The Moral Ethic of Cariño for Justice and Equity: Amplifying the Voices of Immigrant-Origin Youth through Critical Literacy

The Moral Ethic of Cariño for Teaching Critical Literacy through a Justice and Equity Lens

Prominent Latine scholars have highlighted the importance of cariño in the context of relational approaches to teaching Latine youth in K-12 school settings (Bartolomé, 1994b; Curry, 2021; Nieto, 1992; Rólon-Dow, 2005; Valdés, 1996; Valenzuela, 1999). They urged educators and researchers to conceptualize cariño as a form of relational practice oriented towards humanizing the personhood of Latine students in schools. In addition, much work has been done around the conceptualization of the ethic of care in education (Noddings, 2013; Noddings & Shore, 1984). Recently, scholars like Salmerón and Batista-Morales have expanded the work of Angela Valenzuela to account for authentic cariño as an antidote to subtractive schooling (Salmerón et al., 2021). While the concept of cariño is not new, the theorization of the moral ethic of cariño is in that it presents a framework to unpack teacher perspectives and practices in working with immigrant-origin Latine youth, particularly as it relates to critical literacy in a secondary setting and the authentic inclusion of their intellectual prowess. In the teaching of immigrant-origin Latine students, the moral ethic of cariño refers to a framework that urges educators to constantly revisit their perceptions of students and revise their teaching practices so that authentic inclusion is achieved. A moral ethic of cariño centers the morality of the teacher and the ethical implications of the teaching profession.

Morality and Ethics in the Teaching Profession

Scholars like David Hansen have made critical connections between the intersection of moral teaching and professional ethics, defining morality in teaching as the ability of:

Being patient with others, attentive to them, respectful of them, open-minded to their views…. Teachers enact these and other virtues (or fail to) in strikingly diverse ways. In this light the claim that teaching is a moral activity calls attention to teachers’ conduct, character, perceptions, judgment, understanding, and more. (Hansen, 2001, p. 828)

The moral ethic of cariño further expands on this notion of morality in the teaching of immigrant-origin youth, extending our understanding that indeed teaching is a moral activity because of its vital connection to human relationship and its delicate dependence on and the pivotal role of the teacher. In another seminal study on morality in education, “The Moral life of School Project” (Jackson et al., 1993), the researchers examined teaching and, “scrutinized each event for its possible moral significance, illuminating how the smallest gesture, the most fleeting word can leave a mark on students’ emerging intellectual and moral sensibilities” (Hansen, 2001, p. 838). The moral ethic of cariño acknowledges that nearly everything a teacher does while in contact with students carries moral weight. “The response to a question, every assignment handed out, every discussion on issues, every resolution of a dispute, every grade given to a student carry with it the moral character of the teacher” (Fenstermacher, 1990, p. 134).

Therefore, as teachers, we ethically engage in the process of getting to know our students and their narratives and build upon them in critical ways. It is through this process of critical awareness that authentic cariño can be built (Curry, 2016, 2021). Expanding on these ideas, the moral ethic of cariño posits that our perceptions of our students matter and that such perceptions will positively or negatively inform our teaching practices. These perceptions are heavily informed by our morality and ethics as individuals. The moral ethic of cariño urges the field of education to consider how teachers’ perspectives might be embodied in pedagogical practices to either limit or advance learning opportunities for linguistically and culturally diverse students and to examine our moral and ethical duties in the craft of teaching (Lomelí, 2020, 2023). I situate this theoretical framework within the literature on critical literacy particularly as it relates to language and literacy education of immigrant-origin students.

For immigrant-origin students, it is particularly important that educators engage in instructional practices that facilitate students’ free expression in reading, writing, listening, and speaking activities (Muhammad, 2020). The cornerstone of creating a positive learning environment is an ethic that is humanizing, nurturing, respectful, and caring, which includes the development and implementation of culturally relevant curricula (Ladson-Billings, 1994; Paris & Alim, 2017). The interactions between teachers, their students, and the selection of curricula directly reflect how teachers perceive their students. Teachers with a critical literacy orientation support student learning under structures that support their ideas, their personhood, and an unwavering belief in their intellectual capacity (Bartolomé, 1994b; Darder, 1991; Freire, 1972; Janks, 2013; Lomelí, 2020; Valenzuela, 1999). Extant research indicates that humanizing teaching practices centered on a moral ethic of cariño embody critical literacies that center the lived experiences of immigrant-origin youth, rendering positive learning experiences for them (Lomelí, 2020).

