Framework for a New Political Praxis: Respeto, Dignidad, y Conocimiento

This article uses story as a process to highlight the work in a South Texas community that focuses on the education of youth and the development of community. The work is guided by a new consciousness of place, community engagement, and identity formation. The work is local, but breaking the isolation of youth, families, and ideas has been part of an emerging theory of change. The document takes us in and out of stories of place in an attempt to transfer the work to other communities. It presents the voices of witnesses to take the concepts used in this Mexican-American community into other spaces. The work is informed by place, theory, and practice

Virtually Speaking: How Digital Storytelling Can Facilitate Organizational Learning

Digital storytelling can be used as a tool in participatory action research. An organization developed to enhance teaching and learning in high schools used this method as a way to collect narratives from the rural community it served. The staff and students who participated in digital storytelling became researchers focused on the personal narrative. Digital storytelling was used to give voice to community members and also to explain policy initiatives that directly affected the community. Digital storytelling was a way for the organization to engage its members in a way that would benefit all stakeholders

Braceros, Mexicans, Americans, and Schools: (Re) imagining Teaching and Learning in Mexican America

This article examines the stories of Braceros, Mexican contract workers who participated in an international labor agreement between the United States and México between 1942 and 1964. The stories Braceros tell challenge some conventional historiographical notions that they were powerless agents and victims of exploitative labor practices. The stories shed new light regarding the kinds of agency and power Braceros actually displayed in negotiating certain circumstances specific to their work

Self-Organizing: From Child’s Play to An Effective Wellness Program

This article examines the exercise practices of a group of faculty members at a regional university who for a decade have participated in their own racquetball league. These professors self-organized their exercise regimen and during the period of their participation have found significant benefits beyond the physical benefits, as a result. Through the production of reflective narratives focused on the impact of their racquetball participation, their self-reported data show two broad themes and numerous sub-themes that emerge from their exercise experience. They reveal significant health benefits, and they express more deeply the benefits of the positive social interaction that impacts many aspects of their personal and professional lives. The self-reported data from six players was requested and collected during a 6-week period. Faculty members were asked to write freely on the self-organizational aspects of their racquetball participation as well as their perceived benefits of this particular exercise. A qualitative textual analysis was applied to these narratives after they were coded for anonymity. Subsequent conclusions were drawn from the analyses of the content of each narrative

On Not Taming the Wild Tongue: Challenges and Approaches to Institutional Translation in a University Serving a Historically Minoritized Population

A consequence of the development of modern states has been the concept of“minority” as used to refer to subsets of the population that are differentiated from that portion of the population which is seen as the “majority.” These minorities are at times distinguished from each other using terms such as national minorities and immigrant minorities. Some scholars have challenged the distinctions drawn by these constructs. An example of how such constructs are not always accurate can be found in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, where ethnic and linguistic, immigrant and national, minority and majority are not always clear cut. “The Valley,” as the region is locally known, has a long history of the numerical majority being in a minoritized position. In this context, a local university administered a “speech test” to Mexican American studentswho enrolled between the 1950s and the 1970s. The purpose, according to Anzaldúa (1987), was to tame their “wild tongue.” This same university, now transformed, proposes to rehabilitate itself, as it becomes bilingual, bicultural,and biliterate. Accordingly, it now undertakes a systematic effort to bilingualize its operations, starting with the localization into Spanish of its website as conducted by the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley’s Translation and Interpreting Office. A number of terminological strategies and translation challenges stemming from the variegated lectal and diglossic landscapes of the region have arisen, which can be illuminated by the Post-Colonial paradigm found in Translation Studies