Improving schooling outcomes for Latinos in rural California: A critical place-based approach to farmworkers history

ABSTRACT

This article provides a portrait of the challenges and promise of Latino schooling in California’s agricultural Central Valley, site of one of the largest and socioeconomically vulnerable Latino populations in the nation’s most populous state. Through surveys, interviews, and participant observation, we document a multi-year “Placed-Based Education” project by which Latino and Filipino community college students learn of the region’s legendary Farmworkers Movement through oral history methodology. We find that students attain great gains within historical thinking skills, biliteracy abilities, and positive bicultural identity. We discuss the implications of this approach at both the junior college and K–12 schooling levels.

Keywords:

• adolescent
• Latino/a children and families
• rural schooling
• Place-Based Education
• oral histories

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Related to the oral history methodology described in this essay, the National Endowment for the Humanities has funded a $12,000.00 grant project through its Common Heritage program focused on an oral history project on Delano’s diverse international migrant communities. Entitled “Digital Delano: Preserving an International Community’s History,” the project will continue to utilize students at the Bakersfield College Delano Campus to conduct oral histories related to international migration, farm labor, and other topics important to rural California.