Cambio Center News - October 2014

In this newsletter: Cambio Center 10th Anniversary Activities, Cambio de Colores Update, Welcomes, Updates from Fellows, Upcoming Courses

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Cambio Center 10th Anniversary Activities: Link to Events

To celebrate and share our experiences in research and outreach over the past 10 years, the Cambio Center will be showcasing its research in public seminars and meeting to build our agenda for the next 10 years. Please share these events with your colleagues and students.

The Educational and Developmental Experiences (and Challenges) of Latinos in Missouri and Beyond
November 5, 2014
3:00 pm-4:30 pm
Townsend Hall 205

A panel featuring Cambio Center fellows Emily Crawford (Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis ELPA), Lisa Dorner (ELPA), Alejandra Gudiño (Nutrition and Exercise Physiology Extension), and Angie Zapata (Language and Literacy Education)

Latino children from immigrant families are one of the fastest growing groups in the US, yet they typically enter public school systems that lack funds and struggle to provide equitable educational experiences for all. Not addressing this issue will result in challenges in the future of our country. It’s critical to understand the challenges that face Latino youth, as well as the positive developmental opportunities that they have. This panel will present research, policies, and best practices to understand and enhance Latino youth’s well-being and success in U.S. schools.
Refreshments will be provided.

The Academic Adaptation of Immigrant Newcomers with Interrupted Schooling & Schools’ Grade-Level Placement Policies
November 10, 2014
12:00pm-1:00pm
Memorial Union S203-AES
Part of the Truman School of Public Affairs Seminar Series

Research seminar presented by Cambio Center fellow Dr. Stephanie Potochnick (Public Affairs)

Research from the 1990s suggests that 10- 20% of foreign-born youth experience interrupted schooling in their home countries that leaves them woefully unprepared for age-appropriate U.S. grade-level content. Large-scale research on foreign-born youth with interrupted schooling, however, is limited. This research uses data from the Educational Longitudinal Study to estimate the percent of foreign-born youth with interrupted schooling, assess schools’ placement decisions, and evaluate these youth’s academic outcomes.

The Cambio Center’s First Ten Years of Groundbreaking Research
November 11, 2014
3:00pm-4:30pm
Leadership Auditorium
MU Student Center

A panel including Cambio Center fellows Lisa Flores (Educational, School & Counseling Psychology), Eleazar Gonzalez (Community Development), Stephen Jeanetta (Rural Sociology), Corinne Valdivia (Agricultural and Applied Economics)

The Cambio Center has had four groundbreaking research projects focused on Latino communities in the Midwest, among other activities such as its annual Cambio de Colores conference. This panel will highlight some of the most compelling findings from these projects. Projects include studies on:
1. Latino Newcomer’s Asset Accumulation in Three Rural Communities;
2. Immigrant Integration and Sustainable Rural Development;
3. Improving the Use of USDA Programs among Latino Farmers; and
4. Missouri Health Literacy Enhancement Demonstration Project.

Refreshments will be provided.

Cambio de Colores 2015

Scheduled to be in Kansas City, the 2015 conference is currently being organized by the Planning Committee. Contact DeColores@missouri.edu if you would like to help organize the conference.

Welcome to our new Fellow and Assistants

Welcome to our new Student Fellow Alli Walsh, a doctoral student in Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology. Alli is interested in immigrant and refugee populations, and in particular in promoting Welcoming Schools to help support these newcomer populations. She is currently supporting Missouri Immigrant and Refugee Advocates’ (MIRA) initiative to help Ritenour in St. Louis become a Welcoming School district.

The Cambio Center is also ecstatic to have the support of several students:
María Senés is a graduate student in MU’s Master of Public Health program. She is assisting the center with demographic research and analysis, field work, and other projects.
Ashlie Anderson-Rice studies business administration and is helping the Center with the Cambio de Colores conference organizing and proceedings.
Isabel Casal-Nazario is a journalism student who does all our design work and helps with writing projects.
Tahely Garcia is a nursing student and is helping with our field work, along with other projects such as creating a bilingual translating service.
Kanesha Hoover is studying hospitality management, and is organizing our upcoming events, including our 10 year anniversary events and the Cambio de Colores conference.
Many thanks to all of them for their dedicated hard work!

