The Search for Common Ground: Culture in California’s Central Valley
Faculty participants in The Search for Common Ground attended a production of San Joaquin Blues, a play about life in the Central Valley, in order to create curricular units on the performing arts in region. Image courtesy of Modesto Junior College.
Modesto Junior College (MJC) used an NEH grant to integrate the local history and culture of California’s Central Valley into its humanities curriculum, with a focus on the migrant, refugee, and low-income communities from which many of the college’s students hail. Over the course of two years, faculty at MJC developed and tested 27 instructional modules that have been shared across the region and are now being used in classrooms. The new curriculum has drastically improved student outcomes and the teaching culture at MJC, as well as fostered new partnerships among the region’s universities, colleges, and businesses.
“[The program] changed the teaching culture of our institution. We are trying to bring out, from students, the cultural competencies they already have.”
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The instructional modules teach Dorothea Lange’s photography and Joan Didion’s and John Steinbeck’s writing. They explore architecture and food. And they delve into the waves of Asian and Latino immigrants to the region that have been arriving since the nineteenth century. These modules have improved outcomes for thousands of MJC’s students. In prior years, 40.8% of students from nontraditional backgrounds and low-performing high schools failed the college’s introductory humanities course. When the modules were piloted in 2016, this number fell to 7%. Chad Redwing, director of The Search for Common Ground, attributed this change to two factors. First, by grounding the course in a culture the students were familiar with, faculty made it easier for students to grasp new concepts. Of equal importance, he states, the program “changed the teaching culture of our institution. We are trying to bring out, from students, the cultural competencies they already have.”
Faculty and student participants in The Search for Common Ground. Over the course of two years, faculty at MJC developed and tested 27 instructional modules that have been shared across the region and are now being used in classrooms. Image courtesy of Modesto Junior College.
To develop the curriculum, MJC held seven seminars and sponsored a final conference for faculty, bringing in expert lecturers from around the country. More than 100 faculty members from MJC and eight nearby colleges and universities took part in the program, including California State University Stanislaus, University of California Merced, University of the Pacific, and University of California Berkeley. MJC is now partnering with other public institutions to create combined degree programs that focus on the study of the Central Valley. And in Modesto, local organizations have welcomed the college’s interest in the region’s arts and culture; a non-profit (Fourth World) and local restaurants have even begun to sponsor humanities mealtime conversations, providing free books and gourmet meals to college students and their families.
