Spencer Salas

Teaching Emergent Literacy Skills Using Cultural Contextual Story-Based Lessons.

Recent statistics suggest that the number of English-language learners has been growing at a rapid rate in the United States. The growth of this population will inevitably lead to a larger number of culturally and linguistically diverse students with significant cognitive disabilities. Currently, there is little research on effective literacy practices, specifically for English-language learners with a moderate or severe intellectual disability. The participants in this study were one Latina paraprofessional and an English-language learner with a moderate intellectual disability. A multiple probe design across skill sets was used to evaluate number of items correct throughout three skill sets derived from a cultural contextual story-based lesson protocol. Results suggest that the cultural contextual story-based lessons did increase emergent literacy skills for this student. Future research and implications are discussed.

Generación 1.5: A Cultural Historical Agenda for Research at the 2-Year College

In this article, we employ a cultural historical theoretical framework to extend understandings of how widespread 2-year college placement policies concerning English remediation potentially locate and retain U.S.-educated Latino adolescents at the margins of higher education through well-intentioned yet deficit-driven postsecondary cultural practices. We conclude with a research agenda for examining established institutional practices and alternatives in regard to 2-year college support for nontraditional students’ access to and success in the opportunity structures of higher education.

Nativity Shifts, Broken Dreams, and the New Latino South's Post-First Generation

For game three of the 2013 NBA finals, 11-year-old Sebastian de la Cruz, a musical prodigy born and raised in the great state of Texas, opened the June game with a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner—a la mariachi. As the applause faded for the El Charro de Oros [The Golden Mariachis] performance, an outburst of racialized twittering hit the cloud. Although we watched the series of events that surrounded Sebastian de la Cruzs performances from thousands of miles away and despite the geographic distance between San Antonio and our communities, we recognized the hit-and-run commentary as all too familiar. In Georgia and the Carolinas, increasingly corrosive rhetoric surrounds Latino immigration—creating great obstacles to academic achievement including the navigation of a postcolonial nativist American landscape of K-12 education that continues to fail minoritized youth. Or, as Flores and Loss (2010) surmised, “Immigration policies and practices have been, and continue to be, riddled with contradictions. Close to the center of this sometimes bloody and always controversial issue is a fundamental, indeed enduring, question: Who is an American and what sorts of education should all Americans enjoy?” (p. 403). With these questions in mind, we argue that given an ongoing Latino nativity shift marked by 2010 Census analyses, the continued framing of post-first generation Latinos as perpetual foreigners whose academic achievement depends simply on the remediation of their English language proficiency is symptomatic a “national myopia” (P. R. Portes & Salas, 2014). We conclude with the overarching proposition that educational policy paradigms for Latino achievement in and beyond the shifting demographics of the U.S. South need to be grounded in additive models of cultural identity development that advance inter-culturally distributed cognitions, attitudes, and affective-behavioral patterns that result in achieving broader, richer identities across a variety of social contexts.

Career Capital and the Community College

Wanting to elucidate the relationship between student success and employment outcomes, the authors of this study sought to devise a methodology to (a) measure the alignment between the educational/community college experience and potential careers and (b) explore factors that may inform the alignment between college and career. Data were collected on 84 students at a southern community college using the College and Career Capital Survey. Descriptive analyses showed that the majority of the sample was White, female, and worked, and more than half aspired to earn at least a baccalaureate degree. Survey items and responses were used to formulate the College-Career Alignment Index. A stepwise backward regression, used to eliminate noncontributing variables, accounted for 27.4% of the variance and showed the following to be statistically significant in predicting college-career alignment: working full- or part-time, gender (female), relying on institutional networks for information, confidence in finding employment in a desired career field, and enrollment in developmental courses. Based on the findings of this exploratory study, the authors suggest that community colleges consider the value of employment opportunities while in college and the institutions role in providing information about careers as potential avenues to improve college-career alignment. In addition, they propose next steps to expand the study and further explore factors related to career capital.

The dream deferred: Why multicultural education fails to close the achievement gap. A cultural historical analysis

Abstract The authors critically examine multicultural education and its failure to address the stark differences that characterize student achievement in North America in terms of a praxis that would bring equity in learning or other developmental outcomes. Arguing that dismantling proportional group based inequality depends on the systematic reform of structures and policies currently perpetuating the correlation between childrens ethnocultural and economic history and their school achievement, we draw from a cultural historical theoretical framework to outline how the multiple and complex factors influencing underachievement might be better understood and, moreover, effectively counteracted in ways that begin to reverse the rates of school failure for U.S. ethnic minority students, in particular U.S. English learners.

