Program Courses

As a Maestros student at Western, you will have the opportunity to enroll in a seminar every quarter you remain at Western, for a total of 6 credits:  

Fall Quarter

ESJ 397 (1-2 credits) 

Winter Quarter

ESJ 397 (1-2 credits) 

Spring Quarter

ESJ 397 (1-2 credits) 

Goals, Objectives, and Takeaways

  • Demonstrate a general understanding of the sociopolitical, economic, historic, and ideological forces that have informed the development of P-12 public schools and the trajectory of access to educational opportunity in the United States. 

  • Analyze how educational policies and practices (and broader social policies and ideas that impact education) emerge within specific historical moments and theories of change.   

  • Analyze tensions between expressed values such as democracy, opportunity, and equity and practices related to the distribution of educational resources and pedagogical rituals in the classroom.  

  • Analyze the multiple contexts that inform and mediate the relationship between students, families, and communities and public schools in the Skagit Valley. 

  • Explore how educational policies and practices impact students differently based on their structural locations. 

  • Articulate and effect potential strategies that engage the aims of critical multicultural education, social justice education, and critical pedagogy. 

  • Develop habits of critical reflection to understand issues from multiple perspectives and in their complexity. 

  • Consider how methods of collaborative inquiry and dialogue could be employed to build a critical social justice literacy, particularly as it connects to schooling in the Skagit Valley.