Puente Equity Pillars by

karlarojas14 — 2024-05-01 06:17:42 UTC

The Puente Project strives to be anti-racist and culturally sustaining as we serve the diverse communities of California and beyond. We stand with Black and Indigenous students and educators as we commit to addressing anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity within our Latinx communities and beyond. The Puente Project welcomes students of all races, ethnicities, cultures, and nationalities with the recognition that centering Black and Indigenous experiences makes liberation for all possible. We assert that everyone has a right to feel seen and that all educational professionals have a duty to provide this welcoming atmosphere. We stand with immigrants and refugees, recognizing our responsibility to safeguard the dignity and rights of our communities. Our priorities include advocacy, fostering cross-cultural communication, and storytelling in service of community care and resilience. In practice, this means prioritizing collectivism and interdependence, affirming the value of cultural ways of knowing and being, supporting connection with ancestral lineages of wisdom and healing, and advocating for rights to safety and services in our campus communities and beyond.

karlarojas14 — 2024-05-01 06:18:49 UTC

As Puente practitioners, we acknowledge that practices which deny us our rights to our own language/es in writing are damaging, racist, and assimilationist practices that uphold whiteness (*2). We understand that rejection of one’s language is a rejection of one’s culture, and by extension a rejection of the individual. While education in Standard American Edited English (one of many Englishes) has value, we live and teach in a multi-ethnic nation, and cannot continue to privilege SAEE. Other Englishes, translanguaging, code-meshing, and dialects have a place in academia and the “real” world. For these reasons, we must engage in ongoing professional development that: puts respect on the different Englishes spoken by our students, familiarizes us with grammatical constructions that are a result of other languages, and acknowledges that we can never be fully qualified to assess constructions that have so many generational and regional variations. In practice, this means receiving student work with care and prioritizing students’ voices, stylistic choices, and intention in their writing. We must revise writing assessment and evaluation processes to be anti-racist. As we continue our own education of language varieties, our assessment practices should invite and honor the sonics of our students in scholarly writing, celebrate their effective and innovative language constructions, and guide them towards clarity of their message.

karlarojas14 — 2024-05-01 06:19:25 UTC

As Puente practitioners, we acknowledge that anti-gay and anti-trans bias persist in academia, and that ongoing legal and social challenges to LGBTQIA+ rights necessitate our continued advocacy. Puente affirms the dignity and worth of LGBTQIA+ people, recognizes that LGBTQIA+ people have led the resistance against many forms of oppression, and honors LGBTQIA+ history as a part of our collective history. The Puente Project commits to uplifting people’s intersectional identities. In practice, this means the intentional inclusion of LGBTQIA+ voices in our curriculum, avoiding gender binary language, advocating for LGBTQIA+ students, and seeking continuous learning opportunities to affirm LGBTQIA+ people. We recognize that the LGBTQIA+ experience is widely varied. We must decouple misunderstandings that conflate gender identity (*3) and/or gender expression (*4) to sexuality. We maintain the right for our students and colleagues to provide (at their discretion and perceived level of safety) their names, pronouns, gender, and identity and our duty to respect and honor them regardless of institutional labels or records.

karlarojas14 — 2024-05-01 06:20:02 UTC

The Puente Project recognizes the intersectional experiences of people with disabilities and strives to make accessibility the default, so that disabled members of our community can fully participate in all programming. We acknowledge that the traditional approach to disability services focuses unfairly on individualistic methods that rely on people to self-advocate and navigate bureaucratic processes. We assert that diversity should value differing abilities and neurodivergencies, and support the right to receive accommodations that are not solely tied to institutional processes. In practice, this means seeking disabled peoples’ voices on accessibility practices that enable their success, prioritizing accessible content and activities in our face-to-face and virtual spaces (*5), advocating for accessible campus services, connecting students with mental and physical health resources, and learning the context of disability justice on our campuses and in our regions. As we recognize the history of ableism in educational contexts, we work to develop better practices towards design justice (*6). We recognize that disability justice is an issue of holistic access that goes beyond the traditional framing of physical access.

