Particpatory Action Research Process, PAR

Our work with community via our internship experience was conducted in Participatory Action Research methodology where the outside practitioner or researcher works in shared collaboration with the community he or she is working with. This collaboration is a partnership based on what the community knows what it's needs are and through the assistance of the practitioner to create solutions for themselves. A big role for the PAR practitioner is to document the process. This internship experience falls onto a distinct quality as our projects in the form of "performances" must be done within less than a one year framework, as it should be noted a majority of projects and collaborations that follow this methodology run on a longer term. What I feel is distinct with our internship at YJC, is its relation to youth, indeed it was a youth project utilizing Theater of the Oppressed in the creation of a performance.

This is NOT PAR:

I use the image above of me on my first day meeting with the students of the 2-1-1 youth project to represent what is not PAR. The image represents one where a practitioner demonstrates to a group how to do something. This is a paradigm 1 mode of instruction and development process. These students were to create a youth services database cataloging teen services in Salinas. They represented all the high schools in Salinas. The project was a project of 2-1-1 of United Way of Monterey County, as the Youth Coordinator I was tasked with guiding these students through the process of the creation of the database. I had none of the skills in actually creating this database but I knew how to work with youth. The project was designed as a youth empowerment project. It was expected to be done less than three months. Most of my work in a community was at most, about one year. Most PAR projects are conducted with relationship within the community in mind, taking longer to design and create. Many of the outcomes of the youth project were already decided upon before the youth entered the project, thus not making in a participatory action research project.

But what was distinct about our work at YJC was using theater with the specific population of youth at YJC. A population of youth that experience their community as:

Dangerous Always Taking Risks U n predictable

everyone's put d o w n Ghetto- Rachet Held Back Opportunities

Not in Full Potential (Themselves)

and who feel that expectations and ideas of them are:

Fear lower standards Failure

meant for us to fail makes you feel like you can't do nothing

systems train them wrong

we should rise above it

Using PAR to teach theater with students who some of which had never done ‘theater’ in a setting that at times was very distracting and could be chaotic. The work that we were doing was on your feet, it was embodied, very much not in a paradigm 1 mode of education where students sit and listen to teacher, a great majority if not all of these students had experienced this paradigm as they are push outs from various schools, thus also making our challenges more complex in leading into the work of theater. Working more in the framework of this methodology I experienced some of the challenges with it while doing the work in our community. Using excerpts from field notes and journals here are those challenges are chronicled:

Participatory Methodologies What is PAR?
Participatory Action Research is a
research methodology based on preparation that goes beyond a defined goal of
what the researcher wants from the community. It is a process of preparation
that begins before entering the community. The researcher must begin by
checking their assumptions about the community they are preparing to enter.
What do I know about this community? What stereotypes exist about this
community? What do I expect might happen when I enter? What assumptions come to
my mind when I think about this community? What is my relation to this
community? These questions assist in pulling apart what ideas exist in the mind
of the researcher that are important to spread out so as to have a resource as
the experience of entering and working with the community takes place. It is
important to engage in this process so as to understand the positionality that
the researcher holds and to hold himself accountable to what views exist.
Research is done beforehand of what
written and documented histories exist, with awareness of through what lens
these histories have been written and for what purposes. This research should
be in constant check to what internal work the researcher gathered in self
analyzing assumptions and expectations. Physically entering the community can
happen, as I see it in two ways, one through a contact made within the
community, and asking this contact to assist in entering, or unguided. In
either of these cases through PAR the researcher enters with respectful
approach, and I say, enters the community through festivals and community
celebrations, when okay to do so. Eats where community eats, shops where
community shops, in engaging in this way, the researcher is visible. Without a
contact in the community, the work of organizing can be more difficult, the
process of meeting people can take time, but PAR is about process and
relationship and community building.
Beginning with a group the researcher
gains knowledge about the community from the experiences of the community, the
community is the expert of their community and of what knowledge exists about
their community. The researcher can guide the group to record and maintain
their knowledge about their community. What is critical in PAR and what the
role of the researcher is, as a facilitator that acts as a voice that both
challenges and encourages a community to question the structures that create
their community, that sustain or maintain their community. In this way, the
researcher is guiding participants to ask their own questions about themselves.
This self critical and reflective process is the introductory stage by which
participants re-enter into their communities as agents of change. This process
could be modeled and guided by the researcher, as a power sharing, not power
over, and through dialogue and democratic practices not by authority. The ultimate means should be for sustainable
change, through praxis and action, that is transformative to the issues a
problems the community noticed and wanted to see change.
Why do we use it?
PAR is used for community’s to engage in
community solutions. It is bottom up approach that works towards transformative
action based on democratic and grassroots level. PAR is used for sustainable
change in communities.

