Mexican American Studies Teachers' Academy

Scholar Activist response to prepare teachers

As part of the statewide movement to bring MAS into Texas public schools, UTSA MAS faculty Dr. Marie “Keta” Miranda created the MAS Teachers' Academy with the support of Dr. Marco Cervantes and graduate students. The academy is a community-powered, teacher-scholar-led effort that provides educators with foundational content and curricular support to teach MAS in PreK-12 public schools. 

Since 2015, the MAS Teachers’ Academy has organized an annual, week-long professional development institute. Initially, it was designed for secondary social studies teachers who wanted to teach the Special Topics in Social Studies course, approved by the SBOE in 2014, and the Ethnic Studies: Mexican American Studies course, approved in 2018. It has since expanded to include primary and secondary education teachers who want to center MAS in their social studies, ELAR (English, Language Arts, and Reading), Spanish, mathematics, fine arts, science, and dual-language curricula. 

Vision and Praxis

In 2020, the academy shifted to an online platform to meet the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of moving the academy online, we have been able to increase attendance by providing access to participants state-wide. 

Over the past few years, the academy has been able to count on the generous support of community partners like MACRI (Mexican American Civil Rights Institute) and IDRA (Intercultural Development Research Association), as well as expert MAS teachers. We also rely on the support of past and present MAS undergraduate students, graduate students, and community advocates. 

As the only academy of its kind in the state, the MAS Teachers’ Academy introduces teachers to Chicana/x/o Studies liberatory pedagogies and teaching/learning approaches that speak to MAS' commitment to student empowerment, community self-determination, and social transformation.

Teachers who participate in our summer academy receive professional development credits and have access to readings, scholar lectures, curriculum building workshops, pláticas, as well as archives and special exhibits like Los Tejanos at the Institute of Texan Cultures (ITC). 

In addition to our one-week summer academy, the MAS Teachers’ Academy offers Cafecito y MAS pláticas and teacher-led MAS workshops during the Fall and Spring semesters. Co-organized with Aurelio Montemayor of IDRA, these community gatherings and workshops provide educators with access to decolonial, Chicana feminist, and anti-racist pedagogies rooted in MAS.

Land Acknowledgement  

We acknowledge the Payaya – the people of Yanawana and the Tap Pilam Cuahuiltecans who are native to the South Texas and Northeast Mexico region, who live in occupied territory known as San Antonio. We also acknowledge the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation, whose traditional territory we are living on. You are the past, present, and future caretakers and knowledge keepers of this land. We also acknowledge the Lipan Apache, Tonkawa, Kickapoo, Comanche, and other Native nations who were displaced from their territories and migrated to these lands – who continue to care for Mother Earth and maintain their traditional ways.  

As a Hispanic Serving Institution built on Coahuiltecan land, we’d like for us to reflect on the words of Indigenous scholar Clelia Rodriguez who reminds us that “It is important that we acknowledge that we are working, teaching and learning on these lands and consider what responsibilities we carry and how we can engage in meaningful commitments/expressions of relationship, reciprocity and responsibility to land and water.”   

Black Lives Matter solidarity statement   

As MAS educators, we acknowledge that white supremacy has been an insidious system of domination that has assaulted Black communities on this continent and globally for centuries. As a program, we are committed to transdisciplinary frameworks that center the knowledge production and contributions of people of the African diaspora in our curricula as a way of creating greater consciousness around our shared histories of resistance, political struggles, and movements for collective liberation. We also commit to dismantling anti-Blackness in our curricula by centering the histories and realities of Black, Afro-Chicana/x, and Afro-Indigenous people who have, for too long, been erased in white supremacist and settler colonial narratives.