Critical Literacy for Immigrant-Origin Youth

Scholars like Paulo Freire and Hilary Janks define critical literacy as a social justice work methodology in education based on practices that lead students to interrogate the world around them (Freire, 1972; Janks, 2013). Critical literacy in its ideal form, leads to an emancipatory process where students read the “word but also read the ‘world’” around them (Freire & Macedo, 1987). This approach to literacy equips students with the tools to decode and unmask normalized ideological dimensions of texts, social norms, cultural practices, institutional practices, and sociopolitical selective interests (Beck, 2005).

From its initial stages, critical literacy has been associated with self-growth, self-awareness, an ethic of care, and taking action (Freire, 1972). At the core of critical literacy is the regard for critical approaches that culturally and historically situate language use, discourse, texts and their authors, readers, and users as social, cultural, and political contexts (Giroux et al., 2013). The aim of critical literacy is to enable students to critique texts and discourses, understand how words are constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed in order to contest and transform social and semiotic relations (Janks, 2013).

According to Freire (1985), critical literacy requires that teachers lean into crafting opportunities for students to explore and construct knowledge through engagement with texts and discourse that question issues of power, inequalities, disparities within social-economic status, documentation status, and oppressive and unjust forms of social structure. Such opportunities within the context of critical literacy position immigrant-origin students to deconstruct discourse and reconstruct it from their own critical lens and experience (Janks, 2005).

Critical literacy practices are enacted when students adopt a critical stance to read the world around them and interrogate it freely within complex texts (Brannon et al., 2010; Vasquez, 2014b). For immigrant-origin youth critical literacy entails taking views of texts as human technologies for presenting and reshaping possible worlds. Being that critical literacy approaches texts as human technologies that are malleable human designs and artifacts in social fields, immigrant-origin youth can engage in a process in which ideological construction of social relations of class, race, language, and immigration status may become contested through dialogue and text analysis. In this regard, critical literacy approaches begin by culturally and historically situating discourse, texts, and their authors, and disrupting their authoritative status in everyday contexts. Texts, then become the vehicle by which learners are capable of critiquing and questioning the narratives that might frame their communities in negative lights and become the catalyst by which they voice their community and cultural interests.

In this process, traditional authority and relationships between teachers and students are shifted. In critical literacy, immigrant-origin students hold space to become teachers of their understanding and experiences, and teachers hold space to become learners of their students’ experiences (Hikida, 2018). In critical literacy, dialogic pedagogy emerges, centering student voices to critique and interrogate democratic conditions for authentic exchange on issues of moral, social, and sociopolitical significance (Edelsky, 1992). Critical literacy encourages immigrant-origin youth to analyze texts and narratives written about them and critique them as they simultaneously reshape the deficit narratives of their immigrant experiences.

Immigrant-Origin Youth

I define immigrant-origin youth as individuals who are under the age of 18 and belong to either generation 1.0, 1.5, or 2.0. The term 1.0 refers to children that are new to the host country and the term 1.5 describes individuals that migrated to the host country during their teen years (Rumbaut, 2004). The term 2.0 includes children of immigrants who are born in the host country, in this case the United States (U.S.). It is important to note that by no means are these immigrant-youth groups homogeneous, nor is this work suggesting that these groups are a monolith (Rumbaut & Portes, 2001). However, the students in this study did share a common challenge at the time this data was collected (during the Trump administration)—a constant fear of deportation for themselves or their loved ones.

Researcher Positionality

As a scholar, former high school teacher, and immigrant, I came to this work with a deep commitment to improve the learning conditions for immigrant-origin youth. I believe strongly that the experiences of immigrant-origin students and their families are often glossed over in our schools, leaving this very vulnerable population of students with a subpar learning experience. As a former English teacher, alumni of Dreamers High, and an immigrant myself, I am a partial insider from multiple positions. My insider perspective on the students and community allowed me to share background information on how students responded to Mr. Sparks and made sense of the critical curriculum that he had them engage in. It is, however, important to note that returning to Dreamers High after three decades, in my new role as a researcher, situated me as an outsider to the community. I was and continue to be acutely aware of my multiple and simultaneous identities and positionalities as I engage in this critical scholarship on the education of immigrant-origin Latine youth.

