LATINO-HISPANIC STUDENT VOICES AND SELF-REPRESENTATION THROUGH DIGITAL STORYTELLING

Abstract

Forty percent of Portuguese and Spanish speaking students in Toronto do not complete high school (Brown, 2006). This daunting statistic motivated Pueblito Canada, a Toronto-based Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) committed to Latino-Hispanic1 children, to initiate collaboration with the local Hispanic Development Council, a community activist agency, and the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB). The three partners developed a project that engaged Latino-Hispanic students in telling their own stories of schooling. The project’s Participatory Action research (PAR) approach encompassed a series of workshops in which participating students learned the techniques of storytelling and then narrated their everyday experiences of schooling. With the support of a videographer, students moved from documenting their stories through workshops focused on their writing to producing digital stories they had authored. This article considers the emancipatory processes that facilitated students’ coming to voice. Additionally, the silences that contributed to their subjugation in the school system are problematized. Simultaneously, the participating teachers, moved by these stories as they emerged, engaged in a series of workshops that the Pueblito team called “Becoming Cultural Allies” and developed a curriculum enriching toolkit designed to provide classroom materials that reflected the historical and cultural background of their Latino-Hispanic students.