TALAS E-newsletter – May 20

Veda Kanamarlapudi and Aarushi Jaiswal grew up in immigrant households where grandparents and other relatives shared old Indian stories — such as the Jataka Tales that depict the life of Buddha.

That exposure to rich storytelling at a young age left a lasting impression on the Coppell High School juniors.

The Hays school district named a new chief academic officer and formally welcomed two school board members for a new term.  

On Monday, the school board approved the hiring of Marivel Sedillo as the new chief academic officer. Sedillo has most recently served as the district’s chief human resources officer since April 2019.  

Sedillo will replace Sandra Dowdy, who will retire in June.  

Just four years after its launch, Klein ISD’s dual language immersion pathway is expected to grow to more than 900 students in the 2021-22 school year, district officials announced during a presentation to the KISD board of trustees May 10.

According to Kathy Vergara, director of multilingual services for KISD, the dual language immersion pathway was first piloted at Klenk and Zwink elementary schools in the 2018-19 school year with 85 students.

Teachers and learning advocates in Texas have long called for greater representation of Asian Americans in classrooms. Now, the conversation is being reopened after the recent rise in Anti-Asian attacks and hate crimes.

Educators across the country say bottom line: there’s not enough Asian American history covered in classrooms.

In a low-key announcement last fall, the University of Texas at Austin declared that it had reached a significant milestone. 

UT-Austin, which is in the state with the second-largest number of Latinos nationally, had finally enrolled enough full-time Latino undergraduates to be considered a Hispanic-Serving Institution, or HSI. 

An informational interview is an informative meeting held with someone about a specific position, company, or field you have an interest in and want to learn more about. It should be a safe environment where you are free to ask questions and gain insightful feedback. It is not considered a job interview and typically shouldn’t last longer than thirty minutes at most. It’s not a traditional job interview wherein your objective is to be hired for a specific job. 

Before you ask for an informational interview, you should do preparatory research about the position, the company and the person you are meeting and create compelling questions to ask them to make the most out of the meeting. 

It was a Saturday night in Albion, a small city just east of Battle Creek, Michigan, and teenagers lined up for a dance at the school gym.

The price of admission? A bared arm.

The year was 1958, and this was no ordinary Saturday night social outing: Billed as a “Salk Hop,” it was only open to young people willing to receive a jab of the polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk, or show proof of vaccination.

Schools across the country are facing new pressure to open for in-person learning this fall given the authorization of a vaccine for children ages 12 to 15 and new federal guidance that vaccinated people do not need to wear face masks indoors or outdoors.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona in an interview with The Hill reiterated that he expects all schools to fully reopen in the fall and said the vaccine and mask guidance updates this week will likely adjust how schools plan for the next school year. 

When researchers set out to review which digital learning practices most benefit students who identify as Black, African American, Hispanic, Latinx, Latino or Latina, American Indian, Alaskan Native, Indigenous American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander, they quickly ran into a problem — there wasn’t much research to review.

If school system leaders are to make equity a priority as education moves forward during this stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, teacher work environments will have to evolve.

The pandemic struck in the middle of social unrest as U.S. citizens called for action to combat racism and economic inequities. The pandemic highlighted existing educational inequities, drawing attention to large gaps in internet and device access along with differences in family structures and parents’ ability to work from home and help their children with virtual learning. Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students and their families have been disproportionately impacted.

After a year-long closure to the public due to COVID-19, eight Smithsonian Museum facilities are finally reopening. Staggered re-openings expected in subsequent weeks include the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Portrait Gallery and others. The museums, which are among the top 10 visited in the country, are sure to attract eager gallery-goers that are excited to once again experience art and culture exhibits such as “¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now,” in person.

Despite the institutions having temporarily shut their doors within the past year, museum specialists working behind the scenes have innovated ways to bring art to folks at home to keep them engaged with exhibits through online programming, artist interviews, virtual gallery viewings and social media.

For actor Danny Ramírez, being a cast member on the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is a “privilege” and an opportunity that he doesn’t want to waste.

“Sometimes I have to pinch myself because of what it means,” Ramírez tells Remezcla during a recent interview. “But I know there is more to bring. There is still a lot more for us to keep pushing this envelope forward.”