Living and Teaching Along the U.S./Mexico Border:
Midwestern Student Interns' Cultural Adaptation Experiences in Texas Schools

Verónica López Estrada
The University of Texas-Pan American

Abstract

It has been estimated that by the year 2000, only 5% of teachers will be minorities, although minorities will make up about one third of the total school enrollment in the United States (Educational Commission of the States, 1990). Through "The Inter-Campus Enhancement of Language Minority Recruitment and Bilingual Education Project," directed by Dr. Carlos Ovando of Indiana University, and working in collaboration with The University of Texas-Pan American's College of Education, select students from Indiana University spend 6 to 15 weeks teaching children and adolescents in the Rio Grande Valley schools in South Texas—over 90% who are Hispanics of Mexican American descent. This ethnographic article describes the challenges of cultural adaptation of six student interns who chose to live and teach in a small university town along the U.S./Mexico border, and it generates many questions regarding the awesome task of increasing the number of educators prepared to serve Spanish language populations of bilingual classroom settings in the United States.

Sections of the Article

Background

There is a critical shortage of well-prepared teachers nationwide who can work with the growing number of students whose first language is one other than English (Crawford, 1995; Appleblom, 1996). The larger project from which this paper stems is an active step toward countering this growing cultural mismatch, which results from the increasing diversity of our public school system. In addition, this project aims to increase the number of educators prepared to serve Spanish language populations in bilingual classroom settings in the United States. During the time of this study "The Inter-Campus Enhancement of Language Minority Recruitment and Bilingual Education Project," which originated as a partnership between The Bilingual Education Certification program at Indiana University, The University of Texas-Pan American, and the Edinburg School District in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, was in its third year of implementation. Select student interns from Indiana University spent a minimum of six weeks teaching children and adolescents—over 90% who are Hispanics of Mexican American descent—in Rio Grande Valley schools. This project explores ways that cross-cultural teaching experiences affect teaching philosophies, understandings of bilingual education, knowledge and expectations regarding targeted populations, and aspirations to teach diverse populations of children and adolescents.

Origins of the Study

My main motivation for embarking on this study was a desire to discover something important about the process of cultural immersion. I focused on a group of young interns who chose to travel to the Rio Grande Valley hoping that this experience would enable them to become better prepared teachers. I was particularly interested in addressing two significant factors likely to affect whether the participants in this sample would have positive cultural immersion experiences, both as temporary residents of the Rio Grande Valley and as full-time student teachers for 6 to 15 weeks.

First, I wanted to explore cultural consciousness. This assumes two things: (a) an individual must have an understanding of his or her own worldview, and (b) humans have the capacity to reduce their ethnocentrism (Hanvey, 1982). Second, I wanted to learn about the process of acquiring cross-cultural awareness, described by Hanvey (1982) as a process beginning with an awareness of superficial or very visible cultural traits (such as stereotypes), gradually developing into an awareness of significant and subtle cultural traits that contrast markedly with one's own, and finally, acquiring an awareness of how another culture feels from the standpoint of an insider (p. 11). This final level of cross-cultural awareness requires living in the culture, or a period of total cultural immersion.

Culturally relevant teaching was another concept I wanted to explore. A commonly practiced pedagogy among African American teachers of African American students, the idea of cultural relevancy in teaching was introduced by Ladson-Billings (1992), as "a pedagogy that empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes" (p. 382). Ladson-Billings indicates that culturally relevant teaching shares many similarities with critical pedagogy, which according to Giroux and Simon (1989):

In particular, I wanted to know whether the interns viewed culturally relevant teaching as a useful and/or necessary component of effective teaching (particularly for elementary and secondary students), and if so, I wondered to what extent they would be willing to engage in culturally relevant practice. The questions below guided my research:

Theoretical Framework

I used a pragmatic approach in designing this study. Patton (1990) describes the pragmatic paradigm as a:

I drew upon three theoretical traditions and orientations including ethnography, phenomenology, and heuristic inquiry. Each of these approaches shaped my conceptualizations and understandings of what I ultimately decided to observe, how I decided to focus, and what I considered important to ask. The ethnographer in me emerged as I described the culture of the people involved in this study. My phenomenological questions impelled me to focus on the structure and essence of experiencing cultural consciousness and cross-cultural awareness. Lastly, heuristic inquiry enabled me to include my reflections and experiences as a researcher who shares a common experience with the teaching interns from Indiana—the experience of having been a public school teacher in this cultural region of the United States, and of continuing to be personally and professionally invested in the children who live in it.

