A publication of the Association of California School Administrators

Democratic engagement through ethnic studies

Supporting implementation through community action and professional development

By Emily Bautista | March | April 2025

During my senior year in high school, at my uncle Max’s funeral, family members called him a “pioneer.” They told stories about how he came and worked in the fields in the Central Valley of California, moving with the crops as the seasons changed. I was so dismissive and retorted, “He was just an immigrant. That’s what immigrants do to survive in the United States.” The following year, I was immersed in UCLA ethnic studies courses and Filipino community organizations, learning about the rich history and contributions of Filipino men from my family’s region in the Philippines to California’s agricultural boom in the 1930s. Meeting these “manongs” (which translates into “older brother” in the Filipino language Ilocano) at a field trip in Delano and hearing their stories of perseverance, struggle and joy moved me to tears. I was left wondering, why didn’t I learn about this in school? How could I have been so ignorant? But more devastatingly, I wish I would’ve appreciated my uncle while he was still here.

As a freshman in college, it felt like a crime, a betrayal, and unjust that I had to gain admission into one of the most competitive public universities, UCLA, to gain access to precious knowledge and wisdom that would aid my own journey of healing the harmful narratives about myself and my community that I have internalized, developing a grounded sense of self, and gaining strength in solidarity with other minoritized identities. From that point on, making ethnic studies accessible to young people became my mission. Since then, I became a high school social studies teacher, public school administrator, and ethnic studies instructor for teachers pursuing an ethnic studies certificate in the University of California.

What helped me as an ethnic studies high school teacher? Community engagement: That field trip to Agbayani Village in Delano (a retirement village constructed by many Filipino/a/x community members for aging Filipino farm workers) during my freshman year in college represented the heart and spirit of ethnic studies pedagogy. Ethnic studies isn’t only about learning the history of minoritized people. Ethnic studies pedagogy is rooted in a deep understanding of what has created the conditions a community experiences and being able to have a sense of agency with applying that knowledge in ways that can have a meaningful impact on their lived realities.

Thus, being engaged with the community was of upmost importance as an ethnic studies teacher. Being involved with a mentorship program taught me so much about how to build authentic relationships with young people and families beyond a traditional school teacher-student/parent dynamic. Having an intellectual community with liked-minded educators in the People’s Education Movement in Los Angeles helped reduce the sense of isolation I felt as an ethnic studies teacher and helped me refine my craft through critical readings and inquiries into improving our units and even bridging our work among one another.

Schoolwide curricular, instructional and assessment frameworks; partnerships; and resources: When I was a classroom teacher at YouthBuild Charter School of California, their schoolwide approach to inquiry-based project-based learning with social justice themes, with each trimester culminating in an authentic Community Action Project, was so critical to creating conditions for success as an ethnic studies teacher. Working at their South Los Angeles site, I was able to help facilitate students’ inquiry into community conditions around police brutality with the essential question: How do we resist? When community member Patrisse Cullors from the Coalition to End Sheriff Violence in LA County Jails reached out to our school headquarters for a collaborative partnership, they connected Patrisse with me. Together, we were able to co-construct government course units and projects in ways that gave my students (who have had direct experiences with being incarcerated or having their loved ones incarcerated in Los Angeles County jails) authentic opportunities to engage elected officials.

For their Community Action Project, my government students advocated for sheriff civilian oversight through performing poetry in front of the local courthouse, making public comments in Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meetings, and through hosting a community townhall where community members shared their own experiences with County Board Supervisor Mark Ridley Thomas in attendance (the board of supervisors ultimately voted to implement sheriff civilian oversight three years later). Many of my students left feeling empowered about their ability to engage their community and government to make positive changes for issues that mattered to them — the very pedagogical outcomes of ethnic studies. Here, YCSC school administration not only supported ethnic studies through our schoolwide curricular, instructional and assessment framework but also through supporting community partnerships and providing the resources needed to engage in authentic community engagement opportunities in field trips and community-based events.

How can we support ethnic studies teacher professional development? When I joined other teachers and students and advocated for ethnic studies as a graduation requirement in the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2014 and in the state of California in 2021 through AB 101, a concern that was on a lot of our minds was (and continues to be) with the institutionalization of ethnic studies, how do we ensure that ethnic studies curricula and pedagogy is implemented in fidelity with its philosophical principles and outcomes?

Many of the students and educators who have advocated for the institutionalization of ethnic studies in K-12 schools have had the privilege to experience the “ARC” of ethnic studies in the context of a college setting: Access (to quality education for more students of color), Relevance (course content directly connected to the lived experiences of marginalized students of color), and Community (involvement, advocacy, organizing and activism) (Tintiangco-Cubales et al., 2014). Because these types of experiences demonstrate the powerful potential of connecting culturally relevant and culturally sustaining pedagogies with democratic civic engagement at the college level, many advocate for these types of empowering learning experiences for students in compulsory K-12 learning institutions.

With the institutionalization of ethnic studies in K-12 settings, it is important to be mindful that not all K-12 teachers have had the opportunity to engage in the “ARC” of ethnic studies in their own educational careers and to heed the concerns that simply assigning courses to teachers with social studies or even ELA credentials would not necessarily fulfill the intention and purpose of instituting ethnic studies graduation requirements. This type of application would be misguided as ethnic studies is also often taught in math, science, physical education, health, and arts courses, or also through an interdisciplinary approach across multiple subjects.

When I teach ethnic studies courses for K-12 teachers and administrators seeking an ethnic studies certificate, I design courses in ways that are aligned with critical pedagogy so that teachers can have a space to critically examine the ideologies that inform our dominant understandings of how knowledge is constructed in Western educational institutions through the dissemination of information from authority figures and to explore ways to promote a “problem-posing” approach to education where knowledge is co-constructed through inquiry, dialogue, and taking action with ideas generated from dialogue and reflection to help transform our world (Freire, 1970).

