Puente Ethnic Studies

Course Overview

Since 1981, Puente’s mission has been to increase the number of educationally underserved students who enroll in four-year colleges and universities, earn college degrees and return to the community as mentors and leaders to future generations. The Puente Program is rooted in promoting “access, transform[ing] nontraditional students into powerful learners, promot[ing] learning communities, and create[ing] validati[on] in-and out-of-class learning environments that foster academic success and personal growth” (Rendon, 2002). In all Puente courses students build a sense of family/familia and community, creating connections and fostering leadership. Puente Ethnic Studies is designed to help students develop an intersectional and global understanding of the impact of race and racism, ethnicity, gender, and culture in the historical shaping of individuals and communities in the United States. The Puente Ethnic Studies course builds upon the legacy of the Puente Program by promoting social justice themes and community connection and activism.

Course Units

Pacing Guide: Scope & Sequence

Unit 1

Unit One Collaboration Folder

Living History: Defining Ethnic Studies & Building Critical Consciousness

The first unit introduces students to foundational concepts, principles, and frameworks of Ethnic Studies, and how these concepts and frameworks will be used to assess and analyze historical and current events. This unit focuses on laying the groundwork by the defining and operationalizing terms essential for the course. Students learn the origins of Ethnic Studies as an academic discipline at San Francisco State University in 1969 to its current development as a graduation requirement in California in 2025, and the key educational court cases that integrated K-12 schools in the United States. This unit will also engage students in the exploration of their own intersectionalities and narratives as essential in centering all voices and development of Community Cultural Wealth.

Artwork by Melanie Cervantes for the Puente Anthology

Terms:

Race, racism, ethnicity, dominant narrative, counternarrative, gender

Topics of Discussion

YPAR Fridays:

Mr Hernandez' Class

Comprehensive week by week lessons, presentations, assignments, building towards a culminating project in which students write their own children's book on Ethnic Studies

Equity Syllabus Toolkit

Unit 2

Systems & Power

In this unit students will explore the constructs of systems of power and their impact on communities of color. Students will examine historical events in the United States that illustrate how communities of color were oppressed and marginalized through limited access to equal rights under the law made possible by systems of power. Students will analyze these historical examples to better understand how they are perpetuated and maintained in American society, which creates inequalities and inequities in communities of color.

Topics of Discussion

Language: Othering and Belonging
Race:
- Institutional Racism and the Fight for Justice
- From Jim Crow to Mass Incarvceration
Gender: Patriarchy, Gender, and Expression
Intersection of Race & Class:
- Environmental Impacts of Power and the Effect on Communities of Color
- Yo Soy Moreno; Yo Luchare; Yo Seré Victorioso | 1619 Project

Disability Justice for BIPOC

YPAR Fridays

What is Institutional Racism & Power?

Unit 3

Fight Back: Narrative of Resistance & Resilience Movements for Liberation

In this unit, students will move beyond the oppression and marginalization of communities of color and other critical intersectional groups and begin to identify, analyze and evaluate historical events on how African Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanas/os-Latinas/os, Native Americans, LGBTQ, and others have worked to resist and survive to fight for equal rights throughout American history by way of community, state, and national organizing. Students will learn models of resistance utilized by communities of color to resist and transform institutional racialized oppressive systems.

Essential Questions:
How have grassroots organizations resisted and transformed oppressive systems?

How have different groups and movements inspired and informed one another to influence change?

How do the legacy of grassroots resistance movements continue to influence today's movements for change?

Terms:

Transformative Resistance

YPAR Fridays:

Topics of Discussion

From Black Panthers to BLM - A Legacy

Yo soy moreno; yo luchare; yo seré victorioso | 1619 Project

Indigenous Studies

Standing Rock

Latinx/Chicanx Studies
- Labor Labor Movements UFW STudyts: UFW Case Study
- Zoot Suit Riots

Unit 4

Creating Transformational Change in Our Communities

Students will apply their knowledge of strategies from both historical and current models of social change to develop a YPAR (Youth Participatory Action Research) group project to create social change in their respective communities. Following a model of YPAR investigation and action, students conduct authentic and relevant research on their selected issue. Students will report their findings in a final community and school stakeholder presentation. The YPAR project will include solutions on how the issue could be addressed for the betterment of the school and community.

Essential Questions:
How do I construct a YPAR project: