Mexican American Studies for Texas Schools Resource Call

Please view this notice for a call for Mexican American Studies resources here. 

Also, please mark your calendars: I'll soon announce a virtual Mexican American Studies Summit taking place on Saturday, October 24, 2020, beginning at 9AM CST. Super exciting!

-Angela Valenzuela

Online Resources for Texas' New High School Course on Mexican American Studies

Friends,

It's implementation time now for the new statewide elective course in "Ethnic Studies: Mexican American Studies."  I imagine teachers across the state working on figuring that out what this means for their classroom curriculum.  Many of us have been working on this for years and we are happy to share with you this online resource so that you do not have to start from zero.

In particular, if you have never taught MAS, then you'll want to link right away to the "MAS Implementation Packet."

Another important link is the TEKS standards for Ethnic Studies: Mexican American Studies.

It's exciting to see that after all these years of struggle, that MAS is finally getting off the ground in Texas as a high school elective.  Now it's time to teach it and also to develop local pathways into the teaching profession for homegrown MAS teachers in order to grow the number of high school  level course offerings for what we are sure will be many students in districts throughout the state who are wanting to take the course.

-Angela Valenzuela

#ApproveMAS #MASforTexas #MASTejas #RepresentationMatters

BUILDING UP MEXICAN AMERICAN STUDIES WITH LILLIANA SALDAÑA & VANESSA SANDOVAL

Friends,

Happy Friday!  I'm happy to share this interview of Dr. Lilliana Saldaña and Vanessa Sandoval from a podcast named "Visions of Education."  Scroll down to the bottom to get classroom resources.  I loved hearing the excitement in their voices as they told both the story and their story.

I have said previously elsewhere that we do not yet have the historiography of when what we know today as the field of "Mexican American Studies (MAS)" got started.  The historical record, I predict, will show that albeit under other names, MAS has probably existed as long as we have lived as a people in Texas after the Mexican-American War (1846-1848).  And it has existed as a way  to combat and  cope with systemic forms of oppression to which Dr. Saldaña and Vanessa give voice.

I just read this just-published April 26, 2019 article that appears in the Journal of Latinos and Education titled, “No Había Bilingual Education:” Stories of Negotiation, Educación, y Sacrificios from South Texas Escuelitas by Enrique David Degollado,Randy Clinton Bell, & Cinthia S. Salinas from the Universityof Texas at Austin.

I am on David's and Randy's doctoral dissertation committees and David defends his doctoral dissertation soon.  Dr. Salinas is a colleague of mine in the College of Education at UT.  

Great work, everybody!  We are making progress!  I will quote my good friend Tony Baez who expresses with wisdom, "The best curriculum is written in times of struggle."

Pa 'lante!  Onward! Sí se puede!  Yes we can!

Angela Valenzuela

In Episode 113, Michael and Dan talk with Dr. Lilliana Saldaña and Vanessa Sandoval about their (and the larger efforts) to create a Mexican American Studies course approved by the Texas State Board of Education.

https://visionsofed.com/2019/04/25/episode-113-building-up-mexicanamerican-studies-with-lilliana-saldana-and-vanessa-sandoval/

Books, Articles and Other Amazing Resources

1. 1. More on the ‘Reject the Text’ movement The Scholarly Reviews are in on that ‘Deeply Offensive’ Mex-Am Studies Text from The Texas Observer
   2. Interested in learning more about about attending professional development this summer? Check out MAS Social Studies Teachers’ Academy!
   3. Some mentioned resources from the episode
      1. http://education.utsa.edu/mas/social_studies_teachers_academy/
      2.  https://mastxeducation.com/
   4. Here are flyers and images from the MAS Teachers’ Academy and the movement that Dr. Saldaña and Vanessa shared with us!
   5. Stolen Education film.  Dan talked about Stolen Education which documents the untold story of Mexican-American school children who challenged discrimination in Texas schools in the 1950’s and changed the face of education in the Southwest.
   
   

Biographies

Vanessa Sandoval is a UTSA undergraduate and a first generation student with a concentration in Education and Human Development. Her research interest focuses on cross- disciplinary and interdisciplinary understandings of K-12 schooling experiences for Mexican American students, especially as these relate to curriculum.

Lilliana Patricia Saldaña is a Chicana activist scholar raised in San Antonio’s Southside. Saldaña attended Boston University where she earned her bachelor’s degree in English and International Relations, with a concentration in Latin American Studies and a minor in Journalism in 1998. Shortly after completing her studies, Saldaña worked at a dual-language school in San Antonio’s Westside and earned a master’s degree in Bicultural-Bilingual Studies from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2002. During her undergraduate and graduate studies, she was involved in numerous campus-activist projects and worked in community settings, synthesizing her passion for research and social change. As a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Saldaña worked with Latina/o families to establish Nuestro Mundo, the first dual-language school in the city, and Formando Lazos, community development project with Latina immigrant mothers. She earned a doctoral degree in Human Development and Family Studies, with a minor in Chicana/o families, schools, and communities, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2010. Her dissertation—“¡De mi barrio no me voy!: The identity and consciousness of Mexican American teachers at a dual-language school—examines the life histories of Raza teachers and the ways in which they transform, negotiate and reproduce the culture of schooling in San Antonio, Texas.