karlarojas14 — 2024-05-01 06:21:26 UTC

The Puente Project recognizes that environmental justice is a key component of tackling systemic oppression and central to preserving our communities. We advocate for an environmentalism that acknowledges the disparities in health outcomes, toxic exposure, and environmental degradation for Black, Indigenous, and low-income communities. To achieve equity that promotes wholeness, reciprocity and stewardship, we must advocate for an end to environmental racism. Our first step is to engage in education from underrepresented voices on the local-to-global impacts of climate change. In practice, this means making organizational decisions guided by these principles, building classroom resources, engaging in community leadership, and fostering experiential learning opportunities.

Would love to explore further.

seeichel — 2024-05-14 22:19:43 UTC

Diving into this one was really eye opening for me. I realized how much I can still learn about how to incorporate disability justice on a consistent level. It's something to consider every day so I can support Mastery for All.

Access

karlarojas14 — 2024-05-14 22:20:18 UTC

Allow students to speak their native tongue in the classroom. Not grade students on grammar or proper english

Intersectionality of Justice.

seeichel — 2024-05-14 22:22:40 UTC

Environmental justice is an area that intersects with all of the other justices so clearly. I would love to anchor this pillar in my classroom so that we can engage in inquiry around all of the pillars.

It starts with the syllabus

2024-05-14 22:23:02 UTC

I need to reevaluate the language in my syllabus. I want to make sure my tone is respectful of ALL students. In class I need to be intentional about calling my students by their preferred name and pronouns.

Context over content

karlarojas14 — 2024-05-14 22:23:56 UTC

Having students explore data and topics that are localized to their environments. This is powerful when teaching students content. They want to know the "why"

Activities

2024-05-14 22:23:57 UTC

Using activities in Statistics that focus on environmental differences and injustices in communities. Afterwards, having students discuss what it means, what factors could attribute to the differences, and why we should pursue justice for these underrepresented communities. Doing so gives students a chance to understand issues, share their own unique perspectives, and feel that math is much more than just a requirement for transferring: it can be an agent for change. It also helps students connect with the work. And when a student has a strong connection to the problem they are working on, they are much more likely to persist even through challenges!

I've been struggling with how to provide equitable instruction to students who don't speak English. Even with letting them work with classmates or connecting them to a tutor who speaks their language, I feel like they miss too much of my instruction.

2024-05-14 22:24:34 UTC

Speak to all

2024-05-14 22:25:01 UTC

Use language that all can understand. Check in with students about Math vocabulary.

Universal Redesign

2024-05-14 22:26:51 UTC

Provide accessible materials for all. Provide filled in notes and links to captioned videos. Encourage students to share resources that they find useful too.

I've been working with a lot of neurodivergent students this year. I'm trying to figure out how to make group work more effective with these students involved. I've noticed some of their classmates struggling to work with them.

2024-05-14 22:27:51 UTC

Continuing to show support

2024-05-14 22:28:29 UTC

I have a statement on my syllabus as well as my pronouns. The statement includes a link to an A&R form for changing your name and pronouns. I wear a rainbow pin on my lanyard. I have attended various events on campus hosted by our LGBTQ+ club. As professional development chair, I incorporate some training with new faculty. I also organized a flex day with an LGBTQ+ panel as our keynote session with several other breakout sessions.

Being Accommodating in the respective courses

2024-05-14 22:29:09 UTC

I have really challenged myself to be more accommodating, flexible, and adaptable to all my students' needs the past few years. I don't give late penalties anymore, I allow notes for nearly all assignments and assessments (or limited notes for individual exams), and I try not to let any student pass census without a realistic chance of passing the course. However, I know this isn't always sustainable in a non-terminal transfer level math course. I feel that in the Algebra -> Calculus series that I can be flexible, but I need to constantly remind students that their next instructor will likely have much different expectations and it's important to practice meeting the suggested deadlines whenever possible.

Treat Others With Respect

2024-05-14 22:33:53 UTC

We are all different. Show student that you care and their story or background matters.