Whatcom Community College
Home MenuLatine Studies
Newly Supported Area by a College Spark WA Grant
Winter 2025 Schedule
ENGL Composition I: ENGL 101
Hy 2- 17759 Tu 1:30-3:50
Hy 3- 17764 Thu 11:00-1:20
In these 2 ENGL 101 sections, we welcome students from all backgrounds interested in issues of culture and society, with a particular emphasis on Latine culture. Come join our family!
(open to Running Start students, current WCC students, and future students).
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Fall 2024 ENGLISH 194 Schedule
Introduction
With a student-centered approach, Latine Studies aims to bridge lived experiences with interdisciplinary course curricula, and encourages treating students as extended family (la familia extendida).
College Spark WA Grant: Education Equity Fund
Area of focus: Culturally Responsive Curriculum and Pedagogy - WCC earned a 3-year College Spark grant to create Latine Studies.
Logistics
Latine Studies at WCC provides an umbrella for a set of student-centered courses across disciplines; establishes a steering committee for coordination, fosters innovative pedagogy, bridges lived experiences to course curriculum, and provides resources for students including professionalization opportunities and free course materials. Latine studies is housed under the English department to begin and then connects to interdisciplinary programs. Latine Studies coordinates faculty learning communities and innovative curricula, sponsors speakers and germane events (mural, publishes a collection of student narratives/cajitas), and builds community on campus by raising the visibility of Latine students-who are one-of-the-fastest growing groups in the U.S and are expected to become the largest minority group by 2044. Given the equity gaps in completion rates for Latine students, it is deeply needed.
How Latine Studies Supports Strategic Plan Goals (1, 2, 3, and 4)
This area will provide faculty and staff from across the college an opportunity to connect (Goal 1) around this area and provide innovative ideas on how to develop curricular changes to support Latine students (Goals 2, 3, and 4).
Latine students are the "largest systematically non-dominant" (Jenkins 2021) student group that may face academic isolation with conflicts between family life and academia and challenges to standardized belonging and engagement which inadvertently impacts college success and completion. Latine students who may feel isolated in the college classroom when their rhetorics do not align with the hegemonic rhetoric of academia (Romero 2024). Utilizing Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and contextually infusing cultural values such as family into curriculum can better serve the needs of Latine students to ensure belonging and academic completion.
Reduce Academic Isolation Through Connecting Lived Experiences to Co-Created Course Curricula
Speak and Write From the Heart: I tell my children daily, “Mi Vida.” My life is a term of endearment used to express deep affection, love, or attachment to someone; a perfect example of what this work will entail:
- In courses, we share "lived experiences" and welcome home language practices in co-created curricula to continue building an extended family where every person can authentically be who they are.
Why Latine?
Innovative language is one way to support identity and build community. Hence, Latine is easier for Spanish speakers to say and is a gender-neutral and inclusive term. There is more... Latine is a movement, one that seeks inclusivity, shares lived experiences, and embraces authenticity.
Final Goals
Our extended family welcomes you!
Resources:
1. The Horizon article: (News and information produced by students at Whatcom Community College, Bellingham, Wash.) Please click on the The Horizon link and Instagram article link to view the students' extraordinary projects, "Cajitas" (boxes) in ENGL 194 from Spring quarter. Students choose objects that represent who they are are and strategically place them into boxes (cajitas).
2. WCC Opening Week: PD collaborative presentation on Friday October 20, 2024.
Please download power point presentation:
Latine Studies PD - Updated 9-10-24-2
3. Teaching English in the Two Year College journal article
"Write from the Heart (Escribe desde el Corazon): Connect Lived Experiences to First-Year Writing Curriculum"
- Author(s): Andrea Romero
- Source: Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Volume 51, Issue 4, May 2024, p. 339 - 350
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.58680/tetyc2024514339
- Published online: 01 May 2024
- Pdf: Write_from_the_Heart_(Escribe_