Voces: Latino Students on Life in the United States • ABC-CLIO

Featuring hundreds of personal anecdotes by Latino college students against a backdrop of information on their culture, history, and academic needs and strengths, this book offers a compelling and exacting view of the world of Latino students and their families.

With a large percentage of public school students being Latino, the future of America is intertwined with that of Latino youth and their educational experience. Who are these children, and how are they transforming and being transformed by this nation? Voces: Latino Students on Life in the United States serves to answer these questions, putting the focus on the voices of Latino youth and presenting the research through the real-world experiences and individual perspectives of Latino college students. The students’ highly compelling yet rarely heard stories reveal the rewards and challenges of navigating two cultures and languages in school, home, and their communities and offer suggestions for how best to help other Latino youth. The student contributions are analyzed against a backdrop of information on Latino Americans, such as demographics, Spanish-English bilingualism, beliefs, traditions, and cultural practices, putting special emphasis on factors that bear on the academic and social wellbeing of Latino youth. Taking an assets-based approach, the book underscores the strengths of these students and spotlights how they are poised to enrich the American mosaic.

Features

Introduces readers to the experiences of Latino students through personal interviews and autobiographical essays
Provides an overview of the culture, history, and linguistic practices of U.S. Latinos
Presents a non-technical summary of the needs and strengths of Latino students as identified in the research literature
Provides concrete examples of the strategies and tools used by Latino youth to deal with adversity and succeed in life
Takes real-world situations to demonstrate how the actions of educators and other adults help or hinder these students

María M. Carreira, PhD, having accumulated 20 years of teaching experience, is professor of Spanish linguistics at California State University, Long Beach, and codirector of the National Heritage Language Resource Center at University of California, Los Angeles. She is coauthor of four Spanish textbooks: Nexos, Sí Se Puede, Alianzas, and Cuadros. She has published extensively in the field of Spanish in the United States, heritage language teaching, and educational linguistics. She holds a doctorate in linguistics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Tom Beeman is associate dean for the College of Education at Irvine University in Cerritos, CA, and a high school Spanish teacher with California Virtual Academies. He has taught Spanish in public and private high schools as well as Spanish and linguistics at the post-secondary level. Beeman specializes in language acquisition and is currently researching issues on Heritage Language Learners and linguistic prejudice. He holds a bachelor's degree in Spanish from California State University, Long Beach; a master's degree in linguistics from California State University, Fullerton; as well as a California Single Subject Teaching Credential in Spanish with No Child Left Behind certification.

Features

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