First Day in Spring Semester after Winter Break:
I wondered how many
students would be new, how many students we would see from last semester? What
will they remember from last semester? What will they care about? As Quenna and
I walked up I got a text from Julio that he was sick and would not be coming in
today. Quenna and I didn’t really plan an agenda as Julio had been working on
skits with them from last week about an action. So there already we were coming
in, not fully prepared. But I felt we took a breath and totally accepted it. I
think we are much more flexible now than last semester. I feel I am.

Challenge: How to intervene in PAR, when there is a strong observation- such as drug use?
As students showed us scenes from their
communities and talked about their communities, drugs showed up more and more,
every scene that each student constructed using images of others, depicting
their walk to school had drugs in it, it was so common that students knew it as
part of their home, their communities. I was sitting with the idea that what if
they created a play for the encuentro (community performance) about this, as I
talked about it with Quenna she reminded me that the story and topic or topics
has to come from them but I kept hearing more and more and when our Thursday
group began to create scenes and stories, connecting to their stories, they
came to create the character of Elliot James, a stoner who eventually graduates
school. The students did not incorporate any consequences of his smoking. In
reflection it did come up from Henry, that he may not be able to get a job
because of drug testing. When I asked about later in his life, the students
said he would have kids. When I asked could there be any effects to his kids,
one student said yeah, his son would also smoke pot. In addition to this character and
conversation, Jesus a newer student to YJC who played this character had told
us that very same day that he was on track for the a program similar to the
Dream Act to go into school, he was later the following week sent home one day
for smoking at school. I wondered about the culture of YJC and how it affects
students, students first coming in and those remaining.
I finally brought it up one Monday.
Darius a brilliant student who broke down gender stereotypes and masculinity
responded to my observation about drugs in the community as a common thread to
many stories I’ve heard, was able to trace drugs into south central to Reagan
era polices and South American interventions, many students understood and
agreed, but it seemed to make no difference to their actions. I felt
frustrated. Frustrated and a bit wound up, as it seemed we were all being
pressed to have a product of a performance and story for the enceuntro, here it
was March and we still have nothing concrete. At the preview of encuentros the
scene we showed was not what eventually became the story. We were not close to
a story yet.
Challenge: What to do when a student feels her idea is supreme?
Larie had had strong views of creating a
story of a single mother trying to survive, with a daughter who is a prostitute
and who becomes pregnant. Quenna, was excellent in bringing in back to what we
learned about TO, and reminded me with her question to Larie, “Do you relate to
this story?”,Larie personally didn’t. When other stories came, Quenna would
always bring it back to attention of, “Does everyone relate to this story?”
What eventually became the story, contained remnants of all the stories,
collectivity.
Challenge: How to use PAR when working with youth and creating Participatory Theater?
Quenna and I began to further press
students into creating the work as we had only a few weeks to the community
performance known as ‘encuentro.’ We had a special meeting to develop the story
outline, I asked that we sat on a single table in the library upstairs, almost
all students came, I had my computer, we both asked specific questions of how
many children does this mother have, who is talking to who, where are they
talking… I loved this moment, it’s when I feel they began birthing this story.
The next day or later that week, Quenna began staging them, and entered into
director mode. I was recording dialogue from the students, as they acted out
these scenes, later we both transcribed them.
I felt like I was helping them, my role
was more minimal now as I was just using certain tools, like holding my phone
to them to record what they were saying, what they already knew, as their
communities, as each other stories. Later I had some ideas about staging and
aesthesis, there were decisions that Quanna and I made and as we gathered
students for more rehearsals sometimes they’re energy and motivation was flat,
other times it was spot on. Earlier on in this process there was one quote from
Larie when Quenna and I were still trying to hold on to PAR, and Quanna stepped
in as students were offering different ideas, as it the first time we entered
the gym to work they were already making the house set, it was the opening
chaos of a project beginning it’s inception. Quenna asked, “ Can I suggest
something?” Larie’s response was sharply, “Do something!” When I heard this I
understood that we were both needing to step in and help them further developed
what it was that they wanted to do, what they wanted to create. We need to
direct and guide them. I figured here that there are times when PAR needs to be
thrown out and clear direction needs to step in, the whole process of working
with community is like a see saw, of back and forth guidance, steering, and
direction by all involved.
Challenge: PAR and Discipline-One Crazy Crazy Day.

