ABCS Courses

Music in Urban Spaces explores the ways in which individuals use music in their everyday lives and how music is used to construct larger social and economic networks that we call culture. We will read musicologists, cultural theorists, urban geographers, urban educators and sociologists who work to define urban space, arts education and the role of music and sound in urban environments. While the readings we do will inform our conversations and the questions we ask, it is within the context of our personal experiences working with a group of students in the music programs at West Philadelphia High School and Henry C. Lea Elementary that we will begin to formulate our theories of the musical micro-cultures of West Philadelphia and education’s role in shaping socio-economic realities. Students should expect to support music programming at either Lea or West for 2-4 hours a week outside of regular class time. Freshman Seminar; Fulfills the Cross Cultural Analysis Foundational Requirement *Two terms; students must enter first term; Special permission needed from instructor

This course allows Penn students to teach a series of hands-on activities to students in math classes at high schools in West Philadelphia. The semester starts with an introduction to successful approaches for teaching math in urban high schools. The rest of the semester will be devoted to a series of weekly hands-on activities designed to teach fundamental aspects of geometry. In the first class meeting of each week, Penn faculty will teach Penn students the relevant mathematical background and techniques for a hands-on activity. During the second session of each week, Penn students will teach the hands-on activity to small groups of high school students. Penn students will also have an opportunity to develop their own activities and implement them with the high school students.

This class is designed to advance students' writing practice, discipline, and workshop and critiquing skills. Student writers will create non-fiction narrative in several forms: blogs, memoir, interviews, Q&As, essays. We will play with promotion, video, and social marketing, even grant proposals, advertisements, public service announcements, queries, and photo captions -all the forms that writers actually use throughout careers of deep reflection followed by hustle-and-pitch. The class will act as an editorial group for SafeKidsStories.org, a site to be launched in the fall of 2015. The idea is to depict safety with the specificity and drama that we usually reserve for conflict. Your writing will explore Big Questions about the social, emotional, relational and physical structures that affect our children and youth ; your research, interviews, reporting, and experience will discover and share solutions. If we do the job right, we will shine a light on people in our midst creating structures of safety for kids in an era of fear. If we make it fun to read, look at, and listen to, too, then, like a few historic college courses that participate substantively in their communities, we'll be on our way to stealth culture change.

Students will use course readings and their community service to analyze the institutions, ideas, interests, social movements, and leadership that shape the "politics of food" in different arenas. Service opportunities include work with the Urban Nutrition Initiative, Community School Student Partnerships, and the possibility of other placements as approved by the professors.

One of the goals of this seminar is to help students develop their capacity to solve strategic, real-world problems by working collaboratively in the classroom, on campus, and in the West Philadelphia community. Research teams help contribute to the improvement of education on campus and in the community, as well as the improvement of university-community relations. Among other responsibilities, students focus their community service on college and career readiness at West Philadelphia High School and Sayre High School. Students are typically engaged in academically based community service learning at the schools for two hours each week.

This course focuses on various perspectives on urban education, conditions for teaching and learning in urban public schools, current theories of pedagogy in urban classrooms along with a close examination of a few representative and critical issues. In the past, students in this course have volunteered as mentors through Community School Student Partnerships, a student-led group that supports school day and afterschool programs in one-on-one and/or group settings at our West Philadelphia University-Assisted Community Schools. Fulfills the Culture and Diversity in the United States Foundational Requirement; Requirement for the Urban Education Minor

The history and practice of the contemporary mural movement couples step by step analysis of the process of designing with painting a mural. In addition students will learn to see mural art as a tool for social change. This course combines theory with practice. Students will design and paint a large outdoor mural in West Philadelphia in collaboration with Philadelphia high school students and community groups. The class is co-taught by Jane Golden, director of the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia, and Shira Walinsky, a mural arts painter and founder of Southeast by Southeast project, a community center for Burmese refugees in South Philadelphia.

What does it mean to educate for a democracy, and for what type of democracy should we educate for? This course will examine these central questions and others pertaining to citizenship, democracy, and education as it relates to Latin America and Latino/as in the U.S. The course will first examine theoriesof education for democracy comparing and contrasting the works of persons including U.S. progressive-era writer John Dewey, Brazilian scholar Paolo Freire, and Penn President and political scientist Amy Gutmann. The course will delve into a civic and political education curriculum and pedagogies that have beencarried out in institutions, inequality, and culture in the region. The latterpart of the course will examine civic education practices of Latino/as here in the U.S. from primary schools to higher education. This course offers a service-learning component where students will be encouraged to volunteer with educational organizations in the Philadelphia community.

This course explores the relationships between forms of cultural production and transmission (schooling, family and community socialization, peer group subcultures and media representations) and relations of inequality in American society. Working with a broad definition of "education" as varied forms of social learning, we will concentrate particularly on the cultural processes that produce as well as potentially transform class, race, ethnic and gender differences and identities. From this vantage point, we will then consider the role that schools can and/or should play in challenging inequalities in America.