Updates from Cambio Center Fellows

Sarah F. May - Doctoral Candidate in Counseling Psychology
Sarah won the Poster Session titled ‘Acculturation, Cultural Processes, and Immigrant Experiences’ at the 2014 Division 45 APA Convention in Washington, DC. Her poster “Latina/o Immigrant Integration in the Rural Midwest: Long-Term Resident and Immigrant Perspectives” was selected as the winner from the 27 presented in the session. Congratulations!

Angie Zapata – Learning, Teaching and Curriculum, focus on Language and Literacy
Research Projects:

Examining dual language immersion education in Mid-Missouri (with Lisa Dorner)

Knowing, Doing, and Being: Onto-Epistemological Approaches to Writing in K-12 settings

Recent Publications:
Zapata, A. (May 2015).  Making Bilingual Picturebooks In the Elementary Classroom.  Language Arts Journal.
Zapata, A. (2014). Examining the multimodal and multilingual composition resources of young Latino picture book makers.  In Dunston, L. B. Gambrell, S.K. Fullerton, V.R. Gillis, K. Headley, & P.M. Stecker (Eds), 62nd Yearbook of the Literacy Research Association, Oak Creek: WI.
Zapata, A. (2013).  “No, I don’t want to!” Nurturing contexts for sharing culturally specific literature.  World of Words Stories: Connections from the classroom.   http://wowlit.org/on-line-publications/stories/storiesiv6/3/
Zapata, A., & Roach, A. (2011).  Movement in literacy: Resources for new directions in multilingual, multicultural, multinational, and multimodal literacy studies.  In Language Arts, 8(4), 310-314.
Gainer, J.,  Zapata, A., and Gainer, N.  (2013)  Re-storying Nuestro Barrio: Mentoring children’s picture book writing with Latino/a children’s literature.  J. Nadioo & S. Park (EDs), Sliding Doors in a Pluralistic Society: Critical Approaches to and Intercultural Perspectives on Diversity in Contemporary Literature for Children and Young Adults.  Chicago, IL: ALA editions.

Courses taught:

Language, Literacy, and the Multicultural Learner (doctoral level)

Multicultural Children’s Literature (graduate level)

Upcoming presentations:

Translingual Writing in the Elementary Classroom. Proposal Accepted for the Literacy Research Association Annual Conference. December 2014.
Intra-activity matters: Exploring the material↔discursive of literacy learning in multiple contexts. Proposal Accepted for the Literacy Research Association Annual Conference December 2014.
I Write to Show Who I Am: Translingual Literacies in the Writing Classroom; Invited Keynote for the Early Childhood Education Assembly of National Council of Teachers of English Conference: Washington D.C. November 2014.

Extension Ideas:
Angie hopes to develop a Cambio Center partnership with the College of ED/LTC and local schools to support the teaching of English to immigrant families as part of the pre-service teacher program. Dreaming it might culminate in a family literacy center sponsored by partnerships.

Upcoming Course

SPRING 2015 COURSE OFFERING: ESC_PS 8087_07: IMMIGRANT ISSUES IN EDUCATION
3-Credit Hours, E-Learning; 100 % Online; Instructor: Sarah F. May, M.A.
This course is designed to increase the level of cross-cultural awareness, knowledge, and practical skills of professionals working with students who are immigrants from Latin America and all over the world. Activities and assignments in the class are designed to assist, encourage, and challenge each student to more fully develop awareness and knowledge of self, and to use this information to improve intercultural interactions with others in professional settings as well as other settings. The anticipated outcome includes improved skills in conceptualizing the unique needs of and responding with appropriate approaches to effectively assist students who are immigrants.
Prerequisites: Graduate Standing Required - Textbook: Rong & Preissle (2008), Educating Immigrant Students in the 21st Century-What Educators Need to Know -and- choice of 1 of 2 memoirs of an immigrant family

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Cambio Center
301 Gentry Hall
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211
(573) 882-2978
cambio@missouri.edu
www.cambio.missouri.edu