Latinx Studies Curriculum in K-12 Schools


Book Description

Created by an interdisciplinary team of researchers in partnership with a large urban school district, this guidebook helps teachers and school leaders in Texas and beyond learn how to overlay Latina/o/x Studies content on top of existing state standards, providing a practical roadmap toward historically accurate, culturally relevant curricula and instruction that can be injected into all K-12 social studies classes. Following a detailed introductory essay synthesizing the field for new practitioners, it provides detailed explanations of seven major themes that define Latinx Studies across time and space, each accompanied by embedded "enduring understandings" and "essential questions" to jumpstart the process of backward design. For Texas teachers and school districts, the guidebook also includes content maps that provide guidance on sample lessons for specific units in each course and grade level. Finally, educators can draw upon detailed annotated bibliographies to identify supplemental resources, guidance for learning activities outside the classroom, and a scope and sequence for a high-school Latinx Studies elective. This is essential reading for teachers and district leaders who seek to provide culturally relevant instruction to improve student outcomes among the nation's largest and fastest-growing ethnic group.




Latina/o/x Education in Chicago


Book Description

In this collection, local experts use personal narratives and empirical data to explore the history of Mexican American and Puerto Rican education in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system. The essays focus on three themes: the historical context of segregated and inferior schooling for Latina/o/x students; the changing purposes and meanings of education for Latina/o/x students from the 1950s through today; and Latina/o/x resistance to educational reforms grounded in neoliberalism. Contributors look at stories of student strength and resistance, the oppressive systems forced on Mexican American women, the criminalization of Puerto Ricans fighting for liberatory education, and other topics of educational significance. As they show, many harmful past practices remain the norm--or have become worse. Yet Latina/o/x communities and students persistently engage in transformative practices shaping new approaches to education that promise to reverberate not only in the city but nationwide. Insightful and enlightening, Latina/o/x Education in Chicago brings to light the ongoing struggle for educational equity in the Chicago Public Schools.




Latinx Curriculum Theorizing


Book Description

This edited volume is a collection of empirical scholarship that focuses on curriculum as knowledge connected to the Latinx diaspora from three perspectives: content/subject matter; goals, objectives, and purposes; and experiences. In an effort to fill a void in scholarship in curriculum studies/theory for/from Latinx perspectives, this book is a beginning toward answering two important questions: first, what is the significance of the presence and absence of Latinx curriculum theorizing? And second, in what ways is Latinx curriculum theorizing connected to curriculum, as a general concept, schools’ purposes, goals, and objectives and curriculum as autobiographical? This book opens a door into understanding curriculum for/from an important population in U.S. society.




Raza Studies


Book Description

The well-known and controversial Mexican American studies (MAS) program in Arizona’s Tucson Unified School District set out to create an equitable and excellent educational experience for Latino students. Raza Studies: The Public Option for Educational Revolution offers the first comprehensive account of this progressive—indeed revolutionary—program by those who created it, implemented it, and have struggled to protect it. Inspired by Paulo Freire’s vision for critical pedagogy and Chicano activists of the 1960s, the designers of the program believed their program would encourage academic achievement and engagement by Mexican American students. With chapters by leading scholars, this volume explains how the program used “critically compassionate intellectualism” to help students become “transformative intellectuals” who successfully worked to improve their level of academic achievement, as well as create social change in their schools and communities. Despite its popularity and success inverting the achievement gap, in 2010 Arizona state legislators introduced and passed legislation with the intent of banning MAS or any similar curriculum in public schools. Raza Studies is a passionate defense of the program in the face of heated local and national attention. It recounts how one program dared to venture to a world of possibility, hope, and struggle, and offers compelling evidence of success for social justice education programs.




