my name is Ron speedu I am an educator for the past nine years I've been teaching ethnic studies chano studies and African-American studies to high school students in South Los Angeles and what I found working with my young people is that ethnic studies is empowering is liberating and is trans transformative for our young people a growing body of research from Scholars from across the country have shown and proven that ethnic studies has positive academic and social results for students of all Races and ethnic backgrounds now despite my own experiences and this research ethnic studies continues to remain invisible for students at the K through 12 level and in the state of Arizona ethnic studies has even been banned books by Latino authors have been pulled from the Shelf in front of students eyes and they're told that it's illegal for them to read these books in the classroom so how did we get to a point in 2014 where an entire State can ban a proven academic program and to answer that question I want to begin with the story of my grandmother margarita pedrasa my grandmother grew up in San Antonio Texas in the 1930s and when she was going to elementary school she was told that speaking Spanish was illegal she was forced to wear a sign around her neck that says I won't speak Spanish she was physically intimidated and abused by her teachers and her administrators and sadly this experience is common for many Mexican-American Latinos and other immigrants that have come into this country and so in many ways the story of my grandmother was a defining moment for me and it was a defining moment for my mother dor espu who used the experiences of my grandmother as an inspiration to become an educator herself and she became a bilingual education teacher and in 1975 in San Antonio Texas after the historic LA versus Nicholl Supreme Court case that overturn these unjust laws my mother began teaching at the very same school that my grandmother attended except this time my mother was breaking the cycle and she was making students feel proud of their linguistic abilities she later went on to become an a principal of a highly successful dual language immersion program that had incredible results My Father David is Speedy through was also an educator for over 30 years and he was also a principal of bilingual education School and in San Antonio Tex it had incredible results for the students and was a model for the district and the city my parents inspired my two older sisters to become teachers and they also inspired me to become a teacher and we had this incredible model and example that as a teacher you must respect the community that your students are in and you must make them proud of their linguistic abilities and proud of their heritage you see I went to school in the 1990s in San Antonio Texas and while it was very different from my grandmother's experience maybe in some ways it wasn't so different I never read a book by a Latino author or an African-American author I studied Mexican-American history on May 22nd a day before the school year ended and it wasn't until I got here to Amherst College and I took my first black studies course that I realized that there was an entire academic discipline that I had been cut off from and as I learned about the struggles of African-Americans and other ethnicities and the Black Liberation struggle I became inspired to figure out who I was as a Cho male from South Texas I became hungry for knowledge I became inspired and once I found myself placed on the historical timeline I became an intellectual I was a student participant and a student organizer of an event called voices for the voiceless and through this event I met people like haime shagi Flores that connected me to these literary movements that I knew nothing about I met people like veteran Cho poet R selinus who taught me about my indigenous background as a Cho I met Lis Reyes Rivera who taught me about the intersections between people of African descent and Puerto Ricans and I met Carmen Tafoya who was the poet laureate of San Antonio Texas who's one of the band authors in Arizona and I also became actively involved in the social movement of the time which was the Immigrant Rights Movement which is an important lesson about ethnic studies because you have to put what you learn into practice and so I felt liberated but I want to ask you the question why do we have to wait to college until we have these experiences shouldn't it be available for our young people in high school and elementary schools across the I believe so ethnic studies has a 45 year history in this country it was in 1968 a group of multi-racial students formed the third world Liberation Front at San Francisco State University and they staged the country's longest student strike and at the end of this struggle they achieved the creation of the first ethnic studies program at the college level UC Berkeley followed the next year in student activism of college students spread ethnic studies to every major college and university and an entire generation of students have been trained to go back into their community and to use their knowledge that they learned about themselves and their communities and use these theoretical Frameworks to go back and solve problems in their community and be active agents for social change this movement was also at the high school level and in 1968 the historic East LA walkouts was asking for the same things for high school students bilingual education Mexican-American studies programs culturally relevant curriculum and here we are we're not done with this struggle 1998 was a defining moment in ethnic studies history it was the year that the ethnic studies Department in Tucson Arizona was created the country's first and only district-wide ethnic studies program and the Mexican-American studies program was the largest of the program it was a a national model for teachers like me and the teachers in the Mexican-American studies program presented at conferences and freely shared their curriculum and their pedagogy they invited us into their classrooms and I was a student of those teachers they had incredible academic results 93% of the students in the Mexican American studies were graduating from high school and 85% of them were getting accepted into college this compared to a district-wide average for Mexican-American students not in the program of a 50% dropout rate equally important students in the Mexican-American studies program according to the 2012 Cabrera study were outperforming their peers in Reading Writing and math now the funny thing is about math is they didn't even teach math right so how is that possible and I think it proves this point is that the program was allowing students to develop that intellectual identity it was a defining moment for those young people and so despite all this success in 2011 a group of politicians called this program unamerican and unpatriotic and accused the teachers of trying to teach students to overthrow the government yeah which is was the furthest from the truth and this the community responded students and parents and teachers staged hundreds of walkouts and protests and Sittin and they took over the school board and they galvanized an entire nation to defend the ethnic studies program in Tucson Arizona I was there in 2012 as part of the Lio trafficante book smuggling operation we were putting Contraband books by Latino authors in the trunk of our cars and taking them across territory that these books were illegal you know and one of the things that the students and the teachers told me was that we're happy that you're here but the real movement is back in your respective local communities go back there and create your ethnic studies programs so for the past 9 years I've been engaged in that struggle as a member