|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Creating strong bonds and a sense of community is important for people from all walks of life — but having that sense of unity with folks who share one’s own cultural background, who understand you the most, can sometimes be more important in helping understand one’s own identity.
Especially for Black students who are navigating through the Pleasanton Unified School District.
“African Americans only make up 1% of the demographics in … our school district. So if you break that down to all of the school sites in Pleasanton, it really averages out to one per child per class, if that,” Pleasanton mom Sana Vieux told the Weekly.
That’s why when Vieux and husband Steve heard about the PUSD Step Program, they knew it was something they needed to look into for their daughter, whose ethnic background includes Haitian and Indian.
The PUSD Step Program is an after-school group where students of all ages in the district can learn about stepping, the history behind the expressive dance style and become a part of the district’s Steppers team.
Stepping is a polyrhythmic dance form that uses the body as percussion and was created by African American fraternities at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the U.S. at the turn of the last century, according to Antwan Davis, the instructor of the PUSD Step Program.
“I tell people that the African American fraternity-sorority system is a culture, and the dance of the culture is stepping,” Davis said.
Davis is the co-founder of Molodi, a Las Vegas-based body percussion dance company, and has been professionally performing since 2003 with various organizations like Step Afrika, a renowned professional stepping company.
But Davis has also been heavily involved in teaching youth how to step and the history behind the dance — and with the newly created step program at PUSD, Davis said he has been not only witnessing the students improve their dance skills, he has also seen them grow as individuals.
“This challenges you,” he said. “The stepping, the body percussion, the music, the layers of complexity of musicality, challenges you and you basically find yourself through this journey.
“You get to interact with your peers and you find who you are as a community member and … you find out how strong you really are,” he added.
During each session, which takes place once a week at Hearst Elementary School, the families and their kids gather first for free dinner provided by the nonprofit Open Heart Kitchen. Then the students, who are collectively known as the Full Force Steppers, head over with Davis to begin going through different dance routines. After rehearsals, they can stay at the school for tutoring help.
Once a month, the Black Enrichment Program, which is an additional enrichment program connected to the step program, brings in African and African American figures from across the Bay Area who are sort of experts or notable in various fields with the help of the Cheza Nami Foundation, which is an African arts organization.
But what the Full Force Steppers said they really love about the overall step program is being able to perform like they did recently at the 24th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Fellowship Breakfast in Pleasanton on Jan. 22.
For students like Naila — the third grade daughter of Steve and Sana Vieux — she said that she knows how important it is to be in a space where she can learn more about her history.
“I think it’s important to connect with my culture and be with other African American people,” she said.
Seeing that is one of the reasons Jamie Mather, coordinator of extended learning, said he was excited to see the program grow as it enters into its second year. He said that while any student of any race or culture can join the program, he really wanted it to be a space for Black and African American students to find their community and find a sense of belonging.
“There’s a lot of value to affinity spaces for kids and really just for people in a variety of ways,” Mather said. “In Pleasanton, there’s not very many Afro-centric spaces for kids and families where the sort of primary perspectives and experience that is like centered and whatever’s going on is one that is African American or African.”
“For our kids in Pleasanton Unified, we thought that we could build an affinity space for them, while also teaching something pretty central to HBCU … and that is stepping,” he added.
He said that developing an identity relevant to their culture at an early age is so important for students, which is why the district wanted to build this space for them to explore their cultural background and find out more about their history so they can figure out more about who they are as an individual.
For Esther Adeyemi, whose two sons are in the program, that is really important for her given that she not only came to the U.S. from Nigeria, but that she used to practice stepping over there and is now using that as a way to connect with her sons and their cultural background.
“It’s important for my kids to feel that they are Africans,” Adeyemi said.
She said the program has helped with her sons’ understanding their African culture and being able to relate to it because before the step program, they would say they are Americans and they wouldn’t consider themselves African.
But now that they have been stepping, they are more curious about the dance and are now asking Adeyemi to pull up her old videos and photos of when she used to step in Nigeria.
She said that while it can seem like they are just interested in the dance, they are actually learning about their roots and about their history, all while having fun and making friends who share the same backgrounds.
“Usually I’m not friends with people in my culture because there’s not a lot of people at my school who are African American, so it’s really nice to be around people who are from,” said Adeyemi’s son Elijah.
Tonya Bass, who is the parent liaison for the step program and for the African American Family Network, said seeing those students find themselves and discover their cultural backgrounds is one of the reasons she wanted to help create the group.
“I just see the step program as being a positive cultural experience for them, where they get to express themselves,” she said. “It’s just a way to tie our community into Pleasanton but make our children feel self worth and also feel like they have a community behind them.”
Bass has been with the district for over five years now and in that time has helped grow the African American Family Network, which sponsors the step program, into a supportive community where everyone helps each other.
Whether it is to help with finding resources for their children or for themselves as parents, she said that having a group of peers who share similar cultural and ethnic backgrounds is important, especially in a place like Pleasanton where they are a minority group.
“That is very, very important when you’re in small numbers, because sometimes you just need to sit down and talk to somebody who gets it,” Bass said. “That networking is very important because when you are in a smaller community, you want to feel safe to be who you are and that’s what I feel like the network and the step program allows the kids to be.
She said that apart from being an expressive art form where they can educate themselves about Black and African American history, the step program also acts as a way for the students to learn more about colleges and universities that primarily serve Black and African American students, which can help them realize that there are spaces for them in higher education.
“It’s great to see our children finding out about the history of our HBCUs … so they know OK there’s colleges and universities that are out there that are specific for me. Specifically created to educate African Americans (and) Black people,” Bass said.
And because of the fact that those colleges and universities most of the time already have their own step programs, she said these PUSD students who are already stepping at an early age now have that way in and can easily find their place within those institutions.
“It all ties back to being African American and a positive group that wants us to succeed,” Bass said.