This course presents a broad overview of the Latino population in the United States that focuses on the economic and sociological aspects of Latino immigration and assimilation. Topics to be covered include: construction of Latino identity, the history of U.S. Latino immigration, Latino family patterns and household structure, Latino educational attainment. Latino incorporation into the U.S. labor force, earnings and economic well-being among Latino-origin groups, assimilation and the second generation. The course will stress the importance of understanding Latinos within the overall system of race and ethnic relations in the U.S., as well as in comparison with previous immigration flows, particularly from Europe. We will pay particular attention to the economic impact of Latino immigration on both the U.S. receiving and Latin American sending communities, and the efficacy and future possibilities of U.S. immigration policy. Within all of these diverse topics, we will stress the heterogeneity of the Latino population according to national origin groups (i.e. Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and other Latinos), as well as generational differences between immigrants and the native born.

What is an appropriate monument for the current city of Philadelphia? This question is the central prompt for a Fall 2017 citywide public art and history project, as well as a specially designed community-based and engaged research course in Fine Arts. Students in Monument Lab: Public Art & Civic Research Praxis will participate as members of specialized research teams, in partnership with local high school research fellows, embedded in iconic public squares, West Philadelphia sites, and neighborhood parks around the city; serve as trained art guides to facilitate learning around over twenty temporary monument installations by internationally and locally-based artists; collect research proposals as a form of creative datasets managed by Penn's PriceLab and Library; and engage civic partners and public audiences around key issues of the project, including issues of race, gender, sexuality, class, social justice, and civic belonging. The class is structured as a socially-engaged art praxis experience: students will meet weekly for group facilitations, civic dialogues, and special guest lectures by participating artists. In lieu of midterms and a final exam, students will work at research "labs" throughout the city for a set amount of hours per week, write reflection papers, and produce a final site specific research portfolio. The course is ideal for students invested in issues of socially-engaged public art, history, and civic engagement. *Monument Lab is a citywide public art and history project, curated by Paul Farber and Ken Lum, and co-produced with Mural Arts Philadelphia.

The history and practice of the contemporary mural movement couples step-by- step analysis of the process of designing with painting a mural. In addition, students will learn to see mural art as a tool for social change. This course combines theory with practice. Students will design and paint a large outdoor mural in West Philadelphia in collaboration with Philadelphia high school students and community groups. The instructor, Jane Golden, is the founder and Director of the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program.

The course provides an opportunity for undergraduate students to participate in academically based community service learning. Student will be studying early childhood development and learning while providing direct, one-to-one tutoring services to young students in Philadelphia public elementary schools. The course will cover foundational dimensions of the cognitive and social development of preschool and elementary school students from a multicultural perspective. The course will place a special emphasis on the multiple contexts that influence children's development and learning and how aspects of classroom environment (i.e., curriculum and classroom management strategies) can impact children's achievement. Also, student will consider a range of larger issues impacting urban education embedded in American society. The course structure has three major components: (1) lecture related directly to readings on early childhood development and key observation and listening skills necessary for effective tutoring, (2) weekly contact with a preschool or elementary school student as a volunteer tutor and active consideration of how to enhance the student learning, and (3) discussion and reflection of personal and societal issues related to being a volunteer tutor in a large urban public school.

This case study introduces the role of self-care by patients with chronic illness. We will discuss the history, definitions, predictors, and outcomes of self-care in various chronically ill populations. A focus of discussion will be an in depth exploration of the factors that influence self-care. Understanding these factors will prepare nurses for their role in promoting patient self-care. Fieldwork experiences will enable students to gain practical experience in engaging chronically ill individuals in self-care.

In this intergenerational seminar, Penn students and West Philadelphia Cultural Alliance members together read groundbreaking playwright August Wilson's 20th Century Cycle: ten plays that form an iconic picture of African American traumas, triumphs, and traditions through the decades, told through the lens of Pittsburgh's Hill District neighborhood. Students and elders get to know each other by exploring the history and culture that shaped the plays. As an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course, the class plans and hosts events with the West Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, learns history through storytelling, and writes an original theatre piece inspired by the readings and relationships, to share at an end-of-semester performance. Wilson's plays provide the bridge between the two groups and art is the service they provide to the community together. "The people need to know the story. See how they fit into it. See what part they play." - August Wilson Benjamin Franklin Seminar

Lead poisoning can cause learning disabilities, impaired hearing, behavioral problems, and at very high levels, seizures, coma and even death. Children up to the age of six are especially at risk because of their developing systems; they often ingest lead chips and dust while playing in their home and yards. In ENVS 404, Penn undergraduates learn about the epidemiology of lead poisoning, the pathways of exposure, and methods for community outreach and education. Penn students collaborate with middle school and high school teachers in West Philadelphia to engage middle school children in exercises that apply environmental research relating to lead poisoning to their homes and neighborhoods.