of the people's education movement and organization I've worked to create and share ethnic studies curriculum and developed ethnic studies pedagogy and at the school that I teach at animon South Los Angeles we have an 11-year history of offering ethnic studies classes to all of our ninth grade incoming students and an elective also for upper class class in Cho African-American studies these are some of my students and through a important collaborative relationship with my administrators and with the counselors and with the other academic disciplines In My School site we have created myself and the other teachers that have taught these classes an academically rigorous course and program that focuses on reading and writing skills the focuses on listening and speaking skills the focuses on critical thinking through a project based approach to learning and before I share some of my own curriculum I just have to say I don't have this all figured out being a teacher is a grind on a daily basis and I am working to be better every single day so these are my humble ideas but they're research focused and they have results an ethnic studies program has three components number one it needs to be decolonial number two it needs to be culturally relevant and number three it needs to be Community responsive and social justice jce based what I mean by the colonial is that often times students go through history classes and they believe that African-American history began with slavery and that's not true we have thousands of years of history from our ancestors and those that came before us the West African dancers that come to my school every year is one part of an entire curriculum that makes students understand knowledge of self and where we come from the Aztec dancers that come to my school site are one example of an infusion of a curriculum that celebrates the indigeny of our Cho and our Latino students we put Columbus on trial for crimes against indigenous people right and we look at history from different Vantage points and we connect how colonialism of 500 years has shaped the current economic political and social system that our students engage with in South La the course needs to be culturally relevant in it that it has to be specifically tailored to the community that you teach in so I teach in a community that's half Latino and half africanamerican and one of the things that we focused on is celebrating and understanding the Legacy and the lessons of the unsung heroes of American History the program needs to be Community responsive in that my community is half black and half brown one of the centerpiece units that I teach is the missing chapter book on black and brown unity and I grab the state textbooks and I tell the students hey let's look for that chapter because man there's a whole lot written about it and of course we can't find the chapter so I say it's okay the knowledge is out there we'll create it together and so we create the missing chapter book on black and brown Unity this is a picture of two my students and I wanted to share one of the written ideas they came from my student London she's here on the left and she said this about what she learned often times you grew up believing that blacks and Latinos are Arch Rivals only because we aren't taught any better but how can we expect to be taught otherwise when our parents and our grandparents have been sheltered from the truth and the truth is is that black and Latinos are not enemies and in fact they are allies and have faced many of the same struggles throughout the course of history we need to address our struggles and Unite with one another to try to overcome them if we were to learn about how African and Indigenous people came together in Mexico for the liberation of their Collective struggles then we should get the sense to do the same and I think her words are profound in a a lesson and an understanding that's absent from most schools that has a multi-racial population and finally one of the most important lessons about ethnic studies is that ethnic studies is a struggle by itself and so the students engaged in this Innovative project that was brought to my attention by two friends of mine Professor Elia Cerna and professor John Avalos Rios who were creating popup books with their students and the idea of the popup book is a simple idea it's that 500 years ago the Maya indigenous people books were burned by the Spaniards two years ago or in 2011 our books were banned in Arizona so you can burn our books you can ban our books but the knowledge and the history and the struggle will always pop back up it'll pop back up in Los Angeles it'll pop back up in Amherst Massachusetts it'll pop back up in Chicago and all over the country and so students were able to write essays and study about these different events and they posted their work around the school side and they invited their community members and then we had a display at the Southern California library and I was contacted by a journalist from Latino USA at NPR program and what was really powerful is they came to interview my students about the project and about their experience in ethnic studies and we had achieved what we sought to achieve at the beginning which was to change the hearts and minds of people by reaching a national audience and I remember the faces on my students and how proud they were when they were speaking into the microphone and when they heard their words and their ideas over the radio right now in Los Angeles we're currently engaged in a historic struggle to bring ethnic study students to all high school students in Los Angeles my students recently wrote letters to the Los Angeles Unified School Board according to the data from the California Department of Education there's over 152,000 high school students in Los Angeles of those 152,000 only 691 are currently in ethnic studies program this in a school district that serves 90% students of color it's time to change it's time to transform it's time to offer ethnic studies classes not just for the high school students but for elementary and middle school two days from now on Tuesday November 18th I'm going to be joined by thousands of other people in Los Angeles who are going to be rallying in front of the school board and we believe that this is a historical moment similar struggles are taking place in Texas the District Court of Appeals will be hearing the a federal court case that's been brought against the State of Arizona for Banning the ethnic studies classes and my message to you is that you and you can create ethnic studies programs by writing resolutions for your local school board you can go to your local community your local school community and you can encourage teachers and administrators to create these programs if you're an educator whatever discipline whether it's science math or English you can also create these programs you can Infuse ethnic studies pedagogy and ethnic studies curriculum into whatever academic discipline that you have our students need it their success determined their success is determined by us offering this type of learning and this type of transformative and liberating experience and I want to end today with a poem that I begin my class every day with it's a poem that comes from the Mayas it's a concept called inlakesh it's thousands of years old to this continent that we live in it's a poem written by Luis Valdez who was a member of the United farmworker movement in Arizona this is a poem that the government deemed illegal in La this poem is popping up and here's how it goes and it's at the heart of what an ethnic studies classes about inesh you or my other me if I do harm to you I do harm to myself respect if I love and respect you respect I love and respect myself thank you very much ladies and gentlemen