Learning to Value Cultural Wealth Through Service Learning

This paper traces strategies and successes—for both students and community partners—in the implementation of service learning within my English 353: Chicana/oLatina/o Literature classes at California State University Channel Islands. In order to bridge university culture and the farmworker communities that work and live alongside the university, in consultation with community partners, we created bilingual reading circles where students went in to read and discuss works of Chicana/o literature with residents in low-income farmworker housing. Using a critical framework of Freirian pedagogical practice in the classroom and in the community, I explore how first-generation Latina/o students’ participation in service-learning enabled them to counter a cultural deficit model of thinking about farmworkers. In the process, students learned how to value their own rich cultural wealth and the familial assets they bring to the university and society as a whole.