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High school students attending Livermore public schools will have three new equity-focused elective options this fall following the Board of Education’s unanimous approval of the courses last month.
The newly developed courses — “American Identities through Ethnic Literature,” “Ethnic Studies: America’s Social Change” and “Social Justice in Literature” — will be available as electives for grades 10-12, which means they are optional for students to take.
“The expansion of course offerings is a continuous process for our district as we are always looking for ways to broaden the educational experiences for our students,” said Melissa Theide, assistant superintendent of educational services for the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District.
“We are excited to offer these elective courses, in particular, so that our students have opportunities to expand their understanding of history and literature from varied and diverse points of view,” she added.
The classes will be offered beginning this fall at Livermore and Granada high schools as well as Del Valle Continuation High School and Vineyard Alternative School.
“Given our increasingly diverse constituency, our board and district’s commitment to addressing issues of equity, and in response to direct appeals from young alumni and students of color to diversify our elective course offerings, these courses have been developed,” district staff wrote in an agenda report for the school board’s June 15 meeting where the vote was taken.
The report continued, “These upper grade elective courses are designed to increase exposure to multicultural works and writings by authors from various ethnic backgrounds, including those of historically marginalized cultures and to examine and explore cultural and social change and movements, as well as issues relative to cultural and ethnic identity, equity and bias.”
“There’s a lot more things that are in the headlines, there are things that are concerning our students and so the students — working with their teachers — come up with proposed coursework that would enrich their educational experience and so, we listen to them,” Board President Craig Bueno told the Weekly, adding that he thinks it’s “a good idea” to incorporate new curriculum that broadens students’ views.
Students and parents banded together in support of the new curriculum.
Diversify Granada, a student-led organization that advocates for increased diversity in literature taught at Granada High School, used social media to encourage their peers to attend the meeting and to write letters to the board expressing support for the classes. The group said they received more than 100 responses from students and parents and they read some of them out loud during the meeting.
“In preparation of the LVJUSD board meeting, Diversify Granada created an online form where current and former students could give their feedback regarding the courses,” group member Taylor Melton said. “We felt as their student representatives, this would be the most efficient way to convey our peers’ thoughts to the board in hopes of a positive outcome. With our wishes coming to fruition, we were so pleased to see that the board unanimously voted in favor of the courses.”
Sian Salazar, Miraya Choudhury, Meena Mynampati and Melton founded Diversify Granada last summer amid social justice uprisings after the murder of George Floyd. The group held a virtual conference in February featuring a panel of children’s book authors of color to promote diversity in education, particularly literature.
All four founders graduated from Granada this year, so they will not be able to take any of the new equity-focused courses. But they said they are happy that younger students will get to benefit from them.
According to the course overview, “American Identities through Ethnic Literature” will “explore the connections between ethnic identity, literature and culture in the United States. Rather than focus on one tradition, we will read works by writers from various ethnic backgrounds including African American, Asian American, Latinx and other American immigrants.”
Mynampati said she thinks this type of literature is, “valuable for everyone to read because you’re putting yourself in the shoes of other people and that’s the basis of empathy.”
“Ethnic Studies: America’s Social Change” is described as “a one trimester elective course in Social Science that will examine the origins, nature, challenges and achievements of civil rights and social movements in America after 1945.”
The “Social Justice in Literature” course “offers students an opportunity to carefully read and critically analyze a variety of non-fiction and fiction texts that focus on historical and current topics of social issues by authors of historically marginalized cultures.”
The objective of the course is for students to “emerge with a greater understanding of how various aspects of the human condition — class, race, gender identity and sexual orientation — do not exist separately from each other but instead are woven together in a complex framework.”
In its agenda report, district staff said instructional materials for the three courses will be purchased from the district-established instructional materials budget using Local Control Funding Formula and Lottery funds.
