Deeper learning Closing Keynote - On Becoming a Good Ancestor in Education with Dr. Rochelle Gutiérrez

Dr. Rochelle Gutiérrez

From the Deeper Learning website

Dr. Rochelle Gutiérrez' scholarship focuses on issues of identity and power in mathematics education, paying particular attention to how race, class, and language affect teaching and learning. An expert in rehumanizing education and creative insubordination, her keynote will integrate indigenous ways of knowing and being, what it means to build new futures, and so much more!

Rochelle Gutiérrez - University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Champaign, IL
Dr. Rochelle Gutiérrez’s research interrogates the unearned privilege that mathematics holds in society and the roles that race, class, language, and gender play in teaching/learning mathematics so as to open up new possible relationships between humans, mathematics/science, and the planet.

Activism - Creative Insubordination
When you are fighting for the rights of people you don't need no badges. Don't ask for permission we know our ancestors have given us guidance. You don't buy organic because it's good for you, you buy organic because it's an act of solidarity, and you do it because you want to support the workers. Mass farms are not good for the workers on those farms. 

What does it mean to be a good ancestor? Rochelle talked about educators doing the work to support the aspirations of learners to aim high. Do the research to understand where the best place is for a student to go to college to pursue their dreams. Not the local college, not the easy college to access. She talked about her Mother as an educator and how she would also get students to go to college in teams, particularly Latino students who would be strengthened by going as a community. She talked about how she cut deals with universities to accept multiple students so students could have a family and support in the white spaces. She shared a story about her mother talking to the server at Costco and asking her if she is going to college, handed over her card and offered to help. And the two women in the line asking her mother for her card. Talking about the idea of doing what is necessary to help their communities thrive.

There were a lot of parallels between what Rochelle shared and the work of Dr Russell Bishop and Dr Mere Berryman and 'Teaching to the North-East'.  

Ontology, Epistemology and Axiology
  • Know who you are
  • Know where you come from
  • Honour your culture 
  • Become a good ancestor
  • All knowledge is relational
  • Stories are literal and metaphorical; they remake us
  • We create the future we want to belong to
You need to know you are and where you have come. Your entire life's work is figuring out what your gifts are and how you give them freely. It is about abundance and giving, not about hoarding. 

Stories are literal and metaphorical. Some people think we vote every three years, but the reality is we vote with our feet and the decisions we make every single day. We have the ability to create the future we want to belong to us.



Quisieron enterrarnos sin saber que eramos semilla
They tried to bury us; they didn't know we were seeds 

Loved this Mexican proverb about adversity being a source of strength and learning and moving forward. 



The stories we tell in Mathematics. Much of the issue is the colonial scripts we have told about mathematics. We have been taught to be hesitant to use our bodies in maths. Who gave Mathematics the privilege of being "important". Are we giving too much power to the colonialist narratives we have been told?? We need to move from a socio-political to a spiritual space. 

There has never been another you, there has never been another us. Make the most of your connections. How are you showing you are listening and what are you/we going to do?

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