Methods and Procedures

Wolcott (1994) says "everything has the potential to be data, but nothing becomes data without the intervention of a researcher who takes note—and often makes note of some things to the exclusion of others" (p. 3). Purporting that "in the very act of constructing data out of experience, the qualitative researcher singles out some things as worthy of note and relegates others to the background," Wolcott identifies three major modes through which qualitative researchers gather data. These include "participant observation (experiencing), interviewing (enquiring), and studying materials prepared by others (examining)" (p. 10). Keeping within the tradition of qualitative research, I triangulated data several ways to contribute to its trustworthiness—by method, source, and time. Triangulation, Denzin (1989) asserts, is based on the premise that "no single method ever adequately solves the problem of rival causal factors . . . Because method reveals different aspects of empirical reality, multiple methods of observation must be employed" (p. 28). Marshall and Rossman (1995) also maintain that "designing a study in which multiple cases, multiple informants, or more than one gathering method are used can greatly strengthen the study's usefulness to other settings" (p. 144). To justify my methods decisions, I created a data-planning matrix that enabled me to link my research questions to my methods and develop a time line for acquiring data (a technique borrowed from LeCompte & Preissle, 1993).

As an ethnographic fieldworker, I came into the study recognizing that I would have to be able to think clearly about the data I was compiling. Thus, several data-analysis strategies were employed including the following: (a) writing "observational comments" in the margins of fieldnotes during participant observation; (b) writing detailed descriptive and reflective journal entries based on field visits, interviews, events, documents, and other contacts with research participants; (c) transcribing interviews; and (d) reviewing printed data, marking it up with large, descriptive preliminary categories.

Given that interview transcripts constituted the largest portion of the data, I followed Seidman's (1991) method for managing and sharing in-depth interview data especially useful. By crafting "profiles" in the participants' own words, I was able to use those words to "reflect the person's consciousness." The narrative form of the profiles allowed me to "transform this learning into telling a story" (pp. 91-92). Claiming narrative as a means of coming to know something, Seidman (1991) explains his purpose as "finding a way to display coherence in the constitutive events of a participant's experience, to share the coherence the participant has expressed, and to link the individual's experience to the social and organizational context within which he or she operates" (p. 91). While I will not present the profiles in their entirety here, I will discuss themes and patterns that emerged primarily from these data.

Participants

The main participants in this study consisted of six teacher interns from Indiana University at Bloomington. Three of these teachers were interns during the spring semester of 1998, two were interns during the autumn semester of 1998, and one worked on her internship during the spring semester of 1999. For the sake of clarity, I will refer to the first three interns who came in the spring of 1998 as Cohort I and the last three students from the fall of 1998 and spring of 1999 as Cohort II.

Of the three interns in Cohort I, two were placed in a rural school setting where most of the children are poor, Mexican American, and predominantly Spanish speaking. Many of the children who attend this school live in rural enclaves known as colonias, lacking basic amenities such as running water, electricity, sewer systems, and paved roads. Unemployment and illiteracy is prevalent among the parents of these children. Among employed parents, most work at minimum wage or below, and many are only seasonally employed as migrant farmworkers. The third intern was placed in a neighborhood school located near the homes of the most affluent and influential citizens of the town. Most of the children at this school speak English as a first language, have parents who are working professionals, and live in homes equipped with cable T.V., computers, books, central air and heat, plenty of good food, and nice clothes.

Cohort II interns were placed at the same high school, one of three in the city of Edinburg. This particular high school is located at the northern edge of town and has a large population of students who are bused from rural areas outside of Edinburg. The student demographics are somewhat different from the previously mentioned elementary schools insofar as there is a mix of students from different socioeconomic levels. Still, the students at this high school are predominantly Mexican American (many of whom are newly arrived immigrants and live in colonias or public housing), poor or in the lowest socioeconomic classes, and identified as LEP students (limited English proficient). This high school, like most in the Rio Grande Valley, has a burgeoning student population. During the1998-1999 school year, the high school had a membership of 2261 students—a total of 361 students over a 1900 student building capacity.

Cohort I consisted of three students, all female and ethnic minorities. Cohort II was also made up of three students, two females and one male, and all were Anglo-American. The following charts provide sketchy descriptions of each intern. Please note that all names hereafter are pseudonyms.

TABLE 1: Cohort I (Descriptors)

 

Isabel Martinez	Linda Adams	Jennifer Jimenez
Female	Female	Female
Mexican American	African American	Puerto Rican American
Immigrant	Midwestern	Midwestern
Born in Mexico	Born in Indiana	Born in Indiana
Lived in U.S. from age 5 to age 10, and again from age 15 to date	Raised in Indiana	Raised in Indiana
Middle child of three children	Eldest of two children	Youngest of three children
Mother is a homemaker, father is sole provider	Mother and father are teachers	Mother is a teacher, father is an insurance salesman
Attended U.S. and Mexican schools	Attended U.S. schools	Attended U.S. schools
22 years old	24 years old	22 years old
Elementary Education major; first-generation college student	Master's student in Spanish	Elementary Education major; second-generation college student
Bilingual/Bicultural Studies minor	Writing Master's thesis at time of study	Bilingual/Bicultural Studies minor
Studied Spanish in Mexico during middle school years	Never studied Spanish in country other than U.S.	Never studied Spanish in country other than U.S.
15-week internship	6-week internship	15-week internship

