Amanda Aguayo: Painting Pictures of Selfhood
“I’m in the middle of an existential crisis, and you’re giving me a project? As the only Latin voice?”
The quiet of the Thursday afternoon is shattered by Amanda Aguayo’s piercing question. Though it may sound strange to most readers, it makes perfect sense given the context. At the time of the interview, she has four days to complete a presentation for Hispanic Heritage Month, a project assigned to her by her school’s administration. The problem? Aside from the very quick turnaround time, she’s still figuring out the meaning of her heritage for herself.
“And I don’t have anyone else in the building to play off of,” Amanda adds from her seat at her classroom desk. Colorful decorations and artwork can be seen adorning the stark white walls behind her, each piece a testament to her job as an art teacher. She’s been an educator for fourteen years, teaching in multiple counties, from Person to Guilford to Alamance. She’s currently at a middle school in Orange County, where she’s been teaching for almost three years, and with a groundbreaking art program and blooming equity team (of which she is a member), she considers her current teaching home her forever one.
The only catch is that she is currently the only Latinx educator in the building, which presents a unique set of trials.
Chapter I: The Search for Identity
“Students of color need to see other people that look like them,” Amanda says with conviction. “It’s crucial to building community and having someone to look up to.”
She’s speaking from experience, or rather a lack of experience. As is the case with many other students of color, she had few teachers that looked like her in her own educational experience; the only one she remembers is a Latin American professor for an education course, which she didn’t have until she was at university. Her lack of role models of color in the educational space, especially Latinx ones, left a void growing up that she is still feeling today.
She recalls her visit to the Latinx Educator Summit in Greensboro, North Carolina last month, hosted by LatinxEd. Despite being a generally positive experience, the event left her with some reflections about her educational background with regard to representation.
“At one of the sessions…they asked a question about Latinx educators,” she reminisces. “And I ended up breaking down into tears in front of strangers because I did not have a Latinx role model in school, or really in life.” Her voice wavers, expression pinching a bit, and for a moment it’s almost like she’s back in the panel experiencing a wave of emotions all over again. “I had this, like, existential crisis after. Like, it was the best PD I’d ever gone to, but it also made me question: am I doing enough? Am I enough of a representative to my students’ Latinx identity?”
Having lacked representation in her time as a student, Amanda strives to be the Latinx presence she never had for her own students. It’s an incredibly noble cause, but with that goal comes hardships, not helped by the fact that some of them are placed on her by others rather than attempts of her own to connect with her students.
“I am the only Latinx educator in the building, and sometimes that comes with its own challenges,” she admits. “I feel like sometimes I have to be the one to speak up for our Latinx students and say ‘hey, we need to do this, we need to do that’, and also make sure things are equitable and that we’re doing them for everybody. But I’m just one voice. We have kids from several different Latin American countries, and sometimes it’s hard to put all the pressure on me to speak for everyone.”
As I listen to her speak, I’m blown away by her vulnerability about something that can be and is so personal to many others. Not everyone is capable of such openness, and understandably so, but Amanda does it with a classy candidness that is sobering to listen to.
“It’s especially hard because right now I’m on my own journey to find my culture and my roots,” she continues. “Because I didn’t have people to look up to growing up, now I’m in a sort of mid-life crisis and I need to do more digging.”
When she shared these feelings with the administrators at her school, she was given the aforementioned Hispanic Heritage Month project to work on. Despite their hearts being in the right place, offering the project as a gesture of support and guidance on her journey, for Amanda the order was simply too tall.
“They want me to come up with a PowerPoint, and have a slideshow with music and icons. But I want the kids’ voices,” she says, and I can hear that desire in her voice, a longing quality that is subtle to most but loud to those who understand. “I want to know who their icons are, who they look up to, because I’m only one voice. I don’t want to make it about what I assume. I only know who I looked up to, or who is influential to me.”
Amanda is faced with a pressing dilemma: how can she be enough, for herself and for her students? How can she do right by both parties regarding representation and affirming of identity?
Perhaps the answer lies, of all places, in the world of art.
Chapter II: Advocacy Through Art
It’s no secret that artistic expression can be an incredibly effective way of conveying ideas. Artists have total creative freedom and can make whatever choices they want, use whatever mediums they desire, to communicate messages that matter to them. As an art teacher, Amanda understands this, and it’s through her craft that she has worked and continues to work to empower those in need of it.
“I like to expose my students to an array of artists, not just the old dead white guys,” she tells me, eliciting a few chuckles from both of us. “I work in more contemporary artists, and not just showing them artwork, but telling them about the artists. Whether they’re male or female, or identify as other, and trying to build a connection between the artists and the artwork and my students.”
Amanda uses a teaching philosophy known as Teaching for Artistic Behavior, where she teaches her students to act and behave like artists, aspiring to give them a voice within their artwork in order to build connections and tell their own stories.
