Yo leo mi comunidad: Bridging Family, Community, and School Literacies in the Dominican Republic

Molly Hamm-Rodríguez

LASC Travel Grant Project 2019

*This research project is also supported by CU Engage’s Community-Based Research Fellowship at CU Boulder

This preliminary ethnographic investigation was part of pre-dissertation field research in the Dominican Republic, which sought to understand local strategies for supporting positive youth identity development, multiliteracies, and culturally relevant pedagogy. This project aims to contribute to thinking about how literacy projects in U.S. schools and bilingual programs can be designed with a transnational lens (Rodriguez, 2009) to deeply engage with student and family experiences in the country of origin in ways that are culturally sustaining. I partnered with a nonprofit organization on the North Coast of the country in order to begin developing a community-based research project in collaboration with teachers to collaboratively develop literacy activities that sustain “linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of schooling for social transformation” (Alim & Paris, 2017, p.1). This approach locates any perceived literacy “gaps” in educational and academic practices rather than in students and families (Garcia & Otheguy, 2017). In addition, this approach affirms the linguistic competence of students by centering the forms of communication that occur naturally in family and community contexts (Poza, 2014), bringing those practices into the learning environment. Data collected through the ongoing community-based research project will be contextualized with five years of prior participant observation with the organization and its literacy programs.

Throughout the summer, I met with organizational leadership as well as literacy teachers to discuss the goals and objectives for their current literacy programs. In particular, I met with the literacy educator (promotora de lectura) who has developed a constructivist vision for literacy activities which are based in creativity, engagement of the senses, and socio-emotional development. My research visit coincided with the organization’s literacy-focused summer camp. I reviewed the curriculum for both age groups and met with the summer camp to discuss curricular goals and objectives, observed literacy training activities during the orientation week, and observed occasional classroom activities. I also looked at samples of student work to gain a better understanding of their writing development as well as of their expression and meaning making through multiple modalities. I also reviewed data previously collected by the organization around its literacy programs, including their My Very Own Library Book Fairs which have collected family surveys around literacy practices in the home. In addition, I have begun reviewing the Ministry of Education’s competency-based curriculum requirements around literacy to gain a better understanding of state priorities. The summer was primarily spent building relationships with organizational leaders and literacy teachers, while also gaining some contextual information about the current state of literacy programs (through the organization and via the formal school system) in order to think about how to bridge those approaches with family and community literacies. The results from this process will be used to inform planning for a yearlong community-based research project that has been funded by CU Engage at the University of Colorado Boulder through their Community-Based Research Fellowship. Through this project, I will collaboratively co-design literacy activities with teachers that focus on reading both the word and the world (Freire & Macedo, 1987) by integrating family and community members’ stories and storytelling practices. For others interested in conducting similar field research, I recommend using your first field visit to establish relations and gain an ethnographic understanding of the context through participant observation and other methods. If you intend to have a longer-term engagement with the organization and truly collaboratively design a project that is mutually beneficial, it is unwise to rush through data collection through formal instruments at the expense of understanding local needs and how your work might be able to support those needs. In this sense, preliminary summer research can be foundational for designing a more sustained and in-depth research project that is informed by what you observed (and came to know) through your initial visit.