35. Education Back at the Crossroads: Intersectionality as a Framework for Strengthening Teacher Education

This poster and additional multi-modal visual proposal explores one Near Peer Service Learning Program, which is part of the College Access Challenge Grants (CACG) meant to support underrepresented students in graduating from high school and enrolling in and graduating from college (“Educational Access and Success”). This particular program sought to address these goals by pairing undergraduate mentors in an entry-level teacher education course with 9th-grade secondary students who had been labeled by their school as “at-risk” based on test scores. The undergraduate mentors are enrolled in a required entry-level education course entitled “Exploring Socio-Cultural Diversity,” which includes a 20-hour field experience in a diverse setting. The challenge was bringing the class and the field experience together in an impactful way that did not reify undergraduates’ preexisting stereotypes. Many future educators in these courses enter with monocultural viewpoints, and they often ignore diversity in favor of colorblindness or the belief in a post-racial society, become angered by discussions on oppression, or exhibit complacency (Butin, 2005; Jones, 2008; Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2012). The inability, or unwillingness in some cases, to recognize the impact of intersectionality on the children in their surrounding communities results in the continuation of both covert and overt unequal and inequitable educational practices. Thus the goal of the project was to help these undergraduates become educators who authentically care about their students (Rolón-Dow, 2005) and who create borderlands in their future classrooms, spaces where their students can make their voices heard and can thrive (Garza & Ovando, 2012)