scholarly journals Historias Americanas: Implementing Mexican American Studies in K-12 Social Studies Curriculum in the Rio Grande Valley

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 36-63
Author(s):  
Maritza De La Trinidad ◽  
Stephanie Alvarez ◽  
Joy Esquierdo ◽  
Francisco Guajardo
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Social Studies ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
Rio Grande Valley ◽  
Rio Grande ◽  
Mexican American Studies ◽  
K 12 ◽  
The Impact

This essay contributes to the growing literature on Mexican American Studies in K-12 within the broader field of Ethnic Studies. While most of the literature on the movement for Ethnic Studies within Texas and across the nation mainly focuses on the impact of Ethnic Studies courses on students’ academic success, this essay highlights a professional development program for K-12 social studies teachers in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas entitled Historias Americanas: Engaging History and Citizenship in the Rio Grande Valley, funded by a federal grant. This essay provides an overview of Historias Americanas, the objectives and structure of the program, and the ways in which the program contributes to the discourse on Mexican American Studies in K-12. It also describes the frameworks that form the crux of the professional development process: place-based education and culturally relevant pedagogical frameworks.

Gonzalez v. Douglas

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-130
Author(s):  
Christina Acosta
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
Knowledge Networks ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Mexican American Studies ◽  
Communities Of Color ◽  
History Of ◽  
Constitutional Protections

The Mexican American Studies program in Tucson, Arizona, was eliminated in 2011. Shortly afterward, a group of teachers organized to challenge the ban on Ethnic Studies, claiming it was enacted with racial animus and violated constitutional protections. While much scholarship has been written analyzing the bill that contributed to the elimination of the program, a lacunae in the literature has been a focus on the litigation. This article utilizes twenty-one interviews with individuals who were involved in the Gonzalez v. Douglas litigation and successfully overturned the ban in the summer of 2017. Their narratives reveal the importance of what the author terms transformative historical capital, which refers to the transformation that occurs internally when one learns of the tools, knowledge, networks, and determination extant in the Chicana/o community (as well as other communities of color) due to a long history of social movements that sought civil rights and self-determination.

Strategic Leadership

2021 ◽  
pp. 215-229
Author(s):  
Lawrence Scott ◽  
Marisa Perez-Diaz
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
High Schools ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
African American Studies ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Mexican American Studies ◽  
State Board Of Education ◽  
State Board

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the process of building and developing ethnic studies courses, particularly the Mexican American and African American Studies Curriculum for Texas high schools. Dr. Lawrence Scott and the Honorable Marisa Perez-Diaz will discuss their contributions in the passage and implementation of Ethnic Studies courses, particularly as it relates to the African American Studies and Mexican American Studies Courses now offered for high schools around the State of Texas. This chapter explores the inception of both courses, the development, and the process of gaining consensus and concessions for both courses. Both courses were unanimously passed by the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE), but did see some challenges throughout the process. Dr. Lawrence Scott and Texas State Board of Education Member Marisa Perez-Diaz will also discuss how they employed varying leadership styles, in collaboration with stakeholders from around Texas to help establish, pass, and implement the Mexican American and African American Studies Courses in Texas.

scholarly journals Texas Resistance: Mexican American Studies and the Fight Against Whiteness and White Supremacy in K-12 at the Turn of the 21st Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-84
Author(s):  
Josué Puente ◽  
Stephanie Alvarez
Keyword(s):  
Mexican American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
First Century ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Mexican American Studies ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
K 12 ◽  
The Way

