Rosa De La Arte

A few friends and I went to go visit Artes de La Rosa, which is a Hispanic Cultural Center in Fort Worth Texas, on March 24, 2012. There we went to an art gallery created by a Hispanic artist who had moved to Fort Worth in the past few months trying to make his passion for his cultural art work known. It's funny because as we were standing trying to figure out a piece he was standing with us as if he was apart of the audience. Then all of a sudden he introduced himself and pretty much caught us off guard and we all laughed.We got the chance to talk to him and he broke down many of the paintings explaining how he created them and the background behind where the ideas came from. We also had gotten to take a picture of him next to one of his pieces. There were a few based off of his experiences like one he created of his grandmother named "Los Regazos de Abuela" meaning the "The Laps of Grandmother". There was also a piece of art with his daughter acting as a samurai and we had the opportunity of meeting her at the display as well as his wife. There was also a time where they let Hispanic students in high school write a paper over what they thought the paintings were about, how they felt about it, how they related to it or even just write a short story about it and read it to the audience that was there. The arts were very interesting I truly enjoyed this experience and wouldn't mind doing it again. 

Here are a few pictures from the gallery below I got some of the titles to the pieces misplaced and couldn't figure out how to fix it and I apologize but I hope you enjoy!

Stand and Deliver

As a child our teachers had us watch the movie Stand and Deliver and I never understood or even cared enough as child to look into what it was about. Like the rest of the students I laughed and forgot it right after it went off. Now that I am a young adult I have took it upon myself to view this movie again. It reminds me of Freedom Writers and is also about youth in the Los Angeles community but this particular story primarily focused on the Hispanic culture. As it is today, Hispanics are considered apart of the minority and are viewed as "illiterate" and incapable of reaching an intelligent peak to achieve success in school. This teacher Jamie Escalante starts working at this school but realized these students have way more potential then what the school assumes they have. So he takes it in his hands to start teaching them a more difficult curriculum because he knew they were capable of doing so and he wanted to open up the possibility of them earning college credit their senior year. These students also had big responsibilities in their homes helping out their parents and siblings taking on big responsibilities which sometimes clashed with this but the teacher helped them work through their situations. Faculty didn't agree with him and often were against him. When the students took the AP test to earn college credit, they all worked so hard but were accused of cheating because though they passed they got all of the same problems wrong but Escalante knew it was because they were Hispanic and were underestimated. They agreed to retake the test over the summer and passed again. This movie has such a big impact not only on Hispanics but other races as well. Our students shouldn't be underestimated by the background of their culture or the color of their skin. This movie opens your eyes to not what the students need to change in order to learn but what the teachers should change in order to teach. Our children are capable of so much more we must give them the opportunity to prove it.