Puerto Rico is home to 3.3 million people and is the most populous of the 14 U.S. territories. For more than a century, Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens by birth and are required to abide by most U.S. laws. However, representation in the federal government is limited, with no U.S. senators and only one nonvoting representative in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Puerto Rico is an archipelago of islands located 1,000 miles southwest of Florida between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The main language is Spanish. In many cultural aspects, Puerto Ricans identify more with their Caribbean and Latin American neighbors than other U.S. citizens. Nevertheless, Puerto Rican schools have traditionally used American or European children's literature, and teachers must implement U.S. federal education mandates, even if they are not culturally relevant. not.
Thanks to support from the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Indiana University's Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, in-service and early career elementary school teachers in Puerto Rico are working to incorporate cultural relevance into their curriculum. You are learning important tools to further your education. Critical literacy. The center works with University of Puerto Rico Bayamón students as first-year teachers during their final year, student teaching year, and first year while they are taking literacy methods courses to develop their critical literacy skills and knowledge.
The Puerto Rico Critical Literacy Project is one of the many ways Hamilton Lugar School's Center serves the nation by supporting world language and culture education programs through Department of Education Title VI grants.
The project, which began in 2019, is led by Carmen Medina, professor of literacy, culture, and language education in the IU College of Education, and Maria del Rocio Costa, professor in the College of Education at the University of Puerto Rico-Bayamon. After Hurricane Maria, Medina and Costa reaffirmed the need to decolonize literacy education in Puerto Rico.
“The majority of children's literature that comes to Puerto Rico is translated from English, French or German,” Costa says. “We are a Caribbean country, but because of our political relationship with the United States, we do not have a strong corpus of books written by or in Latin America.”
Historical strategies for literacy education do not seem to be working. In Puerto Rico, only 11% of first graders, 6% of second graders and 1% of third graders can read at grade level, according to a 2023 Opportunity Project report. The use of imported media also influences children's understanding of the world.
“If you ask kids to draw a picture of a house, they'll draw a chimney with a peaked roof and smoke coming out of the chimney. That's not what we have,” Costa said. Ta. “When you ask them to draw something for Christmas at Christmas time, they draw snowmen and snow. When there is literature that has no representation of itself, what is legitimate is someone else, an outsider. We just assume we know it.”
For these reasons, it is important to reposition literacy and literary knowledge in Puerto Rican schools as coming from Latin America and the Caribbean, Medina said.
Developing educators
As Medina and Costa explore ways to provide Puerto Rican educators with the tools they need to develop critical literacy, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies learned about the project and brought them to the Center's U.S. Department of Education We invited you to be part of Title VI 2018-22. Grant application form. The Puerto Rico Critical Literacy Project, which was also included in the 2022-26 grant proposal, meets the grant's key priorities because it is a collaboration with the University of Puerto Rico-Bayamon, an institution that serves ethnic minorities. ing.
“Puerto Rico is often not eligible for funding that is reserved for U.S. states,” Medina said. “Sometimes we don't qualify because we're not international. Thankfully, CLACS understood the uniqueness of Puerto Rico's position.
“This was like a dream come true. Not only did they provide the funding, but they also helped me conceptualize the project into what it is now. Their support was truly It was important.”
The 17 main participants in this project include in-service elementary school teachers enrolled in the Faculty of Education of the University of Puerto Rico at Bayamon, as well as recent graduates who are now early career teachers. By the end of the program, the grant will provide approximately $800 in culturally relevant books for each participant's classroom library.
In addition, Ms. Costa used the grant to enhance her book collection, which she uses to teach literacy courses to all of her students. This has already benefited her over 900 in-service teachers who are enrolled in her courses. In addition, over 1,000 people joined her in this project through webinars and her Facebook Live events.
“I think one of the most important parts of this project is helping teachers create their own libraries, but making them libraries with a purpose,” said the Critical Literacy Project. said Priscilla Perez Mercado, program coordinator. “Puerto Rican schools are not properly funded, so there is not enough money to buy books.”
Schools in other parts of the United States may also require teachers to provide their own classroom books, but Puerto Rico is in a more difficult economic situation and has a much weaker school system, Medina said. Pérez-Mercado said there are very few libraries available to students outside of school, and even those that don't stock Latin American books.
Teachers participating in the project will also develop skills in critical reading and writing with their students. Medina said this skill helps educators help students view texts through a socially conscious lens and realize that books are not neutral.
“Engaging with kids and teachers in this more complex conversation creates a lot of engagement, passion and energy because you can really see beyond the surface,” Medina said.
unraveling the past
At the beginning of the program, Medina and Costa offer teachers a variety of culturally relevant books to choose from. After reflecting on their own identities and experiences, teachers select additional books that they find personally meaningful. Through this process, one of her girlfriends, a pre-service teacher, began to identify more intentionally as Afro-Puerto Rican than before.
“This raised issues of colorism, including Puerto Rico's very traditional racial discourse that we need to 'mehoral la raza' (improve the race) by becoming whiter.” said Medina.
When this former teacher started identifying herself as a Black Puerto Rican, she thought about her childhood and how she was raised. Medina said the participant used the book “Mejoral La Raza'' to talk about himself, and that his parents told him he needed to “Mejoral La Raza.'' He said he is realizing that he doesn't have to claim to be whiter to be “La Raza.” Identity.
This experience is just one example of how teachers in the program are gaining experience in having difficult conversations about issues such as race, gender, and identity. Medina said this is another aspect that makes their program stand out.
“Through a book, we gave a workshop about what it means to not know the stories and history of the people we belong to,” Medina said. “We're from South America, Latin America, the Caribbean. So as we were researching these books and stories, participants started saying, 'I don't know anything.' I know very little about the history of all these brothers and sisters in South America and the Caribbean. Why wasn't I allowed to know this? And why was I asked to learn something else? ”
Teachers participating in this project will reflect on how colonialism has impacted their education and envision a different future for their students – one enriched by a diverse and vibrant Puerto Rican culture. I can.