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Transforming curriculum and being proud of who you are. This remind me of teachers who put bad bunny art all over there classroom representing there latin culture.

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When I was a biology teacher, I would like to say I helped decolonize science by talking about unspoken topics such as

the HIV pandemic and the government's abysmal failure to address it

the role of women in the history of science

evolution by means of natural selection

As a physician, I hope to use my role and influence in the community to decolonize sex education by:

moving away from abstinence-based approaches

advocating for all sexual groups to be presented, including MSM and WSM

Normalizing asexuality.

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find resources that tell history or news with multiple narratives. Search out your material to teach and never stop learning.

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Taking the time to transform curriculum and use outside resources that accurately represent the past. I've attached my transformation of our 4th grade Texas Revolution unit.

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This is the poster I have in my classroom. Rather than following arbitrary rules that are framed in negative perspectives, the rights of the learner (RotL) provide an expectation to be active learners and responsible community members.

In middle school, it is not uncommon to hear crazy yelling from the hallways and in the classroom from teachers, and I must admit that I have shown my psycho side at times. This set of classroom expectations had allowed my students to have more openness in engaging with guided instruction and when I am facilitating concrete activities and eliciting thinking to abstract mathematics. Overall, I have had more engagement in instruction and fewer classroom management issues compared to other teachers in my hallway. I have also had improved intrinsic motivation where students where the majority of students actually want to learn rather than having to bribe them with Takis.

This experience is an active demonstration of how I disrupted colonized structures of rules and expectations by engaging in the RotL which is a practice rooted in Democratic education.

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-Mentor texts
-explain history of celebrations

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One thing that I have done this year is give my students the opportunity to create their own individual Who am I? statement. This aligns with their identity and idea of being in the world. My goal is to give them the chance to express themselves through written text. This later turns into a project of a self-portrait. My overall goal is to help them establish their identity within the classroom and share it with their peers. I think that part of decolonizing is giving students voice to be expressive (story tell) and to use testimonial as a counter narrative.

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In my classroom I bring books written in Spanish for my students to read when they want to take a break or finish work early. I buy them super cheap from half price books and keep them in the classroom so they have more options than just the prescribed texts.

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Let our kids be the learners we know they can be, by letting them express their ideas in their own way and not censoring them to hide their true feelings.

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In teaching the STAAR persuasive ECRs and answering SCRs, I've been able to get students to write and debate about some topics that are controversial, scary, funny, and judgy. 

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In teaching the STAAR persuasive ECRs and answering SCRs, I've been able to get students to write and debate about some topics that are controversial, scary, funny, and judgy. 

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Should your parents have access to your cell phone, is it ok to lie or to be honest at all times, should you be social media on a school night, pineapple on pizza yes or no, school dress code, standardized testing, things like that. It activates their opinionated voice, motivation to see different perspectives, argue bias, and learn the power of knowledge, and how it can be manipulated or built. This exercise was so fun to them that we do revisit the debates every Friday.

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To decolonize education towards Indigenous epistemologies, I begin each middle school class period with a mindful moment. Rather than scrambling to start class with a bellringer, warm-up, or agenda, we silently sit in repose and acknowledge our ancestors, the Earth, and the spirit that resides within.

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In a classroom I was inspired by the teacher's display of who her students were. She had gotten maps of different sorts (local, national, countries & world) The map that related to each student was displayed and a "little flag" was pinned to it that told about the were students were from, a little about what familial & local customs/culture were and their goal for the year. Also today in class, it was mentioned that the recent bills would also require us to post the 10 Commandments in our classrooms - an immediate response by another student was that they would place similar texts from other religions right next to it.

As I came in today I was feeling pretty low and wondering if I could really make a difference and once again the voices in this room reminded me I can. These ideas echoed what I have been learning during my graduate school adventures. That by consistently thinking critically and applying the tenets learned in many of our critical social theories, each of us will transform education by opening minds.