I would like to briefly describe what motivated this line of inquiry and how I positioned myself in Mr. Sparks’ classroom. I was only six years old when I came to the United States. Being born in El Salvador during a time of civil war provided me with insider knowledge that many young children have to face, as many of us were forced to grow up quickly, uproot what we knew to be home, and immigrate to a new country. Learning in a new language and cultural context was not an easy task for me and my older siblings. As an immigrant student, I understood first-hand the ways that the students in this study made critical personal connections to what they read in class in relation to the oppressions that they experienced daily. As a former teacher, I was aware of the importance of including critical literacy that leads students to question social structures and urges them to call for change. As a researcher, I acknowledge that new methods and theoretical frameworks are required to identify effective pedagogical practices and perspectives that we employ in the teaching of immigrant-origin youth.

Setting

At the time of the study, Dreamers High, a public high school nestled in the heart of Silicon Valley, enrolled approximately 1400 to 1500 students, and served a diverse student body: 78% Latine, 10% Flipinx, 7% Asian, 2% Pacific Islander, 2% African American, and 1% White. The average household income was less than $42,000 a year (the annual median income in the surrounding area was $117,474).

Classroom

The majority of the students in Mr. Sparks classroom were of Mexican-American descent, bilingual, and of immigrant-origin. However, some students from South and Central America were also represented as well as students of Filipinx background.

Teacher Participant Selection

I sought the expertise of the community in determining which educators were highly effective in their interactions with immigrant-origin Latine youth. I adopted the community nomination process used by Gloria Ladson-Billings (1994), who described in her book, The Dreamkeepers, how parents nominated highly effective teachers with African American students. Prior to the start of this study, I spent a 6-week period in which I spoke with community members inquiring about their most effective teachers. This teacher selection process was used to obtain community insiders’ knowledge as it was important to me as a researcher that the community knowledge be honored. Parents, school administrators, counselors, certified staff, classified staff, and alumni participated in the nomination process. Mr. Sparks’ name resurfaced continuously as I met with school community members. Using the snowball sampling effect, in which a researcher begins with a small population of known individuals and expands the sample by asking those initial participants to identify others that should participate in the study, I began my teacher community nomination process with the school administrator (Biernacki & Waldorf, 1981).

The main criteria for participation in the study were that the teacher participant would be open to having classroom observations weekly and meeting with me as needed. After the 6-week period, I approached Mr. Sparks and he happily agreed to both.

Mr. Sparks

At first glance, one might confuse Mr. Sparks for one of the students at Dreamers High. His classroom environment often felt like a university seminar, rich in discussion and heavy on comparative analysis of text. There was often a robust dialogue and critique about social norms in relation to historically marginalized communities. His lessons involved a lot of social media and contemporary hot topics that attracted students to engage deeply. Mr. Sparks embodied excellent classroom management in a non-punitive approach, demonstrating a special skill set that made him unique. Students held him in high regard but every now and then felt the freedom to joke around with him.

Mr. Sparks taught Economics, Sociology, and US History. He identified as Black, Irish, and Filipino. During his orienting interview, Mr. Sparks shared the important role his father played in his intellectual and personal life. Mr. Sparks is a father of a 9-year-old and a 6-year-old and has been happily married to his partner who at the time of this study worked for a major Bay Area electric car company. At the time the data of this study was collected, Mr. Sparks had been teaching high school for 8 years.

Data Collection

Data collection for this study was initiated in the summer of 2017 and was carried out through summer of 2018. Primary data sources of this study include interviews (n = 12) focused on Mr. Sparks’ perspectives and practices. Interviews ranged from 20 minutes to 60 minutes. I visited the school weekly for 32 weeks and was in Mr. Sparks’ classroom for a total of 18 visits lasting 90 minutes per class. I made observations and took field notes during each visit. The classroom visits and interviews were audio recorded and then transcribed. Teacher interview transcripts and classroom audio recording transcript visits were openly coded (Saldaña, 2009). Some of the codes included practices that centered students’ experiences as critical knowledge and practices that exemplified critical lines of inquiry. Other codes included teacher perspectives that demonstrated a critical consciousness lens and equity-driven perspectives of students. Secondary data sources included informal interview transcripts (n = 10) with students and Mr. Sparks during and after classroom visits.

