About – HEAL NM

THE BEGINNING

In 2022, high school students and K-12 educators from across Southern New Mexico communities including: Gadsden, Mescalero, Las Cruces, and Silver City joined NMSU faculty to co-create new Units and Lessons to support the New Mexico Public Education Social Studies standards inclusion of its sixth strand: Ethnic and Cultural Identities. The group collectively chose seven topics and researched, wrote, and presented those lessons at a summer forum. We hope you enjoy these and include them in your curriculum! We also work with districts and schools to create tailored professional development to accompany the Units and Lessons as well as other educational materials presented on this site.

CURRICULUM PILOT STUDY

In 2020, the New Mexico Public Education Department gave a small grant to NMSU Ethnic Studies faculty to develop a pilot study about teachers’ educational support needs to make the New Mexico curriculum more culturally and linguistically relevant.

The main findings in that 6 month study include:

– Teachers need educational materials that are inclusive and representative of more New Mexican histories (women, people of color, LGBTQ, and others who are marginalized)

– Social Studies teachers love their profession but feel undervalued within the schools

– Professional development to offer culturally and linguistic sustaining curricula is needed for teachers, administrators, and school boards

Read the pilot study here: Report

An op-ed in the Las Cruces Sun News sparked interest in southern New Mexico to unearth place-based histories and develop those into curriculum for the students across the state.

Read op-ed here: SUCCCESS Snapshot: A new day, a new education for New Mexico.

MURAL AS CURRICULUM

The Borderlands and Ethnic Studies (BEST) Research Center at NMSU partnered with local artists to develop a series of murals on NMSU’s campus in O’Donnell Hall (College of Health, Education, and Social Transformation) that reflect the histories of thriving in these lands, and the beauty and dignity of people who seek healthy, joyful, and liberated ways of living in relation to each other, the land, and the animals. They are collectively called, “Homecoming/Bienvenida” and are a form of curriculum that is public and accessible to all.

The murals celebrate the sacredness and people power in this region while inviting guests to imagine a healthy, informed, thriving future. They unearth the stories of peoples’ dignity and refusals in these movements, mostly left out of New Mexico’s K-College curriculum. The murals embody the multiplicities of the lives of the Borderlands Peoples in the present, and at the same time, imagining futurities of love, abundance, wisdom, transborder solidarities, and compassion in these Borderlands and beyond.

Mural artists: Norma Chairez, Beatrice Chavez, Celina Corral Arreola, Citlali Delgado, Ryan Duran, A. Billi Free, Al Na’ir Lara, and Saba. Collage design: Alberto del Campo