One day, it was Quenna, Julio, and I, we
had huge group in I think first period. I don’t know how to describe the day.
Everything broke down. The students were so hyped up, many of them, not all of
them, one famous quote from this day, from my memory, is one female student
being held upside down by a male student and she exclaiming, “I’m a stripper
pole, I’m a stripper pole!” It was all like a scene from a movie. I tried every
attempt with every ammunition I have as a facilitator and nothing worked, we
were so tested and worn out that day. Julio, was at this point was the
authority figure in class and the official ‘teacher,’ Julio had to ask Mr. C to
come into the room and calm students down. What the breakdown was later I
thought was that we were trying to ask students to go into four stations in the
room to work on creative projects, as some were asking to rap or write some
songs, so we stopped our agenda and wanted to get into that, then it went
crazy. Mr. C told us later that day that these students need structure, he said
that many in the room had learning disabilities and to be told choose a corner
and create something, just would not work for them. Some students to me seemed
high or tweeked out on something, I was having a hard time with the culture of
YJC.
Next session, trying to strategize, we decided to finally get to agreements with students, as we had spend our initial time with the groups in games and warm ups.
After the crazy time we had the Monday
before Veteran’s Day I was a bit inhibited to see how the second session would
be. However, perhaps due to it being Thanksgiving week, there was only about a
third of the students from the whole group that were there from the last time.
With the small group, it was much much different. I think there might have been
two students who might have been under some influence, one of them has been
seeming as if he might be under the influence for about the last three or four
sessions. I’m not sure how to respond to this, he was actually one of the two
students who gave us a tour of Chucos when we had our site visit.
Some of the students who were very
challenging in the last time were there. Queena and I did everything that we
had on our agenda, including creating agreements. We did some mapping by seeing
which of each agreement held by each student in a slip of paper was similar to
someone else, from there we did a spectrum activity to see and get students
opinions of each agreement. Students were discussing with each other in both
sessions. At one point, in the first session, it just happened that Julio,
Quenna, and myself were in a ‘clump’ as we shared similar agreements. That
meant the students had different agreements of responses, there was a point
where one student went up to another and they started talking and listening to
each other, it was like a magic moment.
Months Later with our Performance Group- Challenge: When to interrupt oppression
in the group?
Students were a bit crazy, some high
energy, different from Monday mornings.
It was hard for me to come in after spending hours in front of my
computer writing drafts and working on videos for my digital thesis. Also hard
coming in after two weeks not seeing them. My image of the puppet being held by
its feet is very much how I was feeling, it was hard finding motivation to work
and be fully present with the students, especially witnessing and experiencing
them at an energy level, that I wasn’t at. But I did miss them once I saw their
faces and heard them.
I did see most all the same students that
had been there and that was good, as revolving of the culture of YJC can be.
What frustrated me, was in how because their energy wasn’t harnessed, it can be
hard to facilitate and ask them to listen, for them to listen to each other,
and to fully get their ideas out, and opinions in, then there were times when
students were just blasting out with comments or totally not focusing and being
disruptive. Disruptive…, comments, prostitutes and women comments, in and out
of the threshold of understanding and then participating in the same culture
and attitudes and most say they are against. I was happy to hear what Henry