Too Dangerous to be Called Mexican-American Studies by Greg Pulte

Happy to post Greg Pulte's op-ed appearing in today's Texas Tribune. I cannot help but wonder what some Anglos, including those on the Texas State Board of Education, are fearful of.  Empowered Mexicans maybe?  Mexicans with a voice and a vote?  Whatever the reason, history will record that the SBOE acted in bad faith as Greg Pulte's synopsis lays bare, magnifying their affront to our dignity as Mexican American Studies scholars, long-invested in a field that is legitimate, robust, and relevant.

Many thanks to the Texas Tribune for publishing this given the importance of this struggle to us as MAS scholars, but also to us a state given our large and growing demographic in K-12 public education statewide.

Great job, Greg!

Angela Valenzuela
#ApproveMAS

Too Dangerous to be Called Mexican-American Studies

By Gregory Pulte,  April 23, 2018 

At this month’s meeting of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE), a vote to establish education standards for Mexican-American Studies (MAS) courses in public schools should have been an easy undertaking. For the past several years, a coalition of educators and advocates for MAS have asked the SBOE to create academic standards for those courses.
At the meeting, the SBOE voted in favor of establishing standards for MAS courses, but with a catch. Without warning, explanation, public input or deliberation, the SBOE voted to title the course “Ethnic Studies: An Overview of Americans of Mexican Descent.” If that title is not a mouthful of backwater, I do not know what is.
Nine Republicans and one Democrat, Georgina Perez, voted for a last-second amendment to change the course title. SBOE members appeared to have come to the meeting with this amendment already decided as there was no discussion and no hesitation about it or its implications. When questioned by member Marissa Perez-Diaz, member David Bradley, who introduced the amendment, said he did not subscribe to “hyphenated-Americanism.” Member Pat Hardy waxed poetic about the appropriateness of calling oneself Italian-American before voting in favor of the name change.
They fail to understand that many non-Anglo ethnic groups never asked to be described as hyphenated-Americans. Those labels were imposed upon them. These hyphenated identities were no more chosen by these ethnic groups than was the white-washing course title adopted by the SBOE.
Referring to “Americans of Mexican descent” implies that Mexican-American history is dead, and to be relegated to the past. For SBOE members to assume a twisted notion of inclusivity by rejecting a hyphenated label because they do not approve of that ethnic group’s identity or the liberation that label represents is high-handed and deeply hurtful.
One must ask if this name change transfers to other ethnic groups or is it just Mexican-Americans who cannot be called Mexican-Americans? Would it be acceptable for the SBOE to prescribe a course title “Ethnic Studies: An Overview of Americans of African Descent?”
The SBOE would never, and politically could never, arbitrarily change the way African-Americans or other groups self-identify, and it is unacceptable for the board to impose this name change upon Mexican-Americans.
To refer to Mexican-Americans as Americans of Mexican descent is reductive and dismissive. The board’s vote renamed an entire ethnic group and a long-standing academic field of study in a way designed to reject Mexican-American identity. The name change arrogantly negates history and culture, essentially saying, “get over yourselves and forget about your Mexican-American heritage; you are not entitled to call yourself what you choose to call yourself or to identify in the way you choose to identify, the Texas SBOE will make that decision for you.”
At the conclusion of the vote, the mood among MAS advocates was not one of victory that standards had been approved. It was somber. We recognized that our work is not yet done.
One would think that when a determined coalition of Mexican-American Studies educators and advocates struggles for five years to persuade the SBOE to provide standards, that the board would act with integrity rather than blindsiding those dedicated citizens with a disrespectful and colonizing name change. The SBOE’s offensive course renaming was disorienting to the point that it left some wondering if this was a victory. One thing is certain, the struggle will continue.

The University of Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Gregory Pulte

PhD student, University of Texas at Austin

TUSD board does not vote to re-integrate Mexican American Studies

Mexican American Studies in TUSD did experience a set back as one might expect with the political and legal battle that was finally resolved last fall.  It is sadly predictable to see that now there's foot-dragging, despite the court ruling.  Can't help but think about how this mirrors what's going on in Texas right now with our State Board of Education.  

See my earlier post on this here.  Folks seriously have to either run good candidates for school board or State Board, as the case may be, or they have to run for office themselves.

-Angela 

TUSD board does not vote to re-integrate Mexican American Studies

Wednesday, January 31st 2018, 12:27 am CST by Evan Schreiber

Updated: 

Wednesday, January 31st 2018, 3:18 pm CST

TUSD takes up Mexican-American studies

TUCSON, AZ (Tucson News Now) - By introducing a substitute motion the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) governing board did not vote to re-integrate the Mexican American Studies program back into the district, as it was written in the agenda.

