Ethnic Studies No history, no self. Know history, know self.

Diversity is a reality. Inclusion is a choice.

February 22, 2019 Vincent Perez, MPA In Lak’ech (I am you. You are me.) Nehuan Ti Nehuan (I am you and you am I) Tú eres mi otro yo You are my other me. Si te hago daño a ti If I do harm to you, Me hago daño a ḿ mismo I do harm to myself; Ś te amo y respeto If I love and respect you, Me amo y respeto yo I love and respect myself.

– a Mayan inspired poem from Luis Valdez’s “Pensamiento Serpentino” ● identify and explain the national and local conditions that necessitate culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy in K-12 schools. ● understand how bilingual student leadership, Xicanx Indigenous and decolonizing epistemologies can frame curriculum and pedagogy in K-12 settings and how those methods have been successful with youth of color. ● describe the importance of building on students’ funds of knowledge and cultural assets and name/use specific culturally responsive methods and strategies to harness student narrative. Scholars in a House of Learning heart work is hard work La Santa Cecilia - Strawberry Fields Forever La Cima (the summit) bilingual leadership imparts leadership and life skills to Latinx youth.

¡La Chispa! (the spark) bilingual leadership imparts leadership and life skills to Latino youth. Middle School one-day workshops.

Grupo Ollin: Green Hill School every Monday “Grupo” is Spanish for “Group” “Ollin” is Nahuatl for “Movement/Change” We are the group of change. Dare to Dream Academies are credit bearing courses held at four universities for migrant youth in partnership with OSPI and CAMP (College Assistance Migrant Program) offices.

XITO (Xicanx Institute for Teaching and Organizing) strives to support the Xicanx/Latinx community through teacher preparation, social justice pedagogy and community organizing. XITO's practices are steeped in Xicanx indigenous epistemology which drives the intentions, structures, and practices of the institute. (Documentary: Precious Knowledge) Ethnic Studies

Why is race a predictor of academic achievement?

“Socially constructed. Politically contested” - Cornel West Ethnic Studies

Yosso Ethnic Studies Ethnic Studies

Q: What are the policies, processes and practices impacting this educational pipeline? Ethnic Studies

● High stakes & hyper accountability ● Privatization ● Anti-Immigrant Laws ● Zero tolerance policies ● ELL policies ● The academy as a colonial structure ● Deficit ideologies ● Lack of cultura in curriculum vs. Ethnic Studies ● Housing policy From LOSS to RESTORATION: Restore the C’s

● Connection (Attachment)

strong relationship with caring adult

● Coping (Self-Regulation)

ability to manage emotions in a healthy way

● Competence (Self-Worth)

Cognitive skills/competencies CONNECTION: Safety. Belonging. Humanizing relationship. (In Lak’ech = You Do these three are my other me.)

things: COPING: Physical & If you can only do one, be Psychological Regulation connected. COMPETENCE: Agency. Self-Worth & Empowerment. Practice.

14 CONNECTION

“A person’s a person through other people”

Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives. - Van der Kolk

15 COPING Start with Self-Regulation The foundation of all effective treatments involves some way for people to learn that they can change their arousal system.

We are rhythm machines

16 COMPETENCE

COMPETENCE (Self-Worth): Cognitive Skills

Competence is the best defense against the helplessness of trauma. This is, of course, true for all of us. When the job goes bad, when a cherished project fails, when someone you count on leaves you or dies, there are few things as helpful as moving your muscles and doing something that demands focused attention. -Van der Kolk

17 Ethnic Studies

Will Giles & Travis T. - "Oral Traditions" (NPS 2015) Ethnic Studies

The fundamental stages of recovery are: 1. Establishing safety. 2. Reconstructing the traumatic story; remembrance and mourning. 3. Restoring connection.

-Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery Ethnic Studies The valuable knowledge, skills and attitudes gained by students in ethnic studies is clearly evidenced by the fifteen-year long application of the MAS (Mexican American Studies) program in the Tucson Unified School District that resulted in a 97.5% graduation rate for the students who took MAS courses (Fernández 2016) Ethnic Studies

There is a growing body of research and scholarship from across the country that has shown and proven that ethnic studies has positive academic and social results for students of all races and ethnic background (Espiritu 2014). Ethnic Studies

Social justice content directly counters white supremacy, male supremacy, and other forms of oppression through an epistemological contextualization of students’ social, economic and cultural realities (Cammarota & Romero, 2006). Ethnic Studies

Culturally responsive pedagogy is a student-centered approach to teaching in which the students’ unique cultural strengths are identified and nurtured to promote student achievement and a sense of well-being about the student’s cultural place [and critical consciousness] in the world. -Matthew Lynch Ed.D.

