Inner city teacher and activist Jeff Duncan-Andrade spoke to students in the New University Union at CSU East Bay last Thursday to discuss the difficulties youth face trying to get an education in urban communities. The event was sponsored by the Diversity Center.

Andrade is a full-time Raza Studies and Educational Administration associate professor at San Francisco State University. He has been teaching English in urban schools through the practice of critical pedagogy. Andrade tours the world giving lectures on the psychological trauma youth endure due to race and class disparity.

He has lectured at Harvard and many other universities across the world. Andrade, along with his full-time position as an associate professor at SFSU also teaches one period of high school English at Fremont High School every day in his community of East Oakland. He has been teaching for 20 years. Eighteen of those years have been within the high school space.

He completed his doctoral studies at UC Berkeley with a Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Studies in Education accompanied by a M.A. in Language, Literacy and Cultural Education.

Andrade’s research is about youth in urban schools and how trauma affects the development of their psyche and incapacitates them from progressing, trapping them into a continuous cycle that is a result of their environment and lack of resources and attention.

He also explains how children in the urban ghettos are constantly being misdiagnosed with ADHD and ADD, when in reality they show symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

“Soldiers leave the battlefield, these kids go home to it,” said Andrade.

Trauma becomes a continuous cycle and affects these kids’ performance in school and their life at home.

Andrade, drawing on his experiences growing up in East Oakland, connects with his students and expresses that the only way to help the children is to exemplify an adult presence that genuinely cares and loves them.

Andrade uses this model of genuine care and love to help rear the youth of the “the flatlands” or “the concrete,” which is how he referred to the poor, rundown neighborhoods.

“Inequality is a threat to health and the well being of young people and their preparedness in school,” he said.

Andrade uses Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as the model to help children reach their potential.

He teaches that by starting with the basics such as food, shelter, and care, these children can reach psychological stability and could eventually spread these teachings of love to their community through the perpetuation of confidence, self esteem, love and hope.