CLEARvoz Journal (Center for Leadership, Equity and Research)
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“We Have That Opportunity Now”: Black And Latinx Geographies, (Latinx) Racialization, and “New Latinx South”
Full text linkThe “New Latinx South” is a term used by a number of interdisciplinary scholars to describe recent demographic shifts in a region not traditionally home to large Latinx communities. While this scholarship often posits that examining the Latinx experience in regions of the South will shed light on developing processes of racialization, we argue that more specific attention needs to be paid to the construction of Latinidad in the “New Latinx South.” More specifically, and applied to education, we ask what might be gained by interrogating constructions of Latinidad within school spaces in the South. In this conceptual article, we draw on Black and Latinx geographies scholarship to analyze our own (auto)ethnographic layered accounts about living, teaching, and researching in Maryland and South Carolina. We pay particular attention to how the script (and subject) of Latinx is relationally deployed to mark Latinx as both forever outside the South and as a tool to perpetuate deficit notions of Black students and communities. We hold that in interrogating these relationally racialized discourses we might highlight opportunities in newer spaces to build emergent infrastructures and systems towards more just educational outcomes for marginalized and minoritized youth while guarding against the tendency to unintentionally reproduce essentializing and marginalizing ideas of ethnoracial categorization
“It’s Like Where Do I Belong?”: Latinx Undocumented Youth Activism, Identity, and Belonging in North Carolina
Full text linkThis qualitative case study explores how undocumented students in North Carolina navigate their identity, belonging, and decision-making about activist efforts. Drawing on fieldwork and interview data (2017-2019), we provide policy context and empirical evidence through the voices of undocumented youth about their everyday realities and dilemmas that being undocumented with the benefits from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) present. We shed light on local resistance and the complexity of undocumented youths’ lives as they navigate their immigration status and find belonging in the local community of activists.
An Anti-American Ban On Critique: A Critical Policy Commentary
Full text linkWe are a group of educational leaders who are doctoral candidates and faculty members in the Educational Leadership for Social Justice EdD program at California State University, East Bay. Our work centers around 1) creating shared knowledge about inequities and how they are reproduced by institutional systems, such as education, and 2) finding ways to address these systemic issues to create a more equal, healthy society. This work is informed by multiple critical perspectives, such as critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970; hooks, 1994), critical race theory (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), and Black feminisms (Collins, 2002; Crenshaw, 1989). These perspectives, while varying somewhat, offer a common thread guided by the understanding that the world operates via power relations that privilege some groups while subordinating others; but these relationships, and the oppressions that result, are masked by the dominant culture’s insistence on painting reality with a brush of neutrality and a failure to engage with our history in a way that helps us understand and act on its repercussions on humanity
Commentary
Full text linkSanta Clara University has long been an institution that cultivates knowledge with the goal of creating a more humane, just, and sustainable world.
Ignite The Leader Within: Virtual Latinx Youth Empowerment And Community Leadership Amid Covid-19
Full text linkSummer Youth Programs continue to grow as a way to provide alternative educational spaces for Youth of Color who are often framed in deficit ways and that position them as being “at-risk” or in need of assistance (Weiner, 2006; Brown, 2016). To address these perceived deficits, after school and summer programs have been created and funded to serve the needs of children and Youth of Color, in particular Latinxs and African Americans. The literature often centralizes a pathologizing narrative that Youth of Color need saving (Tuck, 2009) via Summer Youth Programs to “keep youth off the streets” and avoid delinquency (Baldridge, 2014). Recent scholarship points to the necessity to interrogate the underlying racialized discourse that permeates through summer youth programming towards one that acknowledges and centers youth agency, resiliency, and identity. This article presents findings from a study of Latinx youth that participated in a summer youth program hosted virtually through collaboration with the Prevention and Early Intervention Division of the Texas Department of Family & Protective Services, and two universities in Central Texas. Due to COVID-19, the summit was re-imagined virtually and strives to build and nurture a community of youth leaders. This qualitative study also examines and evaluates Latinx youth participants’ (ages 13 to 18) expectations of and experiences in the virtual summer youth summit. Our study questions included: 1) How do Latinx youth learn about leadership through an Online Youth Summit amidst COVID-19? And 2) How does the Youth Summit provide a (virtual) space to re-narrate Latinx youth leadership? Emerging findings indicate that Latinx youth were given opportunities to re-narrate leadership and activism, co-create networks and virtual connections with other Latinx and Black youth, and reflect on their own identities and community involvements.
