Categories: GSI Online Library, Teaching Effectiveness Award Essays
By Keren Zou, History
Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2025
While teaching the history of American westward expansion, I asked my students whether they were familiar with the term Californio, referring to a group of mixed-heritage people of Spanish, Mexican, and Indigenous descent who lived in California prior to U.S. annexation in 1848. Despite the fact that 85 percent of my students had grown up and received their K–12 education in California, none of them had heard of the term before. This moment struck me. While many students are familiar with broad narratives like “white supremacy,” which emphasize the suppression and marginalization of underprivileged communities from the past to the present. Yet the enchantment of such narratives can sometimes obscure the agency of those very communities. How can we truly teach the history of settler colonialism without further erasing the decision-making process of those who endured it, through teaching a story of survival, resistance, and resilience? I believe the answer lies in returning to the history itself, by examining the archival sources we use, the historiographical frameworks we adopt, and developing pedagogical approaches that empower students to critically engage with both.
In response, I developed a lesson plan As part of their pre-class preparation, students examined a wide array of materials, including oral histories from Ohlone descendants and colonial records from late 18th- and early 19th-century Spanish missions and presidios. These sources familiarized students with some foundational knowledge to prepare them working in small groups during sections to share reflections from their readings and draw connections across historical contexts. At the center of the section was a creative group assignment: each team composed a biographical narrative imagining the life of a Californio between 1797 and 1840. Drawing from their primary sources and lecture materials, students situated their characters within pivotal events such as Spanish colonization, Mexican independence, the development of the Rancho system, and the early gold rush. This exercise challenged them to synthesize multiple perspectives while restoring emotional and personal depth to historical actors often obscured in the archival record. After presenting their narratives and exchanging peer feedback, we closed the section with a collective reflection on the U.S.–Mexico War and its implications for Californio identity and citizenship. I introduced the scholarship of María Raquél Casas, whose work examines how Californio women used intermarriage as a strategy for survival, cultural continuity, and community-building in the face of colonial disruption and American annexation. Her lens enabled students to see resistance and adaptation not only through the lens of large-scale political change but also in the intimate, relational choices made in everyday life.
To further showcase their comprehension and analytical abilities, students composed a historical essay for the final exam that situated California’s early regional histories within the broader context of American continental transformation in the 19th century. In doing so, they explored the role of Californios as historically embedded actors whose lives intersected with many other figures in American history. Their experiences were connected to broader systems of slavery, xenophobia, and Indigenous dispossession, while also reflecting the persistence of Californio identity. Students crafted sophisticated arguments, structured their essays with logical clarity, cited evidence accurately, and wrote persuasively to convey their interpretations. Throughout the process, students grappled with the meaning of historical agency and the subjectivity of individual actors, shedding light on their lives through critical engagement with archives and the tools of the historian’s craft.