Now here is a cool piece about our nonprofit work in Dallas and Austin. It features our work here in Austin with Academia Cuauhtli and from Dallas, the All Stars Project, Inc. and Big Thought. I am so happy and inspired to see that others like ourselves are doing life-saving work in our communities. I quote my colleague, Dr. Joshua Childs, who states the following:

“What we’re seeing is a concerted effort to how we bring communities together to be involved when it comes to education and public health and providing goods and services that can benefit all,” Childs said.

In addition to thinking of ourselves locally as part of the current Ethnic Studies movement, we also think of ourselves as a cultural and linguistic revitalization project that consists of community members, bilingual education and dual language teachers, students, parents, and elders, as well as our various partners, including the Austin Independent School District, the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Culture Center, the Indigenous Cultures Institute, the Austin Area Association for Bilingual Education, Grupo Xochipilli, a local kalpulli, and the Texas Center for Education Policy at the University of Texas at Austin.  

You can go to this link to see some of whom are in our community. Thanks to Fernando Cervantes of the Dallas Morning News for featuring this work.

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-Angela Valenzuela

#BlackLivesMatter

#AcademiaCuauhtli

#CulturalRevitalization

Revitalized by summer protests, Dallas’ inequity programs fight through pandemic’s ‘gut punch’

As the United States faces questions of racial inequities, more focus is on these nonprofits that work in bettering the conditions of underrepresented communities.

President & CEO at Big Thought Byron Sanders and Vice President of All Stars Project, Inc. Antoine Joyce pose for a portrait at Fair Park in Dallas on Thursday, July 23, 2020. Both men run non-profit programs focused on helping young people of color in South Dallas. (Lynda M. Gonzalez/The Dallas Morning News)(Lynda M. Gonzalez / Staff Photographer)

By Fernando Cervantes, Jr.

6:33 PM on Jul 24, 2020 | Dallas Morning News

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, local nonprofit Big Thought served youth in marginalized communities with educational programs like Artivism, the DaVerse Lounge and Thriving Minds.

But when schools closed, putting an abrupt end to many of the group’s programs, Big Thought had to adjust. For Big Thought president and CEO Byron Sanders, that meant layoffs.

"That was hard, we love this team," Sanders said. "They helped us build who we are today, but we had to let them go and that stung. That was a gut punch."

The group had to lay off 62% of its employees, but has still worked to continue with its programming. Sanders said they’ve worked to bring programs online, but still had to find new ways to adapt.

Then, the latest wave of Black Lives Matter protests put even more urgency on the group’s mission of addressing educational inequality.

“We identify race as a root cause of why we have to exist,” Sanders said. “We’re trying to close the opportunity gap between kids of color and their white peers.”

Big Thought is one of many groups that have been trying to adapt to the current pandemic. Many have had to move their programs online, or found other ways to continue their activities. Others are still desperately trying to find a way to stay afloat.

As the United States faces questions of racial inequities, more focus is on these nonprofits that work in bettering the conditions of underrepresented communities.

President & CEO at Big Thought Byron Sanders (Lynda M. Gonzalez/The Dallas Morning News)(Lynda M. Gonzalez / Staff Photographer)

Bringing communities together

Joshua Childs is an assistant professor of educational policy and planning at the University of Texas at Austin. He has researched the role of these community initiatives to address complex educational issues, and said communities have long wanted a stronger voice.

“What we’re seeing is a concerted effort to how we bring communities together to be involved when it comes to education and public health and providing goods and services that can benefit all,” Childs said.

Austin-based Academia Cuauhtli, for example, provides language and cultural education programs for 4th and 5th grade students focused on the Spanish-speaking community, director Angela Valenzuela said.

“I think we need to double down and revitalize our cultures, and languages. Because that is how we will be strong and if we’re strong then we can advocate for all injustices, with our African-American brothers and sisters,” Valenzuela said.

Academia Cuauhtli’s cultural revitalization program is based around a curriculum developed by Austin-area teachers to keep students engaged throughout the school year and summer.

But having to adapt to an online learning environment has given the organization a new set of challenges to tackle.

“We’re trying to get resources so we can keep teaching over the summer,” Valenzuela said. “We haven’t got the support we’re looking for, but we’re hopeful that something will come through.”

Although Academia Cuauhtli is struggling to find funding for summer classes, they are still serving their community in different ways. For example, Academia Cuauhtli recently received 350 masks from the City of Austin for distribution in their community.

“Now that we are a ‘known entity,’ there are groups that are wanting to work with us. I see this as continuing,” said Valenzuela.

‘It’s about solutions'

The All Stars Project, a West and South Dallas community initiative, was planning their spring talent show before the pandemic began. Young people ages 5 to 25 years old are invited to perform hip hop numbers in front of their community peers.

