Dear Teachers: Ethnic Studies Teaches Us Courage

Joemy Ito-Gates (she/her), is a queer multiracial Japanese American, AIDS orphan, transracial adoptee, mother, and ethnic studies educator with over 20 years of experience in education. She is currently the ethnic studies teacher on special assignment for Berkeley Unified School District (Califiornia). She helped to cofound a summer program for multiracial and transracially raised youth in the early 2000s and currently teaches Dharma School at her Japanese American Buddhist temple. She is a core member of the grassroots organizations Japanese American Families for Justice and Berkeley Families for Collective Liberation. She is also part of the Lisjan Nation Curriculum Collective, in collaboration with Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an Indigenous women-led organization. Her writing is published in Britt Hawthorne’s book Raising Antiracist Children: A Practical Parenting Guide, and she has an essay in the forthcoming anthology Mixed Roots: Writers on Multiracial Identity & Both/And Belonging, edited by Anne Liu Kellor.