You Are My Roots
You Are My Roots: Letters on Resistance, Resilience, and Re-imagination was written by the 2015-2016 9th grade Ethnic Studies students at Roosevelt High School
Introduction
Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature’s law is wrong it
learned to walk without having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared.
-Tupac Shakur, The Rose That Grew From Concrete
DEAR READER,
You currently hold the beautiful byproduct of what we, as educators, can best describe as the blooming, bursting brilliance of our 9th grade Ethnic Studies students. Every year, we commit to cultivating a curriculum and thus, a space for our students to engage in content and practices not found in traditional classrooms. Inspired by the words and work of Tupac Shakur, Jeff Duncan-Andrade, and Paulo Freire to name a few, we carefully create a space where students explore history with an inquisitive attitude and critical lens. With the purpose of healing, humanization, and liberation, students share fears, frustrations, day- dreams and desires, in a space free from judgement. In essence, our hope is to create opportunities for our students to reflect on their lived experiences as opportunities to engage in resistance, resilience and reimagination. As we grow and heal with our students, we reimagine the function and purpose of the classroom. More than anything, we want to ensure our classes are gently tended gardens full of roses in bloom-strengthening their roots, healing their damaged petals, and permanently transforming what may have once only been concrete. This process is only possible due to our students’ courageous commitment to heal through vulnerability as they share their hopes, daydreams, and their highs and lows. This collection of honestly reflective letters is a celebration of every rose in the process of making its way through the concrete. We hope that as you read these letters you too are inspired to plant your own garden.
Teaching Ethnic Studies can very well be seen as a political gardening project, where the teacher is engaged in planting seeds of consciousness and very carefully tending to the soil working to assure that the classroom is a fertile place to cultivate critical and reflective minds. As Ethnic Studies teachers in this political gardening project, we hope the seeds bloom and continue to thrive given the constant social and institutional threats. Freire teaches us that humans are imperfect, unfinished, incomplete beings in a state of “becoming more fully human.” A rose with damaged petals, like a human with imperfections, seeks to flourish and grow towards the sun. As teachers, we are in constant reflection of our practice. We too engage in the sharing of our thoughts and feelings and work to develop an enriching Ethnic Studies curriculum that is nourishing to the roots of our students. Such a curriculum can support the germination of a critical consciousness and the development of their agency to transform them- selves and the world around them. To create a classroom ecosystem that is interconnected and relationship-based, we realize that it cannot be based in iso- lated or non-communicative acts. Instead, we take a loving approach that speaks to the whole student, addressing their culture, history, lived experience, intellect, passion, and feelings.
Freire’s philosophy of knowing is centered around human practice and interaction with the world, not just from abstract theorizing. Knowing requires us to be reflective and active, this praxical approach requires us to know with our entire bodies, including both reason and feelings. We realize that to grow blooming roses, the classroom soil must be tenderized, and rich in a curriculum that speaks to young people’s source of knowledge, their entire bodies. Their bodies carry feelings and emotions that tell stories of trauma, resilience, hope, and dreams. Their bodies are also rooted to the lived experiences of their families and ancestors and tied to collective historical and communal stories of joy, oppression, and survival. We must see youth as conduits of knowledge that can channel their voice in dialogue with others to create a classroom filled with life and hope. We are working as political gardeners planting seeds of liberation and tending to a rose garden in a critically conscious way. We do this by applying a problem-posing pedagogy that is reflective, authentic, and transformational. The potential of such a space can provide youth with a vision on how to confront concrete barriers and social toxins. It can guide youth with the realization that they have the power to change the conditions of the world and inspire the will to pursue the reimagined world they hope to live in.
Our hope for our students is rooted in heart. It is a revolutionary love birthed from a hunger for justice and change, propelled by emancipatory dreams of an unshackled world and absent from suffering of the soul and void of savage oppression. It is a political hope that inspires action and a persistent critical reflection on our liberatory educational practice. We teach hope so that the hopeless can trust that they too can daydream beyond our classroom walls and rethink the landscape of L.A. transformed as a healing environment. We want to instill in our students that change is a collective action that begins with deep reflection of their minds and the exchange of words through voice and paper.
These letters are part of that collective action. We dedicate this book to youth, family, educators, revolutionaries, and to the community of Boyle Heights. These letters are seeds waiting to germinate towards the sun.
Roxana Dueñas and Jorge Lopez
Ethnic Studies Teachers at Roosevelt High School