A Culturally Relevant Pedagogy at the Core - National Forum Journals

NATIONAL FORUM OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION JOURNAL VOLUME 36, NUMBER 4, 2018 SPECIAL ISSUE

A Culturally Relevant Pedagogy at the Core: When Common Teachers Make a Difference Judith Flores Carmona New Mexico State University

Abstract Bridging critical pedagogy and social justice, I address how students in a master’s level course address the demands of Common Core State Standards and incorporate critical thinking, the arts, and social justice issues in their pedagogy. Incorporating self-reflexivity and the scholarship of critical pedagogues, the students in my class develop “critical multicultural curricula” that is often implemented in public schools in the Borderlands region of Southern New Mexico. In this article I answer two questions: “What role do arts-based approaches play in developing teachers as school leaders to promote social justice and equity in their schools? What are possible outcomes associated with promoting an arts-based approach in the transformation of school leaders, school communities, and communities-at-large?” Keywords: critical pedagogy, arts-based, multiculturalism, social justice leaders

According to Taylor (2003), “Art explores our senses and it is through our senses that we connect to the world and to human experience and feel empathy for one and other” (p. 496). However, school systems leave little room for teachers to indulge in this practice. Students are being exposed to a standardized curriculum—forcing teachers to teach to the test (Sleeter & Flores Carmona, 2017). In accordance, Kevin Kumashiro (2009) also critiques why students need to demonstrate their learning through standardized testing and asks; “was this not the view of effective teaching upon which current proposals to reform schools were based, namely, that we reward those schools that can get their students to demonstrate such learning and punish those who do not” (p. 24)? Prescribed curriculum focused on measurable content and selected by the so-called experts reduces the learning process and becomes stagnant, boring and definitely disconnected from students’ experiences and realities. When the curriculum is designed by those in power we are experiencing and replicating hegemony in education, where many voices and perspectives are excluded, therefore exposing students to culturally irrelevant teachings that replicate inequities and injustice in schools and in society (Apple, 2004; Sleeter & Flores Carmona, 2017). Since master narratives are presented as objective facts and tend to be skewed by the lens of the dominant culture, curriculum is therefore not constructed to address the needs of diverse learners (Apple, 2004; Sleeter & Flores Carmona, 2017). For areas like the Borderlands region in Southern New Mexico for example, it becomes harder to draw from the pedagogies of the home present in the families and communities of the predominant Latina/o student populations from

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working class backgrounds (Delgado Bernal, 2001; Freire, 2005; Sleeter, 2005). However, the content of the curriculum should be relevant to the learners, their lives, and their environment. Urgent attention must be paid to the complex ways these issues, standardization and oppression, are connected to the structure of schooling and curricular and pedagogical processes. Leaving little room for teachers to incorporate imagination, creativity, artistic expression, much less to understand the sociopolitical, historical, cultural, and economic problems students are facing in our communities, is a critical problem. Because of the urgent need to pay close attention to these issues at the local, state, and national level, I began to work with teachers in the Borderlands region where I live and teach. In this article I bridge critical pedagogy with social justice issues. Specifically, I address how students in a master’s level course I teach at New Mexico State University (NMSU), EDUC 516: Curriculum and Pedagogy are learning to not feel or be restricted by the Common Core State Standards but rather to incorporate critical thinking, the arts, and social justice issues while still addressing them. Not every student in the course is a teacher in K-12 classrooms but everyone is guided by a basic principle from the very beginning of our class, that we must work together and in creative ways because; “the more standardized we make curriculum to improve students’ achievement, the more we cut ourselves off from students’ cultural, experiential, and personal resources on which learning should be built” (Sleeter & Flores Carmona, 2017, p. 17). Herein, I first situate this manuscript by contextualizing where my students and I teach and learn and how they are introduced to assignments that expose them to self-reflexivity, critical issues students and local communities are facing, and to the scholarship of critical pedagogues. In answering the questions: what role do arts-based approaches play in developing teacher as school leaders to promote social justice and equity in their schools? What are possible outcomes associated with promoting an arts-based approach in the transformation of school leaders, school communities, and communities-at-large? I present you with current teachers’ examples and words about their experiences developing a “multicultural curriculum” and how they became leaders as they implemented such culturally responsive curriculum bridging critical pedagogy and social justice issues. I conclude by sharing the teachers’ experiences on how their school leaders responded to their pedagogical practices and I make recommendations on how promoting an arts-based approach can potentially transform teachers, school leaders, and our communities. The Class: Knowing Our Core Students who enroll in my master’s level course, EDUC 516: Curriculum & Pedagogy, are exposed to an introduction, re/construction, and other connections among historical, philosophical, socio-cultural, psychological, and theoretical foundations of curriculum and pedagogy and their application to culturally and linguistically diverse teaching and learning settings. In this class we engage with a critical, foundational knowledge of the philosophy of curriculum and instruction (theory) while examining current practices in the classroom (praxis). Students in all my courses but especially in this one are constantly reminded that the curriculum is wrought with the teacher’s ideologies, informed by their epistemologies, and not separate from their positionality. By writing their teaching philosophy toward the beginning of the semester I am able to gauge where students are in terms of understanding their viewpoints on students and Borderland communities. Unfortunately, what I read shows that some teachers carry with them deficit

