Pacific Oaks College alumna Karina Murillo, M.A., worked as an early childhood educator for nearly eight years after graduating with her bachelor’s degree from Pacific Oaks. It was while working with children in the classroom that she first began to take notice of children’s lack of exposure to issues surrounding equity and diversity.
“As a minority, I realized this was an important topic to talk about—not just for adults, but for children as well,” Murillo says. “I noticed people aren’t really comfortable talking about class, race, and how those things affect our lives. I would even get backlash from people saying that children cannot talk about race.”
Then Pacific Oaks launched its Advocacy & Social Justice program. Murillo returned to school to broaden her own knowledge about racial discrimination, community marginalization, and biased curriculum, receiving a full scholarship to the program.
“I had never seen a degree program like this before,” Murillo says. “It was transformational. Beyond the intellectual component where you are expanding your knowledge, it pushes you to unveil truths about yourself. As a minority Latina who grew up in a one-parent household, I understood the repercussions of what it means to have a racialized experience. Hearing about similar experiences from classmates and reading about them in our textbooks made my lived experience feel valid for once.
“While it was somewhat traumatizing and painful to relive—through journaling, assignments, and interviews—it was also empowering to discover that there are so many different academics discussing these topics. It is empowering to know that the information is accessible to us. The next step is to then do something with it.”
Often, Murillo says, people may be unaware of their own racialized trauma, which can compound over time. She emphasizes the importance of exploring one’s self and focusing on personal healing first, something she was allowed to do in Pacific Oaks unique classroom environment. “If you want to be a fountain of change, you don’t want your water to be poisoned,” she says. “Healing your own trauma helps prepare you to address those faced by others.”
In the summer of 2019, Murillo was part of the first graduating class of the Advocacy & Social Justice program. She now plans to return to the field of education with more control over the narrative that children are exposed to. She is hoping to form a nonprofit community center where children can explore issues such as diversity and equity and where parents can learn to advocate for alternative forms of education that better represent the diversity of stories in the U.S.
“There is a need to educate parents as well and, really, our communities as a whole, about the importance of these issues and their history,” Murillo says. “Once people are more aware and can see how these issues may affect them, we can begin to transform the way our educational systems work. Understanding the power in our individual stories and making sure that we are always using it to uplift each other for equity and change is essential. But it doesn’t occur unless we all do it together as a form of collective liberation.”
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