April 18, 2023 | 7 p.m.
The Dairy Arts Center in Boulder

Join us for CU Boulder's Ed Talks, a series of short, engaging talks that address some of today's most pressing issues in education and beyond. We will focus on the ongoing legacies of changemakers fighting for civil rights and how we can bring the lessons of the past into our understanding of education today.

We will learn from the deeply personal experiences of community leaders navigating complex struggles for civil rights in the past and present — from uncovering the long-standing but lesser-known history of Mexican Americans’ battle against school segregation to race relations in a rural community and advocating for bilingual learners. Exploring contemporary work that continues the legacy of the freedom fighters of the civil rights movement, the talks explore what it means to continue the fight for justice today.

The Spring 2023 Ed Talks event will be held at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder, and the event is free and open to the public but tickets are required.

Stay tuned — registration opens soon!

 

April 2023 Featured Speakers and Talks:

Race Relations, Refugee Issues, and Rurality: Reflections on “Rights” in Small Town Vermont

Emily Gleason

Faculty Director of the Teacher Leadership program and Senior Instructor

This talk centers on a constellation of local issues that took place in small-town Vermont related to struggles for educational equity for all students. Emily Gleason (she/her/hers) shares her own perspectives on being at the center of the “controversy” related to refugee resettlement and race relations in one town. The talk explores what it means to think about rights, race and racism, and the rural context in a nation divided down lines of race, class, and geography. Gleason explores issues of whiteness, privilege, economic inequalities and rights while also underscoring the need to critically examine one’s own positionality and power in the process of educating for equity for all.

From Silence To Advocacy

Tania Hogan

Executive Director of the BUENO Center for Multicultural Education

Tania Hogan (ella/she/her/hers) shares their experience as an emergent bilingual student in the US school system and the challenges they faced while learning English. Their journey inspired them to become a bilingual teacher and advocate for bilingual education, with a focus on sustaining language and culture. The talk highlights the importance of creating opportunities for bilingual students and shares a pivotal moment where Hogan found their voice and spoke up against being silenced, an experience that led to their research and mindset around resilient and transformational resistance in pursuit of equitable educational experiences.

Dr. Tania Hogan is the Executive Director of The BUENO Center in the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. A native Spanish speaker, born in Acapulco, Mexico, Tania has over 25 years of experience in teaching bilingual students, coaching teachers, facilitating professional learning, coordinating teacher education programs and teaching undergraduate and graduate courses. Her research interests include asset-based and culturally sustaining pedagogies, resilient and transformational resistance and equity practices with first generation, multilingual, students of color across the PK-20 spectrum. She received her BA in Psychology, her MA in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis on Bilingual Education and her EdD in Educational Leadership and Equity focused on Latinx Learners and Communities, all from the University of Colorado Denver.

Chicanismo and the Classroom

Jasón Romero, Jr.

Founder and Co-Director of Aquetza and Director of the Chicano & Latino History Project

This talk by Jasón Romero, Jr. (he/him/his) will explore the impact of the Chicano Movement on Colorado's educational landscape on institutions and individuals. Through the use of testimonio, historical storytelling, and spoken word, the speaker will explore how Chicanismo has served as a catalyst for personal and social transformation that has guided their work inside and outside of the classroom. The talk highlights the importance of embracing the complex identities and histories of our communities, even if it means disrupting our current way of seeing the world.

Jasón Romero, Jr. is a Chicano from Pueblo, Colorado with deep roots in the mountains of Northern New Mexico. A graduate of Centennial High School and Pueblo Community College, Romero obtained his BA in Ethnic Studies and MA in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Colorado-Boulder. As an undergraduate student, Romero created the Aquetza: Youth Leadership, Education and Empowerment program in 2012 and has guided the trainings, programming, and growth of the program over the past 10 years. Since 2014, Romero has been a Chicano Studies teacher in southwest Denver and in 2020 also took over the Chicano & Latino History Project, the only organization in the state of Colorado that provides professional development to educators in the fields of Ethnic Studies and Chicano Studies.

The Landmark School Desegregation Case You Have Not Heard About

Rubén Donato, co-presenter

Professor and Bob & Judy Charles Endowed Chair

Certain movements have become iconic symbols of civil rights movements — Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the fight to end segregated schooling evoke images of young people like Ruby Bridges and The Little Rock Nine tearing down racial barriers. Struggles against school segregation are memorialized in textbooks and curricula, but Mexican Americans have a long-standing but lesser-known history in the struggle against school segregation. Forgotten for over a century, the Maestas v. Shone case is one of the earliest known successful challenges by Mexican Americans to end school segregation in the United States, and the 1913 lawsuit took place in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, a region with deep Hispano/a roots. Talk co-presented by Rubén Donato and Judge Martin Gonzales.

​Rubén Donato is Professor of Educational Foundations, Policy, and Practice in the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  He received his BA from the University of California at Santa Cruz and his MA and Ph.D. from Stanford University. Donato studies the historical dimensions of educational inequality and focuses on the educational experiences of Mexican Americans in the United States. He is an American Educational Research Association (AERA) Fellow and received the Distinguished Career Contributions Award from the American Educational Research Association’s Committee on Scholars of Color in Education.  His papers have appeared in a wide variety of academic journals, and he has authored The Other Struggle for Equal Schools: Mexican Americans during the Civil Rights Era, Mexicans and Hispanos in Colorado Schools and Communities, 1920-1960, and The Other American Dilemma: School, Mexicans, and the Nature of Jim Crow, 1912-1953 (with Jarrod Hanson).

The Landmark School Desegregation Case You Have Not Heard About

Judge Martin Gonzales, co-presenter

Retired 12th Judicial District Judge

Certain movements have become iconic symbols of civil rights movements — Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the fight to end segregated schooling evoke images of young people like Ruby Bridges and The Little Rock Nine tearing down racial barriers. Struggles against school segregation are memorialized in textbooks and curricula, but Mexican Americans have a long-standing but lesser-known history in the struggle against school segregation. Forgotten for over a century, the Maestas v. Shone case is one of the earliest known successful challenges by Mexican Americans to end school segregation in the United States, and the 1913 lawsuit took place in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, a region with deep Hispano/a roots. Talk co-presented by Rubén Donato and Judge Martin Gonzales.

Judge Gonzales is a fourth-generation resident of the San Luis Valley. He obtained his JD from the University of Colorado Law School in 1978. He engaged in an extensive private civil practice before his appointment to the bench. He was the first Hispanic County Judge for Alamosa County, Colorado. Appointed in 2007, he became the first Hispanic District Court Judge for the 12th Judicial District which encompasses the  San Luis Valley. His position as District Court judge makes him a successor judge to Judge Holbrook, who issued the order in the Maestas Case. He is now retired and is with the Senior Judge program for the Judicial Branch. He is the chairperson of the Maestas Case Commemoration Committee and a member of the Colorado Council on Restorative justice.