Last year, the California History-Social Science Project (CHSSP), a key part of the Marchand Public Engagement Initiative, helped sponsor an exhibit about the life and legacy of Cruz Reynoso, California’s first Latino Supreme Court Justice and a beloved professor at both the UCLA and UC Davis law schools. The CHSSP invites you to participate in a Crowdfund Project to bring this curriculum to K-12 teachers in a 2023 summer institute, “Democracy by Participation: Civic Engagement, Cruz Reynoso, and K-12 Classrooms". There are two ways to participate: first, please consider contributing to our Crowdfund effort by donating. Although we have four different tiers of gifts that show how and where your donations go, you can also give according to your ability whether it is $5 or $250. Second, please help us spread awareness of the project to your own network by sharing this blog post with other colleagues who support applied research, especially in history and education.
Daniel Castaneda, a history Ph.D. student, conceived of the project in which undergraduates enrolled in Latino/a/x History courses would be invited to apprentice in applied research/applied history by putting together a public-facing exhibit about Reynoso and his impact on the state. We launched the exhibit last spring, and the display is still in the lobby of Shields Library at UC Davis. You can also take a look at some of the digitized materials by clicking this link.
This initial exhibit led to a curriculum project in which teams of undergraduate students, PhD students, K-12 teacher leaders, and scholars joined together over the summer to author elementary and high school level lesson plans that aligned with the exhibit. The CHSSP was fortunate enough to receive support for this initiative from the Hispanic Serving Institution Initiative within the Office of Academic Diversity. The curriculum project is nearly complete, and now we are on to the next phase of the project: a 2023 Marchand Summer Institute! During the 2023 Marchand Institute, we will apply this research and train teachers on how to use these curriculum sets to integrate Latina/o/x history into their primary and secondary classrooms in a substantive and innovative way.
We invite you to learn more about this project by exploring the transformative work of the Marchand Public Engagement Initiative, one aspect of which is “Democracy by Participation.” Many segments of the University of California community are behind this project and want to honor Justice Reynoso’s contributions and ensure that more students know how his story helps us understand new dimensions of Latina/o/x history and politics in California and the United States. This project, among others, supports the CSMP effort to “affirm and connect [students’] strengths, values, languages, and cultures to amplify their learning.” This work helps bridge K-12 and university communities.
Please feel free to email chssp@ucdavis.edu with any questions or requests for more information.