Latest / New Teacher Talk / Ep 171: How Ethnic Studies Transforms Education: Building Culturally Responsive Curriculum for Liberation

Transcript

Ep 171: How Ethnic Studies Transforms Education: Building Culturally Responsive Curriculum for Liberation · New Teacher Talk

Welcome to the latest episode of New Teacher Talk,
where we discuss issues that are important to aspiring and
early career educators.
We're here to support you in your rural, suburban,
or urban school practice.
My name is Cecily Relucio,
and I am a liberatory educator and the founder and co
-director of Umuwi Ethnic Studies.
Today I'm going to talk about the courage it takes to teach
honest history and why this work is fundamental to the
future of our communities and our planet and how we can
bring others in our community together to stand with us.
My hope is that you'll walk away with a clear and grounded
understanding of why this kind of teaching matters now more
than ever and three actionable strategies to root your
teaching in anti-racist and community-centered principles.
So I speak to you not just as an educator but as someone
who was fundamentally transformed by the uncovering of
truth.
Ethnic Studies changed my life.
In a system where my history as a daughter of immigrants
from the Philippines was a footnote or entirely absent,
Ethnic Studies gave me the tools to heal my understanding
of my identities.
It launched me on a journey of reclaiming the full
beautiful histories of my motherland,
my people and my lineages,
stories that I was never taught in school.
It also helped me to see the histories of struggle that my
people share with other peoples of the global majority
whose histories and contributions have also been excluded
distorted and silenced.
That journey from invisibility to wholeness to solidarity
is why I do this work.
This is what Paulo Freire meant when he called education
the practice of freedom.
It's not just about gaining knowledge,
it's about liberation.
When we teach truth we are offering every student the same
opportunity to see themselves as powerful creators and
contributors to their communities and to building a better
world.
In this moment when there are active efforts to silence and
erase these narratives,
our commitment to telling the truth to Ethnic Studies is a
radical act of love.
It is the essential foundation for a multiracial democracy
that centers the humanity of everyday people and not the
interests of billionaires and corporations.
Ethnic Studies is the antidote to the division and
supremacy thrives on ignorance and fear.
So how do we find the courage for this work and what does
it look like in practice?
I want to share three strategies that you can use right
away and throughout your career.
The first is to build your why sanctuary.
Grab a notebook, write down your core why.
For me it's rooted in the love,
truth seeking and healing I found with Ethnic Studies.
It's rooted in my belief that another world is possible and
that we can build that world in the here and now.
What's your why?
Or visit that why whenever you feel doubt, fear or despair.
The second strategy is to commit to your own learning and
unlearning throughout your lifetime.
We must be active learners ourselves if we want young
people to do the same.
We must recognize the gaps in our knowledge and see them as
an opportunity to expand our worldviews.
Study histories told through an anti-oppressive lens.
Ask critical questions.
Who is hoarding power and resources?
Who has been harmed and what is owed to them?
How have everyday people throughout history come together
to demand equity and justice?
So for example,
instead of just learning that redlining happened,
learn about its specific mechanisms in your own city or
state using a resource like the Mapping Inequality Project.
Then trace the direct lines from those historical policies
to the wealth and opportunity inequality that we see today.
Talk with everyday people about their experiences with
housing inequality and instability and make connections
from the individual to the systemic.
This is how history moves from the abstract to the urgently
relevant.
There are so many things that we can do to learn and
unlearn.
Follow historians and educators of color on social media.
Stay updated on current events through independent news
outlets, not corporate media.
Read books like An Indigenous People's History of the
United States and Original Sins.
Stay curious and cultivate your critical literacy.
This isn't extra credit.
It's essential preparation in order to be ethical,
responsible educators.
The third strategy is to build your culturally responsive
and anti-racist curriculum,
drawing from what's already available and creating your
own.
For instance,
when teaching about the founding of the United States,
instead of a one-sided Eurocentric celebratory narrative,
incorporate the framework of settler colonialism.
Don't reinforce false narratives of European discovery.
Teach the truth about the violence of conquest and
colonialism.
Examine the Northwest Ordinance as a document that
explicitly laid the groundwork for displacing Native
nations and transferring their land to settlers.
Pair this with the Treaty of Fort Wayne as a case study of
the hundreds of treaties that were often negotiated under
duress or through deception and then violated by the U.S.
government.
We are long overdue for education that provides a complete,
systemic understanding of how our education was built,
which is essential for understanding the present.
Organizations like the Zinn Education Project and Learning
for Justice offer powerful, well-researched,
and historically grounded open source unit and lesson
plans.
The Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium
provides a transformative framework and curriculum
resources.
There is already so much available to us.
You don't have to start from scratch.
And you can also create your own curricula that is relevant
to your students and to you.
So I want to acknowledge that doing what is right and just
is not a smooth and easy path and it can be met with great
resistance.
This work can feel isolating and overwhelming.
The greatest tool,
the greatest antidote to feeling isolated and overwhelmed
is finding and leaning on community.
Find colleagues and co-conspirators,
engage parents proactively, and center student concerns,
voices, and power.
Share your why like I shared mine with you.
Because when you speak from a place of personal and
professional conviction, it builds trust,
it inspires others, and it creates powerful allies.
Teaching truth is the heart of education as the practice of
freedom.
It is healing work.
It requires courage,
and it is courage that we can cultivate together.
We must remember that there are many of us who believe in
fairness, equity, and justice,
and there is power in our numbers.
These past few months,
I've seen courage manifest in ways that sustain my hope.
My city, Chicago,
is a city under occupation by federal forces.
A few weeks ago,
my daughter texted me that immigration and customs
enforcement officers were on her school campus and that the
school was on lockdown.
She asked what we could do to prevent students from being
abducted and to live.
Within just a few hours, educators, families,
and community members mobilized at the school to ensure
safe passage for students.
Parents and community members showed up that afternoon to
ensure every student could walk to public transportation,
feeling supported and protected, or could get a ride home.
We didn't just talk about caring, we embodied it.
We stepped into our power.
We became a living curriculum of what it means for a
community to stand together and to care about other
people's children as though they were our own.
That is the community-rooted action we are all capable of.
Your classroom, your PTA meeting, your union,
your school board,
these are all places where you can plant these seeds.
This week, find your version of safe passage.
Write down your why,
explore the liberated ethnic studies model curriculum
consortium website,
and have a courageous conversation with a colleague or a
parent.
Build your circle, take those first steps,
and then keep going.
Thank you for the vital work that you do every day.
Keep standing for truth, for justice, for love,
and for our very humanity.
Thank you.
Thanks for spending time with us on New Teacher Talk today.
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