here the majority of people are from the community, thus they know the necessities and know how the community feels. I think that is the special thing that we have.

A second type of expertise identified by staff members was the skills that people brought with them from Mexico and Central America (which remain unrecognized and uncertified in the United States). While many immigrants in the neighborhood near the school were dentists, lawyers, teachers, technicians, or crafts people; in the eyes of the system, i.e., the school system, medical system, government and social welfare system, they remain uneducated and unemployed. The Center was able to recognize and use these skills. One woman who had been a teacher in Mexico worked with special education children. Another woman who was a qualified lawyer in Mexico gave people free legal advice.