TABLE 2: Cohort II (Descriptors)

Sarah McNeal	Michael Chase	Moira Steinam
Female	Male	Female
Anglo American	Anglo American	Anglo American
Eastern	Midwestern	Midwestern
Born and raised in Pennsylvania	Born and raised in Indiana	Born and raised in Missouri
Second-born of four children	Youngest of three siblings	Eldest of three siblings
Divorced parents, both happily remarried; mother is a computer consultant, father is an attorney	Mother is a nurse, father is a business executive	Mother and father are business executives
Third-generation college student	Third-generation college student	Third-generation college student
22 years old	22 years old	22 years old
Spanish major	Spanish major	Spanish major
Bilingual/Bicultural Studies minor	Bilingual/Bicultural Studies minor	Bilingual/Bicultural Studies minor
Traveled and studied Spanish in Spain for a year	Traveled and studied Spanish in Spain for a year	Traveled and studied Spanish in Spain for a year
15-week internship	15-week internship	15-week internship

Data Analysis: Emerging Themes

When I realized that the first Indiana group consisted of three women of color, I wondered whether this factor would make a difference in their ability to achieve cross-cultural awareness; specifically, whether cross-cultural awareness would be heightened as a result of their own experiences and subject positions as women and as ethnic and/or racial minorities. Soon after, when the second cohort arrived, I wondered whether there would be a considerable difference in this group's capacity to achieve cross-cultural awareness, considering their subject positions as Anglo-Americans who occupy a privileged position in U.S. society. In what follows, major themes that emerged from this study are identified and discussed.

Theme 1: Shifting between Levels of Cross-Cultural Awareness

From the outset of this project, it was clear that the women making up the first cohort (Isabel, Linda, and Jennifer) had developed a perspective consciousness. This is the first dimension of Hanvey's (1982) concept of an attainable global perspective. He describes perspective consciousness as,

Cross-cultural awareness is "an awareness of the diversity of ideas and practices to be found in human societies around the world, of how such ideas and practices compare, and including some limited recognition of how the ideas and ways of one's own society might be viewed from other vantage points" (Hanvey, 1982, p. 8). There are four levels of cross-cultural awareness as described by Hanvey. Each intern in Cohort I and Cohort II surpassed the first level, or "an awareness of superficial or very visible cultural traits: stereotypes." There was evidence that all interns in this study were able to move to Level II and Level III, cross-cultural awareness, or "an awareness of significant and subtle cultural traits that contrasted markedly with one's own" (Hanvey, 1982, p. 11).

Level II is different from Level III only in terms of mode and interpretation. More specifically, the mode for Level II is a cultural conflict situation and the interpretation of it is that it is frustrating or irrational for an outsider looking in. In Level III, the outsider is able to analyze these cultural traits intellectually and can interpret these differences cognitively as believable. Among Cohort I interns, for instance, Isabel noted that people from the Rio Grande Valley often code-switch quite naturally and regularly and many of the men in this region share a rather unique style of dress. After an initial state of culture shock, exhibited in the following observation, she was able to conceive of these peculiarities as cultural traits, rather than strange or exotic customs. Most importantly, Isabel did not judge these cultural practices as deficient or unfavorable in any way.

Linda commented on people's "friendliness," their typical way of travelling "from town to town," and her students' general tendency to be "more polite than I think a lot of my students in Indiana," while Jennifer pointed out linguistic differences ("The slang is different"), Spanish music preferences ("Not too many people listen to norteña up north"), and traditional Mexican American female roles ("It's very traditional down here, where women need to be home and shouldn't be out past a certain time . . . As far as the campus setting for the colleges, they are very strict on the campus here, and Indiana's not as strict as far as women coming and going . . . I know they hold more like, traditional—the old way, down here.").

By contrast, members of Cohort II were a little less accepting and more likely to be irritated by cultural traits that differed from their own. They often identified aspects of the Mexican American culture that bothered them, and they fluctuated from Levels I, II, and III more so than Cohort I. The following are some examples of this pattern of fluctuating between levels of cross-cultural awareness from Cohort II.

Despite the fact that all six of the participants in this study shared a willingness to try new things, an openness to learning something about a different culture from members of that culture, a capacity to be critical and reflective thinkers, and a working vocabulary in Spanish, the first group of students was able to achieve cross-cultural awareness at the ultimate level, whereas the second group was not able to do so. In other words, Level IV of Hanvey's scale, or "the awareness of how another culture feels from the standpoint of the insider," was evident only among the first group of interns. A good example is found in Jennifer's reflections about daily challenges and demands of being a teacher in South Texas:

The observations shared by Cohort II, by contrast, did not show their ability to identify with or an effort to try to understand aspects of Valley culture. Instead, they revealed specific attitudes and beliefs of White culture in the United States.

