Andi Johnson

A few years ago, I created a locally-engaged course, Health in Philly: Past & Present, to try to address the teaching problem of “shallow learning.” By shallow learning, I mean learning that seems to stay within the classroom or within a single assignment, learning that seems somewhat performative or transactional, or learning that stays at a level of abstraction without impacting the student’s “real life.” Maybe you have a sense of what I mean. (By the way, I don’t consider “shallow learning” the fault of the students; it’s a structural problem).

My turn toward locally-engaged teaching was inspired by reading the work of indigenous studies scholar and geographer Laura Harjo. A line from Harjo’s 2019 book, Spiral to the Stars, stopped me dead in my tracks: “If I am not here to honor and create the conditions for beautiful moments—everyday Mvskoke interactions—then in my eyes the worth and value of Mvskoke community work is lost” (23). I found myself musing, what would my teaching look like if my goal each class was “to honor and create the conditions for beautiful learning moments?”

Locally-engaged teaching was one answer to that question. A Health & Societies seminar grounded in history and anthropology, Health in Philly, teaches students about the structural determinants of health in a highly-localized way. Students investigate the history and current practices of a dozen Philadelphia community organizations, such as Lutheran Settlement House, Black Women’s Health Alliance, and Puentes de Salud. Of each organization, students ask: How was “health” defined during this organization’s founding, and by whom? What health concerns—and for whom—did this group address, and how? What does this organization do today? Students spend class time diving into historic primary sources and then go on site visits to talk to the staff of the organizations. For most visits, we take SEPTA to health clinics or community centers. One week we go to a community garden. Let me share an anecdote about the garden visit and then explain how locally-engaged teaching begins to address “shallow learning.”

One early morning last March, I met my students at the 40th & Baltimore trolley portal. While we waited for the next trolley to come out of the tunnel to take us westbound along Chester Ave, I realized something must have had happened downtown. There were no westbound trolleys. As I privately debated the speed, cost, and legality of alternate options (bus? Uber? my minivan?), one of my students said, “Andi, it looks like he’s turning around,” pointing to an eastbound trolley arriving from Baltimore Ave. Instead of continuing into the tunnel, it was circling around to head back west. I ran over and asked the driver if there was any way we could hop on. He asked, “Where do you want to go?” When I replied, “Well, we were going to take the T3 to a garden near Mount Moriah Cemetery,” he smiled and said, “I’ll be the T3,” and with that we went from having no trolley to our own trolley. Happy to be on our way, I wasn’t sure exactly which lessons about the structural determinants of health each of my students would take away from the next two hours, but I knew connecting them to the Karen Community Association of Philadelphia (KCAP) had “created the conditions.”  

Two days prior, our class had welcomed anthropology PhD candidate Rebecca Winkler for a history lesson. Rebecca taught us that the Karen state in Myanmar is the location of the longest, continuous civil war in the world, ongoing since 1949. Karen refugees fleeing the war often spend 10-20 years in “temporary” camps along the Thai border before relocating to other places, including, since about 2008, Philadelphia. Rebecca noted the unique mental and physical health challenges of Karen refugees, challenges including food insecurity. We learned that, with support from People’s Kitchen Philly co-founder Ben Miller, Reinhard Street neighbors, and Novick Urban Farm, Karen refugees had recently begun gardening in southwest Philly. 

When we arrived at the garden, farmers showed us where to grab some gloves and assemble. I realized the students weren’t going to drop a seed in a hole or something simple like that but were being asked to do some real gardening work. The students didn’t hesitate. They organized themselves into wheelbarrow teams, mulch teams, teams to turn the soil, and teams to put in irrigation lines. They traded smiles and tools with Karen elders. They asked questions. Over the course of the morning, we learned about the seasonality, cultural significance, and nutrition of different Karen crops, like rozelle leaf, long beans, mustard seed, and cilantro; about how Karen community members were adapting their growing techniques to Philadelphia’s climate and urban context; and about how they had taken care to devote a section of the garden to crops specifically requested by their neighbors. When it was time to stop gardening and shift to eating, the students passed around the juices we were contributing. They asked how to say phrases like “delicious!” and “thank you” in the Karen language and shared their delight at the dishes.

Locally-Engaged Teaching “Creates the Conditions” for Authentic Learning

Students submit video journal entries to Canvas, reflecting on what they learned from a previous week’s site visit. Here are some excerpts from reflections on the community garden visit:

I was being vastly out-gardened by community members who were significantly older than me. I will continue to think about the physical contributions and health impact [of gardening] on older members of the community… the opportunity to spend time with friends over a garden bed and plant and do light exercise seems so invaluable and overlooked [in conversations about health and healthcare].

The one thing I kept reflecting on is that [one elder] said that ‘as long as you have seeds, you have home.’ That wasn’t the first time I had heard that. My grandparents both lived through the Soviet Union’s specific attack on Ukraine during the 1930s, with the Ukrainian famine, or Holodomor... [The visit] made me really think about the means of rebuilding and belonging after displacement, especially for refugees like the Karen, who live through decades of trauma and statelessness.

[I’m] recognizing refugee farmers not only as recipients of aid but as knowledge holders and leaders in food cultivation and land maintenance...

I am thinking about the limits and possibilities of these kinds of organizations of grassroots care. Is it possible to scale up KCAPS’s model without losing the personal or cultural beliefs, or the grounded approach itself? What role should the government play, if it should?

During other site visits, students identified very different themes, relationships, and lessons. The following week, students reflected on relationships between residential segregation, industrial pollution, and community health after first diving into the history of Philadelphia’s oil refinery and its century-long impact on health in the Point Breeze neighborhood of South Philly and then talking to members of Philly Thrive. The week after, students reflected on how the intersection of gender norms, sexuality-based oppression, and occupational opportunities can impact health after first studying the history of Bebashi (a community organization founded during the AIDS epidemic) and then talking to staff. Truth be told, the students’ take-homes from the locally-engaged version of the course aren’t all that different, conceptually, from those of students in my reading seminar-only version of the course. The difference is that the ideas the students write and talk about are theirs. I create the conditions and then let them make their own observations.

One unexpected bonus of locally-engaged teaching is that it also teaches students that working hard and controlling the future are not the same thing. Engaging with people and spaces outside of our usual corner of the universe (our classroom) requires me to work hard and plan in advance but then also, importantly, a lot of adapting, embracing what is, improvising, and asking for help. The students witness all this in real time, and they help me adapt, improvise, and ask for help along the way. Thank you, SEPTA drivers!

Andi Johnson is the director of the First Year Experience in the College of Arts & Sciences.

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This essay continues the series that began in the fall of 1994 as the joint creation of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Lindback Society for Distinguished Teaching. 

See https://almanac.upenn.edu/talk-about-teaching-and-learning-archive for previous essays.