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\"The first book to address the learning experiences of U.S.-Mexico border-crossing students whose lives span two countries and languages\"--Provided by publisher.

Learning the Possibledemonstrates that it is truly possible for underprepared high school graduates to be successful in college. It chronicles the struggles and triumphs of five Mexican American students in their first year of college, aided by a one-year scholarship and support program called the College Assistance Migrant Program. CAMP, a federally funded program, is designed to help college students from migrant and/or economically disadvantaged families complete their first year of college. CAMP's principal objective is to put students on a trajectory toward completion of a bachelor's degree.Laura, Christina, Luz, Maria, and Ruben, as the author calls them, had daunting challenges: difficulties with English, extremely low self-confidence, teenage motherhood, conflict between gender roles and personal desires, and a history of gang membership. Focusing on the importance of constructing a new identity as a successful student, Reynaldo Reyes III shares with readers the experiences of these marginalized students. Their stories, coupled with perspectives from instructors, CAMP staff and counselors, and the author's own observations, illustrate the influence of past schooling, the persistence of culture, and the tensions and challenges inherent in developing a new identity.This is a study of students who came from the margins and, in a very short time, moved toward the mainstream. In the micro view, it provides extraordinarily useful case studies of a successful intervention program in process. In the larger scope, it is a look at the socially constructed nature of possibility, hope, and success.

\"In a green town in the middle of America, a bright 18-year-old Hispanic student named Isaias Ramos sets out on the journey to college. Isaias, who passed a prestigious national calculus test as a junior and leads the quiz bowl team, is the hope of Kingsbury High in Memphis, a school where many students have difficulty reading. But Kingsbury's dysfunction, expensive college fees, and forms printed in a language that's foreign to his parents are all obstacles in the way of getting him to a university. Isaias also doubts the value of college and says he might go to work in his family's painting business after high school, despite his academic potential. Is Isaias making a rational choice? Or does he simply hope to avoid pain by deferring dreams that may not come to fruition? This is what journalist Daniel Connolly attempts to uncover in The Book of Isaias as he follows Isaias, peers into a tumultuous final year of high school, and, eventually, shows how adults intervene in the hopes of changing Isaias' life. Mexican immigration has brought the proportion of Hispanics in the nation's youth population to roughly one in four. Every day, children of immigrants make decisions about their lives that will shape our society and economy for generations.

In 1925 Adolfo 'Babe' Romo, a Mexican American rancher in Tempe, Arizona, filed suit against his school district on behalf of his four young children, who were forced to attend a markedly low-quality segregated school, and won. But Romo v. Laird was just the beginning. Some sources rank Mexican Americans as one of the most poorly educated ethnic groups in the United States. Chicano Students and the Courts is a comprehensive look at this community's long-standing legal struggle for better schools and educational equality. Through the lens of critical race theory, Valencia details why and how Mexican American parents and their children have been forced to resort to legal action.Chicano Students and the Courts engages the many areas that have spurred Mexican Americans to legal battle, including school segregation, financing, special education, bilingual education, school closures, undocumented students, higher education financing, and high-stakes testing, ultimately situating these legal efforts in the broader scope of the Mexican American community's overall struggle for the right to an equal education. Extensively researched, and written by an author with firsthand experience in the courtroom as an expert witness in Mexican American education cases, this volume is the first to provide an in-depth understanding of the intersection of litigation and education vis-a-vis Mexican Americans.

This book describes how \"at-risk\" Hispanic youth defy the odds and stay in school to earn a high school diploma. Information about success is needed because Hispanic youth drop out at about twice the rate of non-Hispanic Whites. The discussion is based on the results of a 4-year longitudinal study of 100 Hispanic youth labeled at-risk by their school districts. These students and their families were first interviewed when they were 15 years old, and they were followed for 4 years. Qualitative information comes from open-ended interviews; quantitative data are from various school sources. The seven chapters at the core of the book focus on the following key factors: (1) tracking of students; (2) grade retention and high standards; (3) gang involvement; (4) teen motherhood; (5) special needs of immigrants; (6) high school equivalency programs; and (7) educational administration and policies. Obstacles to school completion and successful strategies used by students and their families to encourage school completion are described. Recommendations are made for changes in the public schools to enhance Hispanic students' graduation rates. Eight appendixes contain parent and student questionnaires and interview forms used in the study. (Contains 1 figure and 10 tables.) (SLD)

