BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — From New York to Texas, teachers nationwide are coming to Bakersfield for a unique learning experience and it is all funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
From the labor camps that were the location of the Okie migration to the heart and soul of the farm worker movement, Kern County’s rich history is all coming together in one class and turning teachers from across the nation back into students.
“It’s something very special, something singular when it comes to really the history of farm labor in this country,“ said Adam Sawyer, Liberal Studies Director at California States University Bakersfield (CSUB).
"California Dreamin" is the name of the course drawing educators from across the United States, all coming to experience the legacy of the San Joaquin Valley that is still relevant today.
“Why can’t we have these conversations locally if the rest of the academic world knows about the significance of these places as it relates to migration, agriculture, and labor?" asked Oliver Rosales, a history professor at Bakersfield College and one of the project directors for the course. "We should be having these conversations locally."
For Rosales, it is about finding common ground across the bounds of culture, race, ethnicity, and time. That is why there are four locations the teachers in the program get to experience, including the Sunset Labor Camp in Arvin, the setting for John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath," various sites in Delano associated with Cesar Chavez and the farm worker movement, Allensworth, CA: the first independent Black colony, and National Chavez Center in Keene.
Rosales says that 72 teachers will be sponsored for the course with a $1,300 stipend.
“We want to make sure that history is not just something that people engage in books or in a novel, but it’s something that they know that physically exists, that they can visit, they can touch and remember," said Rosales.
CSUB will be hosting the teachers in the dorms over the summer. While the program has lots of applicants from across the United States, it still wants local teachers to apply.
“We’re getting applications from New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, the Pacific Northwest, so it’ll be a really dynamic experience not only for those teachers from across the United States but for our local teachers to talk with folks from New York to Texas or Oregon about the San Joaquin Valley," said Rosales. “That’s the common thread. That whether it was Okies or whether it was Allensworth or Filipinos or Mexican immigrant laborers, they all had dreams of a better life that they carved in the field.”
The class is a week-long residency experience offered in June and in July. The deadline for teachers to sign up for the class is Fri, March 3,
