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by Dr. Gina Ann Garcia and Leah Jackson
Roman Motizov/Shutterstock
In part one of this Q&A, HigherEdJobs speaks with Dr. Gina Ann Garcia, a professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Education who focuses on issues of equity and justice in higher education, about ways to center and truly serve students at Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs).
Leah Jackson: In your new book, “Transforming Hispanic-Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice,” you provide a roadmap for HSIs to go from just enrolling Latine/x students to actually serving and centering them. One of your recommendations in regards to building the infrastructure to better serve these students is to build liberatory spaces. For people who haven’t read your book, can you explain this concept and why it is an important component of servingness?
Dr. Gina Ann Garcia: There’s a lot there, but yes, let’s talk about liberation. It is a core component. The book was originally called “Transforming Hispanic-Serving Institutions for Equity, Justice, and Liberation,” but I think it was too long, and liberation is a complex concept. And the publisher wants it to be straightforward, right? But I think it is worth talking and thinking through what liberation is.
I’m talking about the idea of education as a space of liberation for minoritized people. I often draw on Paulo Freire’s concepts of educational liberation, which is the idea that education shouldn’t be where we just deposit knowledge into students and they go away and don’t have any part of the process. Liberatory education would actually allow for an exchange of knowledge. The folks who come in bring knowledge, and the folks who are there hired to teach students also have knowledge, and they’re different knowledges and there’s an exchange of knowledge, so it really gets to the centering of students. In the case of HSIs, Latinx students bring in knowledge, such as their cultural knowledge, their ways of knowing, their language — language is a big conversation in HSIs. In the United States, the educational system doesn’t typically allow you to bring those in. I often say it asks you to leave it at the door, right? Leave all your treasures — all of what Freire says is community cultural wealth — leave it at the door. It’s not welcome in here. And the educational spaces are designed to assimilate us into mainstream culture. The reality is that HSIs are enrolling not only Latino students, but also other students of color, other minoritized students, other immigrant students, and indigenous students who have a ton of knowledge that we could learn from.
So, the idea of liberation really is that we would center students’ ways of knowing and being and allow for an exchange of information, which ultimately leads to greater outcomes for the student, such as their own identity development, because they have a space to explore their culture, their race, their gender, all their identities, and also their critical consciousness — their enhanced consciousness of the world.
Now, where do white people fit into this? White people are in the exchange process as well, particularly from Paulo Freire’s perspective of what he says, oppressor and oppressed working side by side for liberation. And you can fill that in with other things besides race — let’s say cisgender people and trans or non-binary people having an exchange in an educational space that allows for us to learn and grow together.
It then can lead to greater consciousness of dominant groups who are then committed to also working for justice. That’s liberatory for people of color who don’t have to do all the teaching now — there are allies and co-conspirators in the process who want to go out and also change the world.
Jackson: So, when you talk about building liberatory spaces, would that be an office on campus for students?
Garcia: No, I say the whole space, all the spaces — the whole campus — because it’s about transforming the entire institution, which I talk about in the book. It’s everything — the way we make decisions, the community partners we engage, etc. So, yes, there could be a cultural center. That’s one space, but the financial aid office, admissions and records, counseling services, and/or residence life could also be that. Every single space can and should become that liberatory space. So, it’s not just one space; it’s all the spaces. And, of course, the classroom, that’s the biggest space. I talk a lot about curriculum in the book.
Jackson: Yes, specifically, you note the importance of curriculum design and four approaches from James A. Banks, ranging from simply including racial-ethic-Indigenous heroes and artifacts (contributions approach) to actually having students decide what and who is included in the curriculum (social action approach). Can you share what this social action approach looks like when implemented? How can one adopt this approach from a logistical standpoint?
Garcia: So social action — I think the key word is action for me. And it’s a lot wrapped up in the four different levels of curriculum redesign, but the action for me is where if you enhance people’s consciousness around social issues because that’s part of what liberation is and liberation is also helping people to see their own oppression, which I think needs to be said as well.
I think we assume that people with minoritized identities have already explored their oppression or their oppressor, and they haven’t necessarily. So, for example, colleges are known for being spaces where queer students can come out for the first time because the space is open. Maybe their families weren’t open, maybe their religious spaces weren’t open, right, whatever it may be, and then the educational space allows them to then become aware, right?
So, letting go of that internalized oppression that maybe others have told you. That happens with racism as well. We internalize the racism and believe it depending on the level of education we’ve had. So, this consciousness awakening is a big part of the educational liberation.
Coming to consciousness is one thing, but coming to consciousness without being able to do anything is actually somewhat harmful as well. For one, people need healing. If there is consciousness and there is some trauma, they might need healing. So that might be action, right?
But they also may want to do something about it. And I’ve seen that in my own classes where I taught a class on race and racism. We had a bunch of consciousness, a lot of racial awakenings, including students of color. And suddenly they felt overwhelmed, like, “What are we supposed to do with all this information that now we can’t even turn on the TV without seeing it?” Once you become aware, it’s hard not to be aware.
Giving students a space to do something is a really important part of it. That’s how I think about social action. There are progressions to it. We need some exploration of identities. We need some exploration of culture. We need some exploration of systems of oppression and ultimately, what do we want students to do about it?
Jackson: So, what are some of the challenges that might come with this curriculum redesign?
Garcia: Yes, there are a ton of barriers. One — people are barriers. I have to put that out there because there are many faculty who are not willing to do this right now.
And so often, there’s one person trying to make big change, but a department can be massive. So, one barrier is people. People have to be willing, and there must be training for people to even be able to do this work.
Then, once you get them on board, again, there are stages to this. The first is getting them on board. Then, I did a session with some faculty and they said, ‘we want to do this, but we don’t really know how. Nobody’s trained us how to do curriculum redesign.”
And in all fairness, faculty are not trained to be pedagogues. We are trained in our discipline, and that’s it. We are thrown into a classroom literally with zero training in how to teach students. That’s a huge issue in higher education in general. To say ‘I don’t know how to do this’ is fair for any faculty member regardless of their background. They’re going to need to know how to do it. There needs to be some training and some development around it.
There are also barriers in that the disciplines aren’t necessarily ready. So even when the faculty are ready and even when the department is ready, maybe the discipline hasn’t provided the opportunities for that. Let’s say, for example, you’re trying to find some of each level of the redesign. The first one is contribution. There might be an area in which faculty can’t even find the contributions, let alone go fully on to social action.
You have to dig deep. It does take some work to find those contributions. Also, I’ve been talking a lot about how we aren’t relics of the past. So even with the contributions approach, for example, right now, it’s Hispanic Heritage Month. If you’re only celebrating historical figures and not any present-day figures, you’re not working hard enough. There are really amazing Latinx people right now who are alive and well that you could be celebrating and talking about.
So, trying to find the folks, the heroes, the contributors, the writers of books — that’s a big one – can be difficult. There are also limitations to how much knowledge is even out there. But it is a matter of taking time. That is another barrier — campuses need to give faculty time to do this. To expect faculty to do this at any other time — let’s say during summer — they don’t work during the summer. We’re off contract in the summer. We technically shouldn’t have to do it. Many people do, but we technically don’t have to. So, when are you going to give people the space and the time to do this work? So there are many barriers. It takes a long time. I don’t expect this to happen overnight. It just has to start.
For more information about centering and serving students at HSIs, read part two of this interview here.
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