CARA
SCHARF
CARA SCHARF BY DEJAH MCINTOSH
INSTRUCTOR
Cara Scharf is an educator focused on critical pedagogy—helping students uncover the ways systems perpetuate inequality and reflect on their positionality, community responsibility, and role in social change. Outside work, she organizes for economic and racial justice locally and volunteers for causes that advance a more caring, less carceral society.
DIGITAL CULTURAL HERITAGE
CIVC 101
All Drexel undergraduates take “CIVC 101: Introduction to Civic Engagement”. The curriculum does not focus on a particular issue or place—it instead allows students to apply the concepts they learn to their own lives and community-engaged experiences of their choosing. A recent pilot has engaged a new, place-based curriculum that uses the lenses of Mantua and Powelton Village to ground students in their physical relationship to these neighborhoods. The course features community members talking about the neighborhood’s past and present history and community, so students not only see course concepts brought to life but also hear the lived experiences and stories of their neighbors to counter harmful narratives they receive from the University and other media.
STEPS CARA TAKES
“[This is a] tweet from a social justice author/organizer that I love, Mariame Kaba. I have it saved on my computer desktop. It’s advice that I turn to a lot both for myself and for students I work with, especially when there is some big injustice happening in the world (an act of police violence, a mass shooting, a discriminatory Supreme Court ruling, etc.). I feel like I am angry so much of the time at things happening in the world, and I often feel helpless when it comes to talking to students about these things and directing them to a pathway forward. This simple tweet gives me so much to work with in terms of practical steps to unpack what’s happening and how to move forward in a collective, constructive way.”
sitting
down with
cara
JAYLA WASHINGTON SAT DOWN WITH CARA SCHARF TO DISCUSS HER UNMAPPING COURSE, CIVIC 101.
The following excerpt of their talk has been edited for length and clarity.
So can you tell me about the specificities of this course and how it came about?
CIVIC 101 is a course that's been taught at Drexel for many, many years. Drexel has this mission as a university to be the most civically engaged university in the country... There was a group of people who realized that having students just volunteer as part of their University 101 class did not provide the context required [to go] out into the Philadelphia community to volunteer with community organizations. And so CIVIC 101 came out of that. It's really meant to be a foundational course specifically centered around preparing students to go into Philadelphia communities, [to] see issues that are experienced by Philadelphians and be able to see themselves as agents of change.
So we talk about--What is the definition of civic engagement? What does it mean to make a difference? What is a social issue? What does it mean to do civic engagement in a collective way? Students unpack that, and they talk about what identity means and how it's used and why it's an important concept in our society that determines people's access to things. We talk about community and what it means. We talk about what it means when we say issues are systemic... the healthcare system, the education system, the criminal justice system.
UnMapping now has given me the opportunity to look back at the original curriculum we developed and really think about how to add in storytelling as an element. And [to ask] what we think of storytelling when we think of connecting students with the local community around Drexel, a reciprocal sort of storytelling... How does Drexel--and how do we--tell the story of those communities? How do students tell their stories? How does that become an exchange that results in better relationships and social change?
How do you establish trust with a community partner that is super rooted in West Philly and knows the connotations of institutions like Drexel? And how do you hold a course in this container of Drexel, while also challenging the norm of what is expected from Drexel?
Yeah, that's a fundamental question of community-based learning courses that are rooted in universities that have history of not doing such great stuff in communities. And I would say it has been a challenge. When I first went to approach the community partner that I'm working with, Dimplez 4 Dayz, we had to work through some reservations they had from previous experiences with the University...
So I have to be realistic about what I can do as one representative working on this one class. I can't change the whole relationship. But I can make a small inroad of one sort of relationship that you all can have with me... I think it's like a long process of just building relationships between people and recognizing that there is this institution looming over us. Right? It's there and I can't ignore it. But for me, and hopefully for them, it's been more about--let's just establish relationships as people and go from there.
“UnMapping now has given me the opportunity to look back at the original curriculum we developed and really think about how to add in storytelling as an element.”
—CARA SCHARF
Speaking of your community partner--tell me about the significance of having Dimplez 4 Dayz as part of this pilot of this course. How [have they] not necessarily affected, but how have they influenced how you're approaching the course?
Back when I was first planning, [someone suggested] it would be cool to have the students sort of do some kind of exchange or relationship-building with people who are close to their own age. I don't even remember who said that, but somebody said that to me and thank you to that person! And then someone suggested Dimplez 4 Dayz as an organization they knew of that did good work with youth, specifically with middle school and high school students.
I am still unsure of how the partnership specifically with the class and with students interacting with the dreamers from Dimplez 4 Dayz is going to go, but at the same time I can tell that this work is going to be ongoing beyond the class. There have already been things that have happened: I was able to connect a group of students at Lebow with Dimplez 4 Dayz to volunteer at an MLK event that they had. I'm planning our first meeting between the students in my class and the dreamers. And it's honestly just going to be that sharing. I want the dreamers to talk a little bit about their experience with the organization and what it means to them. And then the students to talk about their experience in the class and what we've been talking about. I really appreciate Dimplez 4 Dayz and their willingness to go on this journey... and see what this could be
I was wondering what motivates you to continue to do the work--what is the personal motivation for you?
I truly believe that person-to-person relationships are going to save our world. There's a lot of bad stuff happening, and if people were in better relationship to each other these things wouldn't happen as much. Or maybe they would. But you know, with relationship comes the ability to weather challenges. I just truly believe in that power--of individual relationships. Putting intentional time into that has been really meaningful and important. Again, civic engagement is about collective public problem solving, and we can't do collective public problem solving unless people are good at being in relationship to one another, especially across difference and disagreement.