Vol. 19, No. 18

Feb. 3, 2000

Students help create a
common web among cultures

The children sit on the floor in a circle, tossing around a ball of string. When they catch the ball, they tell the group something about themselves. When they throw it, they hold onto a section of string, so the skein slowly unwinds, eventually leaving a network of strands criss-crossing the circle. “What have we made here?” asks the UD student directing the game. “A web,” some children call out. “Why is it a web?” “Because we’re all connected.” That game, played on the first day of a collaborative after-school program at the Latin American Community Center in Wilmington, was designed to introduce the school-age children to one another, to the aspiring teachers who supervise their activities and to the program itself. Called La Red Mágica–in English, The Magic Web–the program serves a variety of purposes as it creates connections among UD teacher education students and youngsters from an urban, and largely poor, Hispanic community. “The idea was for our students to get to know children from a background they might not be familiar with and to create opportunities for everybody to learn in a safe, informal setting,” said Eugene Matusov, education, who supervises La Red Mágica as a practicum for students in his cultural diversity class. Matusov uses his students’ experiences at the Latin American Community Center as the basis for class discussions of cultural differences and their impact upon teaching strategies and techniques. Each group of UD students visits the community center twice a week, helping children use the center’s computers and engaging in other educational and recreational activities. They also read to the youngsters and, if asked, help with homework. For many of the prospective teachers, mostly freshmen and sophomores, the experience is the first time they have interacted with urban or bilingual children. Both groups learn from the experience, said Matusov and Maria Matos, executive director of the Latin American Community Center. “One of the things La Red Mágica does is bring our kids into contact with the University and open their eyes to the idea that there is something beyond high school,” Matos said. “It’s informal, so the University students and our children can really connect and learn from each other. I think it helps the University students to see some of the issues urban kids face, because these are some of the students they’ll have in class someday.” Students who took part in La Red Mágica last year said the experience far exceeded their expectations. Some said they were initially intimidated by the idea of communicating with Spanish-speaking children, working with large groups or going into a “tough” neighborhood. But, they said, they found few problems and many benefits. “This class really helped me feel more comfortable in interacting with a large group of children at one time,” said Heather Young, CHEP 2002, of Lincoln, Del., who took the class last year as a freshman. “I learned so much about what it is really like to be a teacher and to work with students–and not just any students, but minority students.” The children also benefit from the personal attention they receive, said Matusov. La Red Mágica, which began last year, has attracted growing interest among youngsters at the community center. About a dozen signed up initially, but that number quickly increased to more than 60, Matusov said. The after-school activities program, of which La Red Mágica is a part, is one of several, including tutoring and drug-abuse resistance programs, the community center operates. All are designed to help children succeed and to reduce the high dropout rate for Hispanic students, which now stands at 47 percent in Delaware. –Ann Manser