21st-Century Frontera Literacies: Navigating, Negotiating, and Leveraging Literacies in a Chicana/o–Latina/o Studies High School Course

• In Event: 63.084 - Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: 63.084-10 - High School Writers in Linguistically Diverse Contexts

Abstract

Latina/o students’ low academic achievement and schooling alienation marks a significant social problem, particularly given their potential impact on demographic shifts. Through a nine-month ethnographic study, I explore how Latina/o students enrolled in a high school Latina/o Literature course are navigating a classroom that uses socio-culturally responsive and culturally sustaining pedagogies, and multimedia production to validate and honor the many Latina/o perspectives and epistemologies often left out of academic discussions within English Language Arts. I examine how youth draw on and develop multiple literacies, including academic forms of reading and writing as well as multimodal literacies that integrate oral, visual, and print channels in order to cultivate academic and counter-hegemonic identities.

Author

• Cati V. de los Rios, Teachers College, Columbia University