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Interview with Chris Lebo-Planas

ACE Coordinator, Berkeley City College

March, 2010

Q.  How are you involved with ACE?
A.  I teach in the PERSIST Program (Personal Initiative for Social Transformation) at Berkeley City College, which uses ACE Curriculum.

Q.  How long have you been involved with ACE?
A.  About a year and a half.

Q.  What process did you go through as you were getting involved?
A.  I took the FELI (Faculty Experiential Learning Institute), I did the Foundation Course practicum, and did the FELI practicum this past winter.

Q. What drew you to ACE? How did you hear about it?
A.  We were trying to build a cohort with math and English. Then Diego came to BCC for a staff development day and gave a presentation on ACE. We were blown away because it was a model we were striving for and ACE had gone much further in developing it.

Q. What excites you about ACE?
A. The fact that there is a social justice component to it, I think that’s what draws me.  Also, ACE encompasses the kinds of things we’re fighting for in terms of getting students involved and up to college level, and giving them access to college.  ACE is a valuable resource for students who are struggling with the limitations of their K-12 education and also their life situation.  They have a lot of struggles. I don’t really see social change as possible unless we get more diversity among change agents. Education needs to be more accessible to everybody; especially the population that is the most disadvantaged.

Q. What are you reading, or what movie have you seen lately?
A. I am reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell again. In terms of movies, I recently saw a movie called A Serious Man (2009).