Psychologist Judy Katz (1985) identifies nine societal dimensions that are manifestations of White culture. Two of these—rugged individualism and time—are evident in some of Cohort II's comments above (cited in Helms, 1992). For example, Moira's belief in rugged individualism is evident in her perceptions that "there are no single people in the Valley" and that people "don't have to leave their comfort zone" to survive in the Valley. These comments reveal her beliefs that "people should take care of themselves" and that "individual achievement is most valued"(cited in Helms, 1992). Sarah's commentary also reflects White culture's societal views about time, which is perceived as a quantity. In other words, people are expected to "save time, spend time, and perform on time." Although there are obviously people who reside in the Lower Rio Grande Valley that share Sarah's perspective, many other residents are more flexible in their perspective of time and this quality, perhaps, emits a more socially oriented culture than a culture that comes across as "rude or mean" as Michael describes people from the Midwest.

In sum, a dramatic difference in levels or degrees of cross-cultural awareness was evident between students in Cohort I and Cohort II. Whereas the first cadre of students quickly became invested in their school cultures and were able to identify with the daily challenges, trials, and rewards experienced by their cooperating teachers, the second group of students was not as successful. As time passed, Cohort II became less open, and therefore, less able, to achieve cross-cultural awareness. At some points during their internships, members of Cohort II openly showed their apathy regarding their experiences with students, cooperating teachers, and administrators. In fact, one could argue their general unhappiness with their assigned cooperating teachers and some aspects of the school system affected their acquisition of cross-cultural awareness. Their failure to identify with their respective cooperating teachers' teaching philosophies, practices, and attitudes contributed to their inability to become invested in their school cultures. Thus, they did not achieve an "awareness of how another culture feels from the standpoint of the insider," or total cross-cultural awareness (Hanvey, 1982).

Specifically, Michael, Sarah, and Moira all mentioned they didn't see much good teaching in their schools. Michael's main grievance was that his cooperating teacher at the high school was unorganized and too unstructured. Sarah complained about her cooperating teacher's teacher-centered pedagogical style and her expectation that Sarah teach in the same manner. Finally, Moira was most upset about teaching her AP (Advanced Placement) students "to the test" as per her cooperating teacher's expectations. All three Cohort II interns were disappointed with what they viewed as a watered-down curriculum, low teacher expectations of students, and a lack of culturally relevant teaching as described by Ladson-Billings (1992). What follows is a commentary by Moira revealing the general frustration echoed by Cohort II:

The group's experiences at the high school were typical of many beginning teachers insofar as these participants had issues with their respective cooperating teachers' philosophies, methods of instruction, and general beliefs about good teaching—issues they did not feel comfortable addressing to them. The artificial nature of student teaching where one assumes the roles and responsibilities of a full-time teacher, yet is reminded by the cooperating teachers and students time and time again that one is not "the real teacher," frustrated Moira, Michael, and Sarah. They had to deal with a system quite unlike that of their peers at the elementary schools. For example, a school day that is fragmented into 50 minute class periods; teaching Spanish as an elective (considered by many as "an easy A") as opposed to teaching curriculum for bilingual student populations in transitional programs or teaching Spanish as required curriculum; dealing with adolescents who enjoyed testing their limits, as opposed to children who aim to please their teachers; and finally, dealing with the fact that they were not that much older than the adolescents they were teaching, and their students often viewed them as peers rather than as adults.

Added to this was the fact that of their cooperating teachers had mentor training and some of them displaced of their own job pressures (such as obtaining high test scores) to their student teachers. By contrast, Cohort I did not have to deal with these obstacles in their teaching and were more likely to identify with their cooperating teachers. Hence, identifying with their respective cooperating teachers facilitated insider perspectives.

Theme 2: Varied Degrees of Comfort and Ease

Although interns in both cohorts shared common characteristics that may contribute to being at ease in a different cultural region such as The Rio Grande Valley, such as their fluency in Spanish and their willingness to immerse themselves in a culture other than their own by living with/in it for a sustained period of time, Cohort I described feeling "comfortable" and "welcomed" in this setting, whereas Cohort II did not. For example, Linda (an African American woman) shared her experience of being in an environment that is predominantly Latino American for the first time:

