My study explores the underlying factors that allow systemic structural issues to exist within continuation high schools which result in the low educational performance of low-income Latinx continuation students. My study focuses on educators’ experiences, as I conducted 20 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Southern California continuation high school teachers. I focused on the following areas of study: the teacher’s career, the teacher’s interactions with students, and the teacher’s opinions regarding their accessibility to funding and resources. My findings indicate that teachers, the outer community, and school-board administrators utilize cultural deficit thinking and stigmatization as tools of total erasure to exchange low-income Latinx students’ social identities with racist and classist stereotypes; in consequence, these mechanisms allow the district to impose invisibility on students’ academic and emotional needs in order to justify the formation and maintenance of institutional challenges for administrators’ fiscal benefit. Overall, these results reaffirm that our educational system reproduces social inequality; the total erasure of low-income Latinx continuation students’ academic and emotional needs permits the persistence of systemic structural issues informed by racist and classist stereotypes. My research calls for avenues of communication between administrators, teachers, and the outer community to address institutional barriers and, subsequently, establish equitable funding distributions to promote continuation high school students’ educational success with an understanding of the increased academic, emotional, and social needs of low-income Latinx students.

My project explores the role of teachers at Southern California continuation high schools as it relates to serving low-income students of color in the face of the institutional barriers within alternative education. My study focuses on the teachers’ career, interactions with students, and opinions on accessibility to resources and funding. I have examined their experiences through twenty in-depth, semi-structured interviews with teachers from three districts. My findings indicate that district members’ misconceptions of Latinx students as inherently deviant and academically unengaged drive institutional issues creating financial burden for which teachers are forced to compensate. My study highlights that continuation high schools implement unjust policies, limit teaching materials and resources, reduce funding, and restrict the hiring of ancillary staff. My research pushes for more avenues of communication between the district and teachers to fulfill students’ needs through adequate funding allocation. These results extend existing literature in revealing the untold narratives of California continuation high school teachers, the structural issues within alternative education, and the needs of Latinx continuation high school students.

In the context of Chicanx experiences in the United States, where varying generations of Chicanxs experience bicultural realities, this study shows how embodied knowledge performed through the body’s movements in folklórico dance by Chicanx youth from multiple generations, acts as a mechanism for reconnecting youth to cultural ties, reevaluating educational practices, and emplacing within youth, the ability to foster the confidence to express and create imagined futures. Data collection incorporated a series of interviews with eight Chicanx youth and adults who have either taught or danced folklórico in the Phoenix, Los Angeles, or Coachella Valley areas. Interview participants revealed a strong sense of cultural orgullo that acts as a bedrock for their cultural identity affirmation and reclamation. This orgullo and other cultural knowledges such as familismo and collective consciousness were emphasized through pedagogies of embodiment. Dancers described learning these cultural knowledges not just through the embodiment of physical dance steps but through the embodiment of social customs honored by their folklórico communities. Much of these social customs centered around fostering and maintaining relationships of genuine, holistic caring. These relationships were foundational for personal, mental, and emotional growth of dancers. Through these relationships, individual identities found the support to thrive within collective communities. Given the influx of educational pedagogies that attempt to depersonalize, depoliticize, and de-emotionalize the education through the implementation of tracking systems, standardized tests, and culturally inaccessible curriculums, these stories suggest alternate forms of learning that may account for students’ entire well-being. While this project is very much about reclaiming historical pasts, it is also about re-envisioning educational possibilities, discovering inner potentials and building collective communities that recognize and rejoice in those potentials. Through this study, a deeper understanding of the functions of movement and dance will strengthen platforms that push arts education and ethnic studies to greater educationalist agendas.

Being one of the largest and most influential ethnic groups in Southern California, Mexican and Latinx communities have continuously played a significant role in the shaping of major cities. Despite the history of racist and exclusionary urban planning and policy, Latinxs have persevered through adaptive and creative methods of creating space and reusing resources. Such strength, creativity, and resourcefulness are assets within Latinx communities and are also ways that they practice sustainability, thus having the potential to play a significant role in the development of sustainable cities. Therefore, by focusing local solutions and development projects on community assets as opposed to just community need, voice, autonomy, and inclusion are given to Latinx communities, where they not only participate in the development projects that affect them but are the drivers of the solutions and positive changes they see in their communities. I will be doing two case studies on two non-profit community-based organizations, Huerta del Valle and East LA Community Corporation, who practice this form of asset-based community development. Being situated in two of the most population dense areas in Southern California with the highest concentrations of Mexican and Latinx people, East Los Angeles and the Inland Empire, both organizations serve predominantly Mexican and Latinx communities. By practicing asset-based community development through their programming, Huerta del Valle and East LA Community Corporation are connecting their local communities to decision-making spaces, socially and economically empowering their communities, and overseeing green communal urban spaces. Thus, through asset-based community development, these two organizations are able to uplift and meet the needs of both human ecosystems and the natural ecosystems, creating socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable cities, especially for historically marginalized urban communities.