This essay recounts the efforts by various groups throughout Texas with a special emphasis on the Rio Grande Valley to implement Mexican American Studies at the turn of the twenty-first century. We offer a historical timeline of events that demonstrates how the Mexican American Studies course came into existence. We also detail the way in which some Mexican American Studies courses were implemented. In other cases, we describe the way different groups were able to offer professional development to teachers to help them incorporate more Mexican American Studies content in their non-Mexican American studies courses or provide the community with the resources on how to include Mexican American Studies at their school. The common theme throughout is an undeniable resistance and mobilization on the part of many, hundreds, of educators, students, and community members to ensure that the youth do not continue to receive a whitewashed education, to ensure that students receive a more accurate representation of history, culture, language, and literature. In essence, the essay details a very hard-fought battle against White supremacy in the schools at the turn of the twenty-first century in Texas in which Mexican American Studies emerged victorious many steps of the way.

scholarly journals Stats, Social Justice, and the Limits of Interest Convergence: The Story of Tucson Unified’s Mexican American Studies Litigation

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 72
Author(s):  
Nolan L. Cabrera ◽  
Robert S. Chang
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
Interest Convergence ◽  
Mexican American Studies ◽  
Legal Case ◽  
The Law

In 2011, the state of Arizona banned the highly successful Tucson Unified School District Mexican American Studies program through the law ARS § 15-112. This article is a Critical Race Theory counternarrative regarding the role of statistics in the constitutional challenge to this state law. Through firsthand accounts of this process, we demonstrate how multivariate empirical analyses served as an important component for the overturning of the law ARS § 15-112 in the highest-profile Ethnic Studies legal case in the country’s history (Arce v. Douglas, 2015). We also use this article to explore the limitations of interest convergence (Bell, 1980) using this litigation as a case study.

scholarly journals The Struggle for Mexican American Studies in Texas K-12 Public Schools: A Movement for Epistemic Justice through Creation/Resistance

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-35
Author(s):  
Lilliana Patricia Saldaña
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
San Antonio ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Mexican American Studies ◽  
Epistemic Justice ◽  
Feminist Scholar ◽  
K 12 ◽  
State Board Of Education

This article traces how Mexican American Studies (MAS) scholar activists led and supported a statewide movement for MAS in Texas. As a Xicana feminist scholar activist, Saldaña draws from her retrospective memory and personal archive of organizational notes, movement documents, personal testimonies before the State Board of Education, and photos, to document her journey within this epistemic justice movement. In doing so, she narrates the processes of creation/resistance that led to change in a state that has historically excluded Black, Brown, and Indigenous histories from school curricula. As a scholar activist involved in various parts of this movement, Saldaña also examines the various interconnected layers of this movement—from local efforts in San Antonio, where she teaches, to statewide organizing—to chronicle the institutional and grassroots processes that led to this historic victory in Texas.

scholarly journals Cinco Dedos: A Mexican American Studies Framework

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-103
Author(s):  
Nicolas García ◽  
Anthony Gonzales
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
American History ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
San Antonio ◽  
Grade Levels ◽  
Mexican American Studies ◽  
Mexican American Culture

Mexican American Studies (MAS) courses have been criticized for many years. Legislation in Arizona and Texas have attempted to ban the content. This article pushes back on this attempt of oppression and offers MAS teachers a framework to apply when teaching the content. Using a timeline to depict the years of attempts for Mexican American Studies to be approved, we offer practitioners and researchers an Ethnic Studies framework particularly with MAS courses. Using cultural art, poetry, and literature, MAS teachers can benefit from using the Cinco Dedos framework especially at the secondary (6-12) grade levels. This framework prepares MAS teachers to utilize various Chicanx histories to tell the stories of Mexican American heroes not talked about in traditional American history courses. This article also provides tools to use in secondary MAS classrooms that highlight Mexican American culture for students provided by a MAS teacher. One of the founders of the framework uses this in his MAS course at a high school located in San Antonio, TX. 

scholarly journals “Warriors, Not Victims”: Precious Knowledge, the Fight for Ethnic Studies, and Accountability to the #MeToo Movement

2020 ◽  
Vol 118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vani Kannan ◽  
Shyrlene Hernandez ◽  
Alexis Martinez
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
Writing Classroom ◽  
Student Activists ◽  
Mexican American Studies ◽  
Sexually Assaulted

