MHS rolls out new ethnic studies related courses

A multicultural literature course will be piloted in the next school year, Principal Francis Rojas said in a Zoom interview. Additionally, an introduction to ethnic studies course is being developed by a task force of MHS teachers, he added. 

According to Rojas, Superintendent Cheryl Jordan brought up the idea of having an ethnic studies course as it is relevant to MHS and the greater diverse community of Milpitas. English teacher Tonichi Lorenzana also proposed creating a multicultural literature course, Rojas said. 

“A couple months ago, we finally got the group of teachers who were willing to discuss ethnic studies for MHS,” Rojas said. “It’s being led and facilitated by Facing History and Ourselves. We have a small group of teachers who are actually working on writing the curriculum, and then we have a larger group of teachers who are providing feedback to that plan. Hopefully, this new ethnic studies class, as well as multicultural literature, would be an elective that is offered starting next school year. It was not on the course catalog right now, but we will start by piloting maybe one or two classes and recruiting students by interests, at the end of this school year.”

According to English teacher Tonichi Lorenzana, a bill that would make ethnic studies a graduation requirement for all high school students in the state of California was recently vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom. However, the bill also included a statewide ethnic studies curriculum, which State Superintendent Tony Thurmond allowed schools to use as a model to build upon, Lorenzana said in a Google Meet interview. 

“In the process of creating the course for our school, I looked at different ethnic studies, particularly ethnic studies classes that focused on literature, at different high schools throughout the state of California to see kind of how they designed their courses and what curriculum they came up with or what books and other curriculum they used,” Lorenzana said. “I incorporated some of that, and I also did a lot of reading on my own to figure out some things that I thought would be relevant particularly to students at Milpitas High School, because not every school that offers ethnic studies has necessarily the same makeup as our school.”

In preparation for this course, Lorenzana said that he joined a professional learning community (PLC), hosted by Facing History and Ourselves, of different teachers from around the Bay Area who are teaching or creating other ethnic studies classes to further flesh out the course. The PLC meets at least once a month to discuss curriculum and current events, Lorenzana said. 

“I think that being part of the Facing History cohort with other ethnic studies teachers around the Bay Area is very helpful because we can discuss things that maybe don’t go as well as we had hoped, because maybe the subject matter was a little more sensitive than initially anticipated,” Lorenzana said. “[We also] talk about strategies to kind of make the uncomfortable topic as comfortable as possible for people.”

The idea is to give a general background on ethnic studies principles and to incorporate media representation, literary representation, and artistic representation into that, Lorenzana said. The elective will cover both older and more contemporary texts and the different cultural backgrounds present in the class, he added. 

“[We will] spend a portion of the class getting everyone on the same page so that we can all speak a kind of common language with regard to ethnic studies,” Lorenzana said. “Then, I hope to be pretty responsive to the makeup of the students in the class. For example, if the makeup of the course is largely Asian-American, then that first unit after our base kind of understanding introductory unit might focus more on Asian-American literature because that tends to be the makeup of the class.” 

It is important for students to be able to see themselves, their families, and their stories reflected in their education, Lorenzana said. Not only that, this is an opportunity for students to look at art that is created firsthand by people of another group and listen to their stories, he added. 

“I’m really hopeful that this is a course that people are interested in,” Lorenzana said. “I am really hoping that, as this course moves forward, we start to see more classes that are like this. I honestly think that the more students are able to take ethnic studies courses and courses that look at the history of everyone and the art of everyone, as opposed to the narrow definition that we currently have, we’ll all be better for it.”

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