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UCLA Center on Community Schooling To Launch New Multi-Media Journal

By John McDonald
Front entrance of Horace Mann Junior High School a UCLA Community School

Open access journal will provide public scholarship on community schools.

Community Schools have long played a critical role in providing access to health services, child and after school care, recreation and other “wrap-around” services that position schools as an invaluable resource at the center of their communities. For some of these schools, the provision of these services is also part of a more comprehensive effort to improve student learning by linking these services with efforts to strengthen teaching and learning.

But at the UCLA Center for Community Schooling, community schools are seen as more, they are viewed as key to the transformation of public education. And to further that effort, the Center is launching  Community Schooling, a new  open access multi-media journal sharing case studies from community schools, teacher scholarship and student research, as well as policy information and commentary. 

“We believe that community schools represent a radical rethinking of who has knowledge, how young people learn, and how teachers teach,“ said  Karen Hunter Quartz, the director of the UCLA Center for Community Schooling  and the editor of the new publication. “We hope  our new journal will engage educators and policy makers in exploring these ideas and practices to support community schools as powerful sites of learning and social transformation.”  

The first issue, to be published October 29th, tells the story of the UCLA Community School, highlighting the school’s collective effort to create an innovative multilingual program, a sanctuary campus, and a college-going culture. The article includes a discussion guide to inspire other school practitioners to think and talk about their core beliefs and opportunities to strengthen their community-based vision for teaching and learning. 

A second article shares the voice of teachers who work in five Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) community schools. They reflect on the history of LAUSD’s efforts to support community schooling and share their community-based teaching practices. Their work and words offer ideas and examples community school advocates and policymakers would do well to give close attention. 

And high school students share their community-based research in a podcast on what it means to return to school in a time of uncertainty, including interviews with students, parents, teachers and other staff members talking about how it feels to be back on campus after months of remote teaching and learning and what it means to be part of a supportive and caring community. 

The new journal is also cross-posting an important new policy brief from the Learning Policy Institute and Opportunity Institute on California’s historic $3B investment in community schools. 

And it is important to note, the wonderful cover art for the first issue is by Lissbeth Martinez, a high school student at the UCLA Community School.

This winter, the next issue will feature the Mann UCLA Community School.  

“Our intent is that this new multimedia  journal will serve as a critical source of public scholarship for strengthening the practices of community schools in ways that transform teaching and learning and meet the needs of student and their families, said Marisa Saunders, associate director of the UCLA Center for Community Schooling and co-editor of the new journal. “We hope it will inform and empower the collective struggle for democracy, justice and public education.”

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