This qualitative study described four testimonios from Chicanas who have successfully completed a doctorate in education degree, both Ph.D. and Ed.D. The literature reviewed three important areas of study. The first is a review of the systemic challenges that Chicanas must hurdle; cheap labor, segregation of schools and neighborhoods, being silenced through English-only education, and deficit thinking. The second area of review focused on ways that Chicanas create strategies for success to overcome these challenges. The third was a review of the theoretical literature through a distinctly and relevant Chicana feminist lens. Chicanas’ strategies for success were collected as testimonios. These lived stories are shared using a narrative approach and were analyzed through a Chicana feminist lens, allowing the researcher to connect with indigenous roots. Findings include cultural intuition, reflexión, máscaras, nepantla, and La Virgen de Guadalupe as themes that enable an understanding of the strategies used by these successful women. This study sought to understand how gender and race impact graduate scholarship among a unique population and adds to the body of knowledge on doctoral education and Latina (specifically Chicana) education in particular.

Nontraditional college student enrollment in the United States is rapidly growing and is predicted to continue to increase. Similarly, female students are currently the majority student population on college campuses. Although numerous studies document college student experiences, few focus on first-generation Latinas who are student-mothers at community colleges. The purpose of this study was to explore the educational experiences of first-generation Latina nontraditional student-mothers enrolled at a community college in California to identify the ways in which grit (ganas) and mindsets influenced their success. This inquiry followed Moustakas’s (1994) transcendental phenomenology research process. Individual interviews of five Latinas were analyzed using Moustakas’s modification of the Van Kaam method of analysis. The findings indicate that each woman had a similar yet unique story based upon their intersectional identities and the space in which they lived in at the time of this study. These stories collectively echoed a phenomenon rooted in cultural pervasiveness and generational continuity, an urgency to break cultural norms, and the grasp on ganas and mindsets that each participant held onto while striving to reach their educational goals. The participants’ stories illuminated an unanticipated connection to my own story as a Latina student-mother in search of a higher education. This connection provided me with a deeper understanding of my educational path and the realization that ganas and mindsets also influenced my educational experiences. The implications from this study offer ways to support this specific group of students both collectively and individually. La inscripción de estudiantes del colegio no tradicionales en los Estados Unidos está creciendo rápidamente y se prevé que continúe aumentando. Del mismo modo, las alumnas son actualmente la población estudiantil mayoritaria en los colegios. Aunque numerosos estudios documentan experiencias de estudiantes de colegio, pocos se centran en latinas de primera generación que son estudiantes-madres en colegios comunitarios. El propósito de este estudio fue explorar las experiencias educativas de las madres Latinas que son estudiantes no tradicionales de primera generación inscritas en un colegio comunitario en California para identificar las maneras en que sus ganas y mentalidades influyeron en su éxito. Este estudio siguió al proceso de investigación de fenomenología trascendental de Moustakas (1994). Las entrevistas individuales de cinco Latinas fueron analizadas utilizando la modificación de Moustakas del método de análisis de Van Kaam. Los hallazgos indican que cada mujer tenía una historia similar pero única basada en sus identidades interseccionales y el espacio en el que vivían en el momento de este estudio. Estas historias hicieron eco colectivamente de un fenómeno arraigado en la omnipresencia cultural y la continuidad generacional, la urgencia de romper las normas culturales y la comprensión de las ganas y las mentalidades que cada participante aferró mientras se esforzaba por alcanzar sus metas educativas. Las historias de los participantes iluminaron una conexión imprevista con mi propia historia como estudiante-madre Latina en busca de una educación superior. Esta conexión me proporcionó una comprensión más profunda de mi camino educativo y la comprensión de que las ganas y las mentalidades también influyeron en mis experiencias educativas. Las implicaciones de este estudio ofrecen maneras de apoyar a este grupo específico de estudiantes tanto colectiva como individualmente.

To effectively prevent and mitigate the outbreak of natural disasters is a more pressing issue in the twenty-first century than ever before. The frequency and cost of natural disasters is rising globally, most especially in developing countries where the most severe effects of climate change are felt. However, while climate change is indeed a strong force impacting the severity of contemporary catastrophes, it is not directly responsible for the exorbitant cost of the damage and suffering incurred from natural disasters -- both financially and in terms of human life. Rather, the true root causes of natural disasters lie within the power systems at play in any given society when these regions come into contact with a hazard event. Historic processes of isolation, oppression, and exploitation, combined with contemporary international power systems, interact in complex ways to affect different socioeconomic classes distinctly. The result is to create vulnerability and scarcity among the most defenseless communities. These processes affect a society’s ideological orientation and their cultural norms, empowering some while isolating others. When the resulting dynamic socio-political pressures and root causes come into contact with a natural hazard, a disaster is likely to follow due to the high vulnerability of certain groups and their inability to adapt as conditions change. In this light, the following discussion exposes the anthropogenic roots of natural disasters by conducting a detailed case analysis of natural disasters in Haiti, Ethiopia, and Nepal.