Equipped with a foundation in critical pedagogy, teachers can begin to help students critically examine the ideologies that inform institutional, societal, interpersonal, and even internalized value systems, policies and practices. With a critical lens, students can then begin the work of developing a nuanced understanding of the various factors that create the conditions they experience in their communities and for those around the world. This type of critical analysis can also be applied to examining how classroom management and even school policies can uphold dominant ideologies of how certain identity groups are treated and ways that this can be transformed to be culturally relevant, culturally sustaining, restorative and even transformative.

Many of my students left feeling empowered about their ability to engage their community and government to make positive changes for issues that mattered to them — the very pedagogical outcomes of ethnic studies.

In my ethnic studies courses for teachers and teacher educators, we also examine the importance of exploring the intersectionality of our identities so that we can approach curriculum development in alignment with Bree Picower’s (2012) six elements of social justice curriculum design: self-love and knowledge, respect for others, issues of social injustice, social movements and social change, awareness raising, and social action. When paired with Paulo Freire’s problem-posing education approach, these frameworks inform how to develop ethnic studies curricula with assessments that are authentic to our students’ and communities’ lived realities.

How can we support ethnic studies implementation at a school/district? As school and district leaders, when we advocate for ethnic studies, we are advocating for: an education that values minoritized students’ identities, prior knowledge and abilities because it is useful in their academic learning; helps all students develop a sense of constructive participation and hope when they are equipped with tools to help them take action on issues they face in their lived realities; helps all students develop improved racial attitudes and gains in empathy; helps all students develop higher levels of thinking; and promotes democratic engagement (Sleeter, 2011).

In Thomas Dee and Emily Penner’s (2017) quantitative study of ninth grade students who were identified as being in danger of dropping out (based on their eighth grade GPA) from five high school cohorts in San Francisco Unified School District and who were encouraged to enroll in a pilot year-long ethnic studies course, they found causal evidence that participation in the ethnic studies course led to improved attendance by 21 percentage points, improved cumulative ninth grade GPA by 1.4 grade points and increased credits earned by 23 credits. These findings took place in a context where ethnic studies was implemented with high fidelity, forethought and planning from a core group of teachers engaged in regular professional learning communities with subject expert support — which demonstrates that a culturally relevant curriculum implemented in a strongly supportive context can be highly effective at improving outcomes for diverse groups of students (Dee & Penner, 2017).

Thus, what we can take away from these studies and my lived experiences as an ethnic studies educator is that at the district level, change-management in support of ethnic studies pedagogies must be mindful of being implemented with high fidelity, forethought, planning and resources. At the instructional level, this can look like investing in engaging ethnic studies scholars and experts (or enrolling staff into ethnic studies certificate programs) who can support sustained, ongoing professional learning spaces for a community of teachers. At the operational level, this can look like: supporting with designing master schedules in ways that support both student and staff learning communities; supporting with the budgetary needs for staffing, instructional materials, partnerships, field trips; and supporting with educating families and the wider community on the value and potential of ethnic studies.

Some essential questions to help guide our work as school leaders:

How can we support the communication of the value of ethnic studies to our communities? What continued learning do we need to have ourselves as leaders? Who can we engage in this process?
How can we support with connecting staff with ethnic studies experts? Can we sustain an ongoing relationship with experts to support our professional learning, implementation and refinement of our work?
How can we support ongoing professional learning communities? What types of systems or resources would we need to establish and implement?
How can we support community partnerships or engagement in the community? What types of systems or resources would we need to establish and implement to support success?

As a continuation high school principal, because I do not currently have teachers who have an ethnic studies background, I am leveraging our partnership with our Los Angeles Community College District partner college to offer a dual enrollment ethnic studies course with a professor who is passionate about providing high school students access to college-level courses. However, I am also simultaneously leveraging my role as an instructional leader to support teachers with building capacity for implementing: equitable grading and instruction — which shares some important pedagogical values about valuing students’ prior knowledge and abilities and creating learning environments that support students’ development and mastery of skills; inquiry-based project-based learning — which supports student’s critical reading with a problem-based approach to addressing essential concerns about their world; and culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy — which affirms students’ identities and values their lived experiences and values. Building capacity at our school looks like utilizing our LAUSD districtwide “Plan-Do-Study-Act” continuous improvement cycle process where our problem of practice (our PLC essential question) guides our PLCs to “plan” and “do” an improvement strategy, assess if it was successful when “studying” student work, and decide to “act” to either refine or abandon that practice.

As we all learn and work together, I have hope that we can grow to promote school cultures and learning environments grounded in ethnic studies for all students, and that all students can leave our schools equipped with a sense of agency to transform themselves and their communities.

References Dee, T. S., & Penner, E. K. (2017). The causal effects of cultural relevance: Evidence from an ethnic studies curriculum. American Educational Research Journal, 54(1), 127-166.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Herder and Herder.

Picower, B. (2012). Using their words: Six elements of social justice curriculum design for the elementary classroom. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 14(1), 1-17.

Sleeter, C. E. (2011). The academic and social value of ethnic studies: A research review. National Education Association.

Tintiangco-Cubales, A., Kohli, R., Sacramento, J., Henning, N., Agarwal-Rangnath, R., & Sleeter, C. (2014). Toward an ethnic studies pedagogy: Implications for K-12 schools from research. The Urban Review, 47(1), 104-125.

Emily Bautista, Ed.D., is a high school principal in Los Angeles USD, an ethnic studies instructor at UCLA & UC Riverside and an educational leadership consultant. Her doctorate is in Educational Leadership for Social Justice.