Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.
I can still feel the pain from every tug at my scalp, my abuelita, my mom, or my Ana gathering each lock and pulling it into a tight ponytail. My face would get warm from the steam filling the kitchen; coming from the stove were wafts of menudo. I only liked the hominy. Before leaving to school, she would put her hands on my cheeks and say “Eres la niña más bonita de Chula Vista.” To me, this is what it means to be Mexican. These women are my roots, but when I grew old enough to enter the classroom, my culture disappeared.
Year after year, my textbooks only taught me about European strength, European power, and European intelligence. Despite attending a predominantly Mexican school, we only learned about ourselves in class when it came to colonization or drug cartels. No matter how much my mom fought it, I eventually lost my Spanish and rejected my heritage. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that this changed. I became inspired by a book about a little girl named Lupe who grew up in Mexico during the revolution. Her tight braids and loving family connected me to my childhood and her story showed me the resilience of my people. I felt angry with the education that never taught me the beauty of the culture I found within these pages.
As a result, my closest friends and I became passionate about ethnic studies, but because we were not offered this class, we decided to create and teach the curriculum ourselves. We started a student led elective course telling a story about oppression, resistance, love, identity, and ourselves. Now, I have been teaching for over a year, and we have grown our class from 6 students to almost 20. Each day that I teach, I hold the love of my three women close. They showed me from very young that I should be proud of where I come from. In ethnic studies, we do the same.