Every aspect of the talent show is planned and produced by young people. From the lighting to stage direction, they had been preparing to showcase their hard work.

But everything changed, and the students who had worked on their performances for months had to quickly adapt to an online talent show.

“With all our programs, we’ve had to move to a virtual environment,” said Antoine Joyce, the Vice President and City Leader for the project in Dallas. “The pandemic has changed how we do those programs, we actually had to cancel our in-person talent show.”

Now, with the current Black Lives Matter protests, the All Stars Project has had more people calling for information about their initiative.

Native American Education: What Will It Take To Fix The 'Epitome Of Broken'? NPR

This is an encouraging story about the status of Native American Indian education, albeit quite abbreviated.  Greater autonomy and self-determination together with resources should help this particular community make progress with an asset-based,  pedagogy.  I hope that the Navaho language and Navaho cultural and linguistic revitalization, generally, are an integral part of the curriculum. 

Angela Valenzuela

Native American Education: What Will It Take To Fix The 'Epitome Of Broken'? 4:42

Native American Education: What Will It Take To Fix The 'Epitome Of Broken'?

December 25, 20165:00 PM ET

Heard on All Things Considered

Carrie Jung

From

Navajo students at Crystal Boarding School in New Mexico sing traditional songs in class.

Carrie Jung/KJZZ 

 

High up in the mountains of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, Delphine Gatewood teaches special education at the Crystal Boarding School. She's dreading this winter, like she dreads every winter, because temperatures can slip into the negative digits which the school building just can't handle.
"You have a boiler system that regulates heat at one certain temperature so you can't turn it down," she says. "It gets so hot in the classroom and you have to open the windows in the dead of winter."
The Crystal Boarding School isn't part of any local school district in New Mexico. It's overseen at the federal level by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education. As are nearly 200 other Native American schools nationwide.
In 2015, Arne Duncan, the secretary of education at the time, called the bureau "the epitome of broken." The federal school system has been around for more than 150 years, marred by a past of forcefully assimilating students, rock-bottom academic performance and a crumbling infrastructure.
That's why the Obama administration has been pouring resources into leading an effort with the bureau to change the way it serves the 50,000 students attending its schools nationwide.

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The bureau has said it hopes to shift into a role that provides more support, rather than issue directives. In other words, shift away from being a direct overseer of schools and give local control to tribal communities.
Infrastructure
Officials at the Bureau of Indian Education estimate that roughly one-third of their school buildings are in poor condition. To fix them, they say it'll take more than $1.3 billion. That's why a big part of the reform effort is to build new schools and repair old ones.
Delphine Gatewood is a both a teacher at Crystal and the grandmother of a kindergartner, first- and fifth-grader here. She says it's hard for her grandchildren to learn at such a run-down, neglected campus. Crystal is one of 10 bureau schools in line to get a brand new facility.
A new school should also free up time for the principal and other administrative staff to focus on student education, and less time trying to repair this 85-year-old facility.
Academics
"We needed to change the way we were doing business," says Tony Dearman, the new director of the Bureau of Indian Education.
Consider this: Right now fourth graders are scoring 22 points lower in reading and 14 points lower in math than Native American students in public schools.
"The system that we used to have at [the bureau was] one size fits all," he says, "and one size fits all in the tribal nations, that's not realistic. That doesn't work."
Dearman says they've got to do better — because when kids go through school without learning what they need to, it limits economic opportunity throughout their lives.
He says the bureau is encouraging more tribes to take control of their schools because he acknowledges local officials know more about the needs and cultural traditions of students than bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.
Cultural education
The Crystal Boarding School offers something state-run public schools on the reservation don't: immersive Navajo cultural education. Students learn the Navajo language and traditional songs and dances on a daily basis.
It wasn't always this way, though, points out Donald Fixico. He's a historian at Arizona State University. He says bureau boarding schools, like Crystal, were once a place where Native American children were sent to assimilate.
"It was really — save the Indian child but forego all the tribal culture and old ways and languages by the kids," he says.
That was the 19th and early 20th centuries. Back in the 1970s tribes were given more control over cultural education, and new changes take it even further.
Today Fixico says the bureau is a very different place, "because native people are in control of the schools. They're in control of the curriculum, how it develops, what needs to be taught, supplying the instructors. It's a whole different ballgame altogether."
Still, many tribal members across the country say they're skeptical the reform efforts, and all of the resources put into them, will make any real difference in student performance. And, the transition hasn't been without controversy.
One of those skeptics is Delphine Gatewood. She says she's hoping for the best, if only for the future of her grandchildren.

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