Image courtesy of New America Media.

Oakland does not always have a good reputation for its schools but there are programs that seem to be working, for some of its students. I wrote a story for New America Media about Oakland Unified School District’s career pathway programs (some of which are called “academies”). I was astounded, but not entirely surprised, to find that students in career pathways do much better than their general education counterparts. For example, students enrolled in one of OUSD’s career pathway programs have a graduation rate of 84 percent, versus 58 percent for non-pathway students. Their A-G completion rate, coursework required for admittance to the University of California or California State University systems, is 52 percent for career pathway students compared to the district average of 31 percent, according to district data from the previous school year. Why is it working? Part of the reason is that students are linked to the professional world, and sometimes find mentors in their fields of interest.

Students who speak Spanish and an indigenous Mayan language learn about professional interpreting. Interpreters of indigenous languages are in high demand.

I recently wrote a story for the National Interpreter Action Network about Mayan and other indigenous-language interpreters from Mexico, Guatemala and elsewhere. California has more than 900 registered or certified court interpreters in more than 50 languages, but only one registered indigenous-language interpreter — in Mixteco, a non-Mayan language originating from the states of Oaxaca, Puebla and Guerrero in Mexico. Folks like Naomi Adelson, a Spanish-English court interpreter, are teaching interpreting classes through San Francisco nonprofit Asociación Mayab, which serves the city’s Mayan population. Her classes are conducted almost entirely in Spanish. It was nice to see a younger generation of people with unique language skills get some training in the hopes of becoming professional interpreters. The people I interviewed included a housecleaner, seamstress and construction worker. Many expressed that they wanted to help their communities, as well as earn a better living.

I was happy to collaborate with my colleagues at Hyphen, including R.J. Lozada who created the audio slideshow and Andria Lo, who shot the photos. The story was produced as part of New America Media’s 2012 education reporting fellowship for ethnic media journalists in California, with support from the California Education Policy Fund (CEPF) and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

The story was also picked up on Public Radio International on Christmas Day.

Last week, the East Bay Express ran my cover story, “Richard Aoki: Informant Turned Radical?,” which is based on my research and interviews from the Hyphen project.

“Issues to be addressed include: national and state trends in measuring teacher effectiveness, the view from the classroom, and methods for researching and interpreting data.”

As a former high school English and Social Studies teacher, it was great to be back in the thrust of education. and education reform), by learning, mostly from a bird’s eye view, of what is going on with our public education system in CA. The panelists ranged from preschool advocates to folks working at the community college level. One of the highlights of the two days was visiting Rosa Parks Middle School in Sacramento, where teachers were beginning to implement Common Core, national education standards that all CA schools will implement by 2014.

What struck me most is that while some things are moving forward, there are still some things that are the same as when I began teaching in Oakland a decade ago. The recent passage of Proposition 30 by CA voters is a signal that voters recognize the dire need for support of our schools.

As part of the fellowship, I will be writing a story for Hyphen and New America Media, to be published next month. Stay tuned!

One of the awards is for a project about postpartum practice among Asian and Pacific Islander women in the U.S., entitled “Motherhood Rooted,” which I did for Hyphen magazine. The package includes a feature story, a video produced by R.J. Lozada in collaboration with the Center for Asian American media, recipes and sidebars. This project received the award in the AAPI Issues Online category.

The other award is for a radio show produced with journalist Pauline Bartolone for the National Radio Project. The segment, “The Toxic Truth About Nail Salons,” received the award in the AAPI Issues Radio category.

Both were collaborative efforts with great journalists and organizations. And all writers know that with any project, it’s really a team effort that includes editors, producers, copy editors, photographers, artists and so many more people. Both projects were also crowdfunded through Spot.us.

Please check out the work of the other awardees here.

All of the films in the documentary competition this year revealed stories that are largely untold, and I believe all deserve a larger audience. Many congratulations to all of the filmmakers for completing a documentary (no small feat!), for being accepted into the festival, and for the many sold out screenings. But we did have to narrow it down to one winner.

We decided that the winner for this year’s documentary competition is A Lot Like You, directed by Eliaichi Kimaro. This is our juror’s statement:

A LOT LIKE YOU takes us on a personal journey into the most vulnerable corners of a family history spanning generations and continents. This layered documentary starts with a familiar exploration of mixed-race identity as the narrator searches for her roots, but brings the discussion to surprising levels of personal and political self-awareness. Fresh and inspired, tender and uncommonly smart, A LOT LIKE YOU triumphs as an exemplary work of first-person documentary for the 21st century.

This film really surprised me because I thought I knew where it was going in the beginning, and it turns out quite differently. The film takes you on a journey, and I found Eliaichi to be a very compelling and trustworthy narrator and guide. Funny thing is, if I were to try to describe this film to someone, I wouldn’t really be able to. It’s about so many things, including culture, insider/outsider status, suffering, family secrets, and human dignity.  I hope this film reaches an even wider audience in the future, like on public television.

Congrats also to Patrick Wang, who wrote, directed and starred in the narrative In the Family, which garnered him the Emerging Filmmaker and Comcast Narrative Jury Prize awards. Another phenomenal film. Thanks to CAAM, and especially Stephen Gong and Christine Kwon, for inviting me to be a part of this.

Here’s my story in last week’s East Bay Express: Angela Davis and Grace Lee Boggs Ponder Activism in the Age of Occupy. I was able to attend the free event at UC Berkeley, and was impressed by Angela Davis and Boggs’ humor, charm and warmth. If you haven’t heard either of them, I encourage you to do so. Davis is of course a well-known activist, scholar and writer. Boggs is less well-known, but it’s mind boggling how that could be since she has been active – and a pivotal player – in almost all the major social movements for the better half of the century (she was born in 1915).

I also posted most of the Q&A with her at Hyphen where she talks more about activism today and her identity as a Chinese American: Reimagining Revolution: Q&A with Grace Lee Boggs. Colorlines.com’s Julianne Hing did a nice write up of the Q&A for their “Celebrate Love” feature.

Thanks for reading!

Many of the refugees I interviewed are very recent, ranging from fresh off the plane to several years of living here. They all say they want to work, and many are taking English classes. However, cutbacks to social services, including English classes, means that this population has less and less resources to rely on. This means that they are living in pretty dire conditions – and are forced to sink or swim. Some of the crucial needs are translation services, such as medical interpreters, because this could mean life or death. Other troubling findings from the report include the fact that some people eligible for welfare were not on it.

A few years back, I wrote a cover story, also for the East Bay Express, about the newly arrived Karenni population. You can read it here.