Monday, February 12, 2018

Dr. Angela Valenzuela and Growing Our Own Educators Movement featured in La Voz, Alfredo Santos, Editor

So happy to share with you this news story titled, "Dr. Angela Valenzuela and Growing Your Own Educators Movement" written by Alfredo Santos, publisher and editor of La Voz, a local newspaper that you can also find online.  You can read the entire January/February 2018 issue here.

In this issue, he features our work here in Austin, Texas, in partnership with the Austin Independent School District  and the City of Austin's Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center  (ESB-MACC) to carry out activities and instruction for fourth and fifth graders at Academia Cuauhtli, physically located on the grounds of the ESB-MACC.  Our participants emanate from Sanchez, Metz, Zavala, Houston, and Perez Elementary Schools. 

I like how he contextualizes our Grow Your Own (GYO) Educator program.  It's what many communities before us have done and are doing right now.  

This is a movement that is about people and connection.  It's about revitalizing our languages, cultures, and identities and being able to navigate fluidly in the messiness and richness of cultural and linguistic borders and frontiers.  It's about roots and rootedness, and empowering communities by creating formal structures that reinforce informal ones that promote sustainability for a great cause.  It is about working together on one of the most sacred things that we could possibly imagine doing as a society, namely, the education our young.

You can read either my literature review or literature review summary on GYO educators here published by the Intercultural Development Research Association out of San Antonio.  And do check out Santos' other issues of La Voz to learn more about the Mexican American community that he so dutifully and selflessly covers here in Austin, Texas.  Gracias, Santos!

Enjoy!

Angela Valenzuela
c/s



No comments:

Post a Comment