Utilizing asset mapping and story-telling with Latine/x youth in the east side of Salinas, my research questions include (1) what are the depiction(s) of children positioned in and across geographical spaces/spaces that have been historically, spirituality, and environmentally extracted?; and (2) how are their funds of knowledge being informed by geographies rooted in epistemics both outside the U.S. and within the context of settler colonial landscape shape child consciousness in the practice of (re)imagination? I intend on incorporating walking archives and other community members into this study to explicate how first-generation adolescent experiences of familismo, cariño, and funds of knowledge shape adolescent perception of geography and social position. 

My master’s thesis, entitled Brown Skin, Brown Consciousness, triangulates students' maps, stories, and highlighted literature to demonstrate the ways geographies present themselves as bodies of knowledge and as shapers of the ways students navigate settler colonial institutions (Esteban-Guitart and Moll, 2014). Demonstrating how the Salinas Valley’s geography was utilized to create a history materializing interrelationships between agriculture and the Latine/x diaspora, my research showcases how concepts such as familismo and cariño function shape the experiences of space and place, positioning adolescents and influencing present and future “navigation.” 

I am currently working towards developing my own theoretical framework that assists in the demonstration of a triangular visualization of a historical, spiritual, and environmental account of child consciousness. 

In the context of education, my theoretical framework aims to assist K-12 researchers in understanding the changing positioning of adolescents in historically extracted communities that have been taught ethnic studies in their classrooms by teachers who have been taught by decolonial scholars in their own educational experiences. I am deeply concerned with our children, and how we can further assist empowered youth. There are many of us doing pedagogical and educational research that are not in the education discipline.

When I am not learning how to navigate graduate school as a first-generation, oldest child of Mexican immigrant parents who worked in the fields, I am running a blog where I make academic content accessible while connecting it to recipes taught to me by my walking archives and community elders.