Victor Rios
About Victor Rios
Speech topics
Webinars: Interactive and motivational presentations for educators, students, and organizational leaders.
The Anti-Racist Educator: Engaging with Students through an Equity and Justice Framework
In recent months, young people all over the world have erupted in protest over the killing of unarmed Black civilians by police. Should educators ignore these protests and calls for anti-racism? How can educators have genuine conversations with their students about these important issues and other issues related to Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion? Dr. Rios provides educators practical strategies for being reflexive about anti-racism and for having courageous conversations with their students and their colleagues.
Reaching At-Promise Students through Emotional Support During the Remote Learning Revolution
Webinar for educators that provides strategies for continuing to support our most vulnerable students during these difficult times. Dr. Rios provides a facilitated conversation with educators and staff and then hosts virtual office hours after to discuss their individual questions in a one-on-one setting.
“My School Believes in Me”: Culturally Responsive Approaches for Reaching Students Through Remote Teaching and Remote Counseling
In this Webinar Dr. Rios will discuss culturally responsive strategies for providing guidance, counseling, and support for students. Dr. Rios will share his research findings from a research project with 1879 high school students. He will discuss student perceptions of counselors and teachers who are successful at inspiring and motivating them.
#teachersupport Through Social Media: Meeting At-Promise Students Where They Are During these difficult times we have to meet student where they are at. This means having to make the leap into social media as institutions and as individuals. This webinar will discuss best practice for educators on how to connect with student via social media. Emotional support through social media is possible. Dr. Rios will provide specific strategies for making these connections. Questions regarding boundaries, safety, accountability, and professionalism will be addressed.
Speaking videos
Media coverage
TED Talks Profile Latino Game Changers On an 'Education ...
Victor Rios speaks at TED Talks Live -- Education Revolution, November 2, 2015, The Town Hall, New York City. Ryan Lash/TED / Ryan Lash/TED.
Books by Victor Rios
“Human Targets: Schools, Police, and the Criminalization of Latino Youth” (2017)
At fifteen, Victor Rios found himself a human target—flat on his ass amid a hail of shotgun fire, desperate for money and a place on the street. Faced with the choice of escalating a drug turf war or eking out a living elsewhere, he turned to a teacher, who mentored him and helped him find a job at an auto shop. That job would alter the course of his whole life—putting him on the road to college and eventually a PhD. Now, Rios is a rising star, hailed for his work studying the lives of African American and Latino youth. In Human Targets, Rios takes us to the streets of California, where we encounter young men who find themselves in much the same situation as fifteen-year-old Victor. We follow young gang members into schools, homes, community organizations, and detention facilities, watch them interact with police, grow up to become fathers, get jobs, get rap sheets—and in some cases get killed. What is it that sets apart young people like Rios who succeed and survive from the ones who don’t? Rios makes a powerful case that the traditional good kid/bad kid, street kid/decent kid dichotomy is much too simplistic, arguing instead that authorities and institutions help create these identities—and that they can play an instrumental role in providing young people with the resources for shifting between roles. In Rios’s account, to be a poor Latino youth is to be a human target—victimized and considered an enemy by others, viewed as a threat to law enforcement and schools, and burdened by stigma, disrepute, and punishment. That has to change. This is not another sensationalistic account of gang bangers. Instead, the book is a powerful look at how authority figures succeed—and fail—at seeing the multi-faceted identities of at-risk youths, youths who succeed—and fail—at demonstrating to the system that they are ready to change their lives. In our post-Ferguson era, Human Targets is essential reading.
“Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (New Perspectives in Crime, Deviance, and Law)” (2011)
“Street Life: Poverty, Gangs, and a Ph.D.” (2011)
Street Life: Poverty, Gangs, and a Ph.D.
At a glanceVictor Rios
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