Analytic Approach

I examined Mr. Sparks’ literacy choices by describing interview and interactional data through reconstructive discourse analysis. I utilized in NVIVO coding (Saldaña, 2009), a method that uses the participants’ words as codes. I took an inductive approach (Creswell, 2013), engaging in coding that was open, axial, and selective (Corbin & Strauss, 1990), followed by thematic patterning (Kvale & Brinkman, 2009; Seidman, 2006). Rather than looking for a list of identified “best practices” or a matrix of critical literacies, I actively searched for interactional moves that reflected critical orientations to teaching, such as those described by Freire (1972, 1987). Within these teaching interactions, I identified moments when the teacher centered critical literacies that amplified the voices of the immigrant-origin youth, dignified and affirmed their lived experiences, and equipped them with the skills to become experts in the content.

A Critical Curricular Unit on Justice and Equity

During a two-week period, Mr. Sparks introduced students to the principles and elements of the bill of rights and the first ten amendments to the constitution. Students analyzed their virtues and vices by contextualizing the first ten amendments to the American Constitution through current and historical events. Culminating the unit, students were expected to produce a stance that would then be included in their written expository reflections in which they were prompted to: Identify an amendment of their choice. Write about what this amendment offers, and provide examples from current or sociopolitical events to demonstrate how and why the selected amendment is particularly relevant to how democracy operates in our country.

The Case Study: A Moral Ethic of Cariño for Justice and Equity

The analysis of this study draws attention to Mr. Sparks’ practices and his perspectives on his immigrant-origin students. Below I draft three instances that demonstrate his practices and perspectives. I start by sharing the first literacy practice in which Mr. Sparks enacted a moral ethic of cariño when he centered student experiences as critical knowledge in their brainstorming process as they prepared for writing, a critical literacy practice that he often displayed in the classroom.

Critical Conscious Perspective and Centering Student Experiences as Critical Knowledge

“Talk it out”: A Critical Literacy Practice. Mr. Sparks’ unique way of brainstorming sessions for writing required his students to reflect on their ideas orally and engage in talking those ideas out, an instructional practice that he used for brainstorming where students shared their ideas in small group or whole class discussions prior to engaging in any writing task. I observed this practice repeatedly throughout my classroom observation visits. In his social justice and equity unit, Mr. Sparks invited his students to analyze immigration policies and examine the deficit narratives expressed about their immigrant community. Students led the exploration of this topic using his talk it out strategy. Mr. Sparks explained his talk it out strategy as follows:

For my students it is important that they talk it out, this is a time in my curriculum where before they write their ideas, they express those ideas freely with their peers, whether it be in small group discussion or as a whole class. I’ve seen this become a game-changer for my students because most of them are navigating the world in two languages and among two cultures. When they engage in texts or in current events, I want to hear about their interpretations, their connections and how they are making sense of the world around them. If they can say it, they can write about their stances.

This interview data speaks to Mr. Sparks’ intentional approach in implementing a chosen modality to brainstorm ideas for writing through class discourse and discussion. An important approach for immigrant students who are acquiring English as an additional language, this alternate approach to brainstorming proved critical as it allowed students to orally make sense of the assigned reading and make critical connections to their own writing. Reflecting on his curricular choice for brainstorming out loud in the writing process, Mr. Sparks noted that he intentionally positioned his students’ experiences as critical knowledge to draw and build from. A moral ethic of cariño is at the core of this instructional approach as students are granted an opportunity to articulate their ideas and have those ideas valued as critical knowledge in the learning process.

“Talk it Out.” Growing up, Mr. Sparks was expected to share opinions on sociopolitical issues. These conversations as a young boy shaped his worldviews and gave him confidence as he grew into an adult.