It Is Not If, But When: Organizational and Leadership Recommendations for The Upcoming Demand for Expanded Dl Programs and Their Articulation
Full text linkWithin a policy climate that is permissive to Dual Language (DL) programs in California and within the social context of the ongoing gentrification of those programs, this case study explored the leadership and organizational structures required to expand DL programs beyond the elementary years. We asked: (1) What organizational arrangements may favor educational success in expanded K-12 pathways? (2) What leadership moves promote the development of cohesion and coherence within and across DL programs? Data collection included interviews, focus groups, and classroom observations with administrators, teachers, parents and students across all 8 DL schools in a large urban school district in California. The primary organizational issues that impacted the program's success were a lack of articulation, a problematic DL middle school experience, weak relational trust, and an absence of professional learning and collaboration opportunities. In anticipation of an increased DL program demand, recommendations based on social justice and programmatic coherence are offered and discussed
School Leadership For Latinx, Immigrant Students And Families: Centering Advocacy And Critical Care
Full text linkThis paper examines the role of school leadership in centering the rights, wellbeing, and identities of Latinx, immigrant students and their families. It is guided by the following questions: How do school leaders envision and articulate their roles and responsibilities in sites serving immigrant youth? How does this orientation influence the policies and practices they enact in their schools? Drawing on a three-year case study of a public high school that almost exclusively serves Latinx, immigrant students, this paper illustrates how a school’s leadership can apply an advocacy approach and notions of critical care to more holistically serve students and their families. As a “site of possibility,” this school and its leadership suggest important considerations for policy and practice in other contexts, especially in a political environment that is hostile to immigrants and in the aftermath of a pandemic that has taken a disproportionate toll on immigrant youth and their families
Bilingual Teaching Practices: Meeting The Needs Of Latina/o Youth In Secondary Schools
Full text linkThis multiple-case study sheds light on bilingual secondary pre-service teacher practices and the instructional pivots they make to deliver content area instruction in Spanish to secondary Latina/o emergent bilinguals. Lesson plans and interviews with pre-service teachers were analyzed to examine the challenges and possibilities of bilingual instruction at the secondary level. Issues such as absence of multilingual instructional material and knowing the academic content in Spanish were identified as obstacles. Yet, the resourcefulness of pre-service teachers to locate materials online led to instructional pivots that allowed the primary language of Latina/o students to serve as a tool for accessing often abstract content
Knowledge In Use: Designing For Play In Kindergarten Science Contexts
Full text linkDecades of research support integrating play in kindergarten to benefit young students’ social, emotional, and cognitive development. As academic readiness becomes a focus, time for play has decreased. As a result, there has been a demand for integration of play with content. This study modifies a project-based science curriculum about how living things grow to include both child-initiated play and teacher-guided play to meet disciplinary learning goals. The curriculum was initially designed to address reform science standards based on knowledge-in-use. We explore how play invites all students to access and understand the phenomenon. The qualitative study involves 18 kindergarteners and their teacher in a Great Lakes state in the U.S. highlighting four lessons during the enactment that emphasized play. Data include observation, audio recording, transcription of interviews, children involved in play, classroom dialogue, and the examination of artifacts. Thematic coding and analysis of field notes, interviews, and dialogue suggest that child-initiated imaginary play and teacher-guided play can promote the science practice, science ideas, and crosscutting concept of patterns needed to explain the phenomenon