Transforming Educational Pathways for Chicana/o Students

Book excerpt: This book chronicles a 10-year journey to develop and sustain Adelante, a university-school-community partnership designed specifically to address public education’s failure to meet the needs of students of color, particularly Chicana/o students. The authors examine the persistent barriers, mistakes, challenges, and successes that emerged in their community-based partnership with elementary school students, college students, teachers, parents, and educational leaders. Intertwining critical race theories with Chicana feminist theories, they propose a “critical race feminista praxis” and provide real-world examples of what this praxis can look like in the context of a racialized, gendered, and colonial landscape. The book offers practical advice and theoretical insight to those interested in disrupting pervasive inequities that shape the (mis)education of marginalized students. Book Features: Fills a void about how to engage in activist scholarship by describing concrete strategies and practices employed by the authors. Offers theoretical contributions through the braiding together of critical race and Chicana feminist theories. Proposes a partnership model for working with communities of color that promotes pathways to higher education. “Theoretically cutting-edge and with practical on-the-ground application, Transforming Educational Pathways is a brilliant example of how university–school–community collaborations can be reshaped into transformative praxis in the education of Chicanx, Latinx students. The balanced combination of community-engaged work and scholar-activist research in this groundbreaking book powerfully move us further in the spiritual journey of reimagining and transforming the inequities of educational institutions for Chicanx, Latinx students and their families and communities.” —Luis Urrieta, professor, The University of Texas at Austin “Delgado Bernal and Aleman start and end with the transformative idea that all students should be expected to attend college from their earliest experiences in public education—kindergarten. By challenging the deficit notions surrounding Chicana/o students and their communities, the authors provide the most compelling asset-based and theoretically grounded university–community partnership program I’ve seen in the K–8 sector.” —Daniel G. Solorzano, professor, University of California, Los Angeles “Transforming Educational Pathways for Chicana/o Students is a compelling and intimate account of the development of Adelante, an innovative university–school partnership. It is also an inspiring story of the impact of culturally affirming and anticolonial education on Latina/o children and their teachers, university student mentors, and parents. The process of changing deficit-based school culture is a difficult one, as the book shows. Yet, drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa’s feminist theorizing, Delgado Bernal and Alemán offer a theory of school change where collisions, difficult solidarities, and transformative moments constitute a praxis of hope, imagination, and social justice.” —Sofia Villenas, professor, Cornell University