Bridging: Two Nations and Two Languages

Armando Chavez is being honored as a Cesar Chavez Champion of Change.

As the principal of Columbus Elementary School, I have the honor of serving a diverse population that merits a leader who envisions greatness and provides an opportunity in which the students’ needs are seen as a priority.

The majority of the students who attend our school are American citizens who live across the border in Mexico. I consider myself a service provider who is here to provide any type of resource to stakeholders in the school who are in need. The Deming Public School District plays an integral part in the vision of our school. Together, we foster positive attributes to receive the results we are looking for, both academically and personally. 

Working with a dynamic staff who is as dedicated to the students as the administration is is essential. I could not accomplish one task without the support of a faculty who understands the larger picture of being supporters of a community who in turn depend on the school for leadership. Since the school is seen as the heart of the community, we must provide services above and beyond the status quo.

Providing services for students who are poverty stricken must be in place in order to satisfy the basic needs of our students. We work in conjunction with programs such as the Roadrunner Backpack Program, Rio Grande Education Cooperative, and our after school program collaboratively funded by the county of Luna, City of Deming, and The Deming Public School District. These resources allow me to further enhance the educational setting for all students in our school. 

Our area has difficulty communicating with families across the border. In some cases parents are not able to cross, but the child crosses to receive an appropriate education. Making families feel comfortable knowing their children are safe allows me to further build on the relationships needed to fully assist with our students’ progress. Initiating Skype conferences between both the parents and the school has helped us bridge the gap of communication. When parents need to discuss issues with teachers, a local business has volunteered their facilities to ensure this process can continue seamlessly.

It is with great humility that I share my endeavors on the path of receiving this honor. My teams at the school and district level have given me the opportunity to enhance the school and touch the lives of our children. So many dedicated individuals allow me to soar; thus reaching new levels of achievement and triumph.  Students are the focus; growing and learning will lead them to be productive members of any community in which they choose to live. 

Armando Chavez serves as principal of Columbus Elementary School (Deming Public Schools) in Columbus, NM. The school serves a population in which 99% of the students enter as monolingual Spanish language students. Most of this unique group of students were born in the United States and live across the border in Mexico. During his tenure as the leader of the school, he has emphasized the importance of education.   

Community Service Honors Those Who Have Come Before Us, and Helps to Prepare the Path for Those Who Will Come After Us

Luis Urrieta is being honored as a Cesar E. Chavez Champion of Change.

Service to communities is not a choice for some, but an indispensable part of the fabric of daily life. When there are communities that we are committed to, then service and advocacy makes sense.

To me, service means contributing to a larger mission for social justice and educational equity. Service adds to a larger collective struggle to work toward fulfilling the promises and ideals of this great nation.

I first learned about César Chávez and his struggle in 1990 when a group of fellow Chicano students dumped a large bowl of grapes that were being served to us in the dorm cafeteria in the trash. This action was part of a symbolic protest in solidarity with Chávez and the United Farm Workers. At the time, I was an entering freshman in college and Chávez, along with my parents and extended family became an inspiration to me for a life of service. I realized that my work in life would revolve around giving back to Latina/o communities, especially immigrant communities, and raising awareness about Latina/o issues with a wider audience.

My professional, academic, and community service work in education has been dedicated to raising awareness and valuing Latina/o immigrant family and community knowledge. I have focused much of my energies on the importance of nourishing and supporting strong ethnic and linguistic identities in Latina/o children and youth, while promoting and creating the conditions for high academic achievement. My service has been primarily centered on mentoring, teaching, and cultivating leadership in Latina/o children and youth.

As a former bilingual middle school teacher in Los Angeles I was dedicated to working with immigrant and first generation students. Through critical pedagogy and extensive family and community involvement, many of my students became very personally and academically successful, and were able to navigate the higher education system despite their undocumented status. This was not due to me, but to larger collaborative efforts between the students, teachers, family, and community that I was then a part of. Collectively we subsequently published some of the undocumented student testimonios to help raise educators’ awareness about their status and to disrupt the negative perceptions of undocumented youth.