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thinking and ideologies about their students but once they are introduced to critical scholarship— these begin to get questioned and slowly dissipate. These beliefs become apparent in the language they use when talking about their students and sometimes carry out into their practice (Valencia, 2010). Indeed, Freire (2005) insists that it is essential for educators to know themselves, to realize where they came from, and to have a clear understanding of where they stand; “One must know whom or what one is for or against” (p. 79). Therefore, the general objectives we aim to achieve in the course include exploring holistic approaches that affirm the understanding that there is no standard when it comes to knowledge, teaching-learning styles, or worldviews. In order to create class projects embedded in critical thinking, expressing capability and responsibility for creating change through conscious action both in personal lives and in the broader society, students must first recognize their students’ backgrounds and cultures as assets. Acknowledgement of the difference between having a diverse classroom and being inclusive is essential since this understanding informs our pedagogical and curricular decisions. Another objective is to engage the social, political, cultural, and historical issues as they relate to the context where master’s students teach. With these objectives, the goal is to critique the standardization of curricula and its biases through the lenses of social justice, critical pedagogy, holistic education and other progressive and radical models of curriculum and pedagogy (Kumashiro, 2009; Rendón, 2009; Sleeter & Flores Carmona, 2017). Guided by these objectives, students in the class then develop their multicultural curriculum. To inform their curriculum, they read works such as; Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare teach (Freire, 2005); Sentipensante (sensing/thinking) pedagogy: Educating for wholeness, social justice and liberation (Rendón, 2009); Growing critically conscious teachers: A social justice curriculum for educators of Latino/a youth (Valenzuela, 2016), and Un-standardizing curriculum: Multicultural teaching in the standards-based classroom (Sleeter & Flores Carmona, 2017), along with multiple articles written by social justice scholars and critical pedagogues. Students present their curriculum in class and receive anonymous feedback from their peers to strengthen it and to write a self-reflexive paper about how they addressed the course objectives, the Common Core State Standards, and whether or not their curriculum addressed the needs of the student population they envisioned serving or currently serve. For a year, I collected students’ multicultural curriculum to understand their teaching practices and whether or not they moved to implement and teach with a social justice focus and purpose. Specifically, in the remaining of this article I share examples of teachers’ works from two semesters and also answer the following question: How are teachers addressing the Common Core State Standards and still embracing and developing a critical multicultural education that is relevant, responsive and inclusive of diverse student populations in the Borderlands region? Las Maestras: Teaching for Social Change Ms. Corrales. In Fall 2015 I collected the multicultural curriculum and worked with two teachers at Borderlands1 Elementary School, Ms. Corrales and Ms. Garcia. Ms. Denise Corrales’ fourth grade class worked on a unit that revolved around the Mendez v. Westminster case. This 1

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case was precedent to Brown v. Board of Education and involved Sylvia Mendez who was denied enrollment at a school because of segregation and racism. She was sent to attend the “Mexican school” where she became aware of the educational inequalities and discrimination Mexican students experienced vis-à-vis White students. Intrigued by the case, Ms. Corrales’ students read Sylvia and Aki (Conkling, 2011) to further explore issues such as segregation, racism, discrimination, and social injustices against Mexican Americans (Latinos) and Japanese Americans. The book narrates the stories of Sylvia and Aki. Aki is a Japanese American 3rd grader who following the Pearl Harbor bombings is forced to leave her home and move to an internment camp all because she was of Japanese descent. After reading the book and completing historical chronological timelines the students had conversations about their own experiences in schools and were empowered to channel their feelings by writing letters to people in power at their school. They also created posters to inform their peers and other teachers of the injustices that they were discovering through Sylvia and Aki’s stories. Finally, they wrote letters to Ms. Sylvia Mendez, which they shared with her when she visited New Mexico State University in Spring 2016. Figures 1, 2, and 3 depict some excerpts from the letters.

