Aug. 14, 2018 - CSU Channel Islands (CSUCI) Education Lecturer Danna Lomax says growing up in a multicultural family helped ignite her lifelong quest to teach and practice tolerance and social justice.
Her work weaving peace and social justice issues into the curriculum at Anacapa Middle School in Ventura has resulted in Lomax becoming one of five educators nationwide to earn a 2018 Teaching Tolerance Award for Excellence in Teaching. Lomax shares her teaching methods with CSUCI student teachers who are preparing for a career teaching preK-12.
The biennial awards come from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance project, a network of resources designed to combat prejudice and promote equality among the nation’s youth, beginning in the classroom.
“Teaching Tolerance encourages educators to create a more welcoming school environment and inspire a generation of young people to actively and respectfully participate in our increasingly diverse society,” said Maureen Costello, director of Teaching Tolerance. “The Teaching Tolerance Award for Excellence in Teaching celebrates these five educators for their exemplary practice of this guiding principle.”
Lomax, who is fluent in Spanish, teaches in the Bilingual Authorization program at CSUCI’s School of Education as well as English and World Geography to students at Anacapa. She is also Anacapa’s dual language liaison and works with CSUCI student teachers in her classroom.
“I identify as a Chicana with white privilege,” Lomax said. “My grandmother was half Mexican- half Irish-American. My dad was a quarter Mexican-American. Both of my grandmothers were super-influential. They would talk to us about marginalization and discrimination. They taught us about economic, political and social justice.”
Lomax, who has an identical twin, a brother and a half-sister, says her father would take the kids out of school now and then and travel around Mexico, exploring the country and culture.
As a teacher, Lomax worked to incorporate issues like fairness, equality and tolerance into her curriculum. She earned a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction with an eye toward how to imagine, design, and implement lesson plans that incorporated peace education.
Peace education, she explained creates a culture of cooperation, respect, conflict resolution and language that includes rather than excludes those of another race, religion, point of view or other difference that too frequently divides people. Lomax teaches students that peace is also about action.
“When we came back after the Thomas Fire, over 120 students and 20 faculty members had lost their homes, so we engaged in a unit on how to best heal from trauma,” Lomax said. “It culminated with students helping to rebuild the Ventura Botanical Gardens.”
One of Lomax’s goals is to graduate “peace literate” students, she said, using a phrase from Colman McCarthy, director of the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington, D.C.
“We want kids to experience and create peace cultures where kids work together, dance together, play together and laugh together, so they know what peace feels like and want to work to protect it,” Lomax said.