“It’s not necessarily, ‘we’re all gonna do the same project, we’re all gonna do cookie cutter butterflies or Van Gogh sunflowers’”, she explains. “In essence, it’s giving kids choice and voice over their projects, and a safe space through which they can express themselves through art.
As an artist myself, I can’t help but gush—where was this when I was taking school art classes growing up?
“It’s really difficult, especially with my sixth graders, to get them out of the mindset of ‘you’re not gonna tell me what to do, we’re not all doing the same thing’,” Amanda elaborates. “So we have a lot of ideation class periods. And some kids with natural creativity go straight to it. They know what they want to explore.”
As part of her curriculum, Amanda introduces different concepts with themes. One of her major projects is one she calls Artists Explore Identity, where her pupils think deeply about the concept and theme of identity. She encourages them to truly examine who they are as individuals, far beyond surface-level prompts like their favorite color or genre of book.
“I try to get them to think about not just who they are superficially. I want them to dig deep. What are your interests? Where are your roots? How would you identify yourself as a person?” All of these questions are answered in the form of a non-traditional self-portrait that students create.
Another project Amanda leads is Artists Advocate, where she discusses social issues with her class. Students are asked to think about how various issues affect them as middle schoolers and are encouraged to pick one to advocate for through their artwork. Topics they can choose from include climate change, deforestation, homelessness, immigration reform, and rights for marginalized groups.
"Minority students, students in marginalized groups, tend to create artwork that is extremely impactful because they are able to express their emotions through creative measures when their words and voices aren't always heard." Her lips quirk into a smile as she tells me about the proud emails she gets from parents, other faculty, and even officials outside the school when they see her students’ work displayed in the hallways.
Aside from their pieces, participants also write artist statements to support their work and communicate their intentions with it. “Yay literacy, right?” Amanda quips.
By now, my artist heart is screaming: lucky kids! Perhaps it’s not a secret that the arts often go overlooked in education, but the truth is they can be as important as any core class. Amanda exemplifies this through her work in her classroom, where her pupils are given the opportunity to express their fullest selves and explore themes that matter to them through the pieces they create.
Chapter III: The Good Fight
As is customary with many initiatives such as hers, Amanda has gotten her share of pushback, mainly from parents during her first year. Fortunately, her school’s administration supported her. She has continued to lead her students in exploring their identities and the social issues that are relevant to them, and she doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon.
“These are real-world topics,” she asserts, her passion evident in her voice. “Just because it makes your kid uncomfortable to see things like Black Lives Matter and support for immigration—just because it’s not your story—doesn’t mean they aren’t stories for other kids in the classroom and in the building. We’ve got to make people uncomfortable if we want to see changes. My kids need it, and I’m here for them, not for the school board or for the parents.”
Aside from her work in the classroom, Amanda has been advocating for educators like herself and for students of color through her school’s equity team. She serves as a current member and has been vocal about getting a student equity team established alongside the faculty one. She makes her questions as a member known: “What do our kids need? What representation do we need within the schools, within the walls? Within our district? Within our community?”
In the midst of all the work she does, it’s important for Amanda to look after herself as well as her students. When asked what advice she had for teachers of color, she had some valuable words about self-care and setting boundaries.
“I wear my heart on my sleeve—I’m very empathetic,” she confesses. “And I have to learn to sometimes leave things at school. Art comes with a lot of heavy topics, and I like to expose my students to that because a lot of them don’t have another outlet. So sometimes I can read between the lines and sense there’s something deeper at play, but I’m a teacher, not a psychologist. So I’ve had to learn when to be a safe space for my kids, and when to pass things on to a professional.”
Epilogue
While she still has a long path to travel on her journeys, both personal and educational, Amanda has certainly made significant progress. She tells me with excitement about her first presentation on Teaching for Artistic Behavior and literacy in the art room, which she’ll be giving this month. Her art programs will also continue this school year, and despite some changes in the school board’s leadership, she’s determined to do whatever is necessary to keep them afloat.
She closes the interview with one final bit of wisdom. “If there aren’t others out there that are like you, look for them,” she urges. “You have to find that one person that believes in you, that you can make it. Whether that’s a classmate, or a family member, or someone in your community. Sometimes we feel as if we don’t belong because we’re different, so you have to find that safe space, and that person you can confide in and help work through it with you.”
It’s safe to say that the fruits of Amanda’s mission to compensate for her own lack of Latinx role models in education are beginning to show. I have no doubt that, if she hasn’t already, she will absolutely become that figure for her students.
CREED would like to thank Amanda for taking the time to speak with us! Stay tuned for more stories from educators of color like Amanda from across North Carolina.
Are you an educator of color interested in having your story told? See HERE for more information about Diversify the Narrative.
Want to get connected with fellow educators of color throughout North Carolina? Join the #TeachinginColor Community today! We are a professional learning network of educators dedicated to building community, supporting, and advocating for policy changes in the best interest of educators of color and the students they serve. Join HERE.
