Recently, my mother mentioned that my grandmother and my great-grandmother never drove a car. “Really? Why not?” I asked. She replied, “Well it just wasn’t done.” In those days, no one expected a woman to drive a car.
This got me thinking about the reactions we received from people when we first started working on creating college options...
I have no recollection of being brought to the United States; after all I was a 4-year-old child. Growing up I had the good fortune of being raised in an environment that never forced me to think about citizenship in terms of documentation and social security numbers. I attended elementary schools where children of different races learned and...
Unlimited Potential is a small family center in South Phoenix that for 27 years has been educating and empowering economically challenged, undereducated families. Currently most of the parents and children they work with are first and second generation Mexican immigrants. Towards this end they provide an array of services...
With continued awe at the potential of a second term, I watched the President’s inauguration on January 21, 2013. Fittingly, the day coincided on the same day of our nation’s observance and celebration of an inspired leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Partnership for Community Action (PCA) is an advocacy and education organization that engages New Mexicans in learning about the issues that most affect their lives and encouraging them to get involved in civic life. We work at two levels for maximum impact. In communities, we help people develop as leaders to create...
For decades Latinas/os have been called ‘the sleeping giant’ because of their dormant collective political and economic promise. We saw a glimpse of this promise during the 2012 November elections as 71% of Latina/o voters helped re-elect President Obama,...
In 2002, when President George W.
On December 14, 2012, Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut came under siege. Not unlike the Columbine, Colorado shooters some thirteen years earlier, the only definitive truths we seem to know about Adam Lanza are that he was young, computer knowledgeable, and dressed in dissident fashion as he used automatic weapons to kill...
Many of us were not surprised this year when the U.S.
“Rachel” was born with Down syndrome. As she approached the transition from high school to adult life, she and her family were faced with many hard questions and difficult decisions about what her next steps should be. Rachel wasn’t able to read, write, or count to 10, so it was not clear to those close to her how she would achieve any level of...
One night around 3:00 am, I woke up to what appeared to be a flashlight beaming in through my bedroom window. I laid silently as thoughts began floating to consciousness trying to make sense of the light, when I heard our backdoor creaking under the force of something prying at it. As a twelve year old boy living with my mother, stepfather,...
For more than two decades, I have been building partnerships with families and schools creating successful inclusion environments for students with a variety of disabilities and diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. In the past eight years, I have expanded the circle of inclusion to create welcoming schools for students who are gender...
What is it that stands in the way of truly empowering educational experiences? Fear. Fear of who we could be and fear of who we are. Fear that others will misjudge us. Fear that their judgments will be correct. Fear of losing power. Although fear may make school equity movements feel slow and fruitless, hope can remind us of the powerful...
I was recently asked a simple enough question, What is the role of the teacher? Initially, I thought, That’s easy enough. That’s who I am. It’s at my core. Of course I can answer that question.
Standard English Learners (SELs) represent a population of students whose ancestral or home languages reflect unique cultural and linguistic histories other than English, and differ in structure and form from the language of school [i.e. mainstream standard American or academic English]. Their languages...
I remember the first day I arrived at Manzanita School in the Bay Area.
Recently I presented an experiential workshop at a wonderful conference on Equity and Social Justice in Education. I do this kind of workshop often but this one stands out not only as a prototype of my work, but as an archetype of sorts. The strand in which I presented was “Othering.”