Teaching the Lowrider (Self): A Comparative Case Study of Two Latino (Educator) Lowriders

• In Event: Embracing the Power of Latinx Educators: Understanding How Identity, Culture, and Experience Shape Daily Practice

Abstract

This paper shares pilot research that uses a comparative case study of two Latinx teachers, across different regions and contexts in the United States, to ask how and why individual educators draw upon lowriders, lowriding culture, and/or lowrider identities in their (community) education work? Chappel (2012) writes that the lowrider is “a car, a person, and a social practice” (p. 2). The (self-)production and promotion of such “lowriders,” then, includes identities, subject positions, and vehicles, along with attendant communities, spaces, and cultures. Given this rich tapestry, academic study of “lowriding” has examined questions of aesthetics and art, space and place-making, mobility, political organizing, community engagement, and race relations (Carpio, 2019; Chappel, 2012; Lomeli, 2013; Nocella II, 2023; Sandoval, 2013, 2022) and highlights how the inventive, subversive, and resistant act(s) of lowriders has developed in relation to the long-standing marginalization and criminalization of Latinx/e and Black communities.

While this research has been significant in various fields, the study of self, curriculum, and pedagogy of lowriders has largely been left out of educational inquiry. However, as the opening quote from Alex attests, teachers we have previously taught with and researched with continually reference lowriding and education. We have become increasingly interested in how/why lowriders describe themselves as teachers and how and why might teachers describe themselves as lowriders. Even more so, we are interested in how such productions of the teaching self both refract and reflect the neoliberal constructions of Latinx teachers (see Author 2024; Singh, 2018). We share pilot research that uses a comparative case study (Barlett and Vavrus, 2017; Pathmarajah, 2019) of two Latinx/e teachers that asks: How and why do individual educators draw upon lowriders, lowriding culture, and/or lowrider identities in their (community) education work? In their teaching practices? In their curricular practices?


In order to build the case of each teacher, we are collecting photographs, media articles, lesson units/plans, participant interviews, and our own research notes. We anticipate closing data collection in the summer of 2024, allowing us to share initial analysis and highlights during AERA in 2025.

Authors

• Timothy Monreal, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Karen Perez-Sapien, Laramie County School District #1