Learning to read the word and read the world. Ethnic Studies

Ethnic Studies is the critical and interdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, and indigeneity with a focus on the experiences and perspectives of people of color within and beyond the United States. Ethnic Studies

Ethnic studies, in the United States, is the interdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, and nation, but also sexuality, gender, and other such identities—and power, as expressed by the state, by civil society, and by individuals. Ethnic Studies Since the emergence of ethnic studies as an academic field in the late 1960s, scholars have analyzed the ways in which race and racism have been, and continue to be, powerful social, cultural, and political forces and their connections to other axes of stratification, including gender, class, sexuality, and legal status. Ethnic Studies

Ethnic Studies effectively works to counter inequality by facilitating empowering processes that lead to the closing of the persistent and pervasive achievement gap between Youth of Color and white youth (Arce, 2017) Ethnic Studies

Ethnic Studies develops strong cultural and academic identities in Youth of Color while simultaneously reducing prejudice, bias, and racist ideologies in white youth (Arce, 2017). Ethnic Studies

Western education models in the United States have effectively served as tools of deculturalization, colonization, and dehumanization, and the oppression for Black, Chicano/a, Native American, and Asian youth. - Sean Arce, 2016 Ethnic Studies Modern compulsory schooling is deemed a reductive process and schools serve as key sites for the production of minority status. The mainstream curriculum strips culture, language, identity and dignity from students of color with little to no representation of their cultural capital. (Valenzuela 2010) Ethnic Studies

Without analyzing race and racism, critical scholarship can not offer strategies for social transformation? -Bell, Freeman, Solórzano & Yosso Ethnic Studies

A critical praxis questions approaches to schooling that pretend to be neutral or standardized while implicitly privileging White, U.S. born, monolingual, English-speaking students. Critical Race Theory (CRT) challenges claims that the education system offers objectivity, meritocracy, color-blindness, race neutrality, and equal opportunity. - Yosso 2006 Ethnic Studies

Colonizing education “takes away” language, identity, culture. It is subtractive schooling. It communicates, “You do not belong.”

Decolonizing education “brings in.” It welcomes, invites and includes the rich knowledge of students’ lives, language, histories and ancestors. It adds value to the classroom. It communicates belonging. Ethnic Studies

An educator in a system of oppression is either a revolutionary or an oppressor

-Lerone Bennett Jr. Ethnic Studies Counter-storytelling

“Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.”

Countering the “master narrative” or “meta-narrative”

Counter-storytelling, at all grade levels, allows students to see themselves, their histories, their ancestry and their identity as an integral part of the historical narrative. Ethnic Studies Counter-stories can be used to expose, analyze, as well as challenge deeply entrenched narratives and characterizations of racial privilege gender, class, etc.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) explicitly listens to the lived experience of People of Color through counter-storytelling methods such as family histories, parables, testimonios, dichos (proverbs), and chronicles. Ethnic Studies

StoryCounter-Narratives making is not simply / Counter-Storytelling the art of repetition but rather an act of creation. As someone who grew up de-Indigenized, the fact that I am able to partake in the writing of (creation) stories by itself also demonstrates that peoples who are de-Indigenized can be reconnected to ancient knowledge.

They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds. Ethnic Studies

Definitions

Decolonial: a term which focuses on understanding modernity in the context of a form of critical theory applied to ethnic studies. It is, in effect, a continuing confrontation of, and delinking from, Eurocentrism : the idea that the history of human civilization has been a trajectory that departed from nature and culminated in Europe. Ethnic Studies

Definitions Hegemony: is the cultural, political, economic, or military influence, predominance, or control over others

(Erika Story) Ethnic Studies

● Using decolonial pedagogies means disrupting assumptions about where and how “legitimate” learning takes place, and who facilitates it.

● Naming hegemony as a system of social control - and schools as vehicles for that process. Ethnic Studies Theory ● A vision for liberatory education is anchored in a commitment to know through both theory AND practice. ● Theory as a product of historical knowledge construction is ongoing and regenerative...never complete but but always exists within particular set conditions shaped by particular relations of power. ● Theory as a tool to name what you are producing. Ethnic Studies

Aspirational Capital: the ability to maintain hopes and dreams for the future even in the face of barriers.

