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Institution of Education, The Hidden Curriculum

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Institution of Education, The Hidden Curriculum

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The institution of education has had a large impact on my community, specifically myself and others in my community who are in Gateway to College. I would say that the majority of people (ages 15-20ish) in the GTC program have been impacted by the hidden curriculum and the hidden curriculum is certainly responsible for so many of us seeking alternative schooling. The culture in many PPS high schools is painful for underprivileged students, in my experience of attending a Clackamas high school after a PPS middle school I had experienced teachers and staff dismiss mental health issues, misogyny and rape/abuse. I believe this is part of the hidden curriculum because American dominant culture often includes the neglect of mental health issues or neurodivergence and the disbelief/invalidation of misogyny and abuse, something that people in my immediate WRC and GTC community are all dealing with in some shape or form. It's difficult to experience or use our educational institution as a drive for social change when many of us in the GTC community have a distrust in the educational institution based on our experience with the hidden curriculum, many people left their public high school because they weren't having their needs met or were expected to conform to an environment that does not benefit them. I've attached an article that discusses the GTC program and the disconnect young people are having with school and work as a result of the pandemic, I think that the GTC program in Southeast campus is excellent and has lots of teachers that are making an effort to unlearn parts of the hidden curriculum for the betterment of diverse student wellbeing.

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The Gateway to College program at Portland Community College is just getting started - Achieving the Dream

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The institutions of health, safety, and the state hold a lot of influence on my community. My community has an aversion to police and the institution of health care due to police brutality, the aggressive abductions ICE has been performing, our capitalist healthcare system, and how often people are institutionalized for their mental health, rather than understood through an intersectional and sociological imaginative lens. In my community, mutual care and aid are common due to many people having either unhelpful or more harmful experiences with the institutions of health, safety, and the state. My community consists of many people who have disabilities, have used drugs, are chronically ill, or have experienced medical misogyny, along with many of them being low-income or with a small support system. I believe that health, safety and the state is one of the three influencers that have influenced my community and how we experience and understand social change the most. Many people in my community became aware of social inequalities through the institution of health, safety and the state because of either their lived experience, what we saw during the Black Lives Matter protests or hearing about others' lived experiences.

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Social movements have a lot of influence in my community and our experience of social change, since my community and I live in Portland and the surrounding area we understand that we have certain protections from resistant movements like Pro-Life efforts and legislation, and our being a sanctuary state offers a certain level of protection, but that doesn't mean we aren't still depleted and scared by the recent oppressive movements. My community participates in reformative social movements as well as revolutionary ones. One social movement/change my community has an emphasis on is harm reduction as the response to people who use drugs, as many people in my community have advocated for more harm reduction based resources for students who use drugs, including Narcan training and a Narcan vending machine. The Solidarity Not Charity event hosted by and for my community is one of the best examples of my community's participation with social movements, as we had multiple social justice organizations present that are working for reformative or revolutionary social movements. These movements include "Rose City Indivisible", "True Colors Recovery Center" and the "Portland Liberation Center". Rose City Indivisible and the Portland Liberation Center both made a point to promote and defend Palestine during the event, Free Palestine is a movement I would define as revolutionary because it's a call to end military control, the murder and exploitation of a low-income country, as well as a call to prevent further colonization and its tactics from being considered normal.

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The Most Influential Three Institutions are:

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The Most Influential Three Institutions are:

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The institutions of education, health, safety and the state and social movements have impacted my community the most. I have refined those three to add more on why they are the biggest influencers in my community. This column you are reading now holds my 3-5 sentence summaries as well.

Education: My community's experience with social change is influenced by education because we often connect at our educational institution (PCC) and we often come together for support through social change and to gather to navigate social change and our involvement. The social change my community and I engage with the most in relation to the institution of education is dismantling the hidden curriculum and creating accessible community for those of us who are entering college for the first time, returning after a long break or have otherwise had barriers to education due to social location like age, documentation status, gender or ability. My community and I are dedicated to making our educational environment, SE PCC/SE WRC, a non-judgmental, intersectional and diverse community. The inaccessibility to necessary technology is also something my community and I address, many of us share laptops or headphones with one another, inform each other on places to access free computers (PCC library, WRC, public library) and free printing. Conversations about the hidden curriculum is something that happens frequently within the GTC community, as many of us are young adults who had issues with the traditional school system in some capacity.

