<
https://www.chalkbeat.org/2023/9/29/23875602/mixteco-translation-books-oxnard-school-district-indigenous-language/>
"For the past four years, I served as superintendent of Oxnard School District,
located 30 miles up the California coast from Malibu. But unlike Malibu, most
of our school district’s 14,000 students come from low-income, Spanish-speaking
families.
Yet, not all of our Latino families consider Spanish their first or second
language. Nearly 500 families reported speaking Mixteco, an Indigenous language
of Southern Mexico, which has scores of variants. For a long time, though,
Mixteco wasn’t represented in any of our literacy materials, often making it
hard for families to read together.
Despite the prevalence of the Mixteco language, our students sometimes felt
ashamed to report their Mixteco heritage or identify with their unique language
and culture, Argelia Alvarado Zarate, one of our school district’s Mixteco
translators and community support liaisons, told the Oxnard school board last
spring.
“I was told not to say that I spoke Mixteco because it was something that we
couldn’t share with other people who weren’t from our community,” said Alvarado
Zarate. Growing up, she said, she yearned to have something in her native
language to show that speaking Mixteco was “nothing to be ashamed of.”
Looking to change this, Alvarado Zarate and others on our family and community
engagement team decided to support our Mixteco families and bring their culture
to life through storytelling. The idea to translate digital books into Mixteco
first sprouted a few years ago at a family reading night at one of our schools.
There, Norma Zarate Cruz, another one of our school district’s Mixteco
translators and community support liaisons, translated a book into Mixteco for
some of the families in attendance."
Via
The Fixer October 4, 2023:
<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/an-experiment-in-bogota-centers-care-for-caregivers/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