This is an ABCS course designed to provide the student with an understanding of air pollution at the local, regional and global levels. The nature, composition, and properties of air pollutants in the atmosphere will also be studied. The course will focus on Philadelphia's air quality and how air pollutants have an adverse effect on the health of the residents. The recent designation by IARC of Air Pollution as a known carcinogen will be explored. How the community is exposed to air pollutants with consideration of vulnerable populations will be considered. Through a partnership with Philadelphia Air Management Service (AMS) agency the science of air monitoring and trends over time will be explored. Philadelphia's current non-attainment status for PM2.5. and ozone will be studied. Philadelphia's current initiatives to improvethe air quality of the city will be discussed. Students will learn to measure PM2.5 in outdoor and indoor settings and develop community-based outreach tools to effectively inform the community of Philadelphia regarding air pollution. The outreach tools developed by students may be presentations, written materials, apps, websites or other strategies for enhancing environmental health literacy of the community. A project based approach will be used to include student monitoring of area schools, school bus routes, and the community at large. The data collected will be presented to students in the partner elementary school in West Philadelphia . Upon completion of this course, students should expect to have attained a broad understanding of and familiarity with the sources, fate, and the environmental impacts and health effects of air pollutants.

This course introduces participants to a range of theoretical and practical issues related to second language literacy development, with a particular emphasis on writing instruction. An intensive service-learning project offers course participants the opportunity to work with developing writers in a bilingual community organization. The dual emphasis on theory and pedagogy is intended to create space for critical reflection on the characteristics, production, teaching, and assessment of written texts in bi/multilingual educational settings.

This is a Public Interest Ethnography workshop (originally created by Peggy Reeves Sanday - Department of Anthropology) that incorporates an interdisciplinary approach to exploring social issues. Open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students, the workshop is a response to Amy Gutmann's call for interdisciplinary cooperation across the University and to the Department of Anthropology's commitment to developing public interest research and practice as a disciplinary theme. Rooted in the rubric of public interest social science, the course focuses on: 1) merging problem solving with theory and analysis in the interest of change motivated by a commitment to social justice, racial harmony, equality, and human rights; and 2)engaging in public debate on human issues to make the research results accessible to a broad audience. The workshop brings in guest speakers and will incorporate original ethnographic research to merge theory with action. Students are encouraged to apply the framing model to a public interest research and action topic of their choice. This is an academically-based-community-service (ABCS) course that partners directly with Penn's Netter Center Community Partnerships.

This ethnographic methodology course considers filmmaking/videography as a tool in conducting ethnographic research as well as a medium for presenting ,academic research to scholarly and non-scholarly audiences. The course engages the methodological and theoretical implications of capturing data and crafting social scientific accounts/narratives in images and sounds. Students are required to put theory into practice by conducting ethnographic research and producing an ethnographic film as their final project. In service to that goal, students will read about ethnography (as a social scientific method and representational genre), learn and utilize ethnographic methods in fieldwork, watch non-fiction films (to be analyzed for formal properties and implicit assumptions about culture/sociality), and acquire rigorous training in the skills and craft of digital video production. This is an ABCS course, and students will produce short ethnographic films with students in Philadelphia high schools as part of a partnership project with the School District of Philadelphia. Due to the time needed for ethnographic film production, this is a year-long course, which will meet periodically in both the fall and spring semesters.

What is an appropriate monument for the current city of Philadelphia? This question is the central prompt for a Fall 2017 citywide public art and history project, as well as a specially designed community-based and engaged research course in Fine Arts. Students in Monument Lab: Public Art & Civic Research Praxis will participate as members of specialized research teams, in partnership with local high school research fellows, embedded in iconic public squares, West Philadelphia sites, and neighborhood parks around the city; serve as trained art guides to facilitate learning around over twenty temporary monument installations by internationally and locally-based artists; collect research proposals as a form of creative datasets managed by Penn's PriceLab and Library; and engage civic partners and public audiences around key issues of the project, including issues of race, gender, sexuality, class, social justice, and civic belonging. The class is structured as a socially-engaged art praxis experience: students will meet weekly for group facilitations, civic dialogues, and special guest lectures by participating artists. In lieu of midterms and a final exam, students will work at research "labs" throughout the city for a set amount of hours per week, write reflection papers, and produce a final site specific research portfolio. The course is ideal for students invested in issues of socially-engaged public art, history, and civic engagement.

Students in the clinic represent adolescent and youth clients on a variety of matters including child welfare cases, immigration proceedings, education issues and health related matters. As part of the seminar, clinic students will also have access to experts and guest lecturers from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn’s School of Social Policy and Practice to assist with their interdisciplinary representation of clients and examination of laws and policies affecting children and families. *Open only to LAW and SP2 students

This course examines critical issues, problems, and perspectives in multicultural education. Intended to focus on access to literacy and educational opportunity, the course will engage class members in discussions around a variety of topics in educational practice, research, and policy. Specifically, the course will (1) review theoretical frameworks in multicultural education, (2) analyze the issues of race, racism, and culture in historical and contemporary perspective, and (3) identify obstacles to participation in the educational process by diverse cultural and ethnic groups. Students will be required to complete field experiences and classroom activities that enable them to reflect on their own belief systems, practices, and educational experiences.