Lugones (1990) contends that one way of being "at ease" in a "world" is to be a fluent speaker in it. Yet, while Linda, Jenny, and Isabel's fluency in Spanish worked to facilitate their general ease in the worlds of their classrooms, the Rio Grande Valley, San Antonio, Corpus Cristi, South Padre Island, and the Mexican towns and cities of Nuevo Progreso, Reynosa, and Monterey, Cohort II interns were not as positively affected. They agreed that people were generally very friendly and nice; however, they felt uneasy during their time as temporary residents of this region. The regional dialect known as "Spanglish" or "Tex-Mex" contributed to their discomfort to the extent that they became critical about Valley natives not knowing how to speak "correct Spanish" or "correct English." Tex-Mex or Spanglish, whatever one prefers to call the mixing of English and Spanish in everyday speech, was the cause of "unease in the world" because it didn't resemble the Spanish they learned in textbooks, Spanish classes, or while studying and traveling in Spain. Perhaps for the first time in their lives, Michael, Moira, and Sarah were living by other people's "majority" rules and they found it difficult. Another factor adding to their discomfort was their common perception of "being watched" or "stared at" because they did not physically resemble the majority of people that reside in The Rio Grande Valley:

Cohort II's reflections are significant here. In the "world" of the Rio Grande Valley, quite unlike the "world" of Spain, these interns experienced being "the Other" so-to-speak for the very first time in their lives. This was the first and only time where their physical attributes and characteristics were not seen or regarded as "necessarily a good thing" as Moira poignantly states. Being the minority, "the other," the exotic, the stranger, the suspicious outsider—this makes a person uncomfortable and uneasy. In this particular case, it also pushes one to interrogate one's position of privilege as a White person as Moira does in the following:

Moira's awareness of her own racialized identity is significant in several ways. First, by positioning herself as a "multicultural intellectualist"(Titone, 2000)—or a White person who has learned to conceptualize "the Other" as a cultural being and to respect and to affirm "them" (i.e., "always to favor the minority and the underdog"), Moira reveals that cognitively or intellectually, she is aware of her White privilege. Second, her lived experience as a racial minority in the Rio Grande Valley has helped her to see something she may not have otherwise noticed before—segregation among White students and students of Mexican descent. And finally, Moira's realization that most people of Mexican descent from this region do not aspire to an European aesthetic, that people generally do not "cut, dye, and starve themselves to resemble the European ideal of beauty"(Katz, 1985), and that people of Mexican descent generally do not aspire to speak perfectly fluent English and/or perfectly fluent Spanish, pushes her to examine her "Whiteness" as also being racialized. As a White non-native of this area she, along with the others in Cohort II, could not help but feel confused, uncertain, perhaps even fearful, as she became conscious of the racialization of her white identity and how that developing awareness altered her perceptions of her position as a future White teacher of diverse students.

Theme 3: Exhibitions of Play to Fear of Identity Loss

In her description of cross-cultural awareness, Lugones (1990) provides a useful framework for analysis. She says it is like "travelling through worlds," which requires one to "shift from being one person to being a different person":

Contending that "those of us who are `world'-travellers have the distinct experience of being different in different worlds and ourselves in them," (p. 396), Lugones cautions that we cannot be world-travellers without having the right attitude. That is, a playful attitude or "an openness to being a fool, which is a combination of not worrying about competence, not being self-important, not taking norms as sacred and finding ambiguity and double edges as a source of wisdom and delight" (pp. 400-401).

Linda (African-American intern) demonstrated her playfulness on numerous occasions during her internship. For example, her tendency to feel "self-conscious" about speaking Spanish quickly diminished as she encountered people mixing English and Spanish phrases in everyday conversation. This common practice among Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley encouraged her to be playful, to take risks. She began to speak Spanish to children when she worked with them individually and later in small groups. This playful attitude seemed to facilitate her cross-cultural awareness. Other examples of Linda's playfulness included her willingness to dance to Spanish music at social gatherings (quinceñeras and dance clubs in Mexico) even though she didn't know all the steps, and encouraging children to speak in their native language as a means of transitioning to English despite the fact that some of their Spanish vocabulary was different from the Castilian Spanish she learned throughout her schooling.

Isabel (Mexican-American intern), whose "nomadic" upbringing consisted of constant travelling between multiple "worlds" (i.e., homes, schools, countries), attributed her prior "unease" with living in the United States (the second time she moved here) to her lack of fluency in English. By having a playful attitude, Isabel was able to finally "get used to being in East Chicago again. That's when I learned to be literally comfortable with my English," whereas before, "I wasn't really happy, not to the level that everyone thought" (italics, my emphasis).

These women's willingness to embrace ambiguity, or in Gloria Anzaldua's (1987) words, "to develop a tolerance for ambiguity" pushed forward their cross-cultural understanding. By contrast, the second group of interns was less willing to develop a sense of play or to adapt to the new culture in this Texas-Mexico border region. The following are responses to the question: "Would you consider moving to Texas, to the Rio Grande Valley in particular, and starting your teaching career here?"

By contrast, Cohort I's reactions to the same question exhibited a more "playful" attitude as described by Lugones (1990).

