A Universal Pedagogy

-


Just Us 4 Youth has been a phenomenal experience. Coming from a dysfunctional , gang related, addictive and abusive family has made it easy for me to relate with the youth that we deal with on a daily basis. The majority of our students that we assist come from low income family and are first generation students who would go to college. I personally had a third obstacle to deal with, being undocumented.

Growing up in the barrio I was surrounded by over 10 different gangs within a 3 mile radius. I lost a cousin and even some of my friends were getting sentenced to life in prison. I didn’t have much of an option but to overcome the statistics. The average low income latino/hispanic has a higher probability to get locked or lose their life instead of graduating from high school. Being the first person from my family to graduate high school made me want to pursue higher education. Not having that superman in my life made me decide to turn into one for all urban youth that deal with daily social problems such as peer pressuring, lack of support, lack of education, drug addictions, gang affiliation, homelessness, and poverty. Many of our students at JU4Y deal with these types of problems on a daily basis.

One major challenge that I have overcome working for JU4Y is advising and mentoring the lost student. How do you mentor or advise someone when he or she does not know what they want in life or who they are? Our educational culture and system has always been the same, in the way of it being authoritative. Teacher says and student does. This has only trained and taught our students to prepare them for a vocation. The pedagogy that I practice is challenging our youth to become leaders by empowering them to question society and advocate for themselves as they advance in their literacy and knowledge. 

As a volunteer for JU4Y I have not only gained knowledge and experience, but I have had the privilege to inspire the youth to not give up and continue pushing forward regardless of the critical situation they might be in. Thanks to the wonderful and genuine team JU4Y has, I highly recommend for anyone that wants to gain experience in education and or wishes to give back to the  community to join and be part of the journey with JU4Y.

Luis Antonio-Pachecano
Cal Poly Pomona Graduate 
Future principal 



Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 10, 2019 at 10:23 AM

    I enjoyed reading your first blog Luis Antonio!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousOctober 13, 2023 at 5:20 PM

      Hope you do well in courier and life

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Making A Change For The Better

-
I never expected for my life to turn out like this, my mother has never been there for me. She has never loved me, but her other kids have always been more important than I was to her. I was 3 when she decided to leave my life and leave my dad with a huge responsibility. My father has no family to turn to, he has no one, but he still raised me to the best of his ability, although he comes up short often.  It was hard growing up without a mother. When my father enrolled me in soccer when I was younger I was excited because I was actually good at it. I enjoyed playing it. When I was younger my heart crashed because I would look at other boys bringing their mom and dad but I had no one. My father is an older man and he’s always working. I hate it because he just never had the time for me.  When I was in second grade I was excited because my school gave me a letter saying I was getting an award for mathematics. That day I couldn’t wait to go home and tell my dad. I ran ho...
Read more

THE SOUND OF MUSIC

-
Image
Every day and on every campus we get to work with savant students. There is always one who dances to the beat of their own song. One who is moving to a rhythm that is foreign to the world around them. If you only look externally, you may miss the genius that is before you. You may become disillusioned by their lack of “proper social abilities” or “their apparent disinterest” in what you find to be important, but you must not blink or you’ll miss it, or not hear it, the sound of music that is playing. The young urban mind cultivates genius amidst the trauma that it endures. Surviving the misfortunes of the inner city isn’t easy. To avoid collapse, young minds take dissonant sounds created by unspeakable traumas and they orchestrate exquisite symphonies for only them to hear. This sound of music brings peace to the fractured world they live in, and it calms their soul and protects their mind from catastrophe.   As mentors, it is our privilege and our challenge t...
Read more