The agenda item had been introduced by board members Adelita Grijalva and Kristel Ann Foster and was put on hold during the Jan. 16 meeting. 

Foster called it an "olive branch" to let teachers know that they had the support of the board and a way to remove the hardship educators endured during the ban.

Educators echoed that sentiment.

"The teachers that are teaching these courses need to feel that they can teach these courses and not be slapped on the wrist," said Cam Juarez, a Culturally Relevant Curriculum (CRC) board advisor, during the public comment section.

The controversial Mexican American Studies (MAS) program was controversially banned in 2010 and remained so until August 2017, when a federal judge ruled it unconstitutional.

On Tuesday night, Jan. 30, following an informational session presented by CRC education leaders regarding the current status of the courses, including a closer look at the 83 TUSD high school CRC course sections currently being offered, board member Rachael Sedgwick introduced a substitute motion. 

Sedgwick's motion, seconded by board president Mark Stegeman, passed 3-1, with Foster abstaining and Grijalva the dissenting vote. Thus, it nullified Foster's and Grijalva's original agenda item.

Discussion on the original item lasted an hour as board members went back and forth. Grijalva said the goal was not to be controversial or divisive, but a message of support to the teachers.

"To have a conversation about if there's any success that can be made in order to reach these students in any other capacity, anything that we haven't done, then go do it. Go do it because this law is not around to stop us," she said.

Legal action against the ban had already been resolved, thanks to the 2017 ruling.  However, five months later, the board had yet to address exactly how they would bring the curriculum back.

"I cannot as a representative of community members say yes or no to this. I would much rather, that's correct, avoid the conversation, yeah," Sedgwick said, stating that the federal court order was clear and that the Foster/Grijalva item was "redundant."

In principle, Sedgwick's motion stated that the board would continue to maintain the status quo, now that the ban has been lifted. It would put the responsibility of a plan to move forward with the curriculum in the hands of those CRC educators.

Her motion stated that they understand there is a CRC department committed to those courses and has successfully been implementing them. 

As far as a plan to move forward, the motion stated that the board is asking CRC directors to bring forward any curriculum changes through the standard revision process that has existed all along.

Copyright 2018 Tucson News Now. All rights reserved.

Please sign the Texas Responsible Ethnic Studies Textbook Coalition Petition

It is my wish that all of my friends sign this petition against the racist and otherwise highly problematic treatment of Mexican Americans in the book titled, "Mexican American Heritage," written by Jaime Riddle and Valarie Angle.  It is currently under consideration for statewide adoption by the Texas State Board of Education.

Mexican American Studies—of which Ethnic Studies is a part—is a large and growing movement that is taking place right now in Texas and California, two bell weather states with respect to both education and trends in the Mexican American community, in particular.

It is an inspired movement with many adherents of which the publisher and authors of this racist textbook were obviously unaware. 

But then, their cluelessness on the matter maps on perfectly to their woefully inaccurate and offensive interpretation of the Mexican American experience.  This non-trivial, major blind spot explains a lot.

The irony here is—who are they to talk about our heritage without including our decades upon decades worth of research and writing in the area of Mexican American Studies in their book?  How is such a gargantuan oversight even possible?

This area of scholarship is so vast that from where I stand, it takes more effort to ignore than not to. In contrast, these authors are unknown by the Mexican American Studies scholarly community.

It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out at the September and November meetings of the board.  And not just for the publisher and authors, but for the SBOE members, as well.

Not unlike children of other races/ethnicities in the teaching of their respective heritage and notwithstanding this proposed text, our children and grand children still need to know their Mexican American heritage and history.  They need to know who they are, where they came from, and how their personhoods were formed as a consequence.  From a position of strength and self-awareness, they need to know what their responsibilities are to society and to furthering the public good.  

A well taught and well designed Mexican American or Ethnic Studies course will guide them along in this direction.  This proposed book will not only not take them there; it misrepresents and derogates their experience. 

I should know.  I have been teaching Ethnic Studies for over 26 years. I see many of my students—minority and majority alike—blossom and unfold before my very eyes in ways that are life changing, as well as personally and professionally meaningful.

Your signing this petition will help block the book.  

Our students deserve to see an accurate and fair representation of their communities, elders, and ancestors in their classrooms and schools through the textbooks that they read.

If our children are to assume power and a sense of ownership over the profound demographic, political, economic, social, and cultural challenges of the 21st century, every last one of them will benefit greatly from learning about this diversity, addressing important research questions on which we have staked our careers and reputations and to which we have dedicated our lives.

Angela Valenzuela

c/s

#nothingaboutuswithoutus #TxEd #MAStexas  #LibrotraficanteNation