Figure 1. Excerpt one.


Figure 2. Excerpt two.

Figure 3. Excerpt three. Ms. Garcia. With many school systems set up to fail particular students because the curriculum is not inclusive of their language, culture, and/or community—Ms. Lucy Garcia’s


mixed kindergarten-first grade classroom incorporated meaningful and multicultural bilingual (English and Spanish) materials and teaching strategies. Besides incorporating culturally sensitive and appropriate books, she also infused her pedagogy with art, poetry, and songs. These culturally rich literary experiences supported the students’ ethnic backgrounds and linguistic abilities by making the content more friendly, inviting, and relevant while still addressing the Common Core State Standards. Ms. Garcia’s students read Amigos del Otro Lado/Friends from the Other Side (Anzaldúa, 1997). The book is about migration, crossing borders, about a friendship between a young girl, an immigrant boy and his mother. The purpose of Ms. Garcia’s unit was to analyze the book and support the students in understanding their own culture and where they come from. Her unit focused on stories of migration, issues experienced by Mexicans and Mexican Americans along the Mexico-U.S. borderlands, deportation, and what it means to be and live in the Borderlands. By incorporating music, art, and literature, the students in Ms. Garcia’s classroom, were able to further understand their culture and were able to connect to the migration stories of their parents and grandparents. The students worked on their family tree (see Figures 4 and 5) and when sharing them, many spoke of knowing about la migra (border patrol), about deportations, and about crossing borders. For five and six-year olds, as well as for their parents, the issues presented in Amigos del Otro Lado/Friends from the Other Side (Anzaldúa, 1997) were and still are very relevant.

Figure 4. Family trees.


Figure 5. Family trees. Ms. De La Fuente. In Fall 2016, I had a couple of teachers develop and implement curricula with a social justice focus and they made sure to strengthen their pedagogical practices by incorporating arts-based projects in their classrooms. Their approaches aimed to achieve transformation in their students and surrounding community and to promote equity in their school, especially during election year. I was particularly impressed with Veronica’s curriculum because it incorporated art, speech writing, and an action plan by her 3rd graders. Veronica De La Fuente teaches in a monolingual 3rd grade classroom at Fronteras 2 Elementary School. Veronica’s multicultural curriculum was designed as a social studies unit with the objective of increasing students’ consciousness of historical events and the struggles for social justice in the United States. She incorporated history’s implications, the changes that came from the struggles and how these events were a call for social change. While delivering her unit, it was inevitable for her students to not discuss the presidential elections. The students began identifying injustices and discrimination happening around them and in their communities as a consequence of the racist rhetoric one of the candidates kept using against Mexican people specifically. Ms. De La Fuente’s unit drew from the Civil Rights Movement. Veronica titled her unit “I Have a Dream” based on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech. The students analyzed the speech and wrote a summary discussing the major points and the purpose of the speech. Then Veronica instructed her students to write a speech sharing what they would have done if they lived during the Civil Rights Movement. Then, students were channeled to reflect on one specific time they felt they were mistreated or discriminated against. The students’ pieces included powerful thoughts and reflections. Inspired by Rendón’s (2009) call to merge critical thinking with action and motivated by Valenzuela’s (2016) assertion that teachers must address students’ needs—Veronica’s students 2

