Growing up in Texas, Noreen Naseem Rodriguez wondered why there weren’t people like her going to school textbooks.
“I experienced 20 years of schooling and so i never discovered the of Asians in the usa,” said Rodriguez, who will be half-Pakistani and half-Filipina – or what she affectionately calls Pakipina. “Even though early my racial background, since i never heard of it in college, I never had usage of it.”
Rodriguez aims to change that for other students of color. This fall, she joins the Iowa State University School of Education being an assistant professor in elementary social studies education.
She said all students find social studies boring since it is typically disconnected from them own experiences, and quite often depends upon a memorization of dates the ones. Teaching social studies with this misses to be able to provide children with the groundwork in civic education, she said. Rodriguez instead uses children’s books as a tool to show the difficult histories of folks of color in the nation – and engage students in culturally relevant and sustaining ways.
“I believe social studies education ought to be inclusive of the multitude of groups and cultures with our democracy,” she said. “It usually supplies students with the means to access curriculum that critically addresses the complicated past and provide when it comes to race, class, gender, immigration, citizenship, language, and religion, and examines the politics of representation and belonging.”
How teachers’ experiences inform teaching social studies
As Rodriguez explored the background of Asian-Americans, she was fascinated to uncover the amount she couldn’t know. She found that the primary Filipinos landed in Morro Bay, California, in 1587 – ahead of the Pilgrims landed in Cape Cod. She also heard of laws that prevented Filipino men from marrying white women.
“We take a look at school segregation as if it is just a black-white issue, but it really was so extra ,” she said.
Her efforts to enact change were recognized trapped on video tape when she received the OZY Educator Award from OZY, a global online magazine that concentrates on news, arts, culture, politics, business, and sports.
Aside from working directly with students, Rodriguez studies current and future teachers of color -?specifically Asian-Americans and Latinos – and how their experiences inform their social studies pedagogy, or technique for teaching.
Her dissertation in the University of Texas at Austin examined how Asian-American elementary teachers enact difficult histories for example the Japanese-American internment during Wwii. She found teachers’ ways of discussing race, citizenship, and injustice varied widely. ??
“Although each teacher recognized the significance of teaching Asian-American narratives, they displayed various discomfort and unease with broader issues of race, citizenship, and injustice,” she said. “This research demonstrates the importance of counter-stories and reconstructive history with children and teacher education.”
Rodriguez was selected for the 2017 Larry Metcalf Exemplary Dissertation Award through the National Council for your Social Studies for that dissertation. She’s going to present her research and receive her award in November at the council’s annual conference in S . f ., before more than 3,000 of her colleagues.
Bilingual teacher in Texas
Rodriguez brings nine years of experience as a possible elementary bilingual teacher in Texas to her job at Iowa State. She also taught eight areas of elementary social studies methods courses in the University of Texas at Austin to future bilingual teachers and the ones seeking English being a Second Language (ESL) certification.
Her research includes playing the Tejano History Curriculum Project, an endeavor to create curriculum that aimed at the experiences of Tejanos, or Mexican-Americans living in southern Texas, who’re largely invisible in state historical narratives.
“I urge my undergraduates to consider critically with regards to the methods marginalized groups are represented in official curriculum and the ways to better engage children in social studies which might be culturally relevant plus more demonstrative your pluralistic society,” she said.
Rodriguez joins a team at Iowa State that includes assistant professor Katy Swalwell, who also aims to determine the background?of persons whose stories don’t often get told. The varsity of Education also provides a graduate certificate in education for social justice.
Isaac Gottesman, an affiliate professor who led Rodriguez’ search committee, said bigger without a doubt that Rodriguez may become a prominent scholar in social studies education as well as an important voice in conversations about elementary teacher education, both at Iowa State and nationally.
“Her extensive classroom teaching expertise and experience in justice-oriented social studies curriculum and bilingual education are going to be invaluable for our elementary teacher education program as we continue to strengthen our target educational equity,” Gottesman said.
“As a thoughtful scholar engaged in sophisticated and significant work, such as around the experiences of Asian-American and Latinx pre- and in-service teachers, Noreen will even contribute significantly for our graduate programs plus the broader research mission of your School of Education.”
