Cuevas, Jazmin

Hello! My name is Jazmin Cuevas, you can call me either Jazmin or Jaz. My pronouns are she/her/hers. I am a third year first generation Mexican American college student that was raised in Wilmington, California. I am double majoring in Education and Chicana/o/x Studies. I originally planned to become an elementary school teacher as I enjoyed working with students in after-school programs and as a one-on-one tutor. However, recently I have been contemplating becoming a college counselor for high school students. The change of heart stems from the volunteering I did over the past year. I volunteered with Step-Up Tutoring to provide one-on-one tutoring for elementary students in the Los Angeles area as support during the pandemic. It was here that I was able to introduce an end of the session segment in which I introduced a college pathway alongside some of the basic information as well as fun facts. To have my students go from being unaware of higher education as an option to requesting schools to cover weekly made me contemplate whether I would like to continue to introduce college to younger students or support them through the last period of K-12. Thus, my conflict between continuing the elementary school teacher pathway or switching profession and age range completely began. I still enjoy engaging with a class of young learners, however, the one-on-one tutoring and mentorships that I have been able to provide have left me feeling the most fulfilled. Regardless of the career path that I choose to take, I definitely want to serve as a resource for low-income students. 

 My interest in this course stems from the History of American Motion Picture where despite focusing on the American history our research papers were given creative liberty. Learning Chicana/o/x history through this research piqued my interest as to the history behind the arts. Thus, I followed up with Chicana/o's Images in Film and Literature course. Here we briefly reviewed murals by José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera in connection to the story Major Aranda's Hand.  I was drawn to the motif of hands that was visually portrayed in both the murals as it materialized the text's message into color. However, since the course was not focused on the activism aspect that the arts could provide to the community it was not a topic we were able to fully breach. I hope that this class will help build my foundational understanding of the art activism in the Latina/o/x story.