21.037 - Centering Community Knowledge and Counterstories Across Community and School Spaces

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

As educational policies have increasingly focused on standards-based reforms, traditional classrooms continue to struggle to meet the socioemotional and cultural needs of youth of color. Nevertheless, research demonstrates that those needs are essential for youth to develop a positive relationship to learning and sense of self. This session highlights educational practices that nurture the identities of marginalized youth, including students of color, immigrants, and indigenous youth. The panelists show that when youth see themselves as knowledge holders with powerful counterstories, they can develop their sense of belonging, cultural identities, and critical consciousness. This session illuminates the need for educators to center the experiences of youth of color, particularly in this political moment of increased exclusion and hostility towards their communities.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Critical Educators for Social Justice

Chair

• Stacey J. Lee, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Papers

• "Learn From Each Other, Not of Each Other": Counterstories in Pedagogy - Jia-Hui Stefanie Wong, Trinity College

• "Pero yo pienso que You Can Be Proud": Exploring Counterstories From Latinx Youth in Wisconsin - Bailey B. Smolarek, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Nurturing Deep Roots: Ppuri as Resistance in a Korean Language School - Eujin Park, University of Illinois at Chicago

• "You Are My Other Me": Youth Grown Nourishment in a Latinx Youth Group - Julissa Ventura, University of Colorado - Boulder

• "We Learn to Empower Ourselves": Chuj Youth Decolonizing Learning Through Organizing - Alexandra Allweiss, Michigan State University

Discussant

• Bianca Jontae Baldridge, University of Wisconsin - Madison