TRANSFORMATIVE PRAXIS: A VIEW FROM THE GROUND UP

Regeneraciónthe Association of Raza Educators Quarterly Spring 2010 • Volume 1, Number 3

Striving for TruePraxis to ReclaimPublic Education

www.razaeducators.org

IN THIS ISSUE:Dr. Pedro Noguera, speechDr. Antonia Darder, speechTeachers Talk BackAction-ResearchCultura: Hip Hop Activist Olmeca

Regeneraciónthe Association of Raza Educators Quarterly

Introduction to the Third Issue

Page 1

Introduction to the third Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Statement by the A.R.E. State Concilio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Speech, Dr. Antonia Darder. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Speech, Dr. Pedro Noguera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . 8Action-Research, Arturo Molina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Teachers Talk Back / Essays Jerica Coffey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Patrick Camangian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Angela Aguilar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22Contribution, Unión del Barrio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24Features Artist-Activist: Olmeca. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26Call to Progressive Educators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28A.R.E. Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Striving for True Praxis to Reclaim Public Education

Regeneración, the Association of Raza Educators Quarterly, borrows its name from Ricardo Flores Magón’s Regeneración, the revolutionary newspaper

Ricardo Flores Magón

published during early 1900s as a voice against the Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz. In the spirit of Magón’s vision for a people’s newspaper and press, Regeneración is a medium where educators and community organizers provide analyses on educa-tion issues and reports of struggles on the ground.

This third issue, titled “Striving for True Praxis to Reclaim Public Education,” engages the reader in a serious conversation on the meaning of social justice in education and the significance for educa-tors struggling against the recent tide of oppressive education reforms. The set of articles and speeches aim, one way or another, to “reclaim” public education. Borrowing from indigenous projects, to “reclaim” means to take back what was wrested through colonial / capitalist State forms, and to reinvent it from the “bottom up.” For progressive educators, this means re-taking the art of pedagogy from State occupation and recon-necting education within a broader process of community self-determination.

The issue includes speeches by scholar-activists Antonia Darder and Pedro Noguera. These are complemented by teacher narratives of liberatory pedagogy across different educational spaces. The last article, written by members of Unión del Barrio, pushes us to think about the distinction between “progressive” and “revolutionary” educators.

For this issue, Olmeca is our featured artist-activist.

The Association of Raza Educators was established to uphold the rights and liberties of the Raza* community.

Education is essential to the preservation of civil and human rights. It provides the foundation for all political and economic progress and it must be a basic right of all people. Making this right a reality is the fundamental objective of A.R.E.

Raza has been and continues to be oppressed by the educational system within the United States. Therefore, we are obligated to ensure that education serves as a tool for the liberation of our community.

* Raza is a term used to represent all oppressed people of color.

A.R.E. Mission Statement

Contents


Page 2Striving for True Praxis to Reclaim Public Education

TRUE PRAXIS: EDUCATORS, STUDENTS, AND PARENTS/COMMUNITY, WITH THE CAPACITY TO FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE SOCIETY

Statement by the A.R.E. State Concilio

With the 4th Annual Association of Raza Educators (A.R.E.) Confer-ence around the corner (May 15, 2010) we continue the struggle to build a local, state, and nationally organized teacher’s movement. With the onslaught of cut backs to public education, which are historical in magni-tude and scope, many have come to believe that a growing mass teacher movement is on the horizon. Unfortunately, the reality is somewhat different. As critical educators and community organizers, we often ask ourselves: what do educators need to get involved in community activ-ism? Why won’t teachers organize, even when they are losing their jobs? Why won’t they fight to reclaim their profession? Perhaps we have been misled by our own idealism of seeing an increase in teachers committed to community struggle and teachers’ unions taking the lead to reclaim public education. As an organization, A.R.E. is attempting to figure out the answers to building a mass base movement of educators. For us, one thing is fundamental to this struggle: we need to build organizational capacity; without organization our individual efforts will not have any real impact in improving social justice and equality within our communi-ties, which is the primary aim of Public Education. Currently, with the gubernatorial seat up for grabs in California, one of the rhetorical points that politicians from all sides of the political spectrum are raising is that they promise to “fix education”. Isn’t this the age old “broken record promise” we’ve had from every single elected governor since Ronald Regan entered office as state governor in 1967? History explains to us how “privatization” and budget cut backs have been used by the elites (the rich, corporations, politicians, etc.) as a means by which to de-fund public education, and thus impede the progress of social justice and equality. These attacks against the poor and Raza

communities have been taking place since the 1970s state economic recession and increased during the 1990s Pete Wilson regime, and have now hit a high point during the decade of the Terminator, whose policies have pretty much said “hasta la vista” to every public service that would benefit the poor –but clearly gives “corporate America” (capitalist thieves) the ability to take over more and more publicly owned institutions, one of the most important being education. Whatever advances have been made in California, and whatever roads towards progress may have been paved by the legacy of the Civil Rights and “People’s Power” movements of the 1960s and 70s, the masses (workers and poor) of the oppressed nationalities (Mexican-Raza, African, Asians, and Pacific Islanders), as well as those few who have been inte-grated into the new professional middle class, are experiencing a complete set back akin to a pre- 1957 Brown v. Board of Education society. The system has been quite effective in miss-informing and blinding teachers and students alike, into believing that things will get better. The state has been excellent at the game of erasing historical memory. For example, witness the current trends in school districts across California, which have instituted hiring freezes, increased student to teacher ratios in the lower and upper grades, the reduction of guidance counselors (the Los Angeles Unified School District has declared a 1 to 1000 ratio of counselors to students!), a halt on Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA), and a reduction in teacher salaries. All of this done with the objective of “helping” to balance the “budget crisis”; a crisis that in fact is a budget mismanagement and white-collar robbery that has come about through the greed and plain thievery of Wall Street via the economic and political system (capitalism) that sustains mass wealth inequality. (Private industry capital accumulation in California is approximately $1.8 trillion per year: the education budget deficit is a very small fraction of that wealth!). So, let’s say that in five years school districts recover from their current crisis and they open new teaching positions, the student to teacher ratio is reduced, COLA is reinstated, and budget is “balanced” –will we then believe that education is great and that we have made progress? The fact



of the matter is that we will be either back were we started or yet again we are further behind where we were several years ago. This is the historical and present question that we need to resolve. Educators must develop a historical and political consciousness, so we can better understand where we’ve been, the steps we’ve taken back, and where we need to go. For this to happen, we believe that educators, students, and parents/community must create the capacity to fundamen-tally change society. We say that educators and the community must critically reflect on the current situation and that this crisis awakens us to the reality that the solution to our problems comes from exerting our power of self-determination. Otherwise the only thing we can expect for the future is poverty, alienation, and injustice for our children, communities, and teachers. On May 15, 2010 the A.R.E. San Diego chapter is hosting our annual conference, “Striving for True Praxis to Reclaim Public Education,” where we will put theory into action. Educators, students, and our communities already experience limited access to education, as it is undermined at all levels. For us, reclaiming education has meant creating our own educational spaces. We welcome teachers, students, and the general community to attend the conference. We would like to thank and recognize our membership throughout the state for their continued commitment. We would also like to thank our allies who believe and support our efforts. ¡Venceremos!

A.R.E. State Concilio

¡YA BASTA! The Time for Change is Now!*

Antonia DarderUniversity of Illinois Urbana Champaign

*Editor’s note: Keynote speech delivered at the 2nd Annual A.R.E. Confer-ence held at Lincoln Hgh School, San Diego, CA.

I’m going to begin this morning’s remarks with a poem, entitled “Changing Women”, which is dedicated to the mujeres, mis hermanas, especially las mas viejitas, in honor of our contributions to the struggle:

We are of the generation of women who venturedbeyond boundaries;who embrace intellect,who relish passion.who dream of justice. We are of the generationof women who rejectedthe narrow limits;who trample on conformity,who spit on subjugation,who dream of freedom. We are of the generationof women who transgressedthe holy scriptures;who dare to speak;who caress untouchables,who dream deliverance. We are of the generationof women who enduredthe punishment;who wrestle fears,who defy solitude,who dream liberation. (Darder 2002)



I spent some time thinking about what I could offer you in this short time. In the process, I found myself contending with the death of a close friend, the death of my student’s father on the day before she defended her dissertation, and then this week, a Chicana colleague died suddenly of a heart attack at 49. Leaving us thunderstruck, trying to make sense of it all. It made me contemplate about how institutions of learning have become, for many of us, institutions of death. Whether that be physi-cal death, intellectual death, emotional death, or spiritual death.

As Raza, we know that the conditions within schools are not conducive to our survival, the survival of our students, or the survival of our communities.

No matter how you slice it, oppression is about the chipping away at our humanity and the stripping away of our dignity, as we are ushered into an existence of wholesale deception and an alienation from our bodies

and nature around us. Everywhere, capital rules and affluence tempts us away from our sense of oneness and belonging. No where is this more evident than in public schools where teachers’ labor and in the communi-ties in which our children grapple to make sense of life and struggle to survive into adulthood. As Raza, we know that the conditions within schools are not condu-cive to our survival, the survival of our students, or the survival of our communities. Our cultures, histories, and languages are invaded each day, through assimilative practices of literacy that numb teachers and students, causing everyone to disengage or forcefully reject a culture of schooling that negates the spirit and maligns the power of intellect. Our human sensibilities, as both teachers and students, are trampled and pummeled by educational policies and practices that are irrelevant to the conditions and realities that students, families, and their communities face each day.

Conditions that Thwart Community Well-being

In disenfranchised Raza communities across the country it is not unusual to find some, if not all, the following conditions at work-conditions that function to thwart the well-being of unemployed and working populations.