For the past ten years, my work with teachers as a teacher educator has also focused on engaging in conversations and dialogue about Latino/a students, both our long and recent history in the U.S., the issues we face, including our diversity as a community, and the assets we bring. With undergraduate students I instill and encourage a need for service learning projects, volunteering, tutoring, mentoring, and engagement with Latina/o families and communities.

I have done this by creating opportunities for local Latina/o community involvement including work with community centers, non-profits, churches, and through workshops, internships, and exchange programs abroad in Mexico and Guatemala, with strong service learning components. My goal is to instill in young adults the motivation not only to achieve professionally, but to also align those professional goals and commitments to communities, especially communities in need.

For the last two years, along with university student volunteers/interns, I have also coordinated a collaborative after school program, Cultura en Acción—Culture in Action, for upper elementary school students. This program creates a space for Latina/o ethnic and cultural awareness by centering family and community knowledge while promoting high academic achievement and 21^st century skills and technology. This program enjoys success due to the level of engagement and commitment of university student volunteers, interns, and the children in the program and their families.

The legacy of community service honors those who came before us, and it is not a lone endeavor, but a collective project of hope, love, and cooperation. The legacy of service also helps prepare the way for those who will come after. Service, to me, remains fundamental to the mission of social justice and the public good.        

Luis Urrieta, Jr., is Associate Professor and Program Director for the Cultural Studies in Education Program (The University of Texas—Austin), and Coordinator of the Cultura en Acción—Culture in Action after school program in Austin, TX. 

To Serve and to Learn: What We Gain from Giving Back

Khin Mai Aung is being honored as a Cesar E. Chavez Champion of Change.

I began my legal career in the San Francisco Bay Area during the “dot com boom” of the late 1990s, in the litigation department of a large law firm. It was a good firm and I worked on intellectually stimulating cases, but I wanted a more tangible connection to my work, and with my clients and community. I decided to take my career in a radically different path, and transitioned into a nonprofit public interest job that paid about 1/3 of my former salary.

At my new organization, I provided legal advice to indigent senior citizens at clinics throughout San Francisco. At first, the bulk of my cases involved welfare reform. Soon, rising rents led to a wave of eviction defense matters. It was rewarding to provide representation to individuals who wouldn’t otherwise have access to legal assistance, and learn from their diverse life experiences. I was in my 20s at the time, and many clients were old enough to be my grandparents. Some were immigrants and refugees from far flung places who left their homes to pursue opportunity or flee persecution. Others were native-born Americans who were relocated into internment camps as children during World War II. They all had interesting stories to tell.

Eleven years ago, I moved to New York City to launch the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund’s (AALDEF) Educational Equity Program. My work now encompasses a myriad of issues in kindergarten through 12^th grade and higher education, representing and advocating for students, parents, and teachers in matters like obtaining programmatic access for English Language Learners, combatting anti-immigrant and anti-Asian harassment, and promoting school integration and diversity.  My clients are different now – teenagers and adults – but I still learn from their experiences. I am grateful for the opportunity to partner with immigrant Chinese students to battle bias-based harassment, and with teachers who risk their jobs to report problems at their schools.

One of my most memorable cases involved representing a group of veteran teachers in Lowell, Massachusetts who were fired for failing a faulty mandatory English proficiency test. My clients, who hailed from Cambodia, Laos, and Puerto Rico, spoke fluent but accented English. The school district perceived them as deficient on account of their accents and national origin. Our work uncovered critical flaws in the fluency test and testing conditions, and my clients were ultimately reinstated with full back pay and benefits. 

In the course of proving our case, I learned a lot about service and community from that group of teachers.  Witness after witness came forward to testify that far from being deficient, my clients were assets to their schools. One was a volunteer sports coach, and another helped out with delinquent youth. All were exemplary role models for their students, most of whom came from working class immigrant and refugee families. 

My life would never have intersected with any of these individuals had I remained in private practice. I am grateful for the opportunity to meet them, and honored to have served and learned from them. 

Khin Mai Aung is the Director of the Educational Equity Program at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), where she advocates for the rights of Asian American and Pacific Islander students, parents and teachers. In particular, she focuses on concerns faced by immigrant students, English Language Learners, and students from lower income communities.