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We seek to "RicanStruct" the literature regarding Puerto Rican students to include models that reflect success and hope. Finally, the article extends the theory of culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) to DiaspoRicans in order to combat the colonial pedagogies in which many Puerto Rican students are embedded and to promote school success for all Puerto Ricans in the Diaspora.

This article describes the school as sanctuary concept through the voices of students enrolled in a small urban high school that curricularly privileges the linguistic, cultural, and sociopolitical realities of its communities. Moreover, this particular school was founded by students and teachers over 30 years ago as a direct response to pedagogically and psychologically colonizing large comprehensive high schools in a major urban school district. According to students, a school becomes a sanctuary when there are four essential components in place. These sanctuary-like attributes include multiple definitions of caring relations between students and their teachers, the importance of a familial-like school environment, the necessity of psychologically and physically safe school spaces, and allowing students a forum in which they are encouraged to affirm their racial/ethnic pride. Implications for forwarding this concept within a larger discourse around urban school reform are discussed.

Using in-depth interviewing, participant observations, and the review of historical and curricular documents, this paper describes and analyzes two Latino community-based small high schoolsthe Dr Pedro Albizu Campos High School (PACHS) and El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice (El Puente). The findings suggest that these schools are successful because they foment a culture of high academic expectations for their students, value high-quality interpersonal relationships between students and teachers, and privilege the funds of knowledge that students and their respective communities bring to school. Based on these findings, a theory of critical care emerges that embodies these necessary conditions if small high schools created for and by communities of color are to succeed. Finally, the implications of this theory of critical care and its impact are discussed within the framework of small urban high school reform in the US.