Social Justice and DEI at Jesuit Schools with Amanda Montez | S3E7

In this episode, you will meet Amanda Montez. Amanda Montez Cobian is the director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Jesuit High School in Portland, OR. She recently finished her graduate degree at the University of San Francisco in international and multicultural education. Her research centers alumni of Nativity schools and how they transition to predominantly white high schools. As a bi-racial educator, she aims to create the classroom environment she wished she could have had as a student and works to create systems of racial equity at work, in research, and as a co-author of Jesuit West's Community Organizing for Racial Equity (CORE).

Snippet from the interview:

"When I look at the seven principles of [Catholic Social Teaching], I think being able to name all humans have inherent dignity. To me, it's like that is the black lives matter movement; when I think about like preferential option for the poor and vulnerable that is saying by BIPOC right? It's not just saying people of color right. It's centering black and Indigenous and then people of color. I think that there's a lot of overlap actually."

Themes from the interview that connect to the themes of Catholic Social Teaching:

• Family, Community, and Participation: She trains staff, parents, and students on the many different ways to practice advocacy and participate in shaping a more just society.
• Preferential option for the poor and vulnerable: Amanda's work centers on black, indigenous, and people of color. She constantly finds herself at the margins of society. She has personal experience, for example accompanying and building relationships with migrant indigenous women, gang members, people at the border, and BIPOC middle school students transitioning to predominately white high schools.
• Solidarity: She's been on an immersion experience to El Salvador, where she went not on a service trip to fix problems but rather simply to listen and learn.

• Care for God's creation: The social justice she helps coordinate at her school focused on the climate and she brought in a climate organizer as a guest speaker

Resource mentioned in the interview

⁠Are Critical Race Theory and Catholicism compatible? | Think Like a Jesuit, Episode 3⁠

Word of the day: Encounter conversations/One-on-one relational meetings

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