As a self-identified Black man, these critical life experiences influenced Mr. Sparks’ approach to his own students. Like his father did for him, Mr. Sparks urged his students to formulate a stance, craft critiques, and have opinions about social issues they faced. His class dialogues often placed race at the center of social analysis as he affirmed the everyday experiences of people of color. Throughout the academic year I spent in Mr. Sparks’ classroom, I was able to observe how he centered his students’ opinions as critical knowledge, deeming their personal connections to texts and current events as important. Scholars like Rolón-Dow (2005) have urged educators to address issues of racial inequality and social injustices in the schooling process, arguing that it is imperative for educators to actively seek ways to sustain conversations about racial matters within current schooling contexts. Much like Mr. Sparks was engaged in critical dialogue and critique about social inequities as a youngster at home, he engaged his immigrant-origin students in formulating thought and opinion. This approach unveiled his critical conscious perspective of his immigrant-origin students, as Mr. Sparks valued his students' ability to recognize and analyze systems of inequality as they talked out their ideas. This humanizing approach to brainstorming aloud grants linguistically diverse students the opportunity to sort their ideas in a low stakes approach and has a lasting impact on their identities as writers, being that their ideas are affirmed. By crafting a space for students to brainstorm their ideas by talking it out, Mr. Sparks enacted a moral ethic of cariño that reflected his perceptions on the importance of amplifying the voices and experiences of his students through his critical conscious perspective of them as intellectuals.

Critical Conscious Perspectives and Lines of Inquiry as Critical Literacy Practice

“Why is This Only Happening on the Mexican border and Not at the Canadian Border?” Another way that Mr. Sparks demonstrated a moral ethic of cariño was through his critically conscious approach to teaching; as he consistently led them to “read the word and read the world” (Freire & Macedo, 1987) around them. During Mr. Sparks’ Justice and Equity unit in his American Government class, Mr. Sparks began each class by asking, “Who here can define discrimination as seen and heard in an American context?” Without hesitation, most if not all his students would immerse themselves in class discourse. In Mr. Sparks’ class, students were expected to research current events daily and juxtapose such events with class content. On one occasion, students were studying the bill of rights and its implications in real-life contexts. One of his students, David, raised his hand, seemingly pensive, and openly shared:

The chaos that Trump is causing at the southern border is discrimination at its finest. Trump's policy separates families. Separation of children from their parents is by far the greatest discrimination. I had read over the weekend because I knew you would ask us about current events, and I want to talk more about this mess of children being separated from their families. And I mean, why is this only happening on the Mexican border and not at the Canadian border? And who is thinking about the trauma that the kids will suffer? In that article I read, a three-year-old boy was detained in El Paso, TX. He was a boy from Honduras, his dad escaping gang-violence. Like, in this class we have read about civil rights and liberties of people. Isn’t separating children from their families violating the constitution? This is discrimination. Our president is not thinking of the long-term effects on these families, the children and our society.

The nuanced and explicit discriminatory actions that underscored the current event that David referenced revealed his understanding of the importance of analyzing racial discrimination in social issues. David analyzed what was happening at the southern border and articulated a critical understanding of “discrimination.” David problematized the nature of this policy and the social and psychological trauma that vulnerable immigrant families faced. He also questioned the equity of such a policy by asking, “why is this only happening on the Mexican border and not at the Canadian border?” Mr. Sparks attentively listened, and took copious notes and wrote them on the board, signaling to his students that these were valuable contributions. Informed by a critical conscious perspective, Mr. Sparks created an environment where students freely expressed their ideas and interrogated the world around them. David openly shared his ability to recognize and analyze systems of inequality within societal structures, demonstrating a heightened critical consciousness that led him to call into question the impact that separating families might have in the future.

Mr. Sparks valued the power of inquiry and immersed his students in class discussion that would often end in students asking critical questions such as David did in posing, “Isn’t separating children from their families violating the constitution?” This was evidenced by the way that he crafted space for students like David to freely call into question racial oppression and inequality. By allowing students to craft lines of inquiry in discourse that allow students like David to interrogate immigration policies that separate families, Mr. Sparks demonstrated a moral ethic of cariño in that he perceived his students as critically conscious participants of our democracy.

Equity-Driven Perspectives and Crafting Lines of Inquiry as Critical Literacy Practice

“When Families are Detained, Do They Even Get Spanish-Speaking Help?” Finally, Mr. Sparks enacted a moral ethic of cariño through an equity-driven perspective of his students and centered their experiences as critical knowledge in the curriculum. Students expanded on each other's ideas through their own interpretations of texts and made connections to their lived experiences as they chimed in with additional data points. For example, in response to David's claim that Trump's immigration policies that separated families were discriminatory, Yanira added her analysis of the inhumanity she saw in Trump's immigration policies as reflected in his executive order. Yanira shared:

I had read online that there is no system in place to reunite children and unaccompanied youth with their parents once they are separated. There seems to be no logic to this. I feel like we are being treated as less than human. Kids detained at the border, go to sleep at night without their families. I have a nine-year-old sister and a three-year-old brother. Those two have a hard time going to sleep without my parents. I would say that this policy is inhumane and will cause more harm than good in the long run. I agree with David, we do have to ask, why is this only happening in the Mexican border?

