For Teach Central America Week (October 7–11, 2024), we are partnering with the UCI History Project and the Central American Studies in K-12 Curriculum Project to encourage and support teachers to get involved. Complete curriculum units will be shared with participants and registrants of the sessions.

9/24/24: Elementary

Hear from educators who taught Central American Studies focused units for both upper and lower elementary

First Grade

Unit Themes: Oral Storytelling, Cultural/ Identity Preservation, Spanish Bilingual Classrooms

In this mini-unit students will learn about the migrant stories of their families, their school community and local area through the cultural practice of storytelling through oral tradition and artwork. Students will create or retell a migrant story through a written narrative, accompanying art piece and oral presentation.

Charlene Mendoza (She/Her) I am a first-generation Mexican American. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley in California. I never saw myself represented in the curriculum or materials. When I attended college and began my credentialing courses, the “diverse” resources or stories were often centered around the Mexican or monolithic “latino” experience. Now, working in the Pico Union community of Los Angeles, I see the urgent need to increase and improve the resources available to lower elementary teachers that focus on Central American Cultures.

Fourth Grade

Unit Themes: Afro-indigeneity, Resistance, Forced Migration, Erasure

In this mini-unit students explore the Garifuna and their history of forced migration and displacement. They also study who benefits from erasure, as well as the resistance and advocacy of minoritized groups in the U.S. Students will listen, watch, and read multiple sources. Students will then create a multi-media Zine representing a minoritized group and their connection to resisting erasure.

Nadia Gomez Orozco (They/ Elle) My teaching philosophy connects deeply to my Queer, Indigenous, Mexican, Peruvian identity. As a child I struggled to feel seen, safe, and represented. Oftentimes feeling a strong sense of otherness. My students, however, deserve to be celebrated, validated, and encouraged to learn about themselves and how deeply connected we are to one another’s origin stories. Thus, working on this Central American Studies Curriculum Project has been an incredibly fulfilling experience for someone who is attempting to build puentes and plant semillas of community and connection.

10/1/24: Secondary

Hear from a middle school and high school teacher about how they incorporated Central American Studies into their English and History courses.

Middle School History

Unit Themes: Central American Indigenous Resistance, Linking the Past and Present

Students will learn about 4 Central American Indigenous leaders and their fights for their land and equality. First students will learn about Tecun Uman as a whole class. In groups they will then learn about one of the following modern Central American indigenous leaders: Rigoberta Menchú (Maya K’iche’), Berta Cáceres (Lenca), or Rodrigo Tot (Maya Q’eqchi’). After they read and take notes, they will create a comic strip version of one of the other Central American resistance fighters to share with elementary students.

Pablo De Paz (He/ Him) As an immigrant from Guatemala, I feel it is essential to keep our histories and cultures alive by teaching them to the next generations as a way to honor our ancestors, instill pride and joy in our students, and grow critical consciousness and activism to fight any injustices that they encounter in their lives.

High School Language Arts

Unit Themes: Impact of U.S. and Salvador Politics & Migration, Creating Collective Memory Through Poetry

In this mini-unit, students will explore the personal impact that the politics of El Salvador and the US have on both Salvadoran migrants and their children. Students will read and analyze a timeline, an article, and the poem “Diaspora” by U.S. born Salvadoran poet, Cynthia Guardado. The unit centers the symbol of the timeline as a way to understand the politics of both countries, to make the connection between the historical timeline and the writers’ experiences, and to help the students connect their own lives to historical timelines. Students will end the unit by writing their own historical timeline poem modeled after the poem they read in the unit.

Melissa Espiritu (She/Her) I am the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants and I grew up in the South East Los Angeles (SELA) neighborhoods. Both of these identities have been central to who I am as a teacher. I have spent the last twenty years teaching English language arts at several high schools in the SELA and East LA area.

10/8/24: Grounded in Resistance & Revolution: A Framework for Central American Studies in K-12

The field of Central American studies is as diverse as Central Americans on the isthmus and in the diaspora. During Teach Central America Week, we want to take time to share a framework and one approach for teaching Central American Studies in K-12 developed by California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) Professor Enrique Ochoa and former history teacher and current Director of the University of California, Irvine (UCI) History Project Cindy Mata. Central American studies (CAS) is an interdisciplinary field of study at the intersections of critical Latin American studies and Chicanx/Latinx studies. It is also influenced by cultural studies, Black studies, Indigenous studies, and gender studies.

During this presentation, we will provide a synthesis of frameworks that scholars and activists have employed and that can provide a working structure that K-12 educators should consider when developing courses, units, and projects. After sharing the framework we will highlight one approach for unit development based on the framework and will join the educators from the previous weeks to share how the units previously presented are in conversation with the CAS in the K-12 framework.

Themes:

Framework for Teaching Central American Studies in K-12
A Brief History of Central American Studies (CAS) in K-12

New Teach Central America Lessons

By Teaching for Change

New Teach Central America Lessons