Using counter-narratives to expand from the margins

Abstract

I position the use of counter-narratives as a critical approach that grants students agency and meaning in their learning and provides teachers with opportunities to present silenced curricular narratives as relevant and necessary in a globalized setting such as North America. Counter-narratives focus on a subject that preserves colonial and neo-colonial narratives to millions of K–12 students daily: social studies. The counter-narratives in this article, drawn from the collective actions of the Young Lords Party, provide the reader with concrete examples of how counter-narratives empower students who have been marginalized by the dominant social studies curriculum and educators who have been flustered by the standardization of the curriculum.