The Historical and Cultural Process of Becoming a Designer of Human Learning
Monday, March 30, 2026
9:45 AM – 10:45 AM Presentation and Q & A
Location: LSC 745 and/or Zoom link: Click Here
Faculty, staff, students, alumni and members of the public welcome!
Presented by Dr. Adria Marie Padilla-Chavez, PhD, candidate for Assistant Teaching Professor, for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education (CLDE)
Adria will take us on a historical journey through the cultural contexts that led her to the field of education, and in becoming a designer of human learning. Through her experiences as a Prek-12 teacher and a dignity scholar, Adria will guide us in a creative process of co-design guided by historical testimonios and what the Rigth2Learn Dignity Lab calls equivalent expressions of dignity.
A brief bio for Dr. Adria Marie Padilla-Chavez:
The Historical and Cultural Context to my Pedagogy
In the 1940’s my family arrived in Denver from a small pueblito in Nuevo Mexico called Pajarito. They settled in the community of Las Casitas located where we now see the football stadium. There my family lived communally and took buses to local farms to pick beets and beans. My grandparents did not attend school past the eighth grade due to economic needs and because they were deemed “limited English proficient.” My dad and his siblings, who were baptized at St Cajetan’s on the Auraria campus, struggled to finish school which was a tragic process of assimilation. We are generational Chicanos who carry the history of assimilation and resistance in our spirits. Denver is my home, and the roots from where I grew in becoming the first generation to go to college.
I begin here because beyond my teaching and scholarly experience, I carry in my heart the political, the
historical and the cultural fight to be regarded as valuable and intellectual in a city that has seen multiple iterations of whiteness from segregation to white flight to gentrification. This lucha is why I went to college and what guides my pedagogy. I believe that la lucha is the struggle for human rights to be recognized and exercised beginning in our schools and classrooms which are microcosms of our society. I believe that educators have the potential to transform our practice when we center and conceptualize human rights in the design of learning experiences for young children, especially those who have been marginalized and demonized in our society.
Teaching is my life’s work. It’s what gives me life and meaning. I have taught Pre-K to Master’s level classes, and what I have learned is that everyone desires to feel their worth as a human being. Classrooms, as bell hooks has been teaching us for generations, are sites where this desire is possible, if we re-mediate the cultural politics of power to equality, from control and intimidation to liberation where human dignity is felt and experienced. This is what guides my pedagogy from Pre-k children to preservice teachers, to veteran teachers. It would be an honor to be considered for the position of Assistant Teaching Professor in the department of Education Foundations in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Colorado at Denver. It would be an honor to return to my raíces.
Dr. Adria Marie Padilla-Chavez’s CV can be found here. Please note that certain personal information has been redacted.
Please arrive and/or log on to Zoom a few minutes prior to the presentation as we will start promptly.
Please share your feedback by Wednesday, April 1st using the below short survey link: https://ucdenverdata.formstack.com/forms/candidate_feedback_form