This chapter explores a first-year ethnic studies course to highlight the importance of engaging the diversity within the classroom in relation to the diverse communities being served. Students participating in this course are self-identified Students of Color, many of whom are first generation college students, from lower socioeconomic communities. Introducing a Critical Race Service-Learning framework, the authors highlight how Students of Color in this course learn about race, class, gender, language, citizenship status, phenotype, sexuality, etc. to challenge the status quo while also actively engaging in service-learning with/in diverse communities as an empowering pedagogy. Findings indicate the foundational tools learned within the course pushed students to speak back to the educational inequities they witnessed at their service sites and experienced in K-12 to further empower them to continue giving back to their communities beyond college.

This case study discusses some of the issues that Adelante, a 6-year university-schoolcommunity partnership, continues to encounter in addressing college access and parent and community leadership in a community of color. It provides the sociopolitical context as well as a description of the university and community partners that make up Adelante. The two scenarios provided highlight the complexities and challenges of attempting to have an authentic university-school-community partnership given the present sociopolitical state, educational inequities for communities of color, the disconnection between the lived realities of communities of color and leading scholarship. The case relies on the partnership's codirector and graduate student coordinators' perspective and provides teaching notes that ask the reader to think about and react to challenges related to partnership development, higher education access for students of color, and the sustainability of university-school-community collaborations.

This chapter explores a first-year ethnic studies course to highlight the importance of engaging the diversity within the classroom in relation to the diverse communities being served. Students participating in this course are self-identified Students of Color, many of whom are first generation college students, from lower socioeconomic communities. Introducing a Critical Race Service-Learning framework, the authors highlight how Students of Color in this course learn about race, class, gender, language, citizenship status, phenotype, sexuality, etc. to challenge the status quo while also actively engaging in service-learning with/in diverse communities as an empowering pedagogy. Findings indicate the foundational tools learned within the course pushed students to speak back to the educational inequities they witnessed at their service sites and experienced in K-12 to further empower them to continue giving back to their communities beyond college.