• Unacknowledged racism, sexism, and homophobia are interlaced in the deeply embedded and hidden curriculum of one-size fits all schooling in capitalist America—inequalities that are intensifying as the crisis of capitalism advances, hurling us further into peril. The price of food is rising astronomically and in different parts of the world we are hearing about food riots. Workers everywhere are exploited and subsumed by working conditions devoid of justice, in the name of profit and greed.• Our children are brutalized and socialized into subordination through the cruelty of high stakes testing and a teach-to-the-test curricu-lum that has little to do with education and everything to do with exploita-tion and domination. This is a curriculum that prepares them for compla-cency, subordination, or incarceration.• Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE—take note of the acronym, which in some communities connotes termination) raids, carried out under the guise of criminal clean up, breed fear and uncertainty in our neighborhoods. Families and teachers are left to contend with the logical anxieties and rage that such action fuels in our children and our youth. Yet, immigrant students are expected to accommodate and somehow learn and excel despite the injustices they and their families are subjected to each day. What is often ignored, here, is that undocumented immigrants are actually well integrated into the US capital wage system. They are not an anomaly. Rather, they are a necessity for the current form of economic rule to prevail.• Hidden from public sight and debate, there are businesses that deliberately recruit immigrant workers, not just those who are here but even in Mexico. They do this because they know that immigrant workers labor hard for low wages and without benefits. The undocumented immi-grant population actually serves an important scapegoat function—which



helps to masquerades class exploitation. Another way to think about this is, who does all this alarmist anti-immigrant rhetoric benefit, given that over 37 million or over 12% of the US population today lives below the poverty line and millions more are struggling to survive? This includes 40% of whom are “white”—the largest number of poor people in this country?• In poor Raza communities as in other communities of color, racialized profiling of youth, court abuses, forced

detainment and stereotypical notions normalize persistent police brutality. School officials and community patrols subject poor youth to the constant pressure of surveillance. Unfortunately, unchecked tension between youth and the police can result in incidences of abuse and even death. This was the case with a young Puerto Rican youth, a few years back, on the streets of Boston. And more recently, with several Black youth in the rural community in which I reside in Central Illinois—illustrating that rural communities are not the idyllic havens for youth of color, they are often purported to be.• In a world fueled by the politics of neoliberalism, everything becomes commodity to be sold and privatized. Everything tied to our human existence is given a price tag. Our children and youth are taught to equate freedom and democracy with the “freedom” to buy and sell—in other words, to consume. Meanwhile, major capital is invested in the control and management of colored bodies and the disenfranchised. • And in the wake of a swapmeet of carnage, poor communities are told to “ lift themselves up by the boot strap” and “to be accountable.” Working communities are told by the wealthy and powerful, through their middle managers, that “too much aid corrupts the spirit of competition and makes people complacent and lazy.” Funny how this adage is seldom turned toward corporations, who have been bailed out by the government of millions of dollars of bad debt, time and times again, for fear that the

economy will collapse. But the question we must ask is: Whose economy? What no one seems to take note is that for disenfranchised communities everywhere, the economy has been in perpetual collapse. • Meanwhile, most teacher education programs across the country teach with blinders on, remaining recalcitrant in their structures and prac-tices of racism, sexism, class privilege, homophobia, heterosexism, and disablism, through programs that socialize student teachers into the wretched and indiscriminant disembodiment of knowledge. Teaching with blinders only leads to a horrendous misreading of those whom they refuse to know. • Yet, when a grant for “diversity” comes across the table, the same blind educators suddenly are experts in the language of multiculturalism. They are such experts that, at this point, educators from Black, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Vietnamese, Dine, Pueblo, and other communities of color are no longer required. Schools and universities now have their own neat and clean, sterilized, multicultural resource person, who churn our a curriculum entangled in the narrow strictures of identity politics, rather than in the multifaceted identities that emerge from living histories that cry out for decolonization.• Since the late 1980’s, an increasing number of men and women from working class and racialized communities have lost their civil rights, as a consequence of felony convictions and massive rates of incarceration. The level of surveillance within many public schools, including armed personnel, has made them paragons of the Security State. This control and management of students is directly tied to the reproduction of colonizing practices that preserve the interests of the powerful. Under the guise of “School Resource Officers,” school officials scared to death of youth of color, are fueled with alarmist rhetoric. The consequence is the policing, surveillance, and branding of our children as criminals, for the very same or lesser acts that in affluent schools are chalked up as “youth pranks” or “boys will be boys.” Moreover, for adolescent behaviors for which affluent parents of youth simply receive calls from school officials, youth from racialized and class apartheid communities have school officials who call the police in for their containment and/or arrest. Is it no wonder that poor



and working class youth of color is these schools exist enraged and dispos-sessed? • Most recently, a militarizing wave has sought hungrily to absorb poor and working class youth into the armed forces, through unchecked high school military recruitment. This militarized culture of schooling normalizes military recruiting on high school campuses. This practice constitutes a de facto military draft that is kept just below the radar screen, allowing the government to feign itself as a peace-loving nation, when in fact these recruiters prey on our youth, seducing them with “be all you can me” sloganeering. The truth of the matter they don’t give a damn about our youth and our communities—as always, poor and working class have been recruited as fodder for the military wars of the wealthy.• Already over 500 billion dollars have been spent on the Iraq war, not including the billions that will be spent salvaging broken bodies, broken minds, broken hearts, and broken spirits when these young soldiers return. Many who are working class and poor; young people who saw no other door of escape from the poverty other than through military service. Meanwhile, the economic safety net for the most disenfranchised has been eroded. It seems that the government can always find money for war, but cannot scrounge up a pittance of the dollars spent on war expen-ditures to clothe, feed, and care for the most vulnerable populations in this country—a huge number that are women and children. And people ask us, why we are so angry?

On Political Dissent

Here I want to say a few words about political dissent. We exist, today, in a world that attempts to squelch the voices of difference and stifle the historical participation of those that refuse to consent to the tyranny of injustice. Increasing actions have been taken against protestors and dissent-ers. In 2005 a Flag Amendment was passed that made burning the American flag a felony. In 2002, Joseph Frederick unveiled a 14-foot paper sign declar-ing “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” Although he was on a public sidewalk outside his Juneau, Alaska, high school, he was suspended. The case was to reach the

Supreme Court, where the court’s decision drew a murky line between advocacy of illegal conduct and political dissent. Given this repressive moment in history, it is so important that we, as world citizens, take on issues of social justice in a serious, forthright, and sustained manner. Emancipatory principles of life make it impossible to deny that dissent is an essential political ingredient for the evolution of a just democratic society. This is particularly so when we must contend with institutional conditions that marginalize, exclude, and repress our exis-tence. But the truth is that dissent is, in fact, absolutely necessary to the enactment of democratic principles, particularly within a nation so diverse as the United States. A politics stripped of the creative and transformative fuel of dissent leaves the powerful unaccountable, to run roughshod over the interests, needs, and aspirations of the majority of the world’s popula-tion, irrespective of what is said in the public arena. I want to advocate for a revolutionary love which compels us to dissent; to become part of a decolonizing culture that cultivates human connection, intimacy, trust, and honesty, from our bodies out into the world. The moral and the material are inextricably linked here. And as such, our politics must integrate love as an essential ingredient in the struggle for a just society. It is a love that is grounded in the interdepen-dence of our human existence. It is precisely a commitment to such a principle of love that has been the political anchor for generations of students, workers, women, and other oppressed communities around the world. Many who have dissented under the most dangerous and cruel conditions, armed principally with a burning desire to create a world where social justice and human rights are the impetus for our labor and relationships, rather the bloody profits that sustain exploitation, powerlessness, and human suffering. Yet, no form of political dissent or emancipatory struggle can exist in a vacuum. It requires connection, dialogue, and solidarity. It is precisely for this reason that we can safely say that the struggle for justice consti-tutes one of the most powerful pedagogical dynamics in the history of humankind. At each stage of our collective political engagement, knowl-



edge, power, and difference challenge us to grow; demanding from us respect, humility, and faith in our capacity, as individuals and social beings. Truly, examples of political dissent exist everywhere, including right here in this conference. This is a community of educators, rich in a legacy of radical collective struggles and a will to persevere, despite what may seem the worst odds. Students, workers, teachers, parents, and others who embody the passion of justice, clear-sighted and unambiguous in our political intent, discover through our labor and unity, the collective power our humanity. For over 50 years our communities have experienced double digit high school drop out rates and double digit unemployment, even during the so-called economic boom of the late 90’s. The prison population is not only the largest in the world but also overwhelmingly of color. The prison population in number constitutes a nation on to itself, often tripped of civil rights, even when they have paid their “debt” to society. Raza communities are kept weary; often sentenced to death by malnutrition, inadequate housing, poor schooling, miserable or non-existent health care, oppressive labor practices, a minimum wage that is fraction of a living wage, and a shrouded class war that makes racism, sexism, homopho-bia, xenophobia, Islamaphobia, ageism, disablism. These constitute forms of social class and racialized oppression necessary to the preservation of capitalism and its system of economic greed and environmental devasta-tion. I name these conditions to both acknowledge their deep intercon-nection and to highlight explicitly that to struggle against racism requires a clear ecological vision. For example, it is impossible to fight racism without an ecological commitment. Why? Because over 90% of contaminated toxic waste sites are within poor communities of color—which incidentally are associated with learning disabilities in children and major health hazards to our communities.

Beyond Being “Reasonable”

As I consider the impact of racialized policies and practices at the

local, national, and international level, I am reminded of the words of June Jordan: “We are the wrong people, of the wrong skin, in the wrong conti-nent, so what in the hell is everybody being reasonable about?” For over three decades, I have put blood, sweat, and tears into movement work, surviving the entanglements of racism, sexism and class inequalities found in every educational institution for which I have worked. I say this to make a point—if we are committed to a struggle for social justice, collective human rights, and economic democracy, we must relin-quishment “being reasonable.” We must surrender the definitions and meanings forced upon us by an unjustice political economic system. Instead, we must construct our classrooms and communities as spaces of public pedagogy and sites for the voices of peoples’ truths to be heard and where their knowledge becomes central to our work. That is, spaces in which we work deliberately with others toward decolonizing our lives from the excess of capital and ideologies and practices of imperialism, which secure its persistence. This requires willingness and humility to both know and to not know—in order that we might participate in the construction of a revolu-tionary knowledge that struggles without reservations or apologies. Know-ing that the only politics that can transform our lives is one that is grounded upon the oneness of our humanity and a deep respect for our historical, cultural, and linguistic legacies of survival. Brother and sisters, after 30 years of personal struggle, I can say that they are liars or fools who wish to claim that class struggle is dead or never truly existed. Or who claim that social movements are dead or never existed. Beware of the fancy intellectuals or politicians—whether female or of color. Do not stray from your connection with the conditions in which the majority of people exist. Do not lose sight of the fact that the work we do in schools, at every level, must ultimately be founded upon the actual social and material conditions of the students we teach. This means that our theories and philosophies must be grounded upon those conditions, which have resulted in the de facto enslavement and colonization of people everywhere—who have been taught in school to accept that they



are the cause of their own misery. To university folks, I say stop with the nonsense of creating cottage industries from “coined” phrases and recycled ideas that pander to educa-tional elites. To teachers, I say have the courage to teach—to teach from the heart and belly of your knowledge of oppression, even when you’re teach-ing math and science. To students, I say find the strength to forgive us for our weakness and betrayals—and find the power within you to stand up to us with hon-esty and respect, when we trample on your dignity. To parents and communities, I say we need you as the salt of this educational movement, to keep us real in our efforts. And for all of us, I say dare to leave behind “being reasonable” and let us arm ourselves, instead, with history, knowledge, love and the spirit of our emancipation as whole and free human beings! ¡Ya basta hermanas! ¡Ya basta hermanos! ¡Ya basta gente! Have our children not suffered enough? Have our communities not suffered enough? Have we not suffered enough?