Theme 4: Cultural Relevancy: Teaching is Believing

Cultural relevancy teaching was described to each of the interns as having three propositions: (1) Students must experience academic success, (2) Students must develop and/or maintain cultural competence (the student's culture is a vehicle for learning); and (3) Students must develop a critical consciousness through which they challenge the status quo of the current social order (Ladson-Billings, 1992). All six interns believed that it was important to teach within this perspective. Members of Cohort I were able to address the three propositions of culturally relevant teaching to some extent. In particular, each intern attempted to find ways to allow students to experience academic success and to develop and maintain cultural competence (using culture/language as a vehicle for learning). They also believed that elementary students could and should develop a critical consciousness through which they could challenge the status quo of the current social order.

For instance, Linda shared a story about a little girl in her 2^nd grade bilingual education class that reflects her commitment to ensuring that all of her students experience success:

Similarly, Jennifer elaborated on her ideas about how she taught cultural relevancy in her classroom. Her example reveals her deep understanding of teaching in this perspective:

The belief that developing a critical consciousness was also evident in Isabel's teaching:

Despite the fact that cultural relevancy teaching was described and defined in the same way to all participants in the study, and that all six case study participants claimed to agree that culturally relevant teaching was important, transcripts reveal that two of three members of Cohort II had a limited understanding of this type of pedagogy.

Significantly, there was evidence that members of Cohort II who were in secondary school settings did teach in ways that reflected cultural relevancy. Their assignments included teaching Spanish to monolingual students and teaching ESL to LEP students; therefore, Propositions 1 and 2 were quite evident in their teaching. Unfortunately, Proposition 3, or developing a critical consciousness to challenge the status quo of the current social order, was not evident partly because all three interns had mentor teachers who did not allow them the freedom to establish this type of dialogue with their school-age students in their respective secondary classes.

Commentary

Although I expected that participants would have varying levels of cultural awareness coming into the study, and that ethnicity would factor into the process of achieving cross-cultural awareness, I did not anticipate that the interns would be so reflective of their racialized identities in a diverse educational and societal context such as the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. Similarly, I did not foresee the impact that living in a society that is distinctly different from one's own, where one suddenly becomes aware of himself or herself as "a minority," would have for the White students in this study. Nor could I begin to imagine the extent to which participants' perceptions of themselves in such a different "world" would influence personal and professional aspirations to teach diverse populations of children and adolescents in their world.

In the span of this article, I have described the extent to which the interns in this sample exhibited cultural consciousness and cross-cultural awareness. In addition, I have illustrated various understandings and examples of culturally relevant teaching, as well as evidence of social, cultural, linguistic, and professional adjustments in the participants' respective schools and communities. In what remains, I address the final question guiding this project: To what extent are the interns' teaching philosophies, understandings of bilingual education, knowledge and expectations regarding Hispanic students, and aspirations to teach diverse populations of children and adolescents, changing as a result of their cultural immersion experiences?

Several patterns emerging from the study that address the final research question are listed and discussed below. It is important to note that they are not meant to be generalized to other populations of student teachers; they are only meant to be generalized internally (Maxwell, 1996) and naturally (Stake, 1995). Moreover, they intend to stress the very real and urgent need for more scholarly research that addresses the problem of preparing teachers to teach school-age children whose native language is other than English. As Alley and Jung (1995) point out in their article entitled "Preparing Teachers for the 21^st Century,"

Pattern 1. Cultural immersion experiences affect student teachers' teaching philosophies, understandings of bilingual education, knowledge and expectations regarding Hispanic students, and aspirations to teach diverse populations of children and adolescents.

Commentary: Given the time limitation of this study, it became evident that all six participants' teaching philosophies were affected as they began to see the very difficult and very real challenges that Valley teachers face—namely, (1) overcrowded schools due to a burgeoning immigrant population of students of Mexican descent that is poor and limited English proficient; (2) a large percentage of "at-risk" students, who, although capable, often resist learning in school due to low teacher expectations, a history of poor academic performance, cultural conflicts or inconsistencies between home and school cultures, parental and peer pressure, "self-fulfilling prophecy," "learned helplessness," among other factors; and (3) a state-mandated accountability system that is a major source of stress for students, teachers, principals, and parents (e.g., the TAAS, or Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, a standardized norm-referenced test that is used in decisions regarding placement and promotion).

Members of Cohort I were placed in transitional Bilingual Education programs which deepened their understanding and awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of this type of bilingual education program. Cohort II, however, was placed in ESL and Spanish classes where they mostly dealt with ESL issues. They consistently shared their concern that most of the students in their classrooms had limited proficiency in English and Spanish and that for them to be able to be more effective as teachers of diverse students, their students should first be literate in their native language. Frequently, this group shared feelings of being "overwhelmed" with the varying levels of language and literacy proficiencies among students in their classes and their own lack of teaching experience in accommodating these differences. The knowledge and expectations that both cohorts had coming into the study were, thus, challenged and altered once they assumed full-time student teaching responsibilities. Aspirations to teach diverse populations of students and adolescents outside Indiana and other Midwestern states changed for half of the participants (all three members of Cohort II)—a direct result of their 6-15 week cultural immersion experience in South Texas.

