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Resilience is often invoked to address systemic marginalization (e.g. racism) in academia but inadvertently maintains harmful systems. We argue that the ability to transform systems, as opposed to persevering within them, must be prioritized to make real, lasting change.

In this article, Stephanie Alvarez, José L. Martínez, Annabel Salamanca, Erika Salamanca, and Roberto C. Reyna share the impacts of Cosecha Voices, a pedagogical approach used with college students from migrant farmworker backgrounds at one of the largest Hispanic-Serving Institutions in the United States. They argue that Cosecha Voices affirms, validates, and humanizes the migrant farmworker experience and can help students not only unpack and document their migrant farmworker experiences but also strengthen their sense of self-empowerment. Utilizing testimonio, students are able to affirm and find strength in their migrant farmworker lifestyle that helps support them through their college journey. This Voices: Reflective Accounts of Education essay centers the voices of former program participants in its analysis of program impact and offers a program description, personal reflections from participants, and future considerations for similar research.

This essay recounts the efforts by various groups throughout Texas with a special emphasis on the Rio Grande Valley to implement Mexican American Studies at the turn of the twenty-first century. We offer a historical timeline of events that demonstrates how the Mexican American Studies course came into existence. We also detail the way in which some Mexican American Studies courses were implemented. In other cases, we describe the way different groups were able to offer professional development to teachers to help them incorporate more Mexican American Studies content in their non-Mexican American studies courses or provide the community with the resources on how to include Mexican American Studies at their school. The common theme throughout is an undeniable resistance and mobilization on the part of many, hundreds, of educators, students, and community members to ensure that the youth do not continue to receive a whitewashed education, to ensure that students receive a more accurate representation of history, culture, language, and literature. In essence, the essay details a very hard-fought battle against White supremacy in the schools at the turn of the twenty-first century in Texas in which Mexican American Studies emerged victorious many steps of the way.

This essay contributes to the growing literature on Mexican American Studies in K-12 within the broader field of Ethnic Studies. While most of the literature on the movement for Ethnic Studies within Texas and across the nation mainly focuses on the impact of Ethnic Studies courses on students' academic success, this essay highlights a professional development program for K-12 social studies teachers in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas entitled "Historias Americanas: Engaging History and Citizenship in the Rio Grande Valley," funded by a federal grant. This essay provides an overview of Historias Americanas, the objectives and structure of the program, and the ways in which the program contributes to the discourse on Mexican American Studies in K-12. It also describes the frameworks that form the crux of the professional development process: place-based education and culturally relevant pedagogical frameworks.

This essay recounts the efforts by various groups throughout Texas with a special emphasis on the Rio Grande Valley to implement Mexican American Studies at the turn of the twenty-first century. We offer a historical timeline of events that demonstrates how the Mexican American Studies course came into existence. We also detail the way in which some Mexican American Studies courses were implemented. In other cases, we describe the way different groups were able to offer professional development to teachers to help them incorporate more Mexican American Studies content in their non-Mexican American studies courses or provide the community with the resources on how to include Mexican American Studies at their school. The common theme throughout is an undeniable resistance and mobilization on the part of many, hundreds, of educators, students, and community members to ensure that the youth do not continue to receive a whitewashed education, to ensure that students receive a more accurate representation of history, culture, language, and literature. In essence, the essay details a very hard-fought battle against White supremacy in the schools at the turn of the twenty-first century in Texas in which Mexican American Studies emerged victorious many steps of the way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From its inception, World Literature Today has beer one of the great promoters of Latin American literature, and I am happy to see that the journal is continuing this tradition [...]

Introduction: People from backgrounds that are economically/socially disadvantaged experienced disproportionately high COVID-19 death rates and had lower vaccination rates. Effective outreach strategies for increasing vaccine uptake during the pandemic are not fully known. Among patients receiving care at a Federally Qualified Health Center, we tested whether community engaged digitally-enabled outreach from a trusted clinician messenger increased COVID vaccine uptake., Study Design, Setting, and Participants: A 3-parallel-arm randomized controlled trial with a hybrid effectiveness-implementation design was conducted among patients ≥ 18 years old on study enrollment during 2021 with 1,650 assigned in 3:10:20 ratio; 2,328 were later selected for two subsequent implementation rounds., Interventions: From April 13 to June 10, 2021, patients were proactively sent a text-messaging invitation to make an appointment for vaccination as part of the routine practice with a link to frequently asked questions (Arm 1, n = 150) with added personalized clinician recommendation alone (Arm 2, n = 500) or with enabled 2-way SMS messaging feature (Arm 3, n = 1,000). Further implementation used messaging addressing vaccine hesitancy (n = 1,323) or adverse reactions to vaccines (n = 1,005)., Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcome was the completion of the first SARS-Cov-2 vaccine dose determined at 14, 30 and 90 days after outreach., Results: Of 1,650 patients in effectiveness Arms, 61% was female. Vaccination rates for Arms 1, 2, and 3, were 6% (n = 9), 5.4% (n = 27) and 3.3% (n = 33) at 14 days, and 11.5% (n = 17), 11.6% (n = 58), and 8.5% (n = 85) at 90 days, respectively, which were similar in pairwise comparisons. At 90 days, vaccination rates were similar across the two implementation rounds (3.9% vs. 3.6%) and were similar to the rate (3.3%) among patients who were not selected for intervention arms or implementation rounds (n = 8,671)., Conclusions: Digitally-enabled outreach that included SMS messaging outreach augmented with clinician recommendations did not improve COVID-19 vaccination rates., Trial Registration: This study is registered at ClinicalTrails.gov Identifier: NC-T04952376., (© 2024. The Author(s).)