With less than a year until the next academic year, Orestimba High School has been preparing for implementation of an ethnic studies course requirement.

Assembly Bill 101, signed in October 2021, will require incoming high school students to take an ethnic studies course for a semester as a part of a requirement to graduate. Per the assembly bill, students will satisfy the requirement by doing one of the following:

●     A course that follows the model curriculum of Section 51226.7., a model curriculum that ensures ethnic studies are taught in

●     An existing ethnic studies course

●     A ethnic studies course that meets the A-G requirement for the California State University or University of California system.

●     A locally developed course that’s approved by the school district’s governing board.

Currently there are no ethnics studies courses being taught at Orestimba, but three social science teachers will be leading the development of the course implementation. Renae Chance-Dominguez, Pablo Flores and Harold Peeples make up an ethnic studies team that has been working the past two years on the course. From consistently working and adding course lessons, the group has been focusing to ensure everything will be ready ahead of August 2025.

In the beginning of the 2025-26 school year, incoming freshmen will split into two courses. Flores will be teaching ethnic studies course that will focus on the academic disciplines of the course such as history of Chicano & Latino, Indigenous, Black American and Asian American Pacific Islanders. The other position of freshmen students will take a Success 101, a class that all incoming freshmen take to prepare for their career path and their transition after high school. The course will be taught by another Social Science teacher, Michelle Marroquin.

After the students come back from winter break, both sides will swap classes in the following semester. Freshmen who previously took the Flores’ course will go Success 101 while those who took Marroquin’s course will be placed in the ethnic studies course. This schedule change ensures that freshmen meet both requirements within the same year.

Within the past year, the group has received support from the district to attend training sessions within the state where they learned about the state’s ethnic studies model curriculum and what the assembly bill consists of. Afterwards, the group sat down and discussed how it would be taught in a classroom and the scheduling needed to make it possible.

Peeples mentioned that throughout the two year preparation, the group has brought in guest speakers and visited the Stanislaus County of Education for training opportunities. One guest speaker that stood out to him was a refugee from the Vietnam War who spoke with the group earlier in May. Peeples felt that he grew socially from learning the impact that war had on the people within the region.

While the courses will focus on the historical backgrounds of ethnic groups, Chance-Dominguez, a United States history teacher, mentioned that the state provided them with the opportunity to make it as local as possible. One of the things she anticipates about the opportunity is discussing the ethnic groups that lived in Newman and the history of Stanislaus County with her students.

“They're going to be able to connect with the area that they live in and understand the local history,” Chance-Dominguez said. “I think when students connect with stories, it changes you, gives you more empathy and it bridges differences as well.”

Peeples, who currently teaches AP World History, looks forward to the possibility of the four ethnic studies courses raising social awareness on campus and how they can learn about ethnic groups that were locally tied.

“One of the most enchanting aspects of our school is we take pride in being called Orestimba, which is a Yokut word for meaning place,” Peeples said. “Students are now going to get to really dive deeper into that stuff, like the reason Stanislaus County is called Stanislaus County.” 

With the effort of making local connections within the ethnic studies course, a Google Document survey is available to residents within the Newman Crows-Landing Community. If residents are interested to tell their stories, they can fill out the survey which is available in both English and Spanish.

“This is a really cool opportunity to make this as localized as possible,” Chance-Dominguez said.