Educator Speaker Series: Co-Creating Knowledge

Led by ethnic studies educator Navia Itzia, Co-Creating Knowledge: Centering Youth Voices in Ethnic Studies is a workshop that explores how slowing learning down and centering student voices can transform classrooms into ecosystems of care and creativity. Drawing from Tara Yosso’s concept of Community Cultural Wealth and the Slow Money movement, educators will learn practices to recognize and nurture each learner’s gifts, cultivating belonging and shared purpose in both classroom and community spaces through the lens of Ethnic Studies.

Navia Itzia is an ethnic studies and social science educator who sees teaching as a practice of care, creativity, and courage in uncertain times. As a first-generation, formerly undocumented immigrant and cum laude UCLA graduate, she creates a culturally responsive, community-rooted curriculum that emphasizes learner voices and everyday acts of hope. Her work with the Getty Ethnic Studies Advisory Group, Greendot Ethnic Studies curriculum development, the UCLA History–Geography Project, and the New York Public Library’s Center for Educators and Schools demonstrates her belief that art and teaching are ways of reimagining the world and finding belonging within it.