Can you listen to tears,My brothers? My sisters?

Like streams of medicineWe offer them as sacrificeUpon the altar of our grief

Take the hidden sorrowsFrom our aching hearts,And sing, into the ancient Wounds, new life

Follow them like warriors On a treacherous path;

Courage is the way back Home to innocence.

Like logs of wood,Surrender them as fuelTo heat the fire of our soul;So, that cleansed by the Agony of our tears,Our children’s laughter grows.

(”Healing Tears” by Darder 2001)

KEYNOTE SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE 10TH ANNUAL TEACHERS 4 SOCIAL JUSTICE CONFERENCE, MISSION HIGH SCHOOL, SAN FRANCISCO, CA PEDRO NOGUERANew York University

It's a real pleasure to be here. I want to thank Teachers 4 Social Justice for inviting me. I'm just so impressed by the turn out. I had no idea that there would be so many teachers from around the Bay Area and the nation attending this conference today.

I was thinking about what I could say to open this conference that could possibly be meaningful to people who are doing the hard work of teaching young people. I spent some time talking with local teachers about the changes in leadership that is occurring right now in Bay Area schools. We discussed how the rhetoric of social justice is increasingly thrown around. Lots of groups say they do work for social justice, they say, "We're for civil rights, we see education as a civil rights issue, a social justice issue." So I thought what I need to do today is to help define and frame what I think it really means to be a teacher that works for social justice. I do



not think the term social justice is something we can just throw around. We must fully understand what it means to be an educator who actively sees their work as a part of a move-ment - part of an effort to promote social justice. I want to start by acknowledg-ing the unpleasant truth: for the most part, our schools are implicated in the reproduction of social inequality. That is the way schools have been created to function in our society. Those who start off with very little generally end up with very little. Our students who come to us from marginalized and oppressed communities are generally not the ones most likely to end up

thriving in college. We know the story all too well: the most marginalized students usually end up being pushed out of school, or in some cases being locked up, or even worse, dying at an early age. Our schools are part of that process of sorting students out, so the idea that schools could be places that work toward social justice is really a tall order. I say this because once we acknowledge that we work within a system that is largely responsible for maintaining inequality then saying that you are going to use that same system to promote social justice, to promote change, to promote transfor-mation in the lives of people, it is an extremely tall order. This means that you are committed to working against the grain and acting in the interest of those who are more often short-changed and marginalized by the system you work within. Certainly you can't do this by being just a regular ol' teacher. When you commit to working for social justice you have to be a super teacher. You have to be extraordinary and you certainly have to be clear about what it is

you're doing and what you’re up against. What does it mean to be a teacher who is able to achieve some degree of social justice through your work? For me, the starting point has to be that you can actually teach. You have to be committed to making sure that your students actually learn from you. Now that might sound obvious. You're sitting there thinking why did they bring this guy all the way out from New York to say this to you. Well guess what, many of the teachers who think of themselves as progressive and think of themselves as being “down” with the kids are not always teaching their students very well. Some teachers are so cool, they're so friendly, they're so down with the kids that their students think they can chill right there in the classroom. This is a tremendous distortion of what it means to work for social justice. If you are truly committed to advancing social justice through your practice as a teacher then you must be focused on what students need to learn. What do you need to teach them and how do you make it meaningful? How do you make sure that when they are with you they come away more skilled, more knowledgeable, and more curious about the world? If you are unwillingl to make sure that your students are really learning, then you are in the wrong business. Lets face it, there are many people teaching who should not be teachers. Many of them do not know how to teach the kids they serve. They might be able to teach in some other schools but they do not know how to teach kids in L.A., or in Oakland, or in San Francisco, or New York - they just do not know how to do that. There is a mismatch of skills and values. Being an effective teacher who can actually teach kids in these urban areas takes a different set of skills. You have to know how to teach and you must commit yourself to constantly improving your practice. This means that as a teacher you must have a lifelong commitment to learning because as soon as you stop learning your ability to get your students excited about learn-ing and seeking knowledge on their own is next to impossible. Unfortunately, too many teachers do not continue learning after they finish college and enter the teaching profession. To be a great teacher one must also be an intellectual. Unless we make a commitment to ongo-



ing reading, to attending conferences such as these, and to seeking out knowledge, after a while you won't have anything to give to your students. Teachers who are committed to social justice see teaching as inherently political, but they also see it as intellectual work. Second of all, if you are truly committed to social justice you've got to become an expert at how to teach. You have to see pedagogy as a craft that also requires constant, ongoing refinement. Too many of our teachers see teaching and learning as disconnected activities. They confuse teaching with talking. Teaching and talking are not the same thing. If you cover the material but your students don’t learn the material from you then you can’t merely say, “I covered it”. The best teachers don't expect their students to learn the way they teach. The best teachers teach students the way their students learn. It sounds so simple except that if you teach the way people learn then you realize that you must constantly modify what you do to make sure they actually learn it; not merely that they’ve learned enough to pass a test, but that they’ve actually mastered the material and there is real concrete evidence that they have retained it. Think about how many students can say, "Oh yeah I took chemistry." If I say, "How much chemistry do you know?" It turns out they don't know a damn bit of chemistry but they passed! They took history and don't know history but they sat through a course. They put in seat time but they haven’t come away with a clear understanding of how history shapes our lives, and they still don’t understand why history is important. When we are teaching with a focus on learning and making a difference we have to stop and ask ourselves, "Did they actually learn the material? Did they come away with an understanding and appreciation for history or math or science?" We must focus on evidence that our students are actually learning and we must be so determined, so relentless and so committed to our work that if they are not learning from us, we call out for help and let it be known to those in charge that despite our best efforts, the students we serve have not mastered the skills, or retained the knowledge that is regarded as essential. You teach differently when you focus on the evidence. You teach differently when you focus on whether or not they get it. You examine their work, you ask for feedback, and you ask your students to demonstrate what

they have learned. This is why we have to be focused on pedagogy. As teachers you have to have a whole bag of tricks you can draw from so if your students don't get it one way you can find another way to make sure they understand the material. Ultimately, we want to create an environment in the classroom where the students take control of their own learning. Where it's not about you and what you do, it's about them because they now are in control. Because they have a clear sense that you've helped to provide a vision of where they want to go and what they need to do to master the material. In the end, that's what we're after: young people who have control of their lives and control of their own learning. We want students who become life long learners, who seek out information on their own, who read in their free time, who do research, who inquire, who don’t accept what they hear because they are skeptical, critical and inquisitive. We want students who see themselves as people who can contribute to the development and improvement of their communities and society. We want our students to be unafraid of the incredible challenges we face in this world at this time because they are armed with intellect, reason and creativity, and they see themselves as problem solvers. This brings me to the third point of what it takes to be a teacher who is committed to advancing social justice through her/his practice. If we’re going to actually help students to learn then we’ve got to know how to relate to them. If you can’t relate to them, if you can’t connect, if they don’t see you as a mentor, advisor, as an adult who can help them to figure out the complex problems they face, it doesn't matter if you've got strong content knowledge and pedagogical skills--they may still choose not to learn from you. Much of what students complain about when they speak about teachers is that they cannot relate to them and their teachers do know how to make the material relevant to who they are. The fundamental question all educators need to answer is so simple but so complex, "What does it take to educate the children you serve?" Think about how simple that question is. Now think about how complex it is to answer. Because to know what it takes, you actually have to know something about the students you teach:



about their lives, about the challenges they and their families face, about how to make school relevant to them. Our students come with knowledge and skills. They use literacy and math when they are not with us, even if they may not realize it. We don't teach kids with empty heads. Part of our job is to connect what we teach to what they know and to make it relevant to their lives. When you teach the way kids learn you are focused on how to make it connect, how to make it relevant. You're focused on how to build the relationships because they need to know you actually care about whether or not they learn. They have to know that you care so much that you want them at school on time, you care so much you're not going to put up with a bunch of bullshit in the classroom because you're serious about what you do. That's why when I go to the classroom and see students that are not doing their work and the teacher is allowing this to happen, I say well this is not a real teacher. You may be their friend but not their teacher. They have enough friends! They need a teacher. The teacher is a responsible adult and our students need to know that we are committed to making sure they learn. Allow me to share a brief story to illustrate this point. I worked with a brand new teacher from a middle school in West Oakland. She was from Teach for America and she fit the profile: young, smart, committed but overwhelmed and inexperienced. One day she approached me and said, "Hey listen, I'm having trouble with classroom management and no one's been willing to help me, can you give me a hand?" I said, "Well, sure I'll visit your classroom to see if I can help." So I sit in the classroom and after a few minutes it's clear—the problem is far worse then she described. There's total chaos in the room, kids are screaming, she's screaming, things are being thrown and no one is learning. I wait until the end of the period and say, "Wow this is bad." She said, "It's terrible. I leave here everyday with a head-ache. I can't take it. I'm about to quit." I say, "Don't quit. Lets go together and talk to the principal." So together we go and talk to the principle and he listens as she explains the trouble she is having in the classroom. When she finishes he says to her, "You're a professional, deal with it." Then I say, "Listen, if you don't help her, she's going to quit and if she quits you're going to have to get a sub for the rest of the year." Sensing that this will be an even bigger