U.S. Latinos and Education Policy


Book Description

With the American dream progressively elusive for and exclusive of Latinos, there is an urgent need for empirically and conceptually based macro-level policy solutions for Latino education. Going beyond just exposing educational inequalities, this volume provides intelligent and pragmatic research-based policy directions and tools for change for U.S. Latino Education and other multicultural contexts. U.S. Latinos and Education Policy is organized round three themes: education as both product and process of social and historical events and practices; the experiences of young immigrants in schools in both U.S. and international settings and policy approaches to address their needs; and situated perspectives on learning among immigrant students across school, home, and community. With contributions from leading scholars, including Luis Moll, Eugene E. Garcia, Richard P. Durán, Sonia Nieto , Angela Valenzuela, Alejandro Portes and Barbara Flores, this volume enhances existing discussions by showcasing how researchers working both within and in collaboration with Latino communities have employed multiple analytic frameworks; illustrating how current scholarship and culturally oriented theory can serve equity-oriented practice; and, focusing attention on ethnicity in context and in relation to the interaction of developmental and cultural factors. The theoretical and methodological perspectives integrate praxis research from multiple disciplines and apply this research directly to policy.




Latinization of U.S. Schools


Book Description

Fueled largely by significant increases in the Latino population, the racial, ethnic, and linguistic texture of the United States is changing rapidly. Nowhere is this 'Latinisation' of America more evident than in schools. The dramatic population growth among Latinos in the United States has not been accompanied by gains in academic achievement. Estimates suggest that approximately half of Latino students fail to complete high school, and few enroll in and complete college. The Latinization of U.S. Schools centres on the voices of Latino youth. It examines how the students themselves make meaning of the policies and practices within schools. The student voices expose an inequitable opportunity structure that results in depressed academic performance for many Latino youth. Each chapter concludes with empirically based recommendations for educators seeking to improve their practice with Latino youth, stemming from a multiyear participatory action research project conducted by Irizarry and the student contributors to the text.




Feeling It


Book Description

Feeling It brings together twelve chapters from researchers in Chicanx studies, education, feminist studies, linguistics, and translation studies to offer a cohesive yet broad-ranging exploration of the issue of affect in the language and learning experiences of Latinx youth. Drawing on data from an innovative social justice-oriented university-community partnership based in young people’s social agency and their linguistic and cultural expertise, the contributors are unified by their focus on a single year in the history of this partnership; their analytic focus on race, language, and affect in educational contexts; and their shared commitment to ethnography, discourse analysis, and qualitative methods, informed by participatory and social justice paradigms for research with youth of color. Designed specifically for use in courses, with theoretical framing by the co-editors and ethnographic contributions from leading and emergent scholars, this book is an important and timely resource on affect, race, and social justice in the United States. Thanks to its interdisciplinary grounding, Feeling It will be of interest to future teachers and to researchers and students in applied linguistics, education, and Latinx studies, as well as related fields such as anthropology, communication, social psychology, and sociology.




Learning from Latino Teachers


Book Description

Learning from Latino Teachers offers insightful stories and powerful visions in the movement for equitable schools. This compelling book is based on Gilda Ochoa’s in-depth interviews with Latina/o teachers who have a range of teaching experience, in schools with significant Latina/o immigrant populations. The book offers a unique insider's perspective on the educational challenges facing Latina/os. The teachers’ stories offer valuable insights gained from their experiences coming up through the K-12 system as students, and then becoming part of the same system as teachers.




The Latino Education Crisis


Book Description

Drawing on both extensive demographic data and compelling case studies, this book reveals the depths of the educational crisis looming for Latino students, the nation's largest and most rapidly growing minority group.




Crossing Digital Fronteras


Book Description

Crossing Digital Fronteras is about liberatory possibilities and digital technologies in the classroom. The book centers critical Latinx Digital Humanities to illustrate the ways college faculty and Latinx students harness digital tools to engage in "messy" yet essential active learning and knowledge production in Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) and Latinx Studies courses. With increasing Latinx student enrollment and a growing need for the humanities in our complex world, it is essential that HSIs and instructors integrate twenty-first-century tools into their teaching practices to truly "serve" Latinx students and communities. This book definitively inserts Latinx Digital Humanities into broader conversations about best practices at HSIs, on the one hand, and digital humanities and social justice, on the other. Most importantly, it provides practical examples of innovative, rehumanizing digital pedagogies that give students the liberatory learning they deserve.