5362: History and Foundations of Ethnic Studies in K-12 Schools Channel Course Writers

Speaker: Julie Kuntz, Curriculum Designer

Julie Kuntz: Hi, my name is Julie Kuntz and I am one of the course designers for the course 5362: History and Foundations of Ethnic Studies for K-12 schools. I hope that teachers take away some foundational knowledge around the values principles and philosophies behind ethnic studies. As schools across the country continue to implement and incorporate ethnic studies into their social studies standards and curriculum. It's really important for all of us to have an understanding about what this means and how we can best support the ethnic studies, philosophy and pedagogy in classes both in ethnic studies and across the content areas.

Julie Kuntz: Something I love about this course is that it breaks down ethnic studies values and philosophies into bite sized pieces to make them accessible for all teachers regardless of whether or not you have an ethnic studies background. Something I discovered through writing this course that I found really empowering and impactful is that we are implementing and incorporating many concepts of ethnic studies naturally into our courses through the use of culturally relevant practices and pedagogies and equity based instruction. So ethnic studies is just this beautiful and amazing launching point to build on these ideas and to build criticality around them. So I love this course because it helps break down those ideas. But I also think it affirms that you are already doing the really important work of incorporating cultures, stories and diverse perspectives into your classroom.