Social Movements: Social movements influence my community strongly because my community consists of people who keep up to date with social movements around the world, and especially in Portland. Our experience of social change is influenced by social movements because many people in my community are marginalized identities who have been put at risk due to recent resistant social movements. Social movements that have been negatively impacting members of my community are the ICE abductions, anti-abortion and anti-gender affirming care legislation, and especially the rise of aggressive/violent and blatant misogyny, racism and transphobia in America's culture. The social change that's been influenced by these social movements is the collective effort to normalize and create an equitable culture for undocumented immigrants, documented immigrants, transgender people, queer people and people with uterus's, as a community we want our community members with these identities to feel safe and appreciated, now many of these community members are scared or dimming their light/personality out of fear. In Portland my community understands that we have certain protections, but it doesn't change the fact that we are seeing people who share our social locations hurt, murdered or otherwise experience violent oppression, physical or otherwise, all across our supposed Free Country.

Health, Safety & the State: The final biggest influence on my community and our experience of social change is the institution of health, safety and the state. This institution works more as a drive or motivation for my community to work harder as a collective. By this I mean that as a collective we work stronger together to enact social change, for example, creating a culture of equity, awareness of sociological imagination and an awareness of social location and how that shapes one another's individual experiences in social change and in the face of societal oppression. My community has an emphasis on mutual aid and providing one another with affordable health resources, something my community has been very happy about is the Multnomah County Health Service van that visits SE PCC campus three times a month. This was exciting because many people in my community have language barriers that serve as a barrier between them and reaching out for care, so having a service like that come to us was treasured since if someone with a language barrier wanted someone who's first language is english to come with them they could. This was also exciting because many of us are low-income, have transportation barriers, or otherwise have had an issue accessing healthcare services in the past. The social construction of mental illness has had the largest impact on my community and I, many of us have underprivileged social locations, such as age, AFAB, queerness, employment, drug use and more. Many of us have had negative experiences with mental health services, therapists/psychiatrists, and healthcare or state officials. This is because of how common institutionalization is and how common it is for healthcare providers to misdiagnose people or give them a medication that only worsens their symptoms, people in my community come together for mutual aid and mutual support because of this. We rely on one another when one of us is struggling with getting affordable, accurate and proper care because, regardless of individual lived experience or social location, my community is well aware of how marginalized and intersectional identities are and have been treated by the institution. My community is working towards a social change of meeting people where they are at in the context of healthcare and reducing the possibility of institutionalization, we want a widespread culture that uses sociological imagination first when treating people for mental or physical health issues. The social construction of people who use drugs and drug use generally is something that my community struggles with especially, many of us have witnessed loved ones, strangers or ourselves overdose and we are aware of the fellow PCC students who have also passed due to an overdose, we are firsthand witnessing the state, health and safety institution fail us and fail to accurately respond to drug use. It's framed with stigma, and almost solely met with institutionalization through incarceration, rehab or mental health facilities, when many of us understand and have seen that community care has helped people reduce their use or use in a safer way much better than the state has. A social change we are particularly engaged with is using non-stigmatizing language, because language is especially powerful in peoples' attitudes and beliefs when it comes to stigmatized identities, words like junkie, tweaker, or words that otherwise imply drug use defines a person are words I and others explicitly do not use and educate those who do.

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Jane Larson (Left, Gateway to College Advisor) and me (Right) at my graduation from the Gateway to College high school diploma program last June :)

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My Community: Southeast Portland and Southeast PCC Campus

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My Community: Southeast Portland and Southeast PCC Campus

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My community is Southeast Portland, especially the SE college campus that I've been attending school at for two years and working at for almost one year now!

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This is a picture of a "Red Card" I took from one of the offices in PCC. There was an organizer holding a variety of Red Cards in multiple languages, as well as a flyer giving an overview of their purpose. Red card's are explanations of a person's rights when encountering an ICE agent.

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This is a link to a Geographic Information Systems project done by PCC students called "Capturing Community in SE Portland". This is a blog-sort of website that examines the history of the Southeast and East Portland Japanese farmers and farms history. These students collaborated with Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon and Mural Arts Institute in Philadelphia for Midori Hirose's "Furin Project". The Furin Project is a free class series to create interpretations of Furin, which means Wind Bell in Japanese, originally hung from trees in Japan. The goal of Midori Hirose's project was community building and connecting about the importance of Indigenous Stewardship and Southeast Portlands present, past and future.

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Harness the power of maps to tell stories that matter. ArcGIS StoryMaps has everything you need to create remarkable stories that give your maps meaning.

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This is an article about the 2024 ice storms and its drastic impact on Multnomah County's unhoused community. The ice storms we have endured have had a disproportionate impact on our unhoused and low-income community members, our community has lost unhoused members as a result. The ice storms also often shut down PCC campus's which means community members who are reliant on PCC for things like the Panther Pantry, safe/warm physical environments or technology like printers for homework lose access to crucial necessities that impact their physical and mental wellbeing.