This article shares an upper-division writing course's struggle to be accountable to both the #MeToo movement and the fight for Ethnic Studies in Tucson. These movements collided in our class after we planned a campus screening of the film PRECIOUS KNOWLEDGE, which chronicles the student-led movement to save the Tucson High School Mexican American studies program, and then received news that the director had sexually assaulted one of the student-activists in the film. In this article, collaboratively-written by the professor teaching the course and two students in it, we share our accountability process, and concrete methods for social-movement-accountability in the writing classroom.

scholarly journals Code to Learn: Where Does It Belong in the K-12 Curriculum?

10.28945/3521 ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 283-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesús Moreno León ◽  
Gregorio Robles ◽  
Marcos Román-González
Keyword(s):  
Social Studies ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Early Age ◽  
School Subjects ◽  
Research Designs ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
The Subject ◽  
K 12 ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Grade Classroom

The introduction of computer programming in K-12 has become mainstream in the last years, as countries around the world are making coding part of their curriculum. Nevertheless, there is a lack of empirical studies that investigate how learning to program at an early age affects other school subjects. In this regard, this paper compares three quasi-experimental research designs conducted in three different schools (n=129 students from 2nd and 6th grade), in order to assess the impact of introducing programming with Scratch at different stages and in several subjects. While both 6th grade experimental groups working with coding activities showed a statistically significant improvement in terms of academic performance, this was not the case in the 2nd grade classroom. Notable disparity was also found regarding the subject in which the programming activities were included, as in social studies the effect size was double that in mathematics.

scholarly journals Association of HIV-1 Infection and Antiretroviral Therapy With Type 2 Diabetes in the Hispanic Population of the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, USA

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Carlos Lopez-Alvarenga ◽  
Dora A. Martinez ◽  
Alvaro Diaz-Badillo ◽  
Liza D. Morales ◽  
Rector Arya ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Type 2 Diabetes ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Robust Regression ◽  
Rio Grande Valley ◽  
Rio Grande ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Mean Values ◽  
Cell Counts

The Rio Grande Valley (RGV) in South Texas has one of the highest prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2D) in the United States (US). We report for the first time the T2D prevalence in persons with HIV (PWH) in the RGV and the interrelationship between T2D, cardiometabolic risk factors, HIV-related indices, and antiretroviral therapies (ART). The PWH in this study received medical care at Valley AIDS Council (VAC) clinic sites located in Harlingen and McAllen, Texas. Henceforth, this cohort will be referred to as Valley AIDS Council Cohort (VACC). Cross-sectional analyses were conducted using retrospective data obtained from 1,827 registries. It included demographic and anthropometric variables, cardiometabolic traits, and HIV-related virological and immunological indices. For descriptive statistics, we used mean values of the quantitative variables from unbalanced visits across 20 months. Robust regression methods were used to determine the associations. For comparisons, we used cardiometabolic trait data obtained from HIV-uninfected San Antonio Mexican American Family Studies (SAMAFS; N = 2,498), and the Mexican American population in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (HHANES; N = 5,989). The prevalence of T2D in VACC was 51% compared to 27% in SAMAFS and 19% in HHANES, respectively. The PWH with T2D in VACC were younger (4.7 years) and had lower BMI (BMI 2.43 units less) when compared to SAMAFS individuals. In contrast, VACC individuals had increased blood pressure and dyslipidemia. The increased T2D prevalence in VACC was independent of BMI. Within the VACC, ART was associated with viral load and CD4+ T cell counts but not with metabolic dysfunction. Notably, we found that individuals with any INSTI combination had higher T2D risk: OR 2.08 (95%CI 1.67, 2.6; p < 0.001). In summary, our results suggest that VACC individuals may develop T2D at younger ages independent of obesity. The high burden of T2D in these individuals necessitates rigorously designed longitudinal studies to draw potential causal inferences and develop better treatment regimens.

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