Milpitas Unified School District

3 R's essential to meaningful learning that accelerates success are recognition, relationship, and resilience. 

School communities such as ours are ecosystems for recognizing historic leaders, celebrating significant cultural events, and assuring that our collective histories are retold and experienced by our learners. Our students and educators provide context about key leaders from Larry Itliong, Dolores Huerta, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to Fred Korematsu in MUSD Board resolutions for the community, and curriculum in the classroom. Our local, state, national and world leaders provide examples of how we are connected by common interests and oftentimes a desire to become better for the future of our children. 

Knowing one another through our cultural celebrations such as Dia de los Muertos, Diwali, Lunar New Year, and Mardi Gras provides us with experience that expands our ability to collaborate and communicate (two skills that are needed for career and life success) with others who are different from ourselves. Recognizing story as it relates to months such as Black History Month broadens our understanding of our own collective history.  MUSD educator Henry Robinson illustrated the tapestry of history through his years as a teacher citing local leaders such as Chief Jared Hernandez and MUSD Trustee Chris Norwood who shared his classroom and model what it means to be connected to one’s community through historic and personal story. Our histories provide us with rudders to the past that can steer us through the present and into the future. The MUSD Innovation Campus is being built on the foundation of Samuel Ayer High School — evolution is so much more when history is fully recognized by our learners.

A Mother Teresa quote shared recently at La Raza by San Jose Judge Katherine Lucero speaks to the importance of knowing our history in relationship with one another, “Today, if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” In this issue of School Life, there are many stories of achievement, celebration, and connection. In particular, our MUSD leaders of African ancestry who share why our complete collective history is essential to our resilience as learners in this extraordinary community we call Milpitas. 

In community,

Cheryl Jordan
Superintendent