problem for him he says, "Oh no, I don't want you to quit. I have an idea. We have a veteran teacher from this school who has just retired. She is avail-able as a substitute. I'm going to ask her to come take over your class for just a couple of days, I can only afford a couple of days. But she's very good. I think you'll learn some good things from her." The new teacher and I think this may be a good idea. In fact, it’s the only good idea we've heard, so she says, “Let’s try it”. The next day the veteran teacher shows up. She's an older African-American women and I can tell right away that she knows what she’s doing. There's something about her walk, something about the look she gave the students – and the kids can tell right away too. They know the real deal is here today! She starts the math lesson and begins teaching kids. To our surprise the kids are working and there are no disruptions. The new teacher and I are shocked. This is amazing. I can't believe they're the same kids. But at one point during the lesson the veteran teacher sees two girls talking so she stops what she's doing and says, "Young lady, when I'm speaking I want you to be quiet." Then she goes back to the board to write and one of the girls mutters under her breath, "bitch". But it wasn't loud. It was said in a way that would allow you to pretend it was a burp or a sneeze or some-thing. The veteran teacher looks at her and says, "Young lady, do I look like your mother?" The whole class responds with a gasp and say, "oooooh!" The little girl says, "No, you do not look like my mother!" In response the veteran teacher says, "Well whenever you speak to me, I want you to think about your mother." And with that she goes on with the lesson. The girl responds by going back to work. The class resumes its focus on the lesson and does not miss a beat. After a while the new teacher turns to me and says, "How did she know that that would work?" I want you to think about it what does the veteran teacher knows that the new teacher doesn't. She knows, first of all that this is a test isn't it? If she lets that one comment slide, what happens? Disrespect is coming from other students who now think she’s not as tough as they thought if she’s willing to put up with that kind of disrespect. The veteran teacher knows that if she gets on the phone to call for help from the dean she's lost all authority. One swear word doesn't scare her or throw her off because



she knows something the new teacher doesn't -- you know what that is? She knows that the kids know it's wrong to curse at a teacher. What they need to be reminded of is that there's an adult in the classroom who's got moral authority. Moral authority isn’t based upon a title, its based upon your relationship with students. Implicit in her reaction to the student is an understanding that, "You might speak like that some place else, but not here. You're not speaking to me like that." Note that she doesn't address the problem by embarrassing the student or putting her down. She's not going to make this into a battle. She's going to nip it in the bud by saying, "You're going to speak to me the way you would your mother." And then she goes right back to the math. She does this because it's a math class not a class about the names you called me. She is not going to let this disturbance ruin the classroom for everyone else; so she goes right back to work. The veteran teacher also knows that if the kids are engaged in learning they will be less likely to disrupt. The students actually relax and calm down. They can focus on learning when they know they are being taught by a responsible, caring, no-nonsense adult. The new teacher saw this and turns to me to say, "Wow, that was amazing, she's good. How did she know the student would respond that way?” After we talk about it for a while she says, "Maybe I should get out of this field." I say, "well, why is that?" She says, "Because I know that I can't do what she did." Lets face it, a lot of people can't do what the veteran teacher did. She's a highly skilled teacher, with lots of wisdom and understanding about students. We keep pretending that anybody can be a teacher when we know very well that some people should not be teachers! We should help them find another job because they're not cut out for the work. Being a teacher for social justice means you can actually teach kids, it means you understand how to make it relevant to them and that means--building on what Tyrese said--you know how to teach the world, you know how to engage in a kind of critical analysis of the world so that you can make the knowledge directly relevant to them, their lives, their experience so they can start to understand that they don't just exist in the world, but they have the capacity to change the world. That's a different kind of teach-

ing isn't it? To teach like that means we have to understand the way students see things and we have to work with them not to tell them it's different but to show them through what they read and through what they learn, through our teaching. As teachers we cannot be afraid of young people who are empow-ered. The message we often send to young people in the inner-city, in poor neighborhoods and even in some remote rural areas is this: "If you are smart enough, if you are lucky enough, your reward will be to escape. You will get to escape the ghetto, escape the barrio. Your reward for succeeding in school is that you will get to leave your community." We think this will help them, and to be fair, sometimes leaving is necessary. But we must be careful because when we focus upon individual success it means our students have to choose between individual success, versus ties to their family and their community. Why should they have to choose? Why can't they get an education and help their family? In fact, why can't their educa-tion help make their community a stronger and better place to live? For that to happen our students are going to have to have a differ-ent kind of education. They need a problem-posing education, an educa-tion that encourages them to see the problems they face as challenges that must be addressed. Not necessarily solved quickly because the prob-lems in poor communities are deeply entrenched. They're entrenched due to the nature of capitalism. They're entrenched due to the way wealth is distributed and not distributed. I don't want to give a simplistic sense that just because our students are empowered they'll be able to transform their communities on their own. When you look at a place like Detroit, a place like Baltimore where there are very few jobs and opportunities--these are places that are bleaker than even Oakland and Los Angeles--you need to be awfully imaginative, awfully creative to figure out what to do in such places. To imagine that you could use your knowledge, your skills, and your talent to eke out a living that's not based on preying upon other people requires a lot of resourcefulness. But this is the challenge that educators in economi-cally depressed communities must embrace. Education must affirm life, hope and the possibility of change. Education must help our students to



see that we can use our knowledge and creativity to generate wealth and opportunity. This is why education can't just be about depositing knowledge into our students empty heads. We have to be willing to work with them to figure out how to tackle the serious issues and problems facing the commu-nities where they live. I was recently at a high school in the South Bronx in January on one of the coldest day of the year. I show up at the school to go on a tour and I see these students in a chemistry class bundling up to go outside. I said, "Where you guys goin'?" They said, "We're going outside to study the Bronx River." I said, "On this cold day?" They reply, "That's right, we do our samples of the river twice a week. Today is our day to collect a sample." I say, "What are you sampling?" They say, "We're studying what pollutants are in the river, what

plant and animal life is in the river." And then they showed me the chart that they have been collecting over the entire year-

We have to make knowledge come to life for our students and it only comes to life if they can see how it can be a tool to transform and affirm life.

-because they're using chemistry to understand the river and the health of their community. They are learning how to make the Bronx a more livable place. This is why chemistry matters to them because they are able to look at what they learn in a different way because they are learning how to improve the communities where they live. We have to make knowledge come to life for our students and it only comes to life if they can see how it can be a tool to transform and affirm life. Our students need education that provides them with the means to break the cycle of poverty. Poverty is not just a matter of how much money you have. Poverty is a psychological condition too. Poverty is about resignation and fatalism. It’s about lack of exposure to how things can change. Poverty is about learned helplessness. The first big challenge in working in high poverty communities is to get people to no longer see themselves as victims. For this to happen they must see the ways in which they can control their fate. And that takes a different way of relating to young people about

their lives. We have got to find a way to interrogate the world with our students. We have got to help them critically analyze the conditions around them so that they refuse to accept the idea that there are no options. There are always options. Human beings have to create new options when we think there are none. But that activity involves helping students to see beyond and above their circumstances and not just remain submerged within those circumstances. I was asked to go to Rikers Island last spring. Rikers Island is the largest penal colony in the world. In 1984 there was one prison for juveniles at Rikers, today there are twenty-four. One of the teachers asked me to talk to her students, to inspire them. Now I go to schools all over the country in all kinds of communities. The center I direct at NYU actually sponsors a debate program at Rikers Island so I said, "ok, I will be happy to go". I spent the next three weeks thinking about what I could possibly say that would inspire the young men I would speak to. Anybody who has ever visited a prison knows that you have got to go through a lot of security to get into a prison - lots of locks and lots of searches. Finally when I got into the audito-rium, the young people filed in, dressed in their orange jumpsuits. There were guards all around, and I could see from the look on the young men’s faces that they were not looking too happy to hear a lecture from some professor from NYU. So I start by saying this, "Listen, there's a conspiracy to keep you here, there's a conspiracy to keep you locked up! These guards that are all around you they need you to keep coming. Their jobs depend on it." As I said this I could see that the guards were start getting a little jumpy. I say, "There are whole towns in upstate New York that need their prisons. The prisons support their towns. The whole economy is increas-ingly based upon prison labor. So they need you to come, to keep coming back and the research shows most of you will be back here in less than two years. So my question to you is this: "Are you part of the conspiracy too?" The young men looked at me and I saw a few looking at each other won-dering, "What? What's he talking about? How are we part of the conspiracy?" Then I explain, "This system can't work without you, you have



to help them. You have to keep doing stupid shit so that you can keep coming back in here." Well that got a whole lively discussion going about whether or not they were doing stupid shit and who was going to be there long term and a lively debate ensued, so lively that at one point the guards say, "Ok, this is getting a little out of hand. We don't like them so excited." I had them for two hours and at the end I felt I had accomplished something. I'm not sure if I got them inspired but at least I got them thinking, talking and asking questions. At the end of the session the teacher who invited me says, "Look I want you to meet this one young man. Talk to him. He's great at math. He's got a lot of promise. Talk to him." So I went to go shake his hand and he says, "Don't even bother, I'm a Crip for life." And he walked out. I realized then that it takes more than one lively exchange to really penetrate the consciousness of these young men. You have your students for more than two hours. The work that you do has to make it possible for them to begin to see the world differ-ently. To no longer see themselves trapped and limited by circumstances they don’t control. They have to recognize that they do have options and they do have choices. They have to see that if they don't make choices someone else will make them for them. That's what it means to empower students and to teach with a focus on social justice. It means that we see our teaching as an act of solidarity, not as a missionary act. Some people think they are doing our youth a favor just by teaching them. These teachers say, "You know, I could be in the suburbs. I could be in law school but I'm here with you." But students are thinking, are you really with me, or you just a chump making a little bit of money? Are you down with me? Because if you are with me then you're going to help me figure out how to get out of this situation, help me figure out how to help my family and my community. If your with me then help me to figure out how to cope with this situation instead of succumbing to it. This is indeed a tall order, and it takes a whole lot of creativity. So that's why I say being a teacher for social justice is like being a super teacher. I think teaching is a lot like martial arts. Just like in martial arts, seniority doesn't give you a black belt. We have some people that

have been teaching for a long time and they're still white belt teachers - they're still beginners. We have some people who have been teaching for five years and they already have their black belt. You know why because they become masters of the craft they really know how to work with the students they serve. We need more black belt teachers who know how to actually work with kids, who understand how to help them see things differently. And that takes a deep understanding of what's going on in their lives.

Pedro Noguera addressing a packed auditorium at Mission High, Saturday, October 9, 2009, at the 10th Annual Teachers 4 Social Justice conference held in San Francisco, CA. Photograph courtesy of Pocho1.