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Portland ice storm drew unprecedented need from unhoused people

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As Portland begins to thaw from its overnight ice storm, Multnomah County’s efforts to keep unhoused residents warm have begun to wind down.

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I wanted to add this article about the 2016 protest asking PCC to become a Sanctuary College, a historical moment for PCC during a widespread time of fear for many community members and people across the country, especially immigrant and undocumented students.

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Undocumented Students at Portland Community College Want It to Join Sanctuary Movement

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Undocumented students at Portland Community College are calling on school administrators to offer additional safeguards for students, as campuses in Portland and across the country respond to fears of a Trump-led immigration backlash.

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Queer Resource Center Button on my Jacket

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Queer Resource Center Button on my Jacket

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This button about college student hunger can be categorized as cultural and historical to me. My community has a large emphasis on preventing people from going hungry because of the lack of affordable food resources and normalization of hungry college students, like the stereotype of living off of cup of noodles, which is pretty realistic unfortunately.

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The Feminist Sociology of Religion is the perspective that most people in my direct community use to view and discuss religion. Many people in my community do not believe in a particular religion, but have either grown up in a religious household/community, or have a more spiritual belief in a general god rather than a religion, because of restricting practices like the exclusion of women from leadership roles that resist social change and contradict their individual values. Chapter 10 discusses how America's religious culture often views women as madonna's or whores, pure or dirty, and my community consists of the Women's Resource Center staff, PCC students, staff and friends. The reason many of us do not adhere to America's traditional religious institutions is that we are actively trying to engage with and be a part of social change. There is a mutual understanding and care to dismantle a culture that promotes power dynamics based on gender, race, sexual orientation, and ability, and many people in my community have been personally ostracized by their religious upbringing because of their queerness or disagreement with the power structures in play. The institution of religion serves as a sort of drive towards social change in my community to some extent because of people's personal experience with misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia in their religious culture, understanding and sharing one anothers' lived experience motivates one another to deepen their understanding and practice of religion in a lens that includes gender and intersectionality.

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I Believe You refers to believing people about their assault/abuse

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Women's Resource Center Sticker on my Water bottle

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Women's Resource Center Sticker on my Water bottle

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This sticker can fit into both the cultural and historical topics due to America's longstanding culture of victim-blaming, the WRC community has a strong emphasis on believing and supporting all survivors.

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One way that globalization has impacted my community's experience with social change is the tariffs that the Trump administration has implemented, in my community there are many small businesses and small business owners that are impacted by globalization, and the tariffs especially. The article I've attached is an article by Franklin High School students about how the tariffs are impacting Portland small businesses.

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Tariffs are Hitting Small Portland Businesses Hard

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In recent months, a series of steep tariffs enacted by President Trump has sparked international trade tensions, taking a particularly heavy toll on small businesses. Since the beginning of his second term, Trump has threatened to impose significant tariffs on a wide range of countries and goods. On April 5, a new policy took effect,…

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This is a flyer for my Womens Resource Center's upcoming resource fair. To me, this represents my communty's collectivist culture and our response to community discussions and oppressive social change.

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Bee (left) Me (right) We met in Gateway to College Leadership last year and now work together!

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America's capitalist economy is a topic my community and I frequently discuss and struggle to grasp. Housing price increases and gentrification are specific issues my community faces. Capitalist competition has also led to young people in my community to especially struggle with finding employment. Many people in my community are employed but still struggle to meet rent, acquire adequate food or hygiene supplies, and are often faced with choosing between feeding themselves or their children or pets. A key part of our capitalist society is convincing us that our lack of money to meet our basic needs is an individual issue, that if you just keep working and picking up extra employment, then you will be well off, and if you aren't doing well it's because of something you are doing wrong, rather than understanding that we are living in a rigged society where systemic inequalities are deeply embedded in all of our social institutions. Many people in my community understand capitalisms role in where we (individuals) are standing economically, and it's scary. Our federal minimum wage, for example, is a big part in why so many of us are living paycheck to paycheck. Another way capitalism impacts my community's experience of social change is that capitalism sort of puts a wrench in most social changes my community and I need, as it depends on human beings selling their time and emotional/physical labor and has historically been a tool to further social inequalities and keep marginalized groups underprivileged. I attached an article about the basic needs crisis of Oregon's college level students because I feel like this is an issue that properly expresses the detrimental impacts of late-stage capitalism.

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Oregon’s Higher Education Crisis: Food Insecurity and Funding Gaps for Student Success - Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon

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At Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon, we recognize the critical connection between basic needs security and academic access. We see […]