Implementing the Ethnic Studies Graduation Requirement: A Case Study
By Cindy Mata and Lynn Schaulis
November 21, 2022
It has been over a year since Assembly Bill 101 was passed, making Ethnic Studies a graduation requirement in California public and charter schools. As districts work to ensure they meet this requirement for California’s graduating class of 2029-2030, we offer some insights as to what has been helpful in the development of Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District’s (NLMUSD) Ethnic Studies program.
NLMUSD’s journey began in 2017-18 with an exploratory committee formed at the urging of district leadership and informed by a site visit to El Rancho Unified School District, the first district in California to make Ethnic Studies a graduation requirement. Next, NLMUSD partnered with CSU Long Beach to pilot Saturday concurrent enrollment Ethnic Studies courses in the spring of 2018 where the students had a chance to learn about historically marginalized groups, movements for racial equity and justice, and their own family histories, which was met with overwhelmingly positive response from participating students, especially as they were earning university credit alongside their growing social consciousness. Learning from El Rancho’s successes and spurred by students’ excitement for weekend courses with CSULB, NLMUSD high school teachers were invited to submit A-G course proposals. A handful of passionate teachers created courses and submitted proposals that winter for the following school year (2019-20): Chicanx Art History, Ethnic Studies in Graphic Arts, Design and Culture, and Multicultural Women’s Literature.
Then, in January of 2019, Norwalk-La Mirada Unified formally partnered with UCLA’s History-Geography Project (UCLA-HGP) to continue growing their Ethnic Studies program. This resulted in the creation of a multi-year partnership with a growing cohort of TK-12 educators committed to broader outcomes of Ethnic Studies such as student empowerment, greater inclusivity, and community engagement. This partnership has been characterized by 1) collaboration cultivated with relational trust, 2) a systemic approach to building out the program, and 3) consistency. These intentional groundings stem from collaborative conversations with educators, counselors, and district administrators who want to see the program grow and understand change as a process. In each step of our partnership, we have asked for feedback and used that feedback to guide our decisions about next steps, making sure we are meeting the needs of the educators so that they feel supported in their work.
Collaboration cultivated by relational trust has been of the utmost importance in this partnership. From the beginning, the UCLA HGP team stressed the importance of building capacity through the principles of community, identity, and content. The discipline of Ethnic Studies is not merely an intellectual exercise, it calls on us to engage in deep reflection about who we are, how we see the world, and to engage in thinking about how we become an embodiment of the just worlds we envision. This deep dive into self reflection and discovery that we ask of students is also work we ask educators to engage in beforehand. Identity exploration requires a level of mutual trust and respect as exploring the values that shape our worldview makes us vulnerable and can sometimes lead to cognitive dissonance. We have been fortunate to have time to engage in this work in meaningful ways, to move at the speed of trust. All our professional learning offerings have been optional and open to all TK-12 educators, school site administrators and counselors, as well as interested district personnel. We have made plenty of space for discussion, community building, and have co-constructed agendas with lots of feedback from participant evaluations. We have strived to make these welcoming spaces where folks have built a sense of community beyond their school site colleagues.
Because we had a systemic approach to building this program, we intentionally opened up the professional learning opportunities to anyone who was interested in learning more about the discipline. We believe that the successful growth of this program depends on a structure of support for the educators that are responsible for teaching the classes. That is why the learning space also included administrators, counselors, and all personnel that wanted to help build capacity both within the district as well as the larger community. Planning alongside Teachers on Special Assignment (TOSAs) helped connect Ethnic Studies with other district initiatives, such as social-emotional learning (SEL), so folks could see how these initiatives supported, or were in conversation, with one another. For example, TOSAs and SEL advisory members curated slide decks of digital resources such as short videos and read-alouds for heritage month celebrations and equity-focused professional book clubs became a call to action to better understand how to meet the needs of a largely Hispanic/Latino community of learners.
