The Department of Latina/Latino Studies is pleased to announce that professor Mirelsie Velázquez received a Campus Research Board grant from Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation. The grant will fund her project, De Isla a Chicago: Stories of Puerto Rican Teachers, 1970-1990. The project will collect oral histories of Puerto Rican educators who were recruited to work in Chicago in the 1970s to serve the needs of a diverse student population. Velázquez hopes that the life stories of these educators can inspire change in how communities today provide equitable schooling opportunities for marginalized students.
"History teaches us that communities of color, including African Americans, Indigenous, and Latina/os, have engaged in 'creating' a teaching force to meet the need of their community’s children," she writes in the abstract. "This project seeks to remind school-based researchers and administrators that the past is prologue to the present in terms of creating equitable schooling opportunities for marginalized students. Learning from the life stories of teachers of color can help transform the pedagogical practices of educators today."
Velázquez is interdisciplinary scholar whose work centers history of education, women's history, Puerto Rican studies, gender and sexuality, and teacher education.