The Implications of K-12 Recovery Work for Public Education in the Twentieth Century

• In Event: Educating for Sovereignty: A K-12 Recovery Framework for Indigenous and Latinx Students

Abstract

For almost a decade, a landmark lawsuit known as the Martinez/Yazzie consolidated lawsuit has altered the trajectory of public education in the state of New Mexico, changing how educators, youth, and community organizers approach the idea of culturally and linguistically sustaining education. In 2018, a judge determined that the state of New Mexico had failed to fulfill its constitutional obligation to provide students with a sufficient education, one that would prepare them for career and college. Several state laws aim to safeguard culturally and linguistically sustaining teaching and learning for New Mexico students have become central to the lawsuit and how communities expect the state to address decades of irreparable harm; these state laws include the Black Education Act, the Bilingual Multicultural Education Act, the Indian Education Act, and the Hispanic Education Act. For many, the Martinez/Yazzie Consolidated Lawsuit has provided leverage to rethink how the study of language and culture should be approached within K-12 schooling in New Mexico, despite increasing hostility toward diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and programs from the federal government.

This study takes place within the context of the Martinez/Yazzie lawsuit and our current national political landscape, exploring how high school students engage with and respond to notions of “recovery” in an era when ethnic studies programs and humanities scholarship are being framed as regressive and irrelevant if not outright dangerous. This study will be approached from the position of a humanities scholar who has specialized in the recovery work in Latinx/Chicanx studies for more than a decade and a high school educator invested in culturally and linguistically sustainable pedagogies. The theoretical framework is guided by Gholdy Muhammad’s work on culturally and historically responsive literacy and the Chicana feminist praxis of Maria Cotera and Linda Garcia Merchant, who, taken together provide a means of thinking through the ethical dimensions of recovery work; that is, its necessity and implications for K-12 education in the United States. The qualitative analysis will focus on student narratives that are produced as part of a dual-credit course that not only centers Indigenous and Latinx/Chicanx histories, but also responds to calls for curricula that sustains local ways of being and knowing.

Author

• Elena Vicentita Valdez, New Mexico Highlands University