21st Century Scholar

I imagine it takes an extreme amount of courage to migrate from one country to another, to leave your wife and three daughters for the uncertain promise of a better job and more opportunity. That is what Diane’s father did. He immigrated to Los Angeles, obtained a manufacturing job, learned English, and saved money. He [...]

Now is the time to give thanks. I am thankful for having good health, professional successes, and old and new friends and family. When I consider major trends in education, however, giving thanks is more difficult.  Don’t get me wrong—there are people and events for which to be thankful. This year, Governor Brown signed legislation [...]

During my high school years, I remember hearing the counselors and English teachers discuss college applications and the FAFSA. During a class presentation, the counselors kept emphasizing how everyone could apply to FAFSA. I wondered if everyone included me. I am an undocumented student and was curious and confused by this comment. I politely interrupted [...]

A few years ago I was working at Mountain West University* as a retention specialist for Student Support Services, a federally-funded program which serves primarily low-income and first-generation students. Not only did we provide students with great programs and workshops to support them academically, we also organized trips to campus theatre performances and other events [...]

I fell in love with America when I was five years old. It seems like yesterday when I started my first day of Kindergarten. I ventured out in to the world that day with a pink backpack, a new pair of black shiny shoes, and a flower-patterned denim shirt. My mom always tells me how [...]

Paulo Freire wrote about hope as an ontological need and about struggle as a prerequisite for hope. Across his life’s work, Freire suggested that becoming more fully human requires hope, and that struggle itself can be humanizing. Yet, in times like these, hope can be difficult to generate: a global economic crisis, radical consolidations of [...]

November is usually a stressful time for many high schools students all over California; application deadlines to the California State University (CSU) and the University of California (UC) are around the corner and students are working with a lot of effort to apply and be accepted to some of the best public institutions not only [...]

We here at 21st Century Scholar are delighted to bring you a special week focusing on undocumented immigrant students. Each day, a guest blogger—Uriel Rivera, Ryan Evely Gildersleeve, Crissel Rodriguez, Susana Muñoz, and a brother and sister from a mixed-status family—will talk about their experiences as, interactions with, and hopes for undocumented immigrants and students. We hope that you [...]

Our fifth and final installment of a week’s long discussion about financial aid with Dr. Kristan Venegas posts today. Next week, we resume our regularly scheduled programming with Dr. William G. Tierney, Randall Clemens, Thursday is TechDay and a Fridays by Numbers chart. What about the students who are not financial aid eligible? by Kristan [...]

by Bill Tierney I have been vice president of Division J of AERA, and most recently a member-at-large.  In between those stints, I was president of ASHE. During my first term on the AERA Council the citizens of California passed Proposition187.  I was one of the more outspoken voices on the Council that we should [...]