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designed a plan of action. All of her students learned that they have rights and that they deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. For weeks, her students were able to make personal connections between past and present issues affecting their lives in and out of the classrooms. The students also talked about situations where they have experienced healing through the externalization of sadness, anger, frustration, and of having a second chance. On the final phase of the unit, the entire class came up with an action plan to start making a difference while addressing injustices happening at their school. This activity was based on a holistic approach of teaching and learning where students were engaged not only intellectually or academically, but displayed their ability to finding meaning and solutions through personal experiences and working together toward a common goal (Rendón, 2009). As a class, they discussed and created a list of social injustices happening at their school. Following Dr. King’s non-violence activist approach, they also brainstormed peaceful ways of letting the school leaders know that they were aware of the unjust issues. The students then began advocating for positive social change. I must mentioned here that Ms. De La Fuente did not instruct her students to do all that they did—it was their initiative and their motivation to see change that moved them to take all these action steps. Together they decided to create poster signs advocating for respect and equal rights in their school (see Figures 6, 7, 8, and 9). They then conducted a peaceful march around the school letting other students, teachers and their school leaders know that they wanted to be treated with respect and dignity. After their march, the poster signs were posted around the school to make others aware of the negative impact they caused in others’ lives when mistreating them. Veronica’s long-term goal was for her students to take these teachings and learning to their Borderland communities. Veronica’s peers were impressed by the students and of course by her critical pedagogy.

Figure 6. Poster sign.






The posters designed by Veronica’s students send powerful messages and they illustrate the depth of her critical pedagogy. However, these three teachers’ transformative, emancipatory work was not completely welcomed nor recognized by their principals and oftentimes they came to my class feeling defeated and frustrated. Due to the demands of high-stakes standardized testing and school district strains, they admitted that they had been lacking engaging in deep critical teaching but once they started implementing such curricula they witnessed the transformation in themselves and in their students. However, the lack of support from their school leaders was evident and demoralizing but also gave them courage to continue doing this powerful work. The teachers had a lot to say about how their leaders responded to their pedagogy but in my view the teachers displayed exemplar leadership skills by taking on the challenge of not simply teaching to the test but instead to respond to the needs of their Borderlands students and communities.

The Teachers, School Leaders and Social Change Sleeter (2005, p. 15) posits that, “Curriculum should be used as a means for social improvement on people who have been marginalized.” However, school leaders may not always be supportive of these endeavors. Teachers in our teacher preparation program at NMSU are working in poorly funded schools, spend an innumerable number of hours trying to adjust and make fit a curriculum that just does not consider the needs of our local communities, however they make do with what they have because they know that there are missing voices from those who live through the experiences of injustice and inequalities in the Borderlands. School districts spend millions of dollars on curriculum that is based on information that validates injustices by making them sound normal and accepted as common knowledge for all students to absorb. The examples of assignments and projects shared by Ms. Garcia, Ms. Corrales and Ms. De La Fuente illustrate how teachers delved into analyzing their pedagogy, their students’ work and their own growth as critical pedagogues. The three teachers displayed leadership skills, merging theory and practice that impacted their schools and communities in positive ways. The curriculum that was created and then implemented by these teachers in the Borderlands region of Southern New Mexico; defied majoritarian stories and shows us that curriculum should be designed with the students’ best interest in mind. It should connect to the students that it is intended to serve and with a social justice purpose and goal. It is possible and school leaders ought to respond positively to teachers wanting to make a difference via their teaching. On the other hand, school districts and their leaders need to respond to the growth of students from diverse cultural, linguistic backgrounds and diverse ways of knowing. The manner in which a school or district responds to change is largely shaped by the leaders of such schools. Just think about the subtle yet basic difference in perspective if a school leader sees demographic changes as a problem not as an opportunity for growth. A school leader may or may not care or see the importance of valuing the wide representation of learners that their school serves, instead preferring to narrow the scope of the curriculum as a way to target standardized tests which results in homogenized learning and regimented knowledge that is delivered in lock-step fashion (Au, 2007). Indeed, Macedo asked “is it possible to develop a critical literacy program within the institutional space, which contradicts and neutralizes the fundamental task required by the dominant power of the schools?” (Freire & Macedo, 1987).


