When I wrote a column about retiring District 97 educator Gale Liebman a few years ago, I suspected this busy teacher would not stay away from the classroom. After all, since she and fellow D97 retiree Bette Wilson created the Ethnic Fest decades ago, working tirelessly inside and outside of the classroom on activities linking local with international issues, the idea of post-retirement repose in this global environment was so not happening. Well, she’s at it again!
I ran into Ms. Liebman recently at Alliance Francaise for a Haitian cultural event, where she announced that she was now a consultant at Lincoln School, working with teachers there and at nine other schools on a Haitian service-learning program that provides relief to a youth community in that stricken country. I told her that I was working on a Haitian service-learning program with my freshmen at Columbia College. Three weeks ago, I shared a video my student, Krsytina Mikolowski, created that will be featured in the Oak Park International Film Festival on Saturday, Sept. 17 and 18 at Oak Park Public Library. Liebman was so thrilled, she asked if she and her colleagues could use it to highlight how young American students identify with post-earthquake Haiti.
I’m pleased to say that around noon this Saturday in the second-floor Veterans Room, her teachers and students will participate in a forum with my students after viewing a series of video essays that my service-learning freshmen created called, “I Want To Talk About Haiti,” inspired by a poem of the same name they read by Haitian-American performance artist Lenell Moise. The goal of the assignment was to create “empathy.” Liebman’s course and my course have identical starting points.
“After the earthquake in Haiti last year, I spoke to Dr. Serge Pierre Louis, a Haitian-American neurologist at Stroger and Rush hospitals, in order to find out what I could do,” she said. Serge’s sister, Dr. Claudine Pierre Louis, a pediatrician in Haiti who provides care for the children’s home Horizon de L’espoir in Port au Prince, suggested Oak Parkers send them supplies. “I contacted Lynn Allen, director of the Multicultural Department in District 97 and several teachers, and we began collecting enough items to send more than 200 boxes there. We later raised $9,000, half of which bought a huge generator to assist with the many blackouts there. The other half will be used by Dr. Claudine to purchase essential items,” she said. This is not an official D97 project, she noted.
“The executive director of Horizon de L’espoir, Kathelen Douyon, visited Oak Park last November and met some of the teachers, even visited some of the classrooms where we had created a Haitian cultural curriculum,” Liebman explained. Local teachers (including yours truly) continue to work with the Dusable Heritage Association and the Haitian Congress to Fortify Haiti to deliver much-needed goods and services as well as provide links for American youth to connect with Haitian students. (Haitian explorer Jean Baptiste Point Dusable and his Potawatomi wife, Catherine, founded Chicago in 1779.)
To learn more, Liebman invites locals to hear from students who will be on the noon-time panel and check out their Lincoln School blog, haitiexchangeofhope.blogspot.com, and my students’ Facebook page: www.facebook.com/pages/Haitian-Art-Galleries-in-Chicago/125836217472982?ref=ts