Lastly, consistency has been key to keeping this program growing. We are four years into the partnership. Given all that we’ve been through in the past years, it would have been understandable if this work was not prioritized, but we kept the learning going. After the Safer at Home orders, we took our learning online and made space to process all that was happening together, in community. We continued to remind participants that anyone could attend our learning series (offered quarterly), that this was on a voluntary basis, and above all, that educators would be compensated for their time. We believe that this low-stakes approach coupled with monetarily valuing people’s time went a long way in showing our community of educators that we wanted to support them in their learning. Engaging in this work is not merely about developing courses, it also involves learning about the discipline, engaging in deep reflection and creating a community of support. This requires dedicated time and money.
Our annual Ethnic Studies Fall Summits are clear reflections of a collaboration cultivated by relational trust, a systemic approach to building out the program, and consistency. Since the 2019-2020 school year we have created a space, open to anyone in the district, where we deepen our learning as a collective and highlight what is happening around Ethnic Studies at NLMUSD. We begin every Ethnic Studies Fall Summit by exploring an Ethnic Studies theory as part of our commitment to build a communal understanding of the discipline. Cultivating a learning community gives everyone an opportunity to engage in discipline-specific content in a way that is accessible and opens up a space for community building and dialogue. The summits then have various workshops where educators can hear from students about their experiences in Ethnic Studies classrooms, from teachers about the courses that are offered across the district, or participants can choose to deepen their learning by going to various offerings by UCLA HGP and district personnel. The summits have been vital for creating a larger network of support for the program. This includes educators across a spectrum of learning, such as teachers who are curious about what Ethnic Studies is and get to hear first-hand from educators and students or from teachers who leave inspired by the work they saw and commit to deepen their learning throughout the school year by participating in district offerings for Ethnic Studies. Like all our learning opportunities, these summits also provide us with ideas for how to grow the program via participants’ evaluations and reflections. It is precisely from this summit feedback that we discovered a strong interest from elementary educators to have dedicated space to explore what Ethnic Studies could look like at the K-5 level. In response, a cohort was created and these teachers were also provided ongoing support throughout the year through after school meetings. Initially, we had only envisioned a secondary cohort to meet the graduation requirement, but we quickly saw how extending the learning to elementary educators could also help fortify that structural support model.
As the district prepares to expand course offerings to meet the new state requirements, there is a growing vision to further connect with the community, to educate families about Ethnic Studies alongside students, and to continue to support teacher leaders as they refine their curriculum and instruction. To this end, this year we instituted lab days where UCLA HGP and NLMUSD TOSAs could provide targeted support for teacher leaders around a particular lesson. The teacher leaders have then opened up their classrooms for observations to teachers new to the discipline and other district personnel who have expressed interest. These lab days provide a safe space for teachers to share their thinking as it relates to Ethnic Studies and observers also get time to ask questions and to work on a future lesson of their own after the observations are debriefed. These lab days have really helped educators see what is possible and have inspired many to incorporate Ethnic Studies concepts and ideas into their classrooms. NLMUSD is a great example of how to build an Ethnic Studies program in a way that is responsive to the needs of educators and the larger community. As this program grows, our district continues to turn to UCLA HGP for content expertise, advice about implementation, and best of all, encouragement to keep going.
Cindy Mata is the Associate Director of the UCLA History Geography Project and a former middle school and high school teacher. She holds a B.A. in Chican@ Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Masters in Latin American Studies from California State University, Los Angeles. Developing and growing Ethnic Studies programs that are community centered and responsive is a labor of love for Cindy and she is honored to get to do this work with NLMUSD.
Lynn Schaulis is a 29-year educator in Norwalk-La Mirada USD with dual passions for literacy and equity. A graduate of UC Irvine and former middle school teacher, she supports professional learning, curriculum and instruction across her TK-12 district. Her commitment to ethnic studies is nurtured through ongoing learning and collaboration with educators across the state.