AfroLatin@s in the Classroom: Youth, Education and Culture
9:15am-10:45am
Graduate Center of The City University of New York
Participants on this panel will address factors conditioning Afro-Latin@s’ educational access to a well-rounded, comprehensive education leading up to college. A central concern is identifying ways to understand and address racial and class disparities in public and private school systems. We explore ways to achieve the inclusion of Afro-Latin@ history and culture in the curriculum. How can educators make their curricula more diverse for the benefit of Afro-Latin@s and other students of African descent? How can we re-imagine and re-create extra-curricular and after-school programs to further assist Afro-Latin@ students on their educational journeys, maximizing their opportunities for employment and other paths to successful, fulfilling lives?
Graduate Center of The City University of New York
Participants on this panel will address factors conditioning Afro-Latin@s’ educational access to a well-rounded, comprehensive education leading up to college. A central concern is identifying ways to understand and address racial and class disparities in public and private school systems. We explore ways to achieve the inclusion of Afro-Latin@ history and culture in the curriculum. How can educators make their curricula more diverse for the benefit of Afro-Latin@s and other students of African descent? How can we re-imagine and re-create extra-curricular and after-school programs to further assist Afro-Latin@ students on their educational journeys, maximizing their opportunities for employment and other paths to successful, fulfilling lives?
Pablo José López Oro is a doctoral student in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. He holds an undergraduate degree in history and graduate degrees in Latin American Studies, Bilingual Education, and African American Studies. Pablo taught Spanish at a Dual Language middle school in East Harlem for three years with Teach for America. His research looks at second and third generation Garífuna Honduran youths in New York City and their articulation of Blackness, Indigeneity, and Latinidad. A member of the afrolatin@ forum since 2009, he is on the Conference Planning Committee.
Marco Cervantes is Assistant Professor in the Mexican American Studies Program in the Department of Bicultural and Bilingual Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio. His research interests include Chican@ musicology, hip-hop studies, performance pedagogy, transculturation and shared spaces, black and Chican@ cultural hybridity, and AfroLatin@ cultural production. In addition to his scholarly and academic pursuits, Marco performs as hip-hop artist Mexican Stepgrandfather and has also developed a collaborative space for the creation the AfroChicano hip-hop collective Third Root.
Janis Massa is Professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York. Her research and practice focus on diversity-related issues and initiatives regarding the nexus of race and educational opportunity and achievement (k-college), with the intention of making educational research more relevant, timely, and accessible to educators and policy makers. Beyond the university, Janis works with teachers and students at a partner high school in the South Bronx. She is an active member of the Historically Black Colleges and University General Education Assembly and sits on the Executive Board of the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute.
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Ethan Johnson is Associate Professor in the Black Studies Department at Portland State University. He has published in a number of scholarly journals and is co-editor of Education in the Black Diaspora. His multi-disciplinary research examines the educational experiences of youth of African descent and how they negotiate and interpret racial identity and racism in the United States and Ecuador. Since 2006 Ethan has coordinated and hosted the Black Bag Speakers Series at Portland State whose mission is to create and maintain a space for discussion on issues of relevance to the area’s Black community.
Theodore Roosevelt Foster, III, is a doctoral candidate in the Department of African American Studies at Northwestern University where his studies are at the intersection of Afro Latin America, Black Studies and Latin@ studies. He has taught as an adjunct professor and also serves on the board of an educational non-profit, Telluride Association. As an activist from Birmingham, he has worked in Alabama around immigrant and disability justice with a variety of local and national organizations. Theo is currently working on two projects: ethno-education in Quito, Ecuador, and U.S. civil rights memory and the immigrant justice movement in Birmingham, Alabama.
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