REBELS WITH A CAUSE: WRITING OUR OWN HISTORIES

By Arturo MolinaUniversity of La Verne

The majoritarian narrative, when describing student activists, is quick to write these students off as rebellious, ungrateful, and as not having any real, well thought out direction as they engage in their activist endeavors. An online article written in the Press-Enterprise about the Riverside, Califor-nia area March 4th demonstrations catalyzed comments by readers which attacked the student activists by: labeling these students “whiners;” suggesting that if they really wanted to go to college they should stop complaining and find a way to cover the cost of the 32% increase in UC tuition; and in some form of twisted logic, some readers found a way to blame all of this on “illegal” immigrants (see Muckenfuss & Zimmerman, 2010). Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for student activists to encounter the same fate within the university setting. Much of the literature written on student resistance is focused on “self-defeating resistance” (Solorzano & Bernal, 2001) where the students’ actions embed them deeper in the domi-nating structures and institutions (Fine, 1991; McLaren, 1993). For example, some on female student resistance have conveyed that female student resistance manifests itself as aggressive sexuality (Ohron, 1993;Thomas, 1980 as cited in Solorzano & Bernal, 2001, p. 310). Delgado-Bernal’s (1997) framework, constructed of four different types of oppositional behavior, helps us critically understand the processes that occur in student activism. Of the four types of oppositional behavior, the March 4th students mobilizations can be characterized as “transforma-tional resistance,” on account that their activism had both a conscious critique of oppressive systems and was motivated by social justice. Students may engage in transformational resistance in order to prove that students of their ethnicity are capable of educational success (Yosso, 2000) or to demand and facilitate change in environments that are oppressive to them (Robinson & Ward, 2001). The March 4th activists

engaged in transformational resistance with the motives of fighting back against the increasing privatization of public education. Interviews with two University of California, Riverside (UCR) March 4th organizers clearly convey that the actions that occurred in Riverside had specific objectives that were much more nuanced than what mainstream media critics suggested. One such objective was raise awareness at UCR, particularly around the growing trends to privatize the university. Students at UCR have been witnessing their campus cease efforts to serve its students. Christina Troung, a third year Sociology major with minors in Peace and Conflict and Labor studies critiqued the university for “capping the freshmen enrollment and taking more out of state students” and stated that the university is taking explicit steps to court these students:

It’s very clearly seen in the dramatic difference in the events and the construction projects [that are being funded] while education is being cut. While [the construction projects] are getting a lot of funding, [for example] the proposal to expand the rec[reation] center, we’ve seen how lavish projects are being funded while education keeps getting cut... We’ve also seen a lot of funding go to enterprise....and invest-ment.

Another goal of the March 4th activists at UCR was to solidify the link between university students, workers, and the community. Dready Valencia, a fourth year psychology major, states that the community, workers, and university students are all adversely effected by the attacks on public education and conveyed the importance of strengthening the link between the three groups:

UC Riverside Students Protesting on March 4th, Statewide Action.



The inland empire has the largest concentration of warehouses in the entire world. There is a humungous service sector that consists of low income people of color. Their children are trying to get into these universities, and it costs a lot of money because they don’t have a lot of money. It makes college difficult because you have to worry about a lot of things, like you have to worry about what you’re going to eat. The [university] is not accessible because its not affordable because in this area the working class people of color are being exploited.

Another goal of the March 4th actions was to mend the apathy and hopelessness that is associ-ated with campus life at UCR as it relates to the attacks on public educa-tion. Given that this action, which consisted of 1000+ people, which is the largest ever at UCR, marched from the center of campus to downtown Riverside, alongside Riverside Com-munity College and various workers unions, the students are confident that the Inland Action at UCR, composed of student, workers, and community members from the Inland Empire, has the ability to raise awareness and organize and motivate the student body to resist the increasing privatization of education that is evident at UCR. Although the university itself is usually characterized as a liberal space, the university is actually an institution rooted in social reproduction that is resistant to change. Evidence of this is seen in the patterns of admis-sion rates of students of color, the treatment of undocumented students, and the blatant acts of racism that recently infected the UC system. Student activists with critiques of oppressive systems and whom are motived by social justice that engage in struggle against unfair practices are often

UC Riverside students mobilize on March 4th. The series of state and national protests were the most massive since the late 1960s.

written off as angry students without direction. A framework of transfor-mational resistance thus represents a weapon against the demonization of activist students fighting for a world that is more just. Many of today’s student activists find inspiration in the stories of past struggles. A frame-work of transformational resistance seeks to safeguard the stories of today’s student activists, which ensures that tomorrow’s student activists will have a well of inspiration to draw from.

REFERENCES Delgado-Bernal, D.(1997). Chicana school resistance and grassroots leadership:Providing an alternative history of the 1968 East Los Angeles blowouts. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. Fine, M. (1991). Framing dropouts:Notes on the politics of an urban public high school. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Muckenfuss, M., & Zimmerman, J. (2010. March 5). Inland students and educators join nationwide protests against cuts in education. The Press Enterprise. Retrieved from http://www.pe.com McLaren, P. (1993).Schooling as a ritual performance:Towards a political economy of educational symbols and gestures (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Ohron,E.(1993). Gender,influence and resistance in school. British Journal of Sociology of Education,14, 96-107. Solorzano, D.G., & Bernal, D.D. (2001). Examining transformational resistance through a critical race and latcrit theory framework: Chicana and Chicano students in an urban context. Urban Education; 36, 308-342. doi:10.1177/0042085901363002 Robinson,T., & Ward, J.(1991).“A belief in self far greater than anyone’s disbelief”: Cultivating resistance among African American female adolescents.In C.Gilligan, A.Rogers, & D.Tolman (Eds.), Women,girls and psychotherapy: Reframing resistance (pp.87-103). New York: Haworth. Thomas, C. (1980). Girls and counter-school culture. In Melbourne Working Papers. Melbourne, Australia. Yosso,T. (2000).A critical race and LatCrit approach to media literacy:Chicana/o resistance to visual microagressions. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.



TEACHERS TALK BACK!

TRANSFORMATIVE PRAXIS: A VIEW FROM THE GROUND UP

By Jerica CoffeyHigh School Teacher, South Los Angeles

A quote runs the length of a wall in my classroom that reads, “We are not responsible for our oppression, but we must be responsible for our liberation…We have the power those who came before us have given to us, to go beyond the place where they were standing.” They are the words of feminist poet and theorist Audre Lorde from a speech she gave to evoke the legacy of Malcolm X’s teachings. Lorde’s words remain relevant and powerful for teachers working to disrupt the status quo in schools today. They are a meditation on transfor-mative praxis—or a praxis that allows us to closely examine our individual and collective successes and failings as we strive to equip our students with the critical literacy and numeracy skills necessary to fight for justice on behalf of our communities. My experience as a Chicana educator committed to teaching in Black and Brown communities has made me aware that without a transfor-mative praxis that we use in spaces both in and outside of our classrooms, we can find ourselves reinforcing the dehumanizing policies and practices that continue to marginalize our students. I came into teaching thinking that my social justice principles and identity as a woman of color under-served in California public schools was something I could draw on to be effective with youth, yet I struggled to make my curriculum and teaching style relevant and engaging enough to reach all students. Like many underprepared educators in urban communities, I blamed the two graduate teacher preparation programs I attended for not encouraging real dialogue and analysis of the conditions students and educators face in schools designed to underserve our students. The blame game did not help me gain clarity on how to approach

developing the critical literacy of my students. It seemed that no matter what I tried, a majority of them resisted. They resisted passively by not doing assignments, or they actively resisted by disrupting class. I dismissed their resistance as inevitable given the constant denial of access to a quality education, as part of the historical disenfranchisement of their communi-ties. However, over time I have come to understand this lens to be counter-productive as it is often used to justify ineffective teaching. It was not until I stopped blaming student resistance on everyone but myself and began to look closely at what was going on in my own practice, that I began to see success and high levels of engagement in the classroom. I learned that it is not enough for educators to be critically conscious. We must also be highly effective and skilled teachers. In the urban schooling context, four interrelated elements of a transformative praxis can help us develop a pedagogy that is both effective and critical.

Seek Out Mentors We work in a system designed to reproduce inequality, so there are no easy answers, quick fixes, or super-teachers who magically reach all students. Talk to most novice teachers working in an urban schooling context and you will quickly learn that they feel completely unprepared for the challenges they face in the classroom. Working in a system that is structured to reproduce a class of exploitable low-skilled workers, we will continue to lack on-going professional development tailored to our needs. Consequently, if we are to become effective with a wide-range of students in poor, working class communities we must find our own mentors. More-over, when these mentors are unavailable to us physically, we must find them in the form of text. Key mentor texts that helped me to become a more effective educa-tor have been the works of Tara Yosso in Critical Race Counterstories Along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, Jeff Duncan-Andrade’s “Five Pillars of Effective Urban Educators” and The Art of Critical Pedagogy, Patrick J. Finn’s Literacy With Attitude, Daniel Solorzano and Dolores Delgado-Bernal’s work on student resistance, Angela Valenzuela’s Subtractive Schooling, and The Dream Keepers by Gloria Ladson-Billings. Sadly, while the theories



produced and supported by these texts should be seminal in urban teacher training programs, I was only exposed to them through my own inquiry and through mentor teachers. Nevertheless, when I used these works to inform my practice, transformative teaching and learning began to take shape in my classroom.

Build Community In the context of the standards-based reform movement with its emphasis on rewards, punishment, and competition, we need to reclaim spaces that allow us to support each other. Moreover, when teach to the test curriculum leaves little to no room for innovative and critical approaches to learning, it is imperative that we work in community with other educators to design curriculum and instruction that leads to a powerful and critical literacy. It is one important way to resist the business model being pushed onto our schools. Moreover, when teach to the test

curriculum leaves little to no room for innovative and critical approaches to learning, it is imperative that we work in com-munity with other educators to design curriculum and instruc-tion that leads to a powerful and critical literacy. It is one impor-tant way to resist the business model being pushed onto our schools.

In addition to collabo-rating on curriculum, we need to have access to each other’s classrooms whenever possible. When I first started teaching, I dreaded the observations that my administrator would do of my classes. Being observed twice a year for an hour was never enough time to get meaningful feedback, and I hated feeling vulnerable and exposing my weaknesses. I wanted to seem like I had everything figured out, but this way of thinking only limited what I was able to offer my students. Over time I learned that doing justice to my work with students meant opening up my classroom to get ongoing feedback from other teachers who share the same commitment to critical pedagogy. For a transformative praxis, reflection is essential but far less powerful when done in isolation.

Creating the professional development communities that we want requires time outside of class, weekends, and summer planning sessions. However, if this is what it takes to become better for our students, should we ask anything less of ourselves? Until every one of our students is successful, we all have a lot to learn.