Humanizing the Core: English Language Learners and Culturally Sustaining Young Adult Literature

Contemporary “humanizing” English Language Arts (ELA) classroom pedagogies emphasize teacher mindfulness of the lived experiences of diverse learners and how those experiences are represented in culturally and linguistically complex ELA instruction (de la Piedra, J Adolesc Adult Lit 53(7):575–584, 2010; del Carmen Salazar, Rev Res Educ 37(1):121–148, 2013; Lucas et al., J Teach Educ 59(4):361–373, 2008; Paris, Language across difference: Ethnicity, communication, and youth identities in changing urban schools. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011; Souto-Manning, Engl Educ 42(3):248–262, 2010). This chapter describes the potential of young adult literature (YAL) for engaging English language learners (ELLs) and their peers in issues of class, culture, language, and race/ethnicity. Through a series of additive instructional frames this chapter explores generative possibilities of consciously leveraging the lived experiences of diverse learners in humanizing ways.

Literacy coaching in gauteng province: needs and possibilities

Current scholarship advocating the role of pre-service and in-service teacher development for counteracting the multiple levels of South African ‘school dysfunction’ (Bergman & Bergman 2011) has said relatively little about the substantial role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the multiple layers of reform at play in literacy education – and even less has been said about the role of NGOs in developing teacher-leaders, or in our case, ‘literacy coaches’, for engaging grass-roots in-service teacher change. In this article, we theorise findings from a participatory, qualitative needs analysis examining a South African NGOs development of literacy coaches as part of a broader Gauteng Province Literacy and Maths Strategy (GPLMS). Embedded in sociocultural conceptions of ‘thoughtfully adaptive teaching’ (Fairbanks et al. 2010), our findings suggest that although coaches were confident in their ability to interact as coaches for the curriculum generated by the GPLMS reforms, they were less confident ...

El sueño demorado o por qué la educación multicultural no logra cerrar la brecha educativa. Un análisis histórico-cultural

Resumen En el presente artículo se realiza un análisis crítico del paradigma de la educación multicultural y de su fracaso a la hora de reducir las severas diferencias que caracterizan el rendimiento estudiantil en los Estados Unidos, defendiendo una praxis que extienda la igualdad en el aprendizaje y en otras áreas del desarrollo. Argumentamos que para desmantelar la desigualdad entre grupos se requiere una reforma sistemática de las estructuras y políticas que en la actualidad perpetúan la correlación entre la historia étnico-cultural y económica de los niños y su rendimiento escolar, y desde un marco teórico histórico cultural apuntamos de qué manera se puede alcanzar una mejor comprensión de los múltiples y complejos factores que hay detrás del bajo rendimiento y, además, contrarrestarlos de forma que se pueda comenzar a invertir las tasas de fracaso escolar para los estudiantes estadounidenses de minorías étnicas, en particular los que no dominan el inglés.

To Google Translate™ or Not? Newcomer Latino Communities in the Middle.

Abstract LaRocque, Kleiman, and Darling (2011) characterized parental involvement as the “missing link” in school achievement. For this reason, especially, middle grades teachers and teacher leaders want very much to reach out to newcomer Latino families—and they do. Although Google Translate™ has emerged as a go-to tool for many teachers and administrators, sometimes machine-translation backfires. In this article, we leverage a series of vignettes to illustrate the hazards of Spanish/English pseudotranslation. We continue with a brief presentation of the PROSE checklist as a deliberate strategy for increasing the readability of school-to-home communication for all students—and its potential applications for framing communication using translation software. Our intent is grounded in the notion that middle school advocacy is not limited to teacher-student interactions. Rather, in the shifting demographics of middle school education, leadership must also include focused, thoughtful, responsive, and accessible communication with immigrant newcomer families (Allen, 2007; Delgado-Gaitan, 2001, 2004; López, Scribner, & Mahitivanichcha, 2001).

You say, “cariño”; I say, “caring”: Latino newcomer immigrant families in the middle

Abstract One of the 16 core beliefs of middle level thinking is that schools and families must work together on behalf of every young adolescent (National Middle School Association, 2010). However, in classrooms and on curriculum nights, communication emerges as a critical issue. This is especially true when it comes to teachers’ interacting with Latino immigrant newcomer families. That is to say, in our regional context, the vast majority of middle level educators and administrators are monolingual English speakers; they themselves often see their monolingualism/culturalism as a stumbling block for communicating caring to Latino parents and the trust such caring generates. A recurring question we encounter in our various teacher education courses and on-site with our partners is: “How can teachers and institutions demonstrate a language and practice of caring in situations when they do not necessarily speak the same language?” Drawing from intercultural communication theory, we outline two over-arching intercultural communication principles that can be leveraged for communicating our interconnectedness and interdependence within and beyond increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse schooling contexts. Our intent here is more than to argue that we should care. Rather, we hope to provide practitioners with concrete intercultural “moves” for initiating the safe, productive learning spaces where Latino newcomer families can engage in the collaborative work of schools