About the Neighborhood

The Looking Glass Neighborhood is part of the larger network of “Fifth Dimension” programs begun by Michael Cole and colleagues at UCSD’s Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition.  A major goal of Fifth Dimension programs, including LGN, is to provide meaningful academic models for children whose parents have not attended college.  To this end, each Rosa Parks child interacts at every LGN session for over one hour (75 minutes)  with at least one SDSU student in an array of education/play-oriented activities designed to promote literacy, language and cognitive development.   In one semester, a child who attends regularly will have 22 hours of such contact.  

History:  

The Looking Glass Neighborhood is a service learning program currently beginning its 17th year at Rosa Parks Elementary School.   It is one program within the City Heights Educational Collaborative, which partners with SDSU and Sol Price Charities to improve educational outcomes and foster academic excellence in the inner city neighborhood of City Heights.  Of the multiple programs started at the beginning of the City Heights Collaborative, LGN is the only one still in existence. 

Our Students at Rosa Parks:

The overwhelming majority of participating students from Rosa Parks are bilingual children whose first language is Spanish.  LGN has also served children with a variety of other first languages such as Vietnamese or Somali.  Each child attends twice each week (across 4 days per week that the program is in session).  

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Program Structure: 

LGN, as all Fifth Dimension programs, is based on Vygotskyan principles, especially the ‘zone of proximal development’, the importance of play in learning, and the role of tools such as board games and manipulables in cognitive development.    SDSU student participants are enrolled in a linguistics class (usually Language Acquisition) and also register for Ling. 457, a one-unit service-learning course, which requires them to participate in the program one afternoon a week for ten weeks of the semester.    At LGN, the SDSU students (“College Cats”) are paired with the Rosa Parks children to engage in fun and educational games involving problem solving, critical thinking or strategy development.  The program structure also incorporates a literacy component for each game played.  At each session, every child both writes and receives a letter from “Mao”, an imaginary figurehead who “oversees” the entire program.