In this article, the author describes a papier-mache unit inspired by whimsical animal sculptures created by artisans from the Oaxaca (pronounced Wah-Haw-Ka) region in southern Mexico. While the actual Mexican sculptures are carved from wood, the papier-mache medium is easier to work with and requires fewer tools. Most middle schoolers love…

Garro's one-act play offers an unusual combination of corpses and animate actors on stage thus combining life and death in the same body. Garro's piece presents students with an approach to "embodying" Mexican culture and its notions of death. The fusion of death and cultural practices in Mexico is a crucial part of the ongoing project for…

The current study tests a prediction of Relational Discrepancy Theory (RDT; i.e., emotional distress will not accompany discrepancies in hierarchical relationships) for family obligations discrepancies among adolescent-parent dyads in Jamaica, a moderately collectivistic and hierarchical society. Ninety-five dyads reported psychological adjustment…

While it is generally accepted that literature fosters (inter)cultural learning, few qualitative studies have sought to understand in what ways interculturality is developed. This article investigates the development of Spanish L2 students' intercultural awareness through the reading of a short story entitled "Norma y Ester" by Argentine…

The Aztec Sun Stone is a revered Mexican artifact. It is said to be perhaps the most famous symbol of Mexico, besides its flag. It primarily depicts the four great disasters that led to the migration of the Mexica people to modern-day Mexico City. The Aztec Sun Stone also contains pictographs depicting the way the Mexica measured time, and was…

This article focuses on the complex web of issues involved in Esmeralda Santiago's acculturation to US society after arriving from Puerto Rico as a girl. The article is based on examples from Santiago's second memoir, "Almost a Woman" (1998) and the 2001 film adaptation of this memoir; the observations of critics who have written about…

The number of people living in Canada of Caribbean heritage has increased substantially over the past forty years. This paper examines aspects of Caribbean culture and Caribbean education culture to explore if Caribbean Canadians can claim a Caribbean education philosophy. The research claims there is one. The article suggests that this philosophy…

This article focuses on the design and implementation of a new course in Latin American Studies that sought to integrate traditional elements of undergraduate education with a more progressive pedagogical approach stressing experiential applications of classroom education. Civic engagement seemed particularly well suited to the course because of…

Gaia theory proposes that a cybernetic system including the biota and the physicochemical environment regulates environmental variables at a global scale, keeping them within a range that makes Earth inhabitable by living beings. One can argue that this theory can play an important role in school science, since it bears upon current environmental…

The original Moko Jumbie was a spirit dancer from West Africa. "Moko" is a West African word that refers to gods and "Jumbie" means ghost. In West Africa, Moko Jumbies are known to kidnap and eat disobedient children, steal dreams and see into evildoers' hearts and terrorize them. They walk through villages on 10- to…

Given that Latinas/os make up the fastest-growing population group in the U.S., according to the 2000 U.S. Census, classroom teachers increasingly are in need of meaningful resources and learning strategies for students of Latin American heritage. These same resources can also serve to help internationalize/diversify classrooms serving non-Latino…

Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas in Peru, was recently voted one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. Also in Peru are the mysterious Nazca Lines--a humming bird, a spider, and trapezoids--which are etched in the desert so large they can only be seen from an airplane. The author experienced some of these places recently when he and his…

In the nearly two decades since the 1990 Music Educators National Conference (MENC) preconference symposium on Multicultural Approaches to Music Education in Washington, D.C., music educators have come to recognize the need to include a variety of world musics in music curricula at all levels, from elementary classrooms to advanced performing…

This study investigates how the Pierre Verger Cultural Space (PVCS), an educational organization dedicated to teaching Afro-Brazilian culture in Bahia, uses music to construct a sense of Afro-Brazilian self. Located in a poverty-stricken neighborhood of Salvador, Bahia, the PVCS sees its mission as "rescuing" ("resgatar") an…

Whenever a second language is the object of learning, identity (or sense of self) is at stake, and the question of what community and what speech community one belongs to, strives to belong to, or is afraid to belong to raises complex issues. As stated by Zarate, Bhimji, and Reese (2005): "A bicultural identity is not necessarily a homogeneous or…