(re)Negotiate Power A transformative praxis not only develops students’ understanding of power relations in society, it also means that we relinquish our own power in the classroom so that everyone is positioned to teach and learn, including ourselves. While I need to be an expert in my field, I also need to acknowledge the expertise of my students and their ability to make meaning and develop their own theories for social change that can inform our praxis as a community. Similarly, students’ feedback on our teaching and curriculum at the end of lessons and units is one way to develop a praxis that shows students that their voices are a respected and necessary element of the learning process. When the majority of my students are not engaged by a lesson, I will not use it again. While this forces me to constantly rethink units and find new, engaging texts to use, it is this constant reflection and change that I believe helps me engage a broader number of students.

Be Committed To truly implement a transformative praxis, we must commit our whole lives to the communities that we serve. This requires that we utilize every resource we have for our students, their parents, and the community’s benefit. It is an endeavor that continues far beyond the three o’clock bell and the four walls of the classroom as we make ourselves available to students as much as possible outside of the school day. Lastly, those of us who want our students to gain the tools and motivation necessary to fight for social and economic justice also need to be models of this through the way that we live our lives. If we are asking our students to challenge racism, homophobia, patriarchy and other forms



of domination in our classrooms, then we should strive to do the same in both our personal and professional lives. Joining A.R.E. and organizing with educators from throughout Los Angeles County has been part of this journey for me. A.R.E. has provided the space and community where transformative praxis becomes a collec-tive endeavor as we continue to struggle against oppressive conditions in our schools. Reading circles and other activities aimed at political educa-tion ensure that critical texts and larger movements for change inform my work with youth and families. Because very few spaces exist for educators to organize and engage in community struggle, A.R.E. has become an important antidote to the local and national policies that are reshaping our public schools, dividing our communities, and ensuring that structural inequity continues to limit opportunities for Raza students.

UNSHACKLING THE STANDARDS-BASED CLASSROOM

Patrick Camangian, Ph.D.University of San Francisco

We gon’ speak for ourselves…. Schools ain’t teaching us nothing... but how to be slaves and hard workers for white people to build up they shit…. They ain’t teaching us nothing related to solving our own problems…. Until we have some shit... where it’ll reflect how we gonna solve our own problems they [dispossessed youth] ain’t gonna relate to school and that’s just how it is… if education ain’t elevatin’ me… it ain’t taking me where I need to go out some bullshit, then fuck education. At least they shit…. (Stic Man of Dead Prez, 2000).

Understanding Stic Man’s scathing critique of U.S. schools as a sentiment felt largely by a generation of dispossessed youth in “urban” communities, teachers employing critical pedagogy in these institutions must create curricula that are responsive to the articulated needs of young folk strug-gling to navigate the harsh conditions of their everyday life. For anti-colonialists, the relationship between urban communities of color and colonialism in the U.S. is clear – people of color, especially African/Black and

Raza, are impoverished because they have been dispossessed of their resources through their historical relationship with imperial white power (Yeshitela, 2005). At best, a lot of what we are taught in our credential programs narrowly point to issues of race, class, and academic achieve-ment to describe the so-called “failure” of students of color in urban schools. Not enough teachers look to work that recognizes that both Chican@ (Duncan-Andrade, 2005) and Black (Perry, Steele, & Hilliard, 2004) student school performance is negatively impacted by their orientation to colonial subjugation and dominant narratives that silence their experi-ences as historically marginalized people. As a result, “socially just” teachers come into urban schools not realizing

If we are to confront these con-tradictions in our curriculum, we have to channel our stu-dents’ personal frustration and social dissatisfaction against the very social system that un-dermines their existence. One of the most effective ways to do this is by drawing on the very text most relevant to them-their day-to-day life experience.

how oppressive and dehumanizing these institutions are for young folk until they show up and have to confront these issues with their students. The realities of these struggles are intensified when teachers overlook the immediate material conditions and particular needs of historically dispossessed youth. If we are to confront these

contradictions in our curriculum, we have to channel our students’ personal frustration and social dissatisfaction against the very social system that undermines their existence. One of the most effective ways to do this is by drawing on the very text most relevant to them–their day-to-day life experi-ence. As it stands, dispossessed youth of color commonly experience irrel-evant, racially hostile classroom curriculum and impersonal, culturally biased teachers that too often result in high levels of systemically alienating consequences ranging from being pushed-out of school to even falling for



the school-to-prison traps set up for them. As an English teacher, I find it necessary to develop in my students a set of communication (reading, writing, listening) skills and analytical prac-tices to help prepare them to critically make sense of their objective reality, problem-pose our liberation and oppression, and engage academic work that is connected to the needs of their community. Paying close attention to the inter-related conditions that shape their worldviews, I seek to develop curricular units that are inclusive of both school content and students’ lived experiences. I do not do this because I believe in the indoctrinating prin-ciples of schooling, but more so because I do recognize the ramifications of not preparing students to read, write, and navigate through the matrix of these spaces.

Subverting the Master(’s) SyllabusTo subvert the master(’s) syllabus, each unit I plan adheres to the following: 1. Designing units where students can draw from their lived experience in order to study the immediate social conditions that shape their lives.2. Analyzing issues in the interests of the oppressed.3. Positioning students as experts of their own knowledge to culminate each unit.

One way I move students from competitive social orientations toward a collective space in our classroom is to teach them to listen to, understand, and respect one another’s experiences. I usually begin every year with autoethnographies. Autoethnographies are cultural narratives that build towards critical social analysis. It is theorizing from lived experience. Without the critical social analysis, it can be simply narcissistic storytelling. Another way to think of autoethnography, is to look at the etymology of each root word: auto(self )-ethno(culture)-graphy(writing) is writing about yourself as a member of a larger social group, whereas an auto(self )-bio(life)-graphy(writing) simply stated means to write about your unique individual life. For this assignment, students are expected to write and perform a narrative essay that fulfills the following three requirements: 1)

examine the oppressive effects of society, 2) connect their experiences with other oppressed people, and 3) offer a strategy for social change. An example of what this looks like can be seen through one student’s analysis of identity - who he was, what he stood for, and why. In the perfor-mance of his critical cultural narrative, he told a story identifying himself as a strong armed and armed robber from a crew he led named, “Stick Up Kids.” His analysis captured some of the contradictions, pressures and anxieties experienced by many young men of color in South Los Angeles. While the summary of his experience was important, more important was his analysis:

I started thinking, ‘why do I jack people?’ And as I was sitting back watch-ing TV one day, being in the generation I’m in – I’m only 16 – that I try to be so competitive with grown [men], especially [men] I see on TV. I start thinking, ok, so if that’s supposed to be an American dream... when you see a Hip-hop rapper, what’s the image of a successful rapper? You see four or five gold chains, money coming out his pocket – that’s like the American dream where I stay at. Cuz I stay in the hood. That’s as good as it gets. It’s either, you’re gonna play sports, deal dope, rob and steal or rap… Fuck going to school. None of that...

In this assignment, this student started questioning why he was robbing people in his community. The autoethnography unit allowed him to take the time to critically reflect on his identity and gave him the oppor-tunity to question what he believed to be rational behaviors. Turning his attention to the positive qualities of his community experience, he realized he had the potential to use his leadership qualities for something more beneficial to himself and his community.

Bottom line, if I could get the same reaction I got, to do something positive, instead of wanting to [rob people], and have that many [Black men] down for me, and follow my word, like they was, but let’s do something positive.... It’d be a much better place. I know [I] ain’t perfect, or whatever, but ain’t nobody perfect... I know that it all gotta start with myself. I just gotta find a more efficient way to get by on life, just like y’all. So, you know (sigh), I’m hoping those that are real close to me – like my homeboys – will one day realize that we spend so much time and energy into robbin’ [people], that if we spend some of that time and effort on doing something positive, and we seeing the same type of rewards, maybe we could pretty much stop playing ourselves and climb out the grave.

The autoethnography assignment was a small curricular intervention to


Page 21 Striving for True Praxis to Reclaim Public Education

the simple autobiography. Assignments such as these help move students’ thought process towards a more personally responsible and community reflective direction. Teaching in and against a corporate media climate that heavily shapes the identities of urban youth, I designed another unit for students to look more closely at how commercial music informed their worldviews. Specifically, students drew on readings from Gloria Anzaldua, Paulo Freire, Malcolm X, and more for an analytical lens to examine the social, political, and cultural processes through which ideas of race, class, and gender were constructed in the music they listened to. After writing these academic analyses, students wrote poetic interpretations of their formal essays and performed these pieces to the class. In one student’s poem, we could see how his critical writing drew impressively from his profound reading of both social theory and his world:

Castrated minds incarcerated in the prisons of timeIncomplete paths with no knowledge of selfWith untrained eyes we see ourselves as someone elseShaped with the oppressors mold is the image of our soulsThe image of our goalsTo be richTo be famousGo down the list and what you find isThese things are listed under the American dreamWhen we so endlessly chase and don’t know whyOnly way we could explain is that the media put it in our brainsOr should I say the systemAlong with the musicEven what we watch on TVEven our schoolsSee schools produce patriotic foolsWho are then used as toolsTo reproduce their so-called valuesOr should I say, their hegemonic viewsPut it to our heads, this is what they useI pledge allegiance to the flag of the Divided States of AmericaAnd to the racist public for which it stands

One nation on stolen landWhose main principle is division, exploitation, false generosity for allAll means Blacks and Browns in case you didn’t noticeMy bad, I’m sorry, could I requote this?All is the grassrootsRevolutionary troopsHim, her, you, meThe people this nation doesn’t want us to be

Ultimately, both writing assignments empowered students to study issues of privilege, social control, and oppression in society. Sharing their writing through oral presentations is important because we do not want to run the risk of continuing to segregate our students’ from one another. Much of the isolation students experience breeds hostility, and writing alone ignores this concern. Political writing helps students develop social critiques inside of the very schooling context that is designed to oppress them. Allowing students to be honest about the ways they feel about themselves and the world helps them feel comfort-able and open in schooling spaces they otherwise feel alienated from and silenced in.

