Free Minds
November 2010
Welcome to Our E-newsletter
Minds in Motion

As the fall semester rolls to a close, we pause to introduce you to one of our students, a former faculty member, and a volunteer whose grill pan is never far from hand. Happy Thanksgiving from the Free Minds team!
Meet Free Minds Student Lorena Elias

Lorena Elias is a Community Worker with the Austin Health and Human Services Department. She learned about Free Minds from a flyer her 9-year-old son, Miguel, brought home from UT Elementary School. Of all the texts she's read in class so far, her favorite is A Midsummer Night's Dream--not surprising, as she loves theater and will be performing in a Spanish-language production of The Vagina Monologues this spring.

       
I have a mentor, Elizabeth Gray. I met her two years after arriving in Austin, because they needed a babysitter. I didn't have a job back then. I was about 18 years old. I worked with them for close to five years. Ever since day one, Elizabeth was involved in my education. Every morning she'd leave little notes of encouragement, and she helped me register at ACC so I could get my GED. She got together with me on weekends and helped me with reading and writing.

When I got pregnant with my daughter Sofia, I stopped college. One week before I got the Free Minds flyer, Elizabeth encouraged me to improve my reading and vocabulary skills. I had told her that in my position at work, in order to move up, I need to get a degree and go to college. As soon as I got the flyer, I read it through and started thinking, yes, yes, yes, that's me.
   
Free Minds opened a door that you only encounter once in a lifetime. I want my kids to see me educate myself, pursue higher education, and that's a motivation for me, so we can learn together and teach each other. Miguel is in third grade, and he was coming home with assignments asking, "What's the point of view of this paragraph? Who's the speaker?" and I couldn't help him. But now I can. And it's amazing that I'm gaining these skills without noticing.
       
My kids love the Camp Fire program. Sofia is 4, the youngest of the whole group. One day she raised her hand and volunteered to go to the front of the room and sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," and she was so excited when everyone clapped for her. I'm lucky to have the kids the ages they are, because if they were younger I wouldn't be able to bring them. They're the perfect age, this is the perfect time, and we're the perfect family for Free Minds.


Blind-Sided: Dr. Evan Carton on Race in Pop Culture

In the second of a series of masters classes this fall, Free Minds students and alumni welcomed Dr. Evan Carton, UT Professor of English and former Free Minds faculty, to discuss The Blind Side, the 2009 film about a homeless boy who became an All-American football player. The class met over coffee and cookies at the UT Community Engagement Center and delved into the issues of race and sexuality that undermined the feel-good message of the film. Dr. Carton pointed to the long history in literature and pop culture of the rescue by white folk of people of color. "Images come with deep histories," he said, and students jumped in with observations about the images that revealed the film to be a well-intentioned fantasy -- a world where women have to be sexy to be powerful, and black men have to lose their identities to be saved. "I don't care about Sandra Bullock's story," said one student. "Tell his story. I want to hear his story." The class went almost 30 minutes over, and students continued discussing the movie as they pulled on coats and headed out into the cold evening.
Creative Writing Gets Students Telling Their Stories

The creative writing unit wrapped up this week after a series of classes exploring tales of family, loss, first kisses, and school lunches. In keeping with the semester's theme, How do we tell our stories?, students plumbed their own lives for material, putting to paper the experiences that have shaped them. Through short assignments, free writes, and reading aloud, they uncovered the power in honest, straightforward storytelling.

They also discussed what makes a story sing, beginning with advice from Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird, then turning to pieces from contemporary writers, including Dagoberto Gilb's elegiac essay, "I Knew She Was Beautiful," excerpts from memoirs by Joan Didion, Nick Flynn, and Barack Obama, and humor by David Sedaris.

Armed with conviction about the power of details and strong openings, student will take on another way of considering stories, examining the story of our country in the American History unit, which UT Professor Tiffany Gill begins teaching on November 18.
Issue 8
In This Issue
Meet Free Minds Student Lorena Elias
Blind-Sided: Dr. Evan Carton on Race in Pop Culture
Creative Writing Gets Students Telling Their Stories
The Final Word

Special Thanks

On October 25, Free Minds Project Director Viv� Griffith and program alumna Charmaine Nichols visited the TG offices in Round Rock to present Free Minds to TG employees in a brown bag lunch titled, "TG Grantee Greatness: Adult learners accessing higher education through humanities." Attendees learned about Free Minds and its impact and heard Charmaine share her experience as a student and program alum. The event marked the completion of a $42,000 grant TG awarded Free Minds and its project partner Foundation Communities.

Free Minds sends a special thanks to the TG Public Benefit Program for supporting our 2009-10 alumni classes and our new class and we look forward to a continued partnership with the organization.

If you are interested in supporting Free Minds, you can find more information on our website.


So far this semester, Free Minds has served 26 salads as part of our community dinners.

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Minds in Motion Archives


June 2010
Read about our 2010-11 faculty and collaboration with Camp Fire USA

July 2010
Book donations, summer reading, Plato, and more

August 2010
A new class, a new space, and new programming for alumni

September 2010
Read about the new semester, including a reflection from founding director Sylvia Gale


October 2010
  • Adventures with Shakespeare and a master class with Dr. Domino Perez

  • The Final Word
    Amanda Brown, Free Minds Volunteer Chef, on Food and Community


    Close your eyes as tightly as you can. Clear your mind of the busyness and worries of the day. Now bring to the forefront of your mind your favorite memories. Take a deep breath. Let the oxygen fill your lungs, and you are lost in those happy times. You see familiar faces, hear laughter, and then, deep in the background, scents begin to emerge. Perhaps it's your grandmother's menudo, a heavy spicy aroma that hung in the kitchen's air long after the dish was gone. Maybe it's the sugary smell of fresh-baked cookies frosted in green and red that you and your family used to hand out as holiday gifts to neighbors and friends. It could even be the faint and fragile hint of citrus from the wine you shared with your husband or wife on your first date. The memories and the smells are as endless and varied as the people on the planet but the joy associated with it is always the same.

    Food, as I see it, is the most fundamental and uniting force in the world. Families, communities, all of humankind are tied to one another by a passion and appreciation for food. Time and time again meals have brought people together in good times and bad, fostering cooperation, friendship, and love. The community-building aspect of food is what inspires me as an amateur chef and volunteer to cook meals every Monday and Thursday for Free Minds. This class, including its dedicated staff, professors, students and children, are a community bound together by a commitment to overcoming obstacles and obtaining a meaningful education. It has been an honor and a pleasure to help support this community with a warm-cooked meal twice a week. As my great-grandmother said to me when I was a young girl, clutching her skirt and looking up at her with big eyes, entranced by the goings-on of her country kitchen, "It's the company, not the cooking, that makes a meal."

    Amanda Brown is an AmeriCorps VISTA member volunteering full-time with the Volunteer Service and Learning Center at The University of Texas at Austin. Her repertoire includes baked ziti, chicken enchiladas, veggie chili and shepherd's pie.
    Free Minds header
    A program of the UT Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, in partnership with the UT Humanities Institute, Austin Community College, and Foundation Communities, Free Minds offers a two-semester college course in the humanities for Central Texas adults who want to fulfill their intellectual potential and begin a new chapter in their lives.


    Free Minds Project
    Community Engagement Center
    1009 East 11th Street, #218
    Austin TX 78702

    Ph: 512-232-6093   F: 512-236-1729
    www.utexas.edu/diversity/ddce/freeminds