3 minute read
Ethnic studies enters schedules
E
thnic studies enters schedules
BY GRETA REICH
Feature Editor
What is Ethnic Studies?
Chapter 1
As Sequoia students return to campus, a course for the last two decades is not coming with them. Over the online school year of “ 2020-2021, Sequoia Union High School District teachers, including Sequoia’s own history teachers Diana Nguyen, Melissa Díaz, and Claire Kerby, helped to implement Ethnic Studies in place of World Studies in district high schools, beginning this year.
The Ethnic Studies curriculum at SUHSD
centers on the intersection of ethnicity with other social categories, and how different ethnic groups have been treated throughout history, with a focus on the history of local ethnic groups, such as the Ohlone tribe. The class will be split into four units, starting with Introduction to Ethnic Studies, Origins of Race, Migration and Diaspora, Gender and Sexuality, and lastly, Power Movements, Transformation, and Change. Its goal is to teach students about the cycle of oppression through a critical lens so they can not only understand how identity relates to power, but be inspired (and know how) to make change. It will not be a complete shift from World Studies - more accurately, it will dive deeper into the history of oppression and resistance. Freshman history teacher and Ethnic Ethnic Studies will link up the Studies curriculum developer Melissa stuff that we talked about Díaz explained how in World Studies, and link it the curriculum will to the local, making it really transition. “World Studies isn’t going relevant to students. to go away, it’s going to be incorporated Melissa Díaz, Ethnic Studies teacher into the 10th grade curriculum [of Modern European History] that has already begun to move towards World History…Ethnic Studies will link up the stuff that we talked about in World Studies, and link it to the local, making it really relevant to students,” Díaz said.
Previously, World Studies focused mainly on imperialism in Latin America and the US impacts, as well as the colonization of Africa. The sophomore history class, Modern European History, was unrelated to World Studies. The change in curriculum plans to integrate the two classes more, giving a more cohesive understanding of history as well as more perspectives.
Youth Board of San Mateo member Zara Ahsan shares Díaz’s belief that Ethnic Studies is more relevant. As a senior at Sequoia herself, she remembered her freshman World Studies class, but not in high regard.
“We don’t really analyze from different points of view. Maybe we focus a bit on apartheid but we don’t focus on all the other cultural history that we have, what we focus on is basically wherever Europe had an impact. I think it needs to be more comprehensive, because people in our school are from all different backgrounds and they don’t learn anything about their history,” Ahsan said.
Understanding parts of one’s own culture and history can be very important. Learning about the oppression faced by certain groups is just as important as learning about the joy of their culture. Where World Studies taught students about the hardships of different groups of people throughout history, Ethnic Studies will try to teach students how to relate this to their own ethnic racial, gender, and class identity, examining what role they can and do play in making history.
Student counselor Melissa Perez, who took a Latin American studies class as a student at Sequoia in the early 2000s, described how this class inspired her.
“Learning about Latin America was really
Content Check:
1) What is Ethnic Studies? 2) Who originated the curriculum? 3) Why is it being implemented at Sequoia?
