Ethnic Studies For All
What is Ethnic Studies?
A growing body of research from education scholars shows that an Ethnic Studies pedagogy taught at the K-12 level exposes students to an empowering and academically rigorous curriculum. This curriculum has proven to have positive academic and social benefits to students of all races and ethnicities.
Ethnic Studies incorporates culturally relevant, social justice, community responsive and other pedagogical approaches with a focus on literacy and critical thinking skills. Ethnic Studies has a 50 year history in the United States with high school students in East LA demanding Mexican-American studies in their schools in 1968 and college students in that same year creating the first college Ethnic Studies programs at San Francisco State University.
Experiencing Ethnic Studies in LA
What is the Ethnic Studies For All Initiative?
The Ethnic Studies For All Initiative at Camino Nuevo Charter Academy is grounded in four key pillars of instruction. With these pillars and within Teaching For Tolerance’s Social Justice Standards and Anti-Bias framework, a cross-campus Ethnic Studies Task Force, participating and administrators from 6 CNCA campuses have collaborated engaged in professional development led by expert scholars. The participating teachers have created Ethnic Studies units and lessons in their classrooms that have been compiled so that they are available for all CNCA teachers. One such project was in collaboration with UC Irvine’s History and Geography Project to create the first ever Central American Studies focused curriculum developed with our unique student population in mind, that is now published and free to use by teachers and students across the country.