Transforming our Curriculum for a New Demographic and a New Millennium

• In Event: Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: Analyses of Schooling Practices: Curriculum, Discourse, and Setting

Abstract

Abstract
Schools have historically created a context in which students of color feel excluded, ignored, or denigrated. This context pushes Latino students to disengage from school,resulting in a high dropout rate. California schools are not addressing the needs of Latino students,who have the highest dropout percentages. The dismal figures and research are all there, but the problems of curriculum, engagement, and ethnic identity are not being addressed. Ethnic studies courses in a Tucson, Arizona district are successful in engaging marginalized populations, improving their state standardized and SAT scores, graduation rates, and academic viability. This paper explains how ethnic studies curriculum successfully guides pedagogical praxis towards transformation through cultivation of sacred spaces and decolonizing narratives creating agency and meaning.

Author

• Jaime Cueva-Esquivel, Claremont/SDSU Equinox Millennium foundation