Impressions of New Orleans by Gizel Aponte

Day 1 in New Orleans

My knowledge and perceptions of New Orleans were based solely on academic readings, theory, text books. Before coming to the city, I considered New Orleans a bright wonderful city that was totally devastated after Hurricane Katrina. I considered New Orleans as a city that is in need of being “re-built.” New Orleans has a presence of colonial architecture with a long history of Spaniard and French colonization. Despite the fact that the colonizers are long since gone, the community still conserves its historical architecture as it reflects the 

city’s history. I  wonder what ways colonization still exists in NOLA.

I want to mention that one of the challenges that New Orleans face is the failure of its public schools. "Left Behind," a documentary on public schools in NOLA detailed the high rates of violence, drop out rates, lack of resources, corruption within the school system, lack of good and caring teachers, among many other problems. On our first day in NOLA we visited three after school programs and I thought how the problems detailed in the film existed in these programs...

There have been many organization in NOLA that are trying to help students perform better in school, after school programs particularly. However, in these programs the key focus is helping students to pass the standardize exam. Fortunately there is an after school umbrella program that is trying to help students to go beyond preparing for standardizes exams, “Afterschool for Greater New Orleans.” GNO wants to help students to understand the context of the learning material. They want students to start thinking critically because that’s a way for them to learn, not memorize, the context. I am hoping I can learn more and more about after schools programs that are actually making a difference in a child’s life!