Para Power: How Paraprofessional Labor Changed Education

Dr. Nick Juravich discusses the experiences of the first-generation of paraprofessional educators in New York City in the 1960s-1980s and their impact on the city’s educational system, community relations, and public sector unions. Juravich is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Boston and author of Para Power: How Paraprofessional Labor Changed Education.

Related Resources:
Para Power: How Paraprofessional Labor Changed Education

Related Collections:
AFT President’s Office: Albert Shanker Records
AFT Massachusetts Federation of Teachers Records (LR001071)
Kansas City Federation of Teachers, Local 691 Records (LR000624)
United Educators of San Francisco Local 61 Records (LR000524)

Episode Credits
Interviewee: Nick Juravich
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Music: Bart Bealmear

Hidden in the Fields: Invisible Agricultural Child Labor in the American Southwest and the Limits of Citizenship

Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez explains how labor laws helped define the modern boundaries of childhood and citizenship for both internationally and domestically migrant Latinx children working on American farms. Despite the child labor ban supposedly implemented in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act and later laws, legal loopholes have allowed migrant Latinx children to continue to work on American farms today and have limited their access to education. Padilla-Rodríguez explains how advocates fought to enact social welfare initiatives for farmworking children along their migratory route, while teachers and women UFW organizers pursued legislative channels to try to get stricter child labor protections, and special educational and childcare programs created for migrant youth. Padilla-Rodríguez is a Ph.D. candidate in the Columbia University Department of History and a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Latinx Research Center.

Related Collections
Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee Records
Dolores Huerta Papers
Michigan Farm Worker Ministry Coalition Records
National Farm Workers Association Records
National Farm Worker Ministry Records
Ronald B. Taylor Papers
UFW Organizing Committee (UFWOC) Records
UFW Office of the President: Cesar Chavez Records
UFW Texas Records

Episode Credits
Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English
Interviewer: Dan Golodner
Interviewee: Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez
Sound: Troy Eller English

With support from the Reuther Podcast Collective: Bart Bealmear, Elizabeth Clemens, Meghan Courtney, Troy Eller English, Dan Golodner, and Paul Neirink