From January to June 2016, our 11th U.S. History and Geography class at Crawford High School in San Diego, taught by Ken Flaherty and Jody Herman, worked with researchers from San Diego State University to develop skills at conducting interviews, taking photographs and videos, and making maps to represent our experiences of human diversity in our community. Our interviews and visuals tell a story about City Heights' past, present, and future from the perspective of many people in our neighborhoods, and show how our community is unlike any other community in San Diego.
Crawford High School is located southeast of the intersection of El Cajon Boulevard and 54th Street, at the eastern edge of City Heights. We have a lot students of different ethnicities, who come from different places and speak different languages, which makes for a lot of diversity at Crawford. This presents challenges, but it also gives us opportunities to come together. Through sports, food, issues that we feel strongly about, and often just by coming together in the same place, we make friends and learn about other cultures and places in the world. As students, we have accomplished a lot together, including helping and supporting each other as we learn, advocating for appropriate meals at school for students who eat a halal diet, and successfully protesting the school district's proposal to close Crawford's New Arrival Center, where students who have recently come to Crawford can learn English in an environment designed to support them.
Our neighborhood where Crawford is located, City Heights, is often subject to prejudices and misconceptions from people outside the neighborhood. The media reports negative things that happen in City Heights without the context of the positive things that happen here, which can make people who live in other places look at City Heights as a bad neighborhood or a ghetto. Part of our motivation for doing this project was to show the rest of the world a more accurate picture of the reality of our community: a place where there are many nice people, where it is easy to make friends who become like family, where there is a lot to do and see, and where people from all over the world find common ground through struggle, optimism, and humanity to understand each other.
On this site, you can read and listen to the interviews we have collected and view pictures and videos we have taken of places in our community in several different formats. The Map contains transcripts and audio of interviews alongside images and maps to show context. On the Interviews page, you can read transcripts of interviews and listen to the voices of people from our community. On the Photos page, you can view a slideshow of photographs of important places in our community, watch videos taken in our community, and look at art made for the project. On the About page, you can learn more about the project and the people involved in producing it. We hope you enjoy exploring this site and learning about our community!
From January to June 2016, our 11th U.S. History and Geography class at Crawford High School in San Diego, taught by Ken Flaherty and Jody Herman, worked with researchers from San Diego State University to develop skills at conducting interviews, taking photographs and videos, and making maps to represent our experiences of human diversity in our community. Our interviews and visuals tell a story about City Heights' past, present, and future from the perspective of many people in our neighborhoods, and show how our community is unlike any other community in San Diego.
Crawford High School is located southeast of the intersection of El Cajon Boulevard and 54th Street, at the eastern edge of City Heights. We have a lot students of different ethnicities, who come from different places and speak different languages, which makes for a lot of diversity at Crawford. This presents challenges, but it also gives us opportunities to come together. Through sports, food, issues that we feel strongly about, and often just by coming together in the same place, we make friends and learn about other cultures and places in the world. As students, we have accomplished a lot together, including helping and supporting each other as we learn, advocating for appropriate meals at school for students who eat a halal diet, and successfully protesting the school district's proposal to close Crawford's New Arrival Center, where students who have recently come to Crawford can learn English in an environment designed to support them.
Our neighborhood where Crawford is located, City Heights, is often subject to prejudices and misconceptions from people outside the neighborhood. The media reports negative things that happen in City Heights without the context of the positive things that happen here, which can make people who live in other places look at City Heights as a bad neighborhood or a ghetto. Part of our motivation for doing this project was to show the rest of the world a more accurate picture of the reality of our community: a place where there are many nice people, where it is easy to make friends who become like family, where there is a lot to do and see, and where people from all over the world find common ground through struggle, optimism, and humanity to understand each other.
On this site, you can read and listen to the interviews we have collected and view pictures and videos we have taken of places in our community in several different formats. The Map contains transcripts and audio of interviews alongside images and maps to show context. On the Interviews page, you can read transcripts of interviews and listen to the voices of people from our community. On the Photos page, you can view a slideshow of photographs of important places in our community, watch videos taken in our community, and look at art made for the project. On the About page, you can learn more about the project and the people involved in producing it. We hope you enjoy exploring this site and learning about our community!
This project was conducted in honor of Dr. Mark David Mann, Graduate of Crawford High School