Millions of students in the US and Mexico begin their educations in one country and find themselves trying to integrate into the school system of the other. As global migration increases, their numbers are expected to grow and more and more teachers will find these transnational students in their classrooms. The goal of The Students We Share is to prepare educators for this present and future reality. While the US has been developing English as a Second Language programs for decades, Mexican schools do not offer such programs in Spanish and neither the US nor Mexico has prepared its teachers to address the educational, social-psychological, or other personal needs of transnational students. Teachers know little about the circumstances of transnational students' lives or histories and have little to no knowledge of the school systems of the country from which they or their family come. As such, they are fundamentally unprepared to equitably educate the \"students we share,\" who often fall through the cracks and end their educations prematurely. Written by both Mexican and US pioneers in the field, chapters in this volume aim to prepare educators on both sides of the US-Mexico border to better understand the circumstances, strengths, and needs of the transnational students we teach. With recommendations for policymakers, administrators, teacher educators, teachers, and researchers in both countries, The Students We Share shows how preparing teachers is our shared responsibility and opportunity. It describes policies, classroom practices, and norms of both systems, as well as examples of ongoing partnerships across borders to prepare the teachers we need for our shared students to thrive.

01 02 Language, Immigration, and Labor explores dominant ideologies about citizenship, nation, and language that frame the everyday lives of Spanish-speaking immigrants in the U.S.-Mexico border region. Focussing its ethnographic research on Arizona, a state that intensely regulates transnational migrants and Spanish speakers through its immigration and language policies, this book examines the realities of intercultural communication in fast-paced job negotiations between undocumented workers and their employers. The research reveals the ways that dominant discourses reverberate down to localized social and language practices and how day laborers respond by legitimating their participation in society—a kind of cultural citizenship—and constructing identities as language learners and productive workers. 02 02 This book explores dominant ideologies about citizenship, nation, and language that frame the everyday lives of Spanish-speaking immigrant day laborers in Arizona. It examines the value of speaking English in this context and the dynamics of intercultural communication in fast-paced job negotiations. 16 02 Cynthia L. Bejarano, ¿Qué onda?: Urban Youth Cultures and Border Identity (University of Arizona Press, 2007) This book explores the construction of ethnic identity among Mexicano/a and Chicano/a youth at a high school in U.S.-Mexico borderlands. The proposed book differs significantly because it is based on observations of face-to-face interactions between individuals from a variety of social 'categories' and how they perform, construct, and negotiate identities through these interactions, while drawing on interview data to support the analysis. DuBord's analysis is more broadly cast to include Mexican and Central American immigrants, U.S.-born Latinos, and Anglos from a variety of socioeconomic, professional, and linguistic backgrounds. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence (University of California Press, 2001, revised edition 2007). Hondagneu-Sotelo's ethnographic study explores the working relationship between Latina domestic workers and their employers in Los Angeles based on interview data. Although this population more closely mirrors the participants in DuBord's study, Doméstica's sociological emphasis on labour conditions and workers' relationships with employers contrasts with DuBord's analysis of day labourers' and employers' observed language practices in street-corner job negotiations. The data in the proposed book is unique because it examines the actual point of contact in the process of identity negotiation. Julia Menard-Warwick, Gendered Identities and Immigrant Language Learning (Multilingual Matters, 2009) Bonny Norton, Identity and Language Learning: Gender, Ethnicity and Educational Change (Longman, 2000) These two applied linguistics books examine Latino/a immigrants' identity formation as related to language learning in English as a Second Language classroom settings and in the communities where they live. Both of these titles are primarily centred on immigrant women's language learning experiences as related to more formal classroom settings. DuBord's book differs substantially because of its analysis of language practices in the informal labour market and because of its specific emphasis on the lived experiences of adult (male) Latinos. There is a dearth of sociolinguistic research on immigrant men, especially among undocumented populations, which the proposed book seeks to remedy. The focus on the process of identity formation and negotiation in this situation of intercultural contact makes the book unique from other literature on Spanish speakers in the United States. 13 02 Elise DuBord is Assistant Professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University of Northern Iowa, USA. Her research interests include intercultural language contact, critical race theory, language policy, and community-based learning. 04 02 1. The Social Context of Language Contact in the Informal Economy 2. Globalization, Immigrant Labor, and Language 3. 'If I knew the language, don't think I would be here': Shifting Understandings of the Linguistic Capital of English 4. Solidarity, Rapport, and Co-membership: Employers' Hiring Practices 5. Performing the Good Worker 6. Conceptualizing Intercultural Contact in the Borderlands 19 02 Unique approach: combines a sociolinguistic analysis with an intercultural ethnographic analysis Focuses on an under-researched context - that of language contact between immigrant men and employers at day labour centres Tackles issues of gender, globalization, nationhood, citizenship and language policy - fits well with our Language and Globalization series