"Who Am I? Who Are We? What Are We Going to Do About It?": Testimonios of Latinx Social Justice High School Alumni

Author

• William Salomon Orellana, CUNY Graduate CenterFollow

Date of Degree

6-2026

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Urban Education

Advisor

Wendy Luttrell

Committee Members

Melissa Schieble

Limarys Caraballo

Subject Categories

Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education | Curriculum and Social Inquiry | Educational Methods | Holistic Education | Secondary Education and Teaching

Keywords

Testimonio, Latinx education, LatCrit (Latina/o Critical Race Theory), Social justice education, Urban education, Critical pedagogy, Counter-storytelling, Decolonial pedagogy, Education, High School

Abstract

This dissertation theorizes social justice education from the standpoint of those who have lived inside it. Drawing on the testimonios of twelve Latinx alumni of Liberation High, a North Brooklyn public high school grounded in social justice pedagogy since 1993, the study asks what social justice education is, what it does, and what it leaves with the students who carry it into adult life. While substantial scholarship examines social justice education through the perspectives of teachers, curriculum, and pre-service preparation, less research centers former students, and almost none attends to Latinx alumni of social justice schools across multiple decades. The study addresses this gap at a moment of intensifying national backlash against social justice, social justice education, and critical race, ethnic, and gender studies curricula in K–12 public education.

Grounded in Latinx Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) and employing testimonio as both method and methodology, the study draws on pláticas with twelve Latinx alumni whose graduation years span 1997 to 2022, allowing analysis across distinct socio-political eras of New York City public education. Each testimonio was developed through a four-part analytic structure: a participant profile situating the alumnus within their socio-historical context, a narrative portrait, a sequence of critical episodes selected through a Testimonio Mapping Guide designed for this study, and a LatCrit-informed analysis. Four research questions guided the inquiry:

1. In what ways do SJA describe their experiences attending a social justice school?
2. What, if any, are the lasting influences of social justice education in SJA’s present lives?
3. How were ideologies of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and ability (dis) enacted in their schooling?
4. How did the socio-political events during the alumni's schooling effect their social justice education?

Three interrelated findings emerged across the testimonios, each corresponding to a foundational rhythm of the school: the Social, the Justice, and the Education. The Social was articulated by the alumni as belonging: as safety, as family, as care. They identified it as the precondition that allowed any curriculum to take root, and they continue to construct, sustain, and extend it in their own classrooms, organizations, and families.

The Justice, theorized here as a Pedagogy of Urgency, names a pedagogical commitment to drawing contemporary socio-political conditions into the classroom as objects of collective inquiry and praxis. The alumni narrate how the political education they took up at Liberation High became the analytic and political ground from which they later organized their communities, taught their students, voted with intention, wrote their truths, and built lives of consequence.

The Education names the analytical and relational tools the alumni seized and carried into adult lives as organizers, educators, healthcare administrators, software developers, doctoral students, poets, and parents; tools they continue to deploy to read, question, and act upon the structures that shape their communities. The study contributes to social justice education scholarship by centering alumni voices across decades, by extending testimonio methodology into research with high school alumni, and by demonstrating that the inheritance of social justice education is not a measurable outcome but a sustained praxis: a way of seeing the world, and a way of moving inside it.

Recommended Citation

Orellana, William Salomon, ""Who Am I? Who Are We? What Are We Going to Do About It?": Testimonios of Latinx Social Justice High School Alumni" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6753