Yanira built on David's idea that Trump's immigration policies were discriminatory and pushed for further investigation as to why this was only happening at the Mexican border. She raised another valid point about the trauma that kids endured when detained at the southern border. Yanira also made a personal connection that not only showed how viscerally she understood and felt the situation, but also how unacceptable it was. David and Yanira's sophisticated analyses of this current event were typical of how students would engage in class discussions.

During the same class visit, following David and Yanira's share-out, the following class discussion unfolded between Mr. Sparks and his students:

01 Martin: So, you know what David mentioned about the three-year-old boy?

The brief discussion reiterates Mr. Sparks’ classroom culture where his students’ experiences served as valid evidence to support their claims. He validated his students’ meaning-making, and in this way encouraged them to continue to voice their ideas.

Martin (line 01) circled back to the notion that children were being detained at the Mexican border and seemed distraught that a young boy at the age of three would also be subject to such a process. Mr. Sparks (line 02) named the phenomenon, “separated from their families” and critically posed an inquiry. This critical line of questioning within the context of classroom discourse set the stage for students to reconstruct, in their own terms, what was happening to migrant families at the Southern border. Note that this was the only time that Mr. Sparks contributed throughout the entire conversation, as he held space for his students to engage in discourse without him. Martin (line 03) quickly made the connection to our justice system and critically interrogated the role of it (line 04) in this process. Neto (line 05) interjected himself into the discussion offering a critical question regarding language, asking the class, “do they even get Spanish speaking help?” Notably, this critical line of questioning in classroom discourse was modeled for him by his teacher. Adolfo (line 06) speculated and posited his own interpretation of this situation setting the stage for the critical connections that would ensure in subsequent contributions by his classmates. Yanira (line 07) connected the role of citizens to the constitution's role in advocating for human rights (line 08). Adolfo (line 09) then made the critical connection to the U.S. Constitution's bill of rights and the migrant families’ rights to due process of law, content that was presented a few days before through class readings and Mr. Sparks’ course lectures. Building directly on one another's utterances, students grappled together with the equality that such constitutional rights were designed to offer people. At this point in the conversation, Mr. Sparks’ students were engaging in critical lines of inquiry on their own, actively listening to each other—made possible by Mr. Sparks, who yielded power to his students’ experiences and centered their critical knowledge in the discussion.

Implications

In an era where anti-immigrant sentiment is robust, Mr. Sparks chose to amplify the often fearful and uncertain voices of his immigrant-origin students. To support effective learning in diverse classroom settings, teachers need to engage with their students by boldly centering their lived experiences as critical knowledge that then informs curricular content and design. This practice requires that educators like Mr. Sparks immerse themselves in the ongoing process of soliciting and utilizing their students’ narratives and revise their perceptions of their students and what they think they know about them. The findings and analyses of this case study offer important practical implications for classroom teachers interested in taking up critical literacy practices that center the lived experiences of immigrant-origin students and are interested in crafting critical lines of inquiry that hold space for students to challenge the status quo. This case study suggests that teachers can make critical pedagogical choices based on a moral ethic of cariño to positively impact the learning experience of students of color (Lomelí, 2020, 2023). A moral ethic of cariño reflects a liberatory teaching stance that honors the students’ lived experiences and positions the teachers’ perceptions of their students as constantly shifting and evolving.

In my view, these findings and analyses offer important practical implication for classroom teachers and for researchers interested in documenting what a moral ethic of cariño looks like in pedagogical practices and in teacher perspectives. Cariño can now be observed through teacher practices and perspectives and not just as a relational approach of care. These findings also raise questions about the power of teachers’ perceptions of their students and how such perceptions ultimately inform the types of literacy practices that they think their students might be able to engage in. When teachers like Mr. Sparks amplify the voices of immigrant-origin students by centering their lived experiences as critical knowledge in the curricula, the moral ethic of cariño serves as conduit for justice and equity in humanizing their learning experiences.