Why High School Graduation Remains an Important Achievement for Chicanos/Latinos
The same year my son began kindergarten was the same year I started teaching high school. After completing a Ph.D. in Education in 2015, instead of working in higher education as I anticipated, I was called to teach Ethnic Studies in high school classrooms to be in schools that sometimes feel like the “Mexican Schools” I teach about from the 1940s. As Teaching Tolerance has documented in these Mexican Schools, “Many Anglo educators did not expect, or encourage, Chicano students to advance beyond the eighth grade. Instead, the curriculum at the Mexican schools was designed, as one district superintendent put it, “to help these children take their place in society.”
