BAY AREA (California) ARGUS

April 9, 2006

Skit helps teach Schilling students about Cesar Chavez
Teacher surprised at how little his students knew about the activist

By Angela Woodall, STAFF WRITER

NEWARK — On Thursday, Room 8 took a deep breath and climbed up on the stage before their entire Schilling Elementary to perform a skit highlighting the life of Cesar Chavez, the Mexican-American labor activist who became a leading voice for migrant farm workers.

It was the culmination of a lesson about Chavez that turned into a lesson about determination, racism and standing up for your rights.

As students sat clustered on the gymnasium floor, Hamreet Singh, 11, who played Chavez, opened with his line: "Cesar Chavez saw that farm workers were not being treated fairly and decided to do something about it. Along the way, he learned that unity and believing in yourself will overcome even the biggest odds."

It all started, according to Rodriguez, with Cesar Chavez Day, celebrated on March 31. Not long before, he had asked his 31 students if they had heard of Chavez. Only a handful had. And they could barely recall more than the most basic facts.

But by March 31, the day Chavez would have been 79, students knew the exact number of days Chavez's longest hunger strike lasted (36) and that he marched 343 miles from San Diego to Sacramento. They knew that he changed schools 30 times as a child because his parents were migrant farmworkers, constantly on the move to the next harvest.

Rodriguez said he was surprised so few students knew about Chaavez because so many are of Hispanic descent, like Chavez. In Room 8, there are 20 students identified as Hispanic or Latino in school records. The next-largest groups are Filipino and Asian Indian. One student is listed as white and another as American Indian or Alaska Native.

The class is part of a school in which the principal, Nicole Paredes, says the opening greeting at the weekly Unity Assembly in English and Spanish.

And nearly 30 percent of Newark residents are Hispanic, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.

Rodriguez said he decided to turn the situation into a lesson about what Chvez stood for.

That lesson was summed up by Destiny Naples, 11. "People should treat each other equally no matter what they look like," she said.