Ten Years Later: Examining the Impact of an Equitable and Democratic Elementary Classroom

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 9:00 am
  In Roundtable Session: Emerging Issues in K–12 Latina/o/x Educational Research (Table 4)

Abstract

Through their experiences as learners, prospective teachers often have preconceived notions of what it means to be a teacher, which is commonly that teachers are transmitters of knowledge through direct instruction. On the contrary, teachers should nurture students’ funds of knowledge and allow them to make sense of and derive meaning from phenomena through observation, research, questioning, and discourse with peers and experts. A Latinx teacher opted to create such a classroom in a low socioeconomic Latinx community over ten years ago. Those students are now entering their first year of college. This paper presents the experiences and perspectives of three of those students and demonstrates the power of such a classroom on such students’ identities as learners.

Authors

• Mariana Alvidrez, New Mexico State University

• Marisol Diaz, California State Polytechnic University - Pomona

• Jessica Rivera, University of Texas - San Antonio

• Elsa Q. Villa, University of Texas - El Paso