Revolutionary Teaching Requires Libratory Learning From my experience, there will be teachers who get the impression that teaching practices like these teach students hate, but I argue that learn-ing to re-define reality is as Paulo Freire (1970) conceptualized, “an act of love.” Political teaching is, instead of hateful, a process towards helping students move toward self-actualization–where young folk are allowed to critically learn about and voice their humanity in relation to the history and material reality they find themselves implicated in. This self-actualization is often marked by the very anger and frustration that can guide their new-found desire to change the world one assignment at a time. By no means am I saying that our political action should stop at the four corners of student writing, or the four walls of our classroom. Instead, I agree with Chicago’s Teachers for Social Justice’s Eric Gutstein’s (2006) stance that, “[P]olitical relationships go further. They include taking active political stands in solidar-



ity with students and their communities about issues that matter… providing opportunities for [young folk] to join in struggles to change the unjust conditions” (pp. 132-133).However, as classroom teachers with revolutionary politics, it is our responsibility to create socially and academically empowering opportuni-ties for our youth to learn in their own image, in their own interests, and in their own voice. Dispossessed youth of color are continuing to experience the brutal consequences of educational irrelevance in schools and this requires we connect our curriculum to the daily realities of the youth we intend to teach. Doing otherwise makes our “socially just” approaches irrelevant, ineffective, and irresponsible. If we want to be more effective with our teaching, we have to help them grapple with their struggles in ways that channel their energy against the very social forces that under-mine their humanity as ethnic peoples. Theresa Perry’s (2003) philosophy of writing is applicable here. For her, we must, “Read and write [ourselves] into freedom… to assert [our] identity as a human! Read and write your-self into history! Read and write as an act of resistance, as a political act, for racial uplift, so [our students] can lead [oppressed] people well in the struggle for liberation! (p. 19). To make this type of learning happen for our students, we must find critical and creative ways to use whatever content is imposed on us to facilitate the development of their libratory learning.

ReferencesDead Prez (2000). They schools. In Dead Prez’ Let’s Get Free. New York: Relativity Records.Duncan-Andrade, J. M. R. (2005). An examination of the sociopolitical history of Chicanos and its relationship to school performance. Urban Education, 40(6), 576-605.Freire, P. (1970/2002). Pedagogy of the oppressed. 30th Anniversary Edition. New York: Continuum.Gutstein, E. (2006). Reading and writing the world with mathematics: Toward a pedagogy for social justice. New York: Routledge.Perry, T., Steele, C., & Hilliard, A. (2003). Young, gifted and black: Promoting high achievement among African-American students. Boston: Beacon Press.Yeshitela, O. (2005). Omali Yeshitela speaks: African internationalism, political theory for our time. St. Petersburg, Florida: Burning Spear Uhuru Publications.

RAISING LITTLE RESISTORS

By Angela AguilarBay Area Educator

I work with a kindergarten after school program in East Oakland.Having no formal training as a teacher and thus having only basic knowl-edge of the stages of child development I have learned a lot about what teaching for social justice can look like at the level of early childhood educa-tion. Actually, I've learned quite a bit about our little brothers and sister's. Franz Fanon quotes Nietchze several times when he states that "the tragedy of man is that he was once a child." When I first read this statement a few years back, I pondered over it for quite some time. "Classic" (White) psycho-analysis posits that adult mental illness is, more often than not, a result of early childhood (familial) trauma. As Fanon explains in Black Skin, White Masks, for people of color the trauma is exacerbated by our contact with a white world that despises us, that wants to erase our cultural memory or worse. So how do we/can we, as teachers/activists who work in favor of our communities and against an oppressive and colonizing system, displace this logic that is embedded at an early age in our society. The logic of white, modern normativity, even in our "multicultural" society, is introduced when a child enters the public education system. The answer for higher-education and more recently high school has been the demand and constant struggle for Ethnic Studies and exposure to decolonial theories. So what can this look like for younger students? It is within education that we as Ethnic Studies activists/organizers/scholars can put into practice the decolonial logic that we embody. Everyday I go to work and am deeply disturbed by what I see. First, the community surrounding the school is slowly but surely becoming gentrified and many of the students no longer live in the neighborhood. The after-school program coordinator informed me recently that the home



owners in the area proposed that the school be converted into a private school. I am assuming that most of the immediate residents do not send their children to this school. Second, in the after-school school program that I teach in, the student population is comprised of exclusively Black and Brown youth, with only two staff members of color (myself and the newly appointed program coordinator). Essentially, we have a classic picture of urban schooling in america: White teachers working with Black and Brown

While the rest of the classes are gearing up to showcase African-American "trailblazers" (Rosa Parks, Michael Jackson), my kindergarten class is learn-ing about and practicing com-munity solidarity, love for one another. Specifically, we are learning about the Survival Programs introduced and sus-tained by the Black Panther Party.

youth. Many of us know what that translates to; namely, a lack of under-standing or even a concern for the realities of many of these student’s lives. Some teachers wonder why some kids are so tired; or always asking for second snacks; or acting like "grown-ups", etc. Considering all of this, I was not very enthused when we were given the task of

preparing for a Black History Month showcase at the end of February. I wondered what the White teacher from Vermont would teach his young Black students about Black folks. So, I decided to try something different. While the rest of the classes are gearing up to showcase African-American "trailblazers" (Rosa Parks, Michael Jackson), my kindergarten class is learning about and practicing community solidarity, love for one another. Specifically, we are learning about the Survival Programs introduced and sustained by the Black Panther Party. Some programs, such as the Breakfast for Children program still exist in some form in parts of Oakland to this very day.But teaching this is hard work. No doubt about it! They are kindergarteners after all. Everything in small increments! But for those who have worked with the Pre-K and Kindergarten

populations, you understand that these youngsters have a strong, untapped and often ignored desire to create and invent and have a deep will to be compassionate and thoughtful- all necessary components of what Fanon refers to as "a new humanism." But in school, besides learning how to share, these characteristics are overshadowed by the strong arm of discipline and academic "standards". And for young students of color in urban schools, the issue of discipline and control often times takes prece-dence over ensuring that enriching and empowering curriculum are being taught in the classroom. Even in an after-school program, where we have the liberty to be more creative and loving, some teachers spend energy seeking out negative patterns and characteristics in our children. So what does Ethnic Studies look like in early-childhood education? For the kindergarten after-school program at a school in East Oakland it consists of:

1) High expectations. I have high expectations for all of my young-sters. Just because they are 5 years old and Black and Brown does not mean we should expect less of them. 2) I am you, you are me (In Lak'Ech). An intricate concept/philosophy/theory of the ultimate kind of Love. Introducing Kindergartener's to THEORY! In teaching community the kindergar-ten class is encouraged to build solidarity with other communities. This concept has been introduced to displace the idea of individual-ism, a very modern, colonial ideology that has destroyed land and people. We also learn that theory is not just in relation to other human bodies but to nature. The sun, the flowers, the little squirrels on the play-yard. 3) Nurturing creativity and thoughtfulness. Through art (directed and non-directed), music and thoughtful activities that go beyond learning how to share encourages students to problem solve their own conflicts. Really, with patience, this can be very rewarding for us as teachers and empowering for the students. 4) Encouraging voice—the spoken word. Too many of us remember what it was like to be silenced. Of course there should be some respect rules laid down so everyone can be heard, but I encourage



my students, especially when they aren't following directions or have done something that warrants disciplinary action, to talk about what just hap-pened. They say really cool things. I spoke to one of my youngsters during a time-out, after he hit another kid because he wasn't going down the slide fast enough. I asked him, "What happened? What makes you think its ok to hit?" he sighed heavily and put his hands up, "I don't know! Its like, some-thing got in me!" Me: "Oh yeah, what did it feel like" Student: "It felt like a, a spider or something...it got a hold of my brain and and made me crazy!" And of course, none of this could be done without knowing the histories and needs of the communities that we work in. For this too, is Ethnic Studies in action. Transformative and progressive education should begin at the youngest age possible. It's never too early to teach resistance to oppression. A decolonial consciousness is medicine for everyone.

UNIÓN DEL BARRIO ON REVOLUTIONARY VS. PROGRESSIVE EDUCATORS

Since its founding in 1981, Unión del Barrio has recognized the central role education plays in the liberation of our people. In almost 30 years of struggle, Unión del Barrio members have undertaken a series of community-based projects and political programs such as popular education forums, the constitution of the Chicano Studies Council, Escuela Aztlan, the Raza/Chicano Studies Program, and the formation of the Association of Raza Educators. From this collective experi-ence and concrete work, members from base Lucio Cabañas and base Paulo Freire have come together to reflect on the distinction between progressive and revolutionary educators. The following is a summary of that discussion, which serves to inform and clarify for the reader how Unión del Barrio sees the role of the educator and her relation to the liberation of our people.

I. Commonalities between a Progressive Educator and a Revolutionary Educator First and foremost, we need to state that revolutionary and progres-sive educators have, in practice, more in common than difference. But differences that do exist are sharp and fundamental. In the course of liber-ating struggle, these differences become significant. For both revolutionary and progressive educators, education is

founded on the principle that humans are historical subjects who learn best in real-life activities and in close association with other humans. Teachers are facilitators of learning, not dictators. This means that the student must have a voice in his/her education. Democratic schooling is essential to both types of educators, where the students, parents and teachers, as well as the community, have a voice and are integral to the education process. Both types of educators subscribe to the belief that education is a science, art (creative activity), and politics. Both types of educators assume a holistic perspective on educa-tion: Art, sports, music, and other non-formal learning activities cannot be divorced from education; without these, a human is not really educated. A truly educated person is one that has diverse skills and knowledges (practical, theoretical, community, survival, etc.). Academics must be incor-porated to real-world experiences and activities, where experiential learn-ing is an important component of education. Both progressives and revolutionaries are opposed to what Paulo Freire labeled “banking” forms of education, which over emphasizes testing, rote learning, and drills. Creativity in teaching is central versus dependency on textbooks and standardized materials. In addition, both educators value critical thinking and analytical skills, where students draw on relationships between all subject matter to all things (physical, ideological, and social). Furthermore both are of the same opinion that education is based on social responsibility, democracy, and egalitarianism (equality). The goal for both revolutionary and progressive educator is that education is crucial to the eradication of all forms of oppression and the creation of a better world.

II. Characteristics of a Progressive Educator By definition, a “progressive” educator works with a philosophy and set of ideas that would be called “progressive”. Progressive educators believe in social justice and social change. However, what social justice looks like and how it is attained will be different for a progressive vs. a “revolutionary” educator. Progressive educators adhere to various kinds of



anti-oppressive teaching philosophies, such as critical, feminist, post-modernist, multiculturalists, anti-racist, etc. They tend to believe that change is best achieved within institutions, such as schools. For the progressive educator, the goal of social justice is reform of the existing economic, politi-cal, legal, educational, and broader cultural institutions in our society. A classic exemplar of a progressive educator is the American Pragmatist and educational innovator John Dewey.

