The goal of this self-study is to share the process of a first-year, White, middle-class, female teacher adopting a pedagogy and writing curriculum that speaks to the lived realities of her Mexican American students. This paper argues how "testimonio" as curriculum and pedagogy advises critical pedagogy and calls to challenge the present…

In conjunction with the New Mexico State Department of Education's Writing Appraisal Program for high school students, a project was designed whose central goal was to identify and clearly delineate writing competencies for students in the younger grades. A pilot project first collected student writing samples and descriptive data from third and…