Critical Ethnic Studies: Freire in a Chicanx/Latinx High School Classroom

• In Event: (Re)Imagining a Liberatory Pedagogy

Abstract

There is an urgent need for schools in the nation to offer ethnic studies as curricula that is more relevant and engaging (de los Ríos, López, & Morrell 2016). Los Angeles Unified School District passed a resolution to make ethnic studies a high school graduation requirement, and in 2016 California governor signed a bill to develop a model ethnic studies curricula for public secondary schools by 2019 (de los Rios 2017). While we cannot depend on the state to develop an ethnic studies that is grounded in critical and humanizing pedagogies, we can offer models of what a critical ethnic studies high school course that is responsive to the local context looks like (de los Ríos, et al. 2016; Darder 2017). Freire (1970) calls on educators to creatively use and reinvent his ideas and adapt them to local educational contexts and struggles. Serving as a scholar-practitioner at a high school in the Eastside of Los Angeles, this paper offers a pedagogical and curricular approach and a model of ethnic studies implementation with Chicanx/Latinx youth.


Employing humanizing pedagogies and practices (Freire 1970; Salazar 2013) in an ethnic studies course, this paper draws from a yearlong critical qualitative study of high school student narratives and focus groups. Paris’s (2011) understanding of humanizing research requires that inquiry “involve dialogic consciousness-raising and the building of relationships of dignity and care for both researchers and participants” (137). The paper illustrates teacher-student relationships of care and love (Freire 1970; Darder 2017), and a teacher-student revolutionary partnership of engagement in humanizing ethnic studies liberating praxis (Darder 2017).


The findings offer implications on the possibilities of implementing humanizing pedagogies and curriculum in critical ethnic studies courses. Student reflections on the course and written narratives illustrate their telling of their lived experiences, feelings, and rewrite what they hope and reimagine their lives and community to be in the future.


The work is significant in that curriculum and practices grounded in community, lived experiences, and relationships respond to students more holistically.

Author

• Jorge Lopez, Claremont Graduate University