Familial Capital: cultural knowledges nurtured among familia (kin) that carry a sense of community history, memory, and cultural intuition.

Social Capital: networks of people and community resources.

Linguistic Capital: intellectual and social skills learned through communication experiences in more than one language and/or style.

Resistant Capital: knowledge and skills cultivated through behavior that challenges inequality.

Navigational Capital: skills and abilities for maneuvering through social institutions. -Yosso Ethnic Studies Critical lens to view and interact with the world (metacognitive skills) Critical consciousness: critique system or structure that is creating the pathology. ● Critical thinkers (question & verify) Critical ● CHANGE

Naïve consciousness: Blame own culture, self, victim ● Lazy Thinking Naïve ● Blame-a-holics ● NO CHANGE

Magical consciousness: Bad fortune or “God’s will” Magical ● Luck, fate ● NO CHANGE Freire

Ethnic Studies XITO Graduation Rate 97.5%

Mexican American Studies (MAS) students were 9.5 percent more likely to graduate from high school than their peers who attended the same high schools but did not take MAS courses. Ethnic Studies Critical Pedagogy. Critical Thinking - students are Subjects in the creation of knowledge. Authentic Caring - students are full and complete human beings. Social Justice Content - teaching content that directly counters white supremacy, male supremacy, and other forms of oppression through an epistemological contextualization of students’ social, economic and cultural realities Ethnic Studies

Transformational Resistance (Solorzano & Bernal) Ethnic Studies

Culturally responsive pedagogy is divided into three functional dimensions: the institutional dimension, the personal dimension, and the instructional dimension. -Matthew Lynch Ed.D. Ethnic Studies What • Qué Identity • Identidad Dignity • Dignidad

------How • Cómo------Historicize Humanize

------Why • Por qué----- Healing • Sanar Liberation • Liberacíon Ethnic Studies Historicize ● Place ● People ● Policy ● Data ● You name the field/sector: agriculture (Fresh Fruit. Broken Bodies), architecture, business, healthcare, housing, military, academia / education... Into the West-Carlisle Indian School These are my babies, I want to make I have children crying sure I’m protecting my babies in the classroom, I don’t understand crying in my office. My kids now come to why Americans When I ask them, ‘why school with a change of are you crying?’ They clothes in their backpack hate me have expressed that The kids should in case they need to run not be worried they don’t want their about this. They’re here to moms to be learn. apprehended and I have three young ladies taken away from them. It’s something heavy who are literally terrified on my heart. Why does he hate us? After an immigration sweep this month led to dozens of arrests here, a group of elementary school students looked to their teacher for an explanation. The teacher, who is forbidden from taking political stances in the classroom, asked them to write or draw what they were feeling.

This Is What Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Is Doing To School Kids Huffington Post 2/27/2017 Ethnic Studies

Facundo the Great Ethnic Studies

Facundo the Great Ethnic Studies

Educational content based [solely] on the achievements of the dominant group actively silences the cultural capital and thus intellectual contributions of subordinate groups. - Bourdieu 1977 9,000 years Ethnic Studies

Counter-Narratives / Counter-Storytelling

Despite an unprecedented three-hundred-year colonial mass-conversion project (known as reducciones), plus another two hundred years of non-Indigenous cultural domination, maíz cultures and narratives were in fact not eradicated; they continue to be a resilient part of the culture of many AmerIndigenous peoples, including those that live in the United States. Ethnic Studies Humanize ● Redemption ● Reconciliation ● Reclamation ● Reparations ● Restitution Narrative ● Restoration ● Recovery ● Reform ● Reflective ● Responsive ● Repair Ethnic Studies

Harness narrative to grow agency. Ethnic Studies

Changing the World, One Word at a Time! | The Queen Latifah Show Ethnic Studies

Resiliency

● Self-affirming narratives are resilience. ● Be willing to allow people to speak. ● Stories are data with a soul. ● Build “growth mindset” narrative. (Effort -vs- Talent) ● GROW CONNECTIONS to people, animals, places and ideas. Ethnic Studies ● Teacher preparation that examines and decolonizes mainstream education practices ● Engaging with content that illustrates the rights of minoritized peoples and allows normally minoritized learners to be empowered ● Facilitating opportunities to learn from place (or the local land and community) ● An understanding of local customary protocols and community expectations ● Using learning resources or materials that do not perpetuate colonial myths and stereotypical representations Vincent Perez, MPA (318) 510-1936 • [email protected]

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