Prueba paramétrica T de Student para muestras independientes

Her classroom reflects her commitment to social justice. I found books such as A People’s History of the United States (both in Spanish and English), Separate is Never Equal, Funny Bones: Posada and His Day of the Dead Calaveras easily accessible to her students. I also found empowering profiles of famous Latinxs, in English and Spanish, doting the walls of her classroom.

Did your pedagogical approach come from the way you were taught in your teacher ed program?

I got my teaching certification through a program that molded teachers to teaching in privileged settings. During the observation process, most of the schools I saw were the cream of the crop within traditional public, private, and charter schools. So, of course, it never became about what makes school important for children. The best methods were set up in an empty classroom. It did not take into consideration what one child is doing over here, or the reading live of another child, or what’s going through the mind of the child sitting in the middle.

Watching Rosita teaching, she has one clear objective: instilling the concept of critical thinking. Her approach differed from the common critical thinking methods articulated by professional development programs. She instead wanted her students, all students of color, to see how race impacted them, the history they are learning, and their futures. She also wanted the student to understand how prevalent racism is in society (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).

What I learned came from a dominant perspective. It’s a white male, from a middle class or upper class classroom, who has no vocabulary deficits, no other labels, might even be

considered gifted or talented. These best practices are going to work best for him, as someone to go off with all of these resources. As a Latina who grew up in Los Angeles, California, I did not

see myself in any of it. When I think back to my own experiences with history, I absolutely hated history the entire time I was in K-12. It was irrelevant to me…it all was!

How then did you take that and adjust or change your actual teacher experiences of today?

I can tell you a couple of things that have definitely worked for me. There’s the understanding by design backwards model of life. Where do you want to get the kids to go to, and how you can work backwards from that? So, if I want to talk about what I want to get my students to articulate social injustices, I ask why? I also help students learn how to critically read a text. What is the power of the words? Why did the author choose this word in place of this other word? How does that change the perspectives?

How do you then draw in current events?

I remember this one class I taught. It was actually about the last two shootings, the one in Charlotte, and the one in Tulsa. I was like ‘What was the most important thing that you learned from this class?’ A kid said ‘It’s bad to kill people.’ I was like, ‘Hold up! Are you telling me that before you walked into this class, you didn’t know that?’

At this point, I noticed that Rosita starts engaging in some reflection of that experience. I was talking about this, this event, and this suspect and this incident. So, I can

understand how all of it got jumbled into one big picture of ‘violence is bad.’ So, I need to take back the steps of how do I break these very critical and hard to understand issues to my students because they clearly missed the point. It’s how do I break down this super abstract and complex idea that even adults have a hard time recognizing for students?

I saw Rosita understanding the complexity of trying to discuss these racialized experiences with her students. To her credit, she examined her own pedagogical methods in

drawing in the narratives of these two incidents into her classroom. But what I sensed was a local connection she was trying to make with her teaching.

So then how do you bring in the community into your classroom?

These shootings are happening in Texas. These shootings are happening in Tulsa. These shootings are happening here, right near the school! I brought to their attention the case of Jesus, who to them, was a child in the same school district. So, I needed to ask the question why is this happening? I want to the kids to know that I care about them, and that we acknowledge that they are in danger here for being black males, people of color. I think they see it too, but they don’t have a space to talk about it. Maybe not every child has experienced it, but some had.

Rosita understands the racial realism of these shootings (Chandler, 2015). She extends this realism to Latinx students by bringing up Jesus. He was an adolescent who died in police custody a year earlier in the city Rosita taught. Outside her classroom, there is a large board with the words “Black and Brown Lives Matter” on it. In the middle is a map of the United States. Strings connect thirteen pictures of individuals killed by law enforcement to different parts of the country. Jesus is there; it is a powerful image to see every day.