Pattern 2. Being bicultural promotes an "insider" perspective that makes it easier to acquire cross-cultural awareness.

Commentary: This pattern emerged as it became clear that Cohort I (made up of three bicultural individuals) had an easier time adjusting to the area and achieving cross-cultural awareness. As bicultural individuals, sharing a subject position of "ethnic minority" in the United States, and as women of color, Linda, Isabel, and Jennifer had the advantage of having somewhat of an "insider" perspective insofar as they, along with most Valley natives, do things that Hispanic Valley natives also do such as codeswitching in everyday speech (i.e., switching back and forth from American Standard English to Spanish in Isabel's case, Puerto Rican Spanish in Jennifer's case, and Black English in Linda's case).

This is a typical practice that reveals pride and a sense of belonging to a cultural group while also having a strong sense of identity as "Americans." For minority groups in the United States, racial and ethnic identities are situated and multiple, in a constant state of flux, a constant state of negotiation and renegotiation. Members of the dominant culture are not accustomed to this process that has become second nature to minority groups in this country. In terms of achieving cross-cultural awareness at the ultimate level in Hanvey's scale (1982); that is, to have an awareness of significant and subtle cultural traits that contrast markedly with one's own and to be able to analyze these cultural traits intellectually and interpret cultural differences cognitively as believable (p. 11), sharing aspects of the subject position of racial and/or ethnic minority contributed to the group's ability to gain cross-cultural awareness in a considerably short period of time.

Anzaldua's (1990) notion of la conciencia de las mestiza or a new mestiza consciousness is a helpful depiction of the internal or psychological bordercrossing experience that bicultural people share. Anzaldua (1990) explains that la mestiza, "a product of the transfer of the cultural and spiritual values of one group to another," has learned to cope by being flexible and developing a tolerance for ambiguity:

The women in Cohort I clearly had a new mestiza consciousness and were thus able to adjust to cultural intricacies and societal dimensions in the "world" of the Rio Grande Valley (e.g., code-switching, more conservative views regarding the roles of teachers, women, family members, school policies, practices, procedures, and so on), whereas members of Cohort II were only beginning to explore their racialized identities as a result of their student teaching internship in South Texas.

Pattern 3. White students have a more difficult time adapting to societal dimensions when immersed in a culture that is considerably different from their own.

Commentary: For Moira, living in the Valley was "the most difficult experience" she had ever had because it meant "mold[ing] [her] views to fit the majority culture" and "losing a part of [herself] to fit in with everyone else." Sarah admitted that "the Valley itself" would keep her from beginning her career here, while Michael described the possibility of living here permanently as "the thing that scares me." What is it about this region in the United States that is so scary and even more foreign than a foreign country in the eyes of these students? Why is it, in fact, easier to adjust to living in Spain than it is to live in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas? Moira suggested the following.

This uncomfortable feeling, a result of increased diversity, is described as a stressor in today's teaching landscape by Gmelch and Parkay (1995) who contend that the reality of teaching today is that "some teachers may experience the free-floating anxiety known as culture shock as they address the diverse needs of students who come from cultural backgrounds different from theirs" (p. 49). They state that even as our nation's student population is becoming more diverse, the teaching force continues to be primarily Anglo-European American and there is an alarming discontinuity between our nation's student and teaching populations.

The Rio Grande Valley, where Mexican American enrollments in most public schools are typically well above 80%, and the population as a whole is 90% Hispanic (Texas State Data Center, 1998), proved to be somewhat of a stressful setting for Cohort II. This pattern among Cohort II emphasizes the drastic need for multicultural education for all students as conceptualized by proponents such as Sonia Nieto, Joe Kincheloe, Shirley Steinberg, Peter McLaren, Carl Grant, Christine Sleeter, Michael Apple, and others. Nieto (2000) describes this broader conceptualization of multicultural education and stresses its significance for European American, or White, students in the following noteworthy quote:

Pattern 4. Cooperating teachers can play a key role in facilitating insider perspectives and cross-cultural awareness for student teachers by being explicit about aspects of the culture of the school and the community.

Commentary: This pattern led me back to Delpit's (1988) article, "The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People's Children." In particular, I remembered Delpit's discussion of the five aspects of power within the context of the debate over skills versus process approaches to literacy development and her fourth aspect in particular which states, "If you are not already a participant in the culture of power, being told explicitly the rules of that culture makes acquiring power easier." Her explanation is noteworthy:

Although Delpit is writing about issues of power within educational contexts, her example still emphasizes a good point—that one must be willing to learn about another culture from members of that culture but they must first respect its beliefs, rules, customs, and traditions. Cooperating teachers of members of Cohort I made time to get to know the interns outside the classroom. The young women were invited to their homes, met their families, attended quinceñearas, weddings, birthday parties, and barbecues. Some of them traveled to Mexico with their cooperating teachers and socialized on weekends with other teachers from their schools. Their cooperating teachers were cultural informants who truly facilitated the acquisition of cross-cultural awareness for the interns in Cohort I. They understood the significance of their role as not only as cooperating teachers, but as mentors, and they took that role seriously by establishing strong relationships with them as fellow colleagues in the teaching profession.

