As a student at Theodore Roosevelt Senior High School, Julian Morales became aware of the injustices affecting his community. He learned about racial discrimination, financial inequality and neighborhood gentrification.
It was through his ethnic studies teacher, Jorge Lopez, that Morales’s awareness deepened.
“We’re fighting these silent battles that no one really is talking about,” Morales said. “I feel like [Lopez’s class] really challenged me to learn more about what I can do as a person to fight back against those systemic oppressions, and that makes me motivated to join any opportunity I can.”
For Lopez, a 22-year veteran at Roosevelt High, witnessing his students’ growth and seeing the positive change his class has had in their lives is the most rewarding part of teaching. He said it brings him joy to see former students become professionals and lead change in their communities.
“The hope is that they want to be involved in their own transformation,” Lopez said, ”And the transformation of society and the world around them.”
As a senior last year, Morales helped Lopez support middle school students’ transition to high school as part of a student ambassador program at RHS. He and other former students often credit Lopez for inspiring them to explore fields like politics and social justice.
Lopez, however, didn’t always plan to teach ethnic studies. He initially studied psychology in college but quickly changed majors after getting involved in community activism and taking an ethnic studies class– an experience he says changed his view of the world.
“It gave me the language and lens to make sense of the experiences of my family,” Lopez said. “I come from a family of farm workers, so it made me understand the exploitation that they’ve kind of lived through. It also gave me the language to understand a lot of the things that I had internalized as a result of going through American schooling.”
In 2001, Lopez earned a Bachelor’s in Social Studies with a minor in Chicano/a Studies from San Diego State University. He later earned a teaching credential and Master’s in Education from UCLA, followed by a second Master’s in Educational Leadership and a doctoral degree in education from Claremont Graduate School. In addition to teaching at Roosevelt, he is also a part-time professor at Cal State Los Angeles, where he teaches an ethnic studies course.
Lopez said that he initially agreed to teach ethnic studies at Roosevelt after he realized he wanted other young people to feel the same empowerment he felt when he learned about himself, his people, his culture and his connection to this land. He said he became more interested in the original inhabitants of this land, the different Indigenous nations, and began embracing his own Indigenous roots as a Purépecha from Michoacan, Mexico.
“There’s this narrative in this country that we don’t belong here,” Lopez said. “And then you realize that we didn’t cross borders, the borders crossed us and we’ve been here forever.”
To that point, one of the first lessons in Lopez’s class involves looking at one’s identity as it’s tied to the history of schooling in the U.S. and its original purpose.
“Students learn about the experiences of Native American children in the school system, the experiences of Black and Mexican kids as well,” he said.
Lopez encourages his students to explore why ethnic studies courses exist at Roosevelt. He explains that the drive to establish ethnic studies in Los Angeles public schools began as a movement in the late 1960s, advocating for students to learn about their history, culture, and contributions to society.
His class covers key social movements from the 1960s, Latino history, and civil resistance, including the Zoot Suit Riots, the East L.A. student walkouts, the Black Panthers, the Brown Berets, and the fight against Japanese incarceration camps.
Sophomore Itzel Manzano shared that what stood out to her most about Lopez was the sense of community he fostered in the classroom. She was particularly inspired by the film “Walkout,” directed by Edward James Olmos and produced by Moctezuma Esparza, a student involved in the walkouts. The film, which depicts students demanding school equality and better representation of Latino teachers, resonated deeply with her.
“I feel because of that [film] and since we literally are at Roosevelt and Garfield high schools, we’re around Boyle Heights, I feel like that was a really big thing,” Manzano said. “The walkouts were really important for creating a safer place for us in our school.”
Community empowerment is exactly what Lopez said he’s trying to instill in his students. His classroom philosophy emphasizes equality, where students and teachers learn from each other through dialogue. He believes ethnic studies center students’ voices, experiences, and cultures, addressing the historical erasure of people of color from schools and curricula.
As part of Lopez’s assignments, students have the chance to write a book. They write poems or letters to their future selves or write about their current personal struggles and significant life experiences, such as facing discrimination or experiencing street violence. Lopez often draws lessons from these student writings, and the books he publishes may even be used by college professors Lopez is connected with.
“We’re all teachers and learners,” Lopez said. “That students could be teachers and teachers could be students, that there’s this dialogical kind of relationship with each other.”