The Teachers’ Voices When I asked the teachers about the barriers or struggles they encountered at their school with its leadership—this is what they answered. One of the biggest struggles or barriers we have at our school is that bilingual classes aren’t valued and seen as a priority by our administration. Although we teach 50/50 in both languages (Spanish and English), by the time students enter 3rd grade and up, students are pushed into testing in English right away. The administration believes students will be more successful in English than in Spanish, because according to them the students who are assessed in Spanish do poorly. As a bilingual teacher, I have to work twice as hard to create resources and assessments in both languages. However, our administration doesn’t take that into consideration and every year we get moved to another grade, but this only happens to bilingual teachers. This was the first year I stayed with my grade, but then I received a split class, having to teach first grade as well which is a grade I’ve never taught before. There’s an irony in this statement because we live in Borderland communities where the student population is usually well over 75 percent Latina/o, Mexican or Mexican American specifically. As stated by this teacher, the work of bilingual teachers doubles since they lack resources in English and Spanish. Another issue is that bilingual teachers then get punished if the English Language Learners (ELL) do not do well on tests. Comparing a monolingual English student testing in English with an ELL student testing in English does not make sense. It takes time to acquire a second language and when students test in a language they are not proficient in, students are only demonstrating what they know in their home language and therefore not demonstrating the skills they have learned in all content areas. This teacher also shared that when it comes to testing, monolingual English students are doing better on the state test than the ELL students and the administration continues to question what the teachers are doing wrong. Students who test in Spanish are not doing well either because the test doesn’t correlate with the English test, and the translation is not done properly. Another teacher also shared about the lack of support she receives from her principal and emphasized that her role is to show her students to critique the system, to be critical thinkers. Since I started working on my Master’s degree in Bilingual Education at NMSU, my pedagogy has been dramatically channeled to advocate for my non-English speakers, fighting for their right to be educated with the same quality and opportunities regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds and language abilities. Unfortunately, the reality of any school leader, in my opinion and experience, is to turn students’ achievement into data. To them, as long as students are producing, learning and doing well on the tests, everything is fine and they will leave me alone. Of course, they ignore the fact that the extent of my curriculum content is developing my students’ consciousness to higher levels and that they will start questioning many deficiencies and issues taking place in our school community and in society. The school leaders know that my students are learning about civil rights and about important characters that impacted the history of the United States. As an educator, I am teaching accordingly to the standards but that is not entirely my focus.


This teacher has a clear understanding that teaching and learning should not just be an action to accumulate knowledge, data, facts, reading skills, and mathematical skills, as seems to be requested by the national standards of the U.S. educational system. The three teachers showcased in this paper are also aware that current neoliberal agendas focus on measuring the intellectual skills that are required by a market economy, a capitalist society but that does not drive their curriculum or pedagogy. In fact, Ms. Corrales, Ms. Garcia, and Ms. De La Fuente all understand that education must be an action to develop and teach love and to work toward social change, starting in their classrooms. They all spearhead and embody a passion to teach and learn to build a better world, in which all human beings are valued, taken into account, and respected. The teachers’ hope is that their school leaders will also see value in what they do in their classrooms and that their leadership praxis will eventually also reflect these values. Another teacher expanded on her response to my question about the support she receives from the school administrators. I would say that the administrators’ support toward me is letting me teach my content utilizing my own instructional method. 85% of my students are reading at grade level, they are producing acceptable quality essays, and mathematics is not an issue for them. As I mentioned before, students’ achievement as data is more relevant to school leaders. I am giving my administrators what they want, but I am teaching my students to their fullest potential exposing them to what is important and relevant to their present and future. School leaders should recognize that we are teaching students to develop empathy, respect, solidarity, understanding, tolerance, perseverance, responsibility, honesty, peace, kindness, generosity, compassion, and above all, love. All these values are indispensable for living a life within the framework of social justice that should not only exist between and among human beings, but in the natural environment that sustains our lives. Indeed, teachers are asking from their school leaders to enact a culturally responsive leadership praxis. Johnson (2014) notes that culturally responsive leadership practices, “bridge school community concerns, advocate for cultural recognition and revitalization and position educational leaders as advocates for race equity and community development in diverse neighborhoods” (p. 150). We would see more transformative change in schools if teachers and school administrators all served as bridges to merge community and societal issues with their students’ cultural, linguistic, and diverse knowledges. Possibilities for the Leaders As stated by the teachers, they wish their administrators were more supportive and that they recognized their efforts to produce change in the lives of their students and for the surrounding communities where they teach. Indeed, Freire (2005), says that teachers do not live in a world devoid of ideology, of racism, sexism, classism or other forms of oppression, but rather they live as social and political agents who: Challenge their students from an early age to a more adult age, through games, stories and reading so that students understand the need to create coherence between discourse and practice: a discourse about the defense of the weak, of the poor, of the homeless, and