Cooperating teachers of Cohort II interns did not establish mentoring relationships and collegial friendships with their student teachers to the same extent as Cohort I cooperating teachers. Observational fieldnotes and interview data revealed common problems in the professional relationships among the interns and their cooperating teachers including the following: (1) An uncertainty regarding the roles and responsibilities of being a student teacher and a cooperating teacher that led to communication break-downs; (2) A lack of consistent communication between cooperating teachers and interns (i.e., a regular time set aside on a daily basis for giving constructive feedback to the interns regarding their teaching performance, discussing classroom management systems, curriculum development, familiarization of managerial tasks, and other aspects of teaching; (3) A general reluctance on the part of cooperating teachers to allow student teachers to assume full-time teaching responsibilities with supervision for a minimum of five full weeks; and (4) The interns' tendencies to let differing personalities, work styles, and teaching philosophies get in the way of the job of learning from the cooperating teachers. Given the problems interns had with cooperating teachers, they tended to isolate themselves in many ways throughout their internships. For example, they would often drive home during lunchtime rather than have lunch with teachers at school; they would not volunteer to help the cooperating teachers tutor students before or after school; they rarely participated in extracurricular activities which would have enabled them to get to know students and cooperating teachers in a different setting; and finally, they chose not to make more concerted efforts to really get to know more about life in the Rio Grande Valley by getting more involved with people from the area. Ultimately, problems with relationships with cooperating teachers played a major role in the limited levels of cross-cultural awareness acquisition that resulted among members of Cohort II.

Pattern 5. Attributes such as "playfulness "and "world-traveling" as described by Lugones (1992) facilitate cross-cultural awareness.

Commentary: Members of Cohort I shared similar personal attributes that contributed to their ability to achieve cross-cultural awareness in a very short period of time. Among these was their ability to be "playful" and their willingness to "world-travel." Lugones (1990) says that "most of us who are outside the mainstream U.S. construction or organization of life are `world-travellers' as a matter of necessity and of survival" (italics mine, p. 396).

When one steps out of their comfort zone or travels to a different "world," one begins to have the potential for cross-cultural awareness beyond a certain superficial level. This is referred to by Lugones as "travelling" or "the shift from being one person to being a different person." It requires a "playful" attitude—one that "includes uncertainty, but in this case the uncertainty is an openness to surprise." Lugones's (1990) concept of play emphasizes "a particular metaphysical attitude that does not expect the world to be neatly packaged, ruly." It is a world where "we are not self-important, we are not fixed in particular constructions of ourselves, which is part of saying that we are open to self-construction." She further explains:

Linda, Jennifer, and Isabel consistently demonstrated "playful" attitudes and facility with "world-travelling" and were able to achieve cross-cultural awareness in a very short period of time, whereas Michael, Sarah, and Moira clearly had difficulty with aspects of their cultural immersion experience and were unable to get that far. Moira's question lingers on:

Hanvey's (1982) longitudinal acculturation studies with American Peace Corps volunteers in the Philippines indicates that the amount of time spent with members of a different culture is not the only major factor for obtaining cross-cultural awareness.

Hanvey (1982) contends that "Whites do not achieve such an awareness of minority world-views" when the missing elements of "respect and participation" are absent.

Conclusion

As is often the case with ethnographic case studies, particularly those designed to be heuristic in nature, this study may leave readers with more questions than answers. The most important question for me stems from the main purpose of "The Inter-Campus Enhancement of Language Minority Recruitment and Bilingual Education Project." That is, to what extent will this project meet its main goal of increasing the number of educators prepared to serve Spanish language populations of bilingual classroom settings in the United States?

An attempt to answer that question leads me to develop more questions such as the following: What exactly is involved in the task of preparing students from midwestern settings (who are mostly White, middle-class students) to teach in heavily Hispanic populated southern states along the Texas-Mexico border? How can teacher preparation colleges best prepare future teachers of culturally and linguistically diverse students? What kinds of courses need to be developed for these preservice teachers and what do they need to cover? To what extent should cultural relevancy pedagogy be a curricular goal? To what extent should multicultural courses include an ethnic studies component that interrogates the racialization of the White race? Are similar university/school partnerships adequately training cooperating teachers to support and mentor university interns from midwestern and northern states? If so, how do these programs prepare teachers to mentor students who are dealing with various degrees of culture shock and identity issues? These are just some of the questions that underscore the need for more research in this crucial area of educational scholarship.

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