[MUSIC]
Abbie Navarrete I think that that's the wonderful thing about learning is that you start to think critically,
not just about a piece of literature that you're reading, but about everything. It opens up your mind.
Nobody in my family has ever attended college. I would say a very small majority has ever even completed high school.
Emma Middleton It was always on my mind to go back to school but I had kids and I had a husband and I worked and,
financially, I knew that I wouldn't be able to afford it.
Abbie Navarrete I read the pamphlet and it was free tuition, college credit, childcare,
fields of study from philosophy to history to theater. I completed it right then and there and I sent it off the next day.
Vive Griffith Free Minds Project is a course in the humanities for adults living in Austin or central Texas
who are living on low to moderate incomes and have faced barriers to education.
Emma Middleton I read about it and immediately I thought, "Well, this is me. I'm qualified to be in this class."
Vive Griffith Part of the idea with Free Minds is that they're a taking challenging course. They're working with our top faculty.
Abbie Navarrete I was afraid that it was going to be sort of like a feel-good experience.
You know, pat you on the back and make everybody feel good, but not really, not really challenge you
and it was completely the opposite. It was a real college class and it was hard and I loved it.
Daniel Zamarripa Like when you see our professors and they get so excited over what they're reading
their passion really, really draws you in. There's a respect that follows that and it makes a person want to say,
"I want to know what he's excited about."
Vive Griffith We provide a two-semester course in the humanities for these adult students.
They study literature, theater, philosophy, history and writing.
Aaliyah Noble I never really realized how much I had distanced myself from education and I actually,
not only did I stop going to school, but I stopped educating myself and reading books
and getting the culture that I could get from literature and poetry and things like that.
Evan Carton I always, in my literature class, do a Shakespeare play because we have here on campus
Actors From The London Stage performing a Shakespeare play each year, so it's an opportunity both to read the play
and then to take these Free Minds students, many of whom have never been to a live theatrical performance,
to an actual, professional company performing Shakespeare.
Stacy Wolf Everything that we did in the Free Minds class are things that I use in my class every day.
One activity that we do that I really love and is incredibly interesting is students work in groups
to create a sculpture with their bodies that captures the essence of the play.
Choose one or two lines from the poem that are what you think are the most important lines of the poem.
Vive Griffith A lot of students don't go back to school, particularly adults,
because their lives are too full of other things. They have jobs. They have families.
So, what we try to do is take away many of those barriers.
Emma Middleton Everything was taken care of for us from childcare, which they knew would be a struggle,
to how to apply for different places to get scholarships.
I used to live in the world, but then I moved to Harlem and now my universe is only six blocks.
Daniel Zamarripa I used to live in the world, then I moved to Harlem and now my universe is only six blocks.
Awesome!
Emma Middleton The program has really built up more confidence in me at a time in my life that I really needed that.
Stacy Wolf Last year one of the students told a story about a play, literally,
empowering her to go to her boss and argue for more money for the time she was putting in.
Aaliyah Noble I feel like I didn't know how to communicate as well, but this class kind of forces you to do that.
Abbie Navarrete I have an 18, a 14 and a 6-year-old, so I've always been very pro-education
and just really pushed them, but they did not have an example in their own lives.
Daniel Zamarripa That's how we were raised. We were raised to finish high school and get a good job
and you're good. It's time to break that cycle. And, it gives me such joy that my daughter goes like this
and my son says, "I'm gonna go to UT."
Aaliyah Noble I looked in the mirror and what did I see? A person I was pretending to be.
A failure. Unintelligent. A loser. A quitter. Oppressed. A follower. A hopeless beginner.
Today, I look in the mirror and like what I see. A strong, independent thinker with a mind that's free.