a practice that favors the haves against the have-nots; a discourse that denies the existence of social classes, their conflicts, and a political practice entirely in favor of the powerful. (p.15) The teachers are actually advocating for their school leaders to also become social and political agents who embrace a culturally relevant leadership practice, one that links culturally relevant and anti-racist pedagogy to, “explore the yet-untapped possibilities of speaking across areas of theory, research, and practice within the field of education” (Douglass Horsford, Grossland, & Gunn, 2011, p. 582). An example of leaders as social-political agents is explained by Douglass-Horsford (2012) who contextualizes bridge leadership as another way to address social justice issues in schools. As she explains, bridge leadership “demonstrates how the intersection of race and gender as experienced by Black woman leaders has, in many instances, resulted in her serving as a bridge for others, to others, and between others in multiple and often complicated contexts over time” (p. 12). Specifically, bridge leadership: Refers to a grass-roots leadership approach grounded in democratic practice, community work, and social change to improve the lives of the disadvantaged and underserved. It requires the ability to traverse and negotiate difference, primarily race, gender, and class divides, by rethinking and restructuring hierarchical, top down configurations of leadership that fail to meet the needs of people where there are and ever worse, are unable to connect with who they are. (p.18) This “grassroots” or bottom up leadership approach is further explained by Marshall and Oliva (2006) who state that; “social justice leadership reconnects with emotional and idealistic stances. It supports leaders’ impulses to transgress, to throw aside the traditional bureaucratic rationality and the limiting conceptualizations of leadership” (p. 7). The teachers are asking for a collaboration based on strong communication and support from their school leaders to strengthen their work in the classroom and create greater impact and change in the communities. There is often miscommunication and lack of understanding, at the administrators’ end, of the basic needs teachers have in order to continue doing critical work with their students. For example, one day one of the teachers came to class in tears after being evaluated. The low scores and comments on her evaluation were the complete opposite of the powerful experience she and her students had with the unit. The teacher asked, “Is it really that hard to start the evaluation with something positive or to comment on the good I’m doing with the students?” What this teacher was asking for was for her leader to push aside the bureaucratic rationality and to simply value and acknowledge her hard work and the impact her pedagogy was having on the students and community. And, therefore, I ask, what would it look like for leaders to employ a “social justice, distributed leadership” at their schools? Harris (2004) explains that, “Collaboration and collegiality are at the core of distributed leadership, but it is important to recognize that distributed leadership is distinctive from, and more than, mutual collaboration between teachers” (p. 15). Distributed leadership then is about being of service and doing without top down models of leadership—where the leader is disconnected from the realities of the teachers, students, parents, and from the social and political issues that impact the communities surrounding their school. There are many possibilities for social change if school administrators believe in being of service before being leaders.


Greenleaf (1996) explains: The servant-leader is servant first…It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. He or she is sharply different from the person who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. For such it will be a later choice to serve- after leadership is established. (p. 52) The teachers presented here are asking that their school leaders indeed transgress and push aside the bureaucratic protocols that keep change from happening at their schools. They are also wishing that the administrators understand the crucial circumstances they face when they solely focus on teaching to the test. The teachers want the administration to recognize that; “The time is right for the cross-fertilization of the arts and leadership” (Adler, 2008, p. 190) because change is possible but a distributed leadership praxis must be enacted by the school leaders in order for this to happen. Conclusion: The Work Continues Even without much administrative support, when the teachers reflected on the possibilities for transformation that sprung from them employing critical pedagogies and incorporating art, music, and social justice issues in their classroom, they moved from being common [core] teachers to being exemplary critical pedagogues that move from theory to praxis. In fact, they all recognized that while it is much more work to incorporate art and social justice issues in their curriculum—the results justify the long hours they added to their workload. They still addressed the Common Core State Standards but they were also doing powerful work with their students. One of the teachers shared the following. When I try to create more socially just units, they usually take longer than planned. However, I would rather have students take their time and learn something meaningful and critical than having my students move on to the next unit for the sake of moving on or having them just sit there with the test and focus on the test. As long as I cover the standards I need to cover, I am able to justify why my units end up taking more time than planned. I try to teach these units during my social studies and science block because this is where I have more freedom to teach what I want and not risk being questioned by the administration on why I am teaching all this stuff. The teachers all developed critical, culturally relevant and inclusive curricula that allowed them to demonstrate their pedagogical leadership skills in their schools. As you have read here, the teachers’ students researched their family genealogy to craft their family trees and learned about immigration—crucial, relevant topics to the Borderlands region. Others learned about the Civil Rights Movement, about injustices happening at their school or about segregated schooling in the Southwest. Guided by readings and assignments that pushed their critical thinking, the students created posters and had a march to inform others about the injustices they had witnessed at their school; and others wrote empathetic letters to Sylvia Mendez to thank her for her courage to fight discrimination. A highlight of this work is that the lessons learned by these students cannot be standardized because they are learning about issues