III. Fundamental differences between Progressive and Revolutionary Educators Unlike the progressive educator, revolutionary educators believe that the goal of social justice is not progressive change or reform, but a total transformation of the systems of domination and exploitation. This total transformation can be termed a “revolution”. To the progressive educator, community and social activism of the student is important and desirable to education (praxis), but not indispensable. To the revolutionary educator, you cannot educate without social activism. This latter type of praxis is funda-mental. The progressive educator believes in change, but doesn’t see a need to always be active outside pedagogical spaces or the classroom, in the struggle for change. The revolutionary educator believes she must be active in social change; otherwise she is not a true educator. The progressive educator believes that she can change society through a series of gradual “reforms” in which progressive education is central. The revolutionary educator believes that only a “revolution” can transform the existing social order: the purpose of education is to prepare the masses for revolution. The progressive educator believes that education itself is the vehicle which will bring about democracy and equality. The revolutionary educator believes that the ruling class (capitalist/colonialist) will never allow for a truly liberating education that will end their rule over the masses and bring about democracy and equality. The progressive educator understands why the oppressed use violence, but will never justify its use. The revolutionary sees the “violence” of the oppressed against the oppressor as a legitimate means/or right of

To the progressive educator, community and social activism of the student is important and desirable to education (praxis), but not indispensable. To the revolutionary educator, you cannot educate without social activism. This latter type of praxis is fundamental. The pro-gressive educator believes in change, but doesn’t see a need to always be active outside pedagogical spaces or the class-room, in the struggle for change.

self-defense. The progressive educator believes that the elimination of the oppressor ruling class can come about through peaceful means, such as through “democratic participation”, and only on rare occasions will force be necessary. The revolutionary believes that mainly through force and rarely through peaceful means, can humans liberate themselves. Revolution cannot be achieved through “non-violent resistance”, but the revolutionary educator recognizes that within a mass-based, organized

front, non-violent resis-tance can be a tactic of the broader strategy for liberation. The progressive educator tends to believe that the economic back-ground of the student matters, and that a progressive education can overcome the social and economic obstacles in her life. The revolutionary educator believes that the victory of the working class (class struggle) and the destruction of colonialism/racism are

fundamental to the materialization of real education (as opposed to socialization).

IV. Concluding Comments Although we understand that under the current system a revolu-tionary educator would not survive because the system would never tolerate it, one can maintain a revolutionary practice if he/she is organized with others. Our current work strives to unite and organize with other revolutionary and progressive educators. The goals of a revolutionary educator are to overthrow the capitalist system of exploitation and enter



into the historical process of transforming the colonial order of the world. Revolutionary educators propose alternative societies, such as a world where wealth is distributed equitably among all people, the exploitation of workers is replaced with people working under humane conditions, people do not produce for a market but for the people. In sum, a socialist economy and political program. We also understand that in order for this to happen, for true democratic education to take form, we must destroy the current colonial/capitalist system and rebuild a socialist society from the ground up. A democratic education will truly educate and meet the needs and social dreams of our people because it is they who will determine the content and direction of education. Our struggle and that of other oppressed peoples, teaches us that revolutionary educators do not become revolutionary simply by reading Karl Marx or Frantz Fanon, but by standing alongside and working with the people we are struggling for their liberation. For example, a revolutionary educator we recognize and study is Lucio Cabañas . Compa Lucio[1], through his experiences as an educator in oppressed rural Mexico, came to the conclusion that his commitment to his people went beyond the four walls of the classroom and that only armed struggle would change the dismal social conditions of the oppressed, indigenous working communities of Guerrero, Mexico. In contrast, Paulo Freire[2] was a progressive educator in both principle and practice. As we study Freire we learn methods that can lead to the transformation of consciousness but understand that this perspective is limited for what we aim as an organization. In Unión del Barrio, we seek to develop the type of educator that fights all forms of oppression, one who understands that these multiple forms of oppression are rooted in capital-ism and colonialism. We conclude by saying that education must grow out of organized revolutionary struggle. NOTES: 1. Lucio Cabañas Barrientos (December 12, 1938 – December 2, 1974) was a Mexican schoolteacher who became a revolutionary. 2. Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (Recife, Brazil September 19, 1921 – São Paulo, Brazil May 2, 1997) was a Brazilian educator and influential theorist of critical pedagogy.

FEATURED ARTIST-ACTIVIST

OLMECA: ART AS A WEAPON FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

By Ron D. EspirituChicana/o Studies Teacher, South Los Angeles

In the words of the great Chicano poet, activist, and revolutionary Corky Gonzales, “There is no inspiration without identifiable images, there is no conscience without the sharp knife of truthful exposure, and ultimately there are no revolutions without poets.” Local Los Angeles hip hop artist/activist Olmeca is one of the contemporary poet/MCs that most clearly represents Corky’s analysis of culture, truth telling, and poetry as a central role in any movement for social justice. As a Mexicano/Xicano activist who has lived the harsh realities of both sides of the border Olmeca’s artistry transcends national boundaries connecting local and global movements for self-determination, dignity, and survival. His music speaks to the struggles of immigrant families and their fight against capitalist exploitation and police intrusion into their commu-nities. In his most recent album, La Contra Cultura, the song “Pieces of Me” breaks down the global forces that create the need for migration: “And how did we get here, our folks forced out of the country, you must be stupid nobody crosses the desert because they want to, it’s a necessity, a sacrifice for the family, you don’t call them illegals, you call them economic refu-gees.” In other songs like “Ese Dia,” he serves as a journalist documenting the LAPDs abuse of the 2007 May day Immigrant Rights march at Macar-thur park. He roots his messages in popular struggles and rebellions, in songs like “Battalla” from his Semillas Rebeldes album he analyzes the role that hip hop plays as a weapon of the movement bridging generation gaps, inspir-ing youth, and building an empowering consciousness that leads to action. In fact Olmeca’s whole album, Semillas Rebeldes was written and recorded while Olmeca was in Chiapas, Mexico in Zapatista communities for over a year in 2005 teaching arts and skill sharing workshops as well as building



around the sixth declaration of the Lacundon Jungle and the “Otra Cam-pana” of the EZLN. While in Chiapas he also organized delegations for people of color throughout the US to meet and share political analysis and share dialogue with the Zapatistas with the goal of learning strategies and

Olmeca performing during the March 24, 2010 march and protest against the deportations organized by the Southern California Immigration Coalition, Los Angeles, CA.

bringing them back to the US. He has brought the Zap-atista struggle back to Aztlan class-rooms, concert venues, and com-munity workshops. Olmeca’s very name also speaks to the importance of deconstructing our indigenous history and ancestry. By tracing these roots, he argues we can

work towards healing the fractured relationships that colonialism has created and move towards unity in organizing and self-determination. It is these efforts which sets Olmeca apart from other conscious hip hop artists. Yes his lyrical content serves as a “sharp knife of truthful expo-sure” but his activism is also rooted in a praxis where he lives the struggle that he rhymes about. At a Los Angeles immigrant rights march, or a Coali-tion of Immokalee Workers boycott demonstration in Florida, or the March 4th demonstration against the California Budget Cuts you might turn to the side and see Olmeca marching right next to you and then getting up to the mic not just to rhyme but to listen to those present. He travels tirelessly around the nation and continent making stops in Arizona, the Midwest, the North East, Canada, or Mexico working with youth presenting workshops on Zapatismo or “art as a weapon in social change” at dozens of colleges, community centers, and conferences (such as the 2009 ARE state confer-

ence). Locally you can find him performing benefit concerts at Imix book-store in March of 2010 or at Self Help Graphics year after year. Whenever I see and talk to Olmeca in the words of one of his songs he is always keep-ing it moving. It is this movement, this connection to our past leaders like Corky Gonzales and the continuation of present national and international struggles that utilizes culture and music that we need to pass onto our youth so that this next generation won’t forget the many years of resis-tance that has shaped our struggle. You can support Olmeca’s music and find out more about him at www.olmecamusik.com, myspace/olmeca and facebook. You can purchase his albums at Itunes but Olmeca encourages supporters to purchase his music from independent stores in LA like Imix bookstores, Nahui Ollin, Mi Vida, Radio Futura, or The Globe.

COVER PHOTO

The conver photo was taken on March 4, 2010, the national day of student action and protest against the budget cuts and in defense of public education. Cal State LA students marched early on campus and joined forces with students from other colleges and universities on the East side of Los Angeles. ¡Que Vivan Los Estudiantes!



“I know that currently many of our students are suffering while receiv-ing a watered down version of education. Because ‘Students First’ has become a mediocre slogan that no longer means anything: everyone knows students have not been put first. Why have we allowed California to severely damage and drain our education system? It is time to strive for true praxis and Reclaim our Public Education. I challenge you all to make today March 4th the beginning of your struggle and fight back to regain respect for education. Let’s continue with this struggle, let’s continue taking action by joining coalitions that fight for Social Justice, that defend public education and that believe students should be put first. Get involved with community organizations, attend conferences like the one the Association of Raza Educators will have on May 15th (DIA DEL MAESTRO) At Lincoln High. But please don't become stag-nant; don't let the budget cuts go further and take more away from our students. Lets push Dr. Webber to reinstate the local admit guarantee and halt any tuition hikes that threat the integrity of our students goals to achieve higher Education. As teachers and parents Lets take control and have our voices heard.”

- Zulema Torres, educator, parent, and community activist. Excerpt from speech delivered on the March 4th national day of action to reclaim public education, San Diego, CA

A CALL TO ALL PROGRESSIVE EDUCATORS

A.R.E. San Diego chapter joining forces with students and comu-nity members on March 4, 2010. A.R.E. San Diego is a part of FUeL (Frente Universitario en Lucha), a coalition comprised of different collectives engaged in a campaign to demand SDSU restore the Local Admit Guarantee

A.R.E. Los Angeles chapter marching in downtown Los Angeles with the Southern California Immigration Coalition, May 1, 2010, to demand an end to Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and full legalization for all undocumented raza.



A.R.E. Events

For Chapter Specific Events:

Los Angeles Chapter: www.ARELosAngeles.comOakland Chapter: www.AREOakland.comSan Diego Chapter: www.ARESanDiego.com

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P.O. Box 226768Los Angeles, CA 90022

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© Association of Raza Educators

Regeneración, the Association of Raza Educators Quarterly is a publication of the Association of Raza Edu-cators Press. Its Editorial Board consists of A.R.E. members. The views expressed by the authors do not necessarily represent the views of the Association of Raza Educators. Regeneración is published quar-terly, three times per year. For journal submissions or questions, please contact [email protected]. Past issues are available online at www.razaeducators.org.

TRANSFORMATIVE PRAXIS: A VIEW FROM THE GROUND UP

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