Connecting Classrooms and Communities Through Chicano Mural Art

Abstract

Teacher educators can use community art and arts learning strategies to help secondary preservice teachers gain insight into disciplinary understanding that is important to the humanities and relevant to the communities in which they teach. Such insight can then inform teachers’ rationales for why and how they teach principles of social justice.

Notes

I use the term Latino to describe the community's residents, the majority of whom are immigrants or descendants of immigrants from Mexico and Central America. I use the term Chicano to describe the murals in this neighborhood because this term is most often used to describe the mural arts that began with el movimiento Chicano, the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

For additional information about, and history of, Oakland's Fruitvale neighborhood, see The Unity Council of Oakland's Web page on the community at http://www.unitycouncil.org/community1.htm.