and topics relevant and important to who they are and where they live. The students’ new knowledge cannot be tested because it is not measurable via a test. The material they were exposed to will show greater results and will have longer impact than an exam and they can use their critical thinking skills and new learned tools to put to use in life. Indeed, Ms. Corrales, Ms. Garcia, and Ms. De La Fuente all demonstrated that academic knowledge is important, but it should not stand alone because students’ cultures, epistemologies, and backgrounds need to be incorporated as well and there is nothing to lose (Flores Carmona & Delgado Bernal, 2012). The everyday knowledge and life experiences of students and their communities matter and have their place in the curriculum since “human intelligence is multifaceted” (Rendón, 2009, p. 28). These teachers also understand that just as there are various ways of knowing, there are also different types of knowledge and ways of teaching (Rendón, 2009). This wide variety of knowledge can and should be subsequently presented and shared using various pedagogical modalities (Sleeter & Flores Carmona, 2017). Critically conscious teachers should find the courage to address important issues of inequality and racism. According to Freire (2005) and Sleeter and Flores Carmona (2017) one of the main purposes of the curriculum should be to improve the society we all live in while striving to create a more just and balanced societal structure. The teachers I worked with are developing and delivering such curriculum and as the title of this piece indicates, these teachers are not only implementing a culturally relevant pedagogy at the core; they are also making a difference in the lives of their students and their communities. Lastly, while the focus of this manuscript has been on arts-based, social justice pedagogical practices in K-12 classrooms, it is important to emphasize that it was written to inform school leaders and teachers alike. It is the hope of the teachers and mine that this work will inspire teachers to not focus solely on teaching to the test and that school leaders will begin to rethink hierarchical, top down configurations of leadership at their school and begin building bridges and enacting distributive leadership as servant-leaders or as I see the teachers—as teacher leaders who serve and make a difference through their teaching.

References Adler, N. J. (2008). The arts & leadership: Now that we can do anything, what will we do? LEARNing Landscapes: Leadership in an Era of Change, 1(2), 187-213. Anzaldúa. G. E. (1997). Friends from the other side/amigos del otro lado. San Francisco, CA: Children’s Book Press. Apple, M. W. (2004). Ideology and curriculum (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge Falmer. Au, W. (2007). Critical curriculum studies: Education, consciousness and the politics of knowing. New York, NY: Routledge. Conkling, W. (2011). Sylvia & Aki. New York, NY: Yearling. Delgado Bernal, D. (2001). Learning and living pedagogies of the home: The mestizo consciousness of Chicana students. Qualitative Studies in Education, 14(5), 623-639. Douglass Horsford, S. (2012). This bridge called my leadership: an essay on black women as bridge leaders in education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 25(1), 11-22. Douglass Horsford, S., Grossland, T., & Gunn, K. M. (2011). Pedagogy of the personal and professional: Toward a framework of culturally relevant leadership. Journal of School Leadership, 21(4), 582-606.


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Author Bio Dr. Judith Flores Carmona is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and in the Honors College at New Mexico State University. Her research interests include critical pedagogy, Chicana/Latina feminist theory, critical race feminism, oral history and testimonio methodology and pedagogy. Her work has also appeared in Race Ethnicity and Education, the Journal of Latino/Latin American Studies, the Journal of Latinos and Education, the International Journal of Information Communication Technologies and Human Development, and in Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of MALCS.