Humanizing Education Through the Creation and Implementation of a College Preparatory “Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies” Course

• In Event: Reclaiming Social Justice Teaching, Curriculum, and Teacher Education: The Centrality of Grassroots Community Organizing

Abstract

At a time when K-12 schooling is increasingly routinized, standardized, test-driven, and school curriculum promotes the de-indigeneity of our youth and families—Mexican-American students continue to drop out of high school at a national rate of 48%. (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002) However, a surging number of students from a working-class barrio east of Los Angeles incessantly walk in the beauty of resistance to this reality. In 2006, Chicana/o and Latina/o students from Pomona High School readily fought to create alternatives to their schooling experiences and organized—alongside parents, teachers, university professors and community members—for spaces promoting ethnic studies, engaged pedagogies, critical thinking, and freedom.

The presenter will discuss the intersections of Raza Studies and student community organizing to institutionalize the first A-G accredited “Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies” high school course in Southern California. The author specifically examines the power of students’ organizing and leadership development, the efficacy of culturally relevant curriculum and what it meant for students to read themselves outside of a dominant US narrative through their creation for spaces advocating critical race counter-stories.

This study uses Critical Race Theory (CRT) (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Solorzano & Yosso, 2002) to situate the struggle for education by Latina/o students at Pomona High School against the backdrop of institutional racism. In particular, this study expands upon the concept of counter-narrative/storytelling within CRT to include community’s lived-experiences of resistance within grassroots organized struggles. Finally, building from Romero, Arce, & Cammarota’s (2009) Critically Compassionate Intellectualism framework.

Data were collected from January 2006 to June 2010. Ethnographic research methods were used to ensure triangulation of data. Data sources include audio tapes, visual documentation, student journals, rap and poetry created by youth, student documentaries, field notes from weekly classes and discussion during each academic school year, and informal conversations with students, parents, teachers, administrators and community members.

Now in the course’s fourth year and with four course sections, the Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies classes are more than social science electives to these high school students—they are spaces were re-humanization is cultivated and barrio intellectualism is promoted. These learning environments affirm who students are as full human beings—classrooms of Mexicano, Chicano and Latino heritage peoples with thousands of years of culture, history and philosophy on this continent. Through Tezcatlipoca, an Aztec Indigeneous epitemology and principle, which speaks to the critical reflection of self, family and community and calls for the liberation of the mind and spirit, students are provided with a space to create their own counter-narratives. (Romero, Arce, & Cammarota, 2009) Thus, allowing students to see themselves represented in juxtaposition to a world where urban Students of Color are too often criminalized.

Author

• Cati V. de los Rios, Teachers College, Columbia University