ON THE MAP
Dr. Gabriel Velez, BLEST Hub faculty director, is leading efforts to map an education resource ecosystem (pictured in background) to support students through transitional moments between high school and college. Search for “Milwaukee Black and Latino/a Ecosystem Map” to access the education resource site.
By Claire Curry
Before she arrived at Marquette to pursue her doctorate in educational policy and leadership, Verónica Mancheno spent 18 years working as an elementary and high school teacher and administrator in schools serving minoritized communities. Also the mother of two teenage sons, Mancheno has seen firsthand the inequities that Black, Latino and Latina students face every day.
stories that fill us with indignation because they are just so clearly wrong.”
“I can think of a myriad of stories that sound like they come right out of a movie script,” says Mancheno, who was born and raised in Ecuador and moved to the U.S. in 1996 and to Milwaukee in 2007. “I have witnessed, both as a mother and as a teacher, hundreds of incidents … the types of horror
Addressing such inequities is what motivated Mancheno to advance her education, so when she was offered a research assistantship with a project aimed at improving the experiences of Milwaukeearea high school and college students of color, she enthusiastically accepted.
8 | College of Education 2022
Perhaps the most pervasive damage, she adds, is the compounded effect of institutionalized daily practices that youth of color constantly navigate within educational systems. “Our youth experience erasure, invisibility and direct assaults on their dignity,” she says.
