Latinx Student Leaders' Spatial Perspectives and Practices: Ascribing Enjoyment and Belonging to Urban School Space

• In Event: Construyendo Spaces of Belonging for Latinx Youth: Understanding Race, Space, and Place

Abstract

Efforts to transform urban schools often overlook the role of students in shaping educational spaces. This is even more so the case for urban schools constructed as “failing” (Lipman, 2011) and for Latinx students that are increasingly concentrated in these schools (Orfield, 2014). Critical geographers nevertheless account for how people living in and interacting in spaces produce them in spite of how power creates them (Lefebvre, 1991). And so, I ask: How do students, as the primary users of school space, make and shape their school? Relying on ethnographic observations and semi-structured interviews, I present the case study of Azul, a young Latina from a working-class community and Associated Student Body president of her school, and examine instances where Azul and her peers transform school spaces at their majority-Latinx high school in Los Angeles from their intended uses to student-friendly, democratic spaces. I draw on spatial inquiry that emphasizes the social production of space (Lefebvre, 1991) to analyze youth spatial perspectives, what they say about space, and spatial practices, what they do in/for space.

My findings demonstrate that Azul and her leadership peers hold democratic perspectives of, as well as enact emancipatory practices of belonging and enjoyment onto, school space. These may be short-term or more permanent transformations of both the physical and social spaces of the school. Azul and her peers used the Hallway space, for example, to create an educational experience for students that aligned with their ways of being and their creative interests manifested onto school spaces. As their spatial practice, they decorated the Hallway walls with multidimensional figures from the Harry Potter movies that depended on their creative uses of the means available to them (i.e. butcher paper, paint) to create an immersive experience over space. In doing so, they reimagined their school’s Hallway as one for amusement and student enjoyment instead of as a space to simply use to get to and from class. Furthermore, Azul’s spatial perspectives of the Quad space as it was transformed into the Club Circuit, an annual event intended to introduce students to the various clubs they could join, was to ensure that students had opportunities for belonging at school, as an escape from the conditions they face from living in an impoverished community of Los Angeles. The Quad, typically a space that students merely walk past to get their food, was turned into a space for students to pause, to look around, become informed, and become a part of, if even for a fleeting moment, to the extracurricular culture of the school.

By focusing on the spatial perspectives and practices of Azul and her peers, they offer insights into the socio-political commitments of Latinx student leaders in their everyday lives as significant social beings and actors over school space. These reveal that students’ articulations about place that frame schools as spaces of possibility and hope are important for creating equitable schools where students may serve as partners in building a collective vision for schools.

Author

• Claudia Diera, California State University - Los Angeles