Inspired by a beautiful bookmark one of the author's students made for him as a gift, he began a lesson exploring the vibrant bark paintings popular all over Mexico. The majority of his students have Mexican ancestry, so exploring the arts of Mexico is always popular and well received. Amate paintings can also be a great way to introduce the…

The environmental crisis challenges us to look at our relationships with the rest of the world, human, animal, vegetable, and mineral. That the resources of our faith could apparently not foresee or prevent the environmental crisis leads many to suspect that this faith is complicit with the crisis, and it prompts us to reexamine our theologies to…

Creative classroom constructions imbued with arts integration, a transmediational multimodal pedagogy, are examined in exploratory action research in three bilingual elementary classroom learning experiences. In each of the lessons, there was a whole-group introduction and small-group hands-on arts-based activities inclusive of peer dialoguing,…

With scholarships and other special programs, the Culinary Institute of America's (CIA) Texas campus hopes to make its Latino students into industry leaders. CIA is considered as the most august culinary school in the United States. CIA San Antonio dispatches chefs to study and document traditional cuisines throughout Latin America for its Center…

A bidimensional acculturation framework cannot account for multiple destination cultures within contemporary settlement societies. A "tridimensional model" is proposed and tested among Jamaican adolescent-mother dyads in the United States compared to Jamaican Islander, European American, African American, and other Black and non-Black U.S.…

Background: Assessment of basic dietary intake and community nutrition environment is lacking and needed to improve health outcomes for the growing U.S. Latino community. Purpose: The dietary intake and community nutrition environment of a Latino population in the Midwest was evaluated. Methods: In a community clinic, Block Food Frequency…

The Adoption Mentoring Partnership (AMP) matches preadolescent adoptees with adopted college students, prioritizing matches of the same ethnic background. As part of AMP, participants actively discuss issues of ethnicity and adoption with a cohort of mentors over a period of 1 to 3 years in mentor group meetings (MGMs). This study focuses on…

Researching the learning experiences of postgraduate students requires a different type of qualitative research to enable access to areas of their lives which may well remain hidden with more conventional methods of research. Narrative inquiry as both method and methodology allows such access. In this article, I focus on the use, appropriateness,…

Studies have shown an absence of Afro-Latin American culture at all levels of Spanish instruction. In this essay, I propose the use of film to expand the undergraduate curriculum. Film provides both a visual and cultural narrative for the understanding of Latin American history, culture, and literature, and is an invaluable resource for teaching…

The documentary "Favela Rising" (2005) and its companion narrative, "Culture is Our Weapon" (2010), depict the AfroReggae cultural movement as a break with the past, a means of creating citizenship for Brazilian "favelas." A leitmotif of the film is struggling to end the communities' "paralysis" caused by…

If parental involvement in a child's education is generally viewed in positive terms, then it is important to understand what sorts of barriers might hinder it. This article reviews literature on culturally and linguistically diverse parental involvement in special education in the United States and Canada. In analyzing 20 articles published in…

The purpose of the maps was to show the density and distribution of students enrolled in foreign language courses in Austin Independent School District (AISD) high schools and middle schools and to show the distribution of student enrollment in Spanish-language courses, as well as the density of Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs) in…

Alberto Fuguet, one of the leaders of the McOndo writers who seek cultural direction from the United States and exploit mass-media formulas, is a polarizing figure in contemporary Latin American culture. His most recent full-length novel, the semi-autobiographical "Las peliculas de mi vida" (2003), has led many to conclude that Fuguet is simply a…

This paper presents the results of a case study that was conducted to investigate the perceived effectiveness of a blended (online and face-to-face) Latin American Civilization Spanish class offered at a mid-sized Midwestern university. Students (N = 23) completed pre and post-course surveys in which they indicated their perceived comfort levels…

This paper analyzes the activities, members, and effects of an inter-American expert network for the diffusion of psychometric knowledge, specifically of standardized aptitude testing for university admission in Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s. Within the framework of educational transfer studies, the role of international,…