2 How this Book is Organized- and how to make the most of it!
“Stories ….are to be listened to, remembered, and thought about, mediated on. [They] are not frivolous or meaningless, no one tells a story without intent or purpose”
~ Cora Weber Pill Walx as cited in Brayboy, 2005, p. 439
This book is organized into two parts. The first part, Getting Started, which you are reading now, provides the background for this book, including how our learning is organized and why this book is published as an Open Education Resource.
Part II, Centering Latine Students’ Educational Experiences, begins with Chapter 5, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Latine, Latinadades: Beyond Latino Monolithic Myth. This chapter describes the various terms that are used to describe people with Latin American heritage, as well as insights into enduring debates on the use of these terms. Most importantly, the chapter also describes the concept of Latinidades which serves as the theoretical underpinning of this book. The chapters that follow are corazón of this book, each chapter is a resource guide focused on a different Latine student group. Each guide includes an introduction, an annotated bibliography of high-quality research, a series of popular sources, and a list of programs and organizations that focus on this student group. The resource guides were written by our contributing authors, all whom are well-respected and knowledgeable educators and scholars. The last chapter in this section, There is Always More to Learn, includes additional resources that educators can access to further deepen their knowledge beyond the groups highlighted here. References for all in-text citations can be found in the last chapter of this book.
In many respects, each chapter in this book presents a series of stories, offering multiple perspectives and inviting readers to consider the authors’ intentions and significance of the themes they have identified as important. Together, these “stories’ present complex and at times conflicting narratives that stand against stereotypical tropes that position Latine students, their families, and communities as a monolithic group. This is important because there is no single Latine student single story (Adichie, 2009). Rather, educators committed to best serving Latine students must lean on the complexities of the histories and experiences of Latine students in US Schools.
GO DEEPER: This book intentionally challenges us to move beyond dominant tropes about Latine students, their families, and their communities. Many of these tropes are deeply grounded in stereotypes and can invite bias into our teaching and learning. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story” (2009) invites us to move beyond a “Single story narrative” and to consider their potential danger.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi: The danger of a single story. YouTube, uploaded by TED on October 7th, 2009.
The National Council of Teachers of English provides an important critique of Adichie as well as additional resources to amplify the importance of moving beyond tropes.
Because these stories are beautiful and complex, it is not necessary to read the book in chronological order. You will likely jump from chapter to chapter, from source to source, and back again, making your own interactive experience. You might, for example, find yourself reading one of the chapters, then you click on one of the links, and before you know it, what you have read inspires you to find more sources on the topic you are interested in. Maybe you will decide to watch or listen to one of the many audio/visual materials, which will lead you to other materials you want to watch. You might even be in the process of developing a lesson plan or writing a grant proposal, and the sources included may serve as great background materials. Or maybe you will read a chapter and want to contact one of our contributor authors to submit a question that you want them. All of these scenarios and hundreds more are precisely the point of this interactive guide! The materials should lead you to want to learn more and to have a learning experience that best suits your needs and interests. This approach also perfectly aligns with the goals of Open Educational Resources (OER).
As subsequently discussed, the power of OER materials is the possibility of adaptation and modification; this means that it is very likely that this book will have new chapters, new questions, and new materials for you to engage with. With this framing in mind, it should not be surprising that this book does not include a conclusion. Rather, I end the book with the biographies of our contributors and collaborators, who have generously agreed to include information on how to contact them, including our librarians who made this book possible. If you have questions or want to further expand your learning, I encourage you to reach out to our content experts for further guidance.
In closing, I need to reemphasize that this book is just but a first step in what I see as a lifelong journey to better understand the students we serve. It is an invitation to learn, and wonder with us, as we learn about (and from) Latine students, their families, and communities.
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