said about disrespect. This is in contrast to a comment Kenny Jr made, which I
opened my month to speak to, but Quenna directed the scene to begin, ““Ain’t no
strong women in these stories,” in reference to Boys in the Hood. I had to bite
my tongue as we were moving along with our work.
Challenge: Who is expected to call people out? (discipline)
Eventually in creating these agreements
and having the conversation about disruptions, students asked us to regulate
and told us that, as what we felt, when students talk out loud or with
themselves it’s a distraction and it needs to stop. Many students referred to
immaturity and said that they should leave the classroom. When asked who should
ask them to do that if they are not self- regulating, they responded that they
felt it should be Quenna and I. I was happy to hear that, as in my belief if
one student is disrupting the work of a group, after conversations with that
student about their choices and their affect, if he or she is still choosing to
be distracting and I don’t know of any reasons why they are such as disabilities
and therefore have some idea of how to redirect them, or have additional
support, then I feel confident asking someone to leave. I was confused as with
our study of PAR how it would work with youth, as in the materials we studied,
there wasn’t any light being shined discussing how the methodology informs discipline.
There was information about redirecting when focus isn’t clear but there can be
a different between needing to redirect and needing to regulate as an ally for
others in the space who might feel uncomfortable or triggered by someone else’s
behavior. At times I felt in the classroom there needed to be some regulation,
and some asserting of authority and the negotiation of power.
Challenge: The complexity of PAR in communities and cultures of ‘different’ or perceived different values
Ronnie was the first real challenge to me
personally at YJC, his behaviors is what led us to begin to talk about self
regulation and classroom agreements. He was being super distractful one
particular day and when I saw students being annoyed by him, I had been giving
him ‘warnings’ he then escalated to smacking the backside of a female student.
I was triggered by this particularly as I had just spend two years giving
presentations about sexual assault including sexual battery as this could be defined,
I immediately asked him to leave. He was offended by me, as this outsider
coming into to tell him what Ronnie saw not as a bad thing but what entrenched
on his community, as he stated, “I have family here, you can’t step up and tell
us how we need to act.”
When I heard this I understood the
conflict. Grateful for two practitioners in the room as Quenna was with the
main group so I explained to Ronnie what I saw and how I interpreted what I
saw, and told him that it could be defined as sexual battery. I did not focus
on consent but just on the term I used. Ronnie was interested and I believe I
had already starting the Sexual Violence scale on the board as we happened to
be sitting across from in each other in two chairs in front of the board. I
went further and explained a little more. I then asked if this was helpful and
if I should continue, Ronnie said yes. When we were done talking, I asked
Ronnie if this was helpful, he said that this information is not information
they get. Class was about to end, and I wanted to acknowledge and sit in the
space that had contained us so I didn’t move forward on the topic if consent
and relationship, as he himself mentioned family. I was wanting to pause here
in this building block of a relationship with him. We shook hands and I asked
him something like, “Are we alright now?” He said, but then I do believe I went
back to the topic of distraction and asked him if the next time he feels he is
going to talk out loud or be triggered not to listen or participate is there
anything that he could do to check himself? He said he could draw on the board.
I encouraged that and asked him if next week if he felt he was in a place of
not being focused if could he draw. He agreed. Later on the following semester he was on his feet engaging in scenes.