A Xicana Maestra on Politics, Education, y mas
By Xicana Ph.D. Irene Sanchez If our schools are not safe, where are the places we can walk with safety? Our schools are not safe. At least that is what my students told me one morning when they were asked to take a survey. One student said a survey question out loud, “Do you feel … Continue reading C/S: With Safety
“Identity is our way of reminding ourselves that we are beautiful in a society that doesn’t validate us or often makes us feel as if we don’t belong.” By Irene Sanchez Note: A previous version of this article was originally published on Sept. 19, 2016 and republished on Sept. 27, 2017. While in grad school … Continue reading Memory as an Act of Defiance: Latinx Pride All Year Long
Lessons from a Teacher's First Active Shooter Drill By Irene Sanchez (Xicana Ph.D.) 5 years agoYear 1 Public schoolI became a high school teacher My son entered kindergartenWe had our first active shooter drillsHigh school teacherThree schools a day, everydayThat morning Continuation schoolFollow the instruction on the paper Most importantLock the doorLock the door LOCK … Continue reading Lessons From a Teacher’s First Active Shooter Drill
By Irene M. Sanchez Xicana Ph.D. What’s really sad. Representation is important. I see that as a Chicano/Latino Studies teacher everyday. Representation is important, but it is not enough if all our idea of representation does is reinforce tired stereotypes that mock the most powerless within a certain culture/community. I get satire and its importance … Continue reading What’s Really Sad
“With so many Mexicans in the grammar schools this would greatly interfere with class work, as the excluded students, who are always the slowest in the classes, would fall still farther behind, making the present task of completing a year’s work before next summer nearly impossible”. This denial of education for Mexican students during the 1918 flu pandemic, which was the same “logic” that established separate Mexican schools, was rooted in white supremacy and racism in the ideas that Mexican students were dirty, unclean, inferior in intelligence, and likely wouldn’t catch up with school work anyway.
By Irene Sanchez Today marks the 75th anniversary of the ruling that desegregated schools in the state of California. While Mendez is talked about a little more now than when I was a younger person, it is not talked about enough. The Mendez case was the precursor to the landmark supreme court case of Brown … Continue reading 75 Years After the Mendez Case: Our Children Still Need Us to Fight for Equal Education
Refusing to DisappearBy Irene SanchezXicana Ph.D. How many of us have heard these sayings in the U.S.? “America is a melting pot…” “The national fabric is a diverse tapestry...”“America is united as one…”People who offer assimilationist snippets of what they believe "America" is fail to say that the dominant Euro American group often demands that “others” … Continue reading Refusing to Disappear
By Irene Sanchez This is hardly a surprise, but the pandemic has impacted many students at all levels of education, particularly those who are underserved and over represented in a system like the community college. It’s no surprise that as a result community college enrollment has dropped in a global pandemic. Then there was a … Continue reading Building Back More Inequality: No Free Community College While Enrollment Dips In The Pandemic
Xicana Ph.D. 