Student academic achievement is a collective effort of family, community, and school experience (Sloat, Makkonen, & Koehler, 2007). However the biggest burden is placed on teachers who are assumed and expected to possess the skills, knowledge, caring, and commitment to students often without the appropriate support, resources and professional development. With a focus on teacher development this work will listen to the voices of eight veteran educators from the Texas-Mexico border region and trace the steps in their formation and critical understandings of themselves and their professions to better diagnose students’ academic needs. The site of my study is in the southern-most part of the U.S.-Mexico border known as the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas (RGV). This dynamic region of our country was occupied by immigrant settlers in the middle 1700s and has seen much socio-political and cultural change throughout the years. Nucleus to the “browning of America” (Rodriguez, 2002), the demographic shift toward more ethnic/racial diversity, and in particular the ascent of Latinos as the largest minority in the country, the Border and its teachers provide key insights regarding effective ways to educate Latino children because they have served this community the longest. This study is a synthesis of historical sociology and cultural anthropology inquiries based on applied research method of interviews with Border educators. It includes: ethnographic and historical data, and testimonios, or critically documented histories, that address views on educational reform intended to foster academic success among Latino students. Latinos have become the nation’s largest majority at 16.3% of the population. The growth trend is also evident in Texas with a 37.6% and 90.4% for the RGV (Census, 2010). The correlation between poverty and educational attainment places this population at a significant disadvantage in the nation as well as in the RGV. Some observers have expressed concern that Latinos will represent the majority of the population by 2040 as the “poorer, less educated, and productive” (Jillson, 2012, p. xiii). My work challenges this conceptual relationship between poverty and school failure by focusing on a region where the student body has historically been predominantly Latino and economically disadvantaged with a 32.6% poverty rate compared to a national figure of 11.3% (Census, 2010). My findings on the epistemic value of identity demonstrated through my Spotlight Identity (SI) framework, support the notion that aligning students with teachers of similar experiential and cultural backgrounds positively impacts academic achievement and that, generally speaking, these affinities improve relations with families and allow for teachers to better understand the academic and personal challenges that the students are facing. My constructivist analysis suggests that academic success can be achieved, regardless of economic impediments when communities, schools, educators, and families work collaboratively with a child-centered approach. For participants in the study, barriers such as low socioeconomic (SES) were not seen as germane to student academic success when all the elements in their “educational equation” were in place. Academic success—construed by participants as significant student yearly progress, meeting grade level requirements, and high school completion—can be achieved, regardless of social and economic factors, when communities, schools, educators, and families work together through child-centered efforts and mediated through “critical bicultural education” (Darder, 1991). / text

This dissertation examines the educational journey of a Chicano educator; from his early experiences with colonization while growing up in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas to his role as a lecturer in a First Year Experience course at a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) along the U.S. - Mexico border. Ultimately asking the question, "what is his role as a Chicano educator?" and can the once colonized decolonize his own classroom? / text

This study is significant because U.S. schools are continuously being transformed due to the increasing numbers of linguistically and culturally diverse students, in particular Latina/o youths. Therefore, this qualitative dissertation study explored and described ways three Latina Tejana Maestras utilized Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) during literacy learning as they integrated students’ knowledge about their social and cultural environment, including their native language repertoire, while developing and implementing instruction. This study used sociocultural and borderlands theoretical construct to explore and describe ways the Maestras enacted and sustained CRP during literacy events. The sociocultural perspective is a fitting lens because it takes into account how knowledge is constructed in and through social interaction. Borderlands is also a fitting lens because it takes into account the Tejana Maestras borderlands identity of straddling simultaneous worlds — two languages, two cultures. Sociocultural theory and Borderlands theoretical lenses were complemented by CRP, a teaching approach that not only fits the school culture to the students’ culture, but uses the students’ culture as the basis for students to understand themselves and guiding them to becoming academically successful. The two questions used to guide this dissertation were: What culturally responsive pedagogical knowledge and practices do Tejana Maestras enact in bilingual classrooms? Second: How do Tejana Maestras acquire knowledge about the culture, language, and background experience of their students when planning and implementing instruction? The research revealed three themes, a) the presence of Building a Bilingual Classroom Community (BBCC) that was continuously evolving, and seamlessly functioning, as a system was clearly evident in each of the three classrooms, b) the Tejana Maestras notion of agents of change that guided their pedagogical literacy practices, and c) the notion of centering Mexican American students’ values, beliefs, and norms into the pedagogy and curriculum responsive to emergent bilinguals was recognizable. Six findings developed from the data; a) Tejana Maestras foster cultural awareness, b) embrace Latina/o bilingualism, c) employ a menu of culturally responsive literacy practices, d) learn from their students e) are conscious of their identity, and f) teaching philosophy. Due to U.S. schools being transformed by the increasing numbers of linguistically and culturally diverse students, the study demonstrated that it is important to conduct research about Tejana Maestras to learn the ways they are effectively meeting the needs of bilingual students by using CRP to promote academic success. / text

This study is dedicated to examine the concept of borders, geographical and otherwise, as instruments that are socially produced. It utilizes Gloria Anzaldua's theoretical framework of Borderlands theory as a set of processes that seek to attain the de-colonization of the inner self. The historical and spatial dynamics of the geographical border between Mexico and United States, largely shaped by the U.S. expansionist agenda, resulted in the Mexican lost of more than half of its territory and the subsequent stigmatization of Mexican-Americans/Chicanos as "foreign others," since they did not share with predominant Anglo-Saxons the same values, culture, religion, traditions and skin color. I argue that the later exploitation, exclusion, marginalization, and racism against Mexican-Americans/Chicanos informed Anzaldua's development of her Borderlands theory that seeks to attain liberation for any colonized identity. However, it is also my argument that the borderlands theory fails to account for meaningful political freedom since the processes that compose the theory are principally worked at the inner level, restricting the possibilities for a direct confrontation in the public sphere. / Master of Arts

abstract: Those who are in or have aged out of foster care, most of whom are queer, Black, brown, and low-income, are represented by social workers, educational advocates, behavioral health specialists, and the mainstream media as “at-risk” for criminal behavior, teen pregnancy, homelessness, and lower levels of educational attainment. Current and former residents of foster care and their experiences must be understood beyond these deficit models in order to restore humanity to and bring about positive change for this population. This project traced the strategies for survival of those in and aged out of foster care in Arizona through artmaking and critical qualitative methods. Using borderlands theory and medicinal histories, I demonstrated how system involved youth paint a picture of foster care as a dehumanizing borderland creating una cultura mestiza – a hybrid culture that youth learned to navigate as both healers and healing. Additionally, I argued the foster care system is inherently disabling by way of the processual (re)narrativization the system dictates in order to make those in the system legible to the State through the labeling of mental and physical disabilities. Lastly, I explored insights garnered about foster care through ensemble-based devised theatre. I found it is important to have systemic representations of foster care in tandem with embodied experiences of said system. Collage-making served as an accessible mechanism for relationship building, material generation, and material knowledge. I discovered meaningful ways of representing absent presences of system involved people through feeding forward their artistic creations into the devising process. Taken together, I found foster care system involved people survive through art and creativity, connection to people and places, and keen resourcefulness cultivated in the system. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Women and Gender Studies 2020