Cultural Modeling: Leveraging Bilingual Skills For School Paraphrasing Tasks

co-authored with Jennifer Reynolds

In this article, the authors use and further elaborate a cultural modeling framework to juxtapose two distinct yet analogous
literacy practices:
1. The out-of-school practice of translating and interpreting across languages, or “para-phrasing”
2. The cross-disciplinary and school-based practice of paraphrasing or summarizing written texts
Data are from field notes based on two years of ethnographic observations conducted in the homes and classrooms of
18 fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-grade students; the students’journals about their translation experiences; focus group
discussions with the students; audiotapes of para-phrasing interactions that involved written text; interviews with the
students’teachers; and audiotaped process-focused literacy assessments that provided insights on how children read
and interpreted two different kinds of texts, putting both in their own words. Through grounded theorizing, the authors first
analyze the skills involved in the everyday para-phrasing or translation activities performed by immigrant youth. They then
identify analogues between these skills and those required for practices of translation, interpretation, and paraphrasing
as they are enacted across disciplines and in an array of discourse practices. Finally, they examine classroom practices
to identify points of leverage between home and school practices. The authors contribute to the elaboration of the cultural
modeling framework by exploring a set of language and literacy practices that frequently occurs in immigrant
communities and yet has been little explored to date, and by considering how schools can better engage the skills of
bilingual youths.

“It’s Just Something You Do to Help Your Family:” The Development of Immigrant Youth Through Relationships and Responsibilities.

co-authored with Lisa Dorner and Rosa Jimenez

This article examines how immigrant adolescent development is shaped by the
cultural and linguistic practice of language brokering. Framed by theories on
interdependent/independent developmental scripts, the changing experiences
and views of 12 Latino/a children of U.S. immigrants over 5 years were analyzed.
It was found that translating is a relational, interdependent activity in
which adolescents both help and receive help from family members. As adolescents,
they extend this helping orientation beyond their household, but in
these public spaces, they sometimes meet up with other developmental scripts.
This article’s examination of brokering’s effects on immigrant adolescence
leads to the discussion that one must consider the manner in which all adolescents
and parents are negotiating independent and interdependent worlds.

The construction of moral and social identity in 3 immigrant children’s narratives-in-translation

co-authored with Inmaculada García Sánchez

In Other Words: Translating or "Para-Phrasing" as a Family Literacy Practice in Immigrant Households

co-authored with Jennifer Reynolds, Lisa Dorner and María Meza

"It's Just One of Those Things You Do to Help Your Family:" Language Brokering and the Development of Immigrant Adolescents

co-authored with Lisa Dorner and Rosa Jimenez

Accessing Assets: Immigrant Youth's Work as Family Translators or "Para-Phrasers"

co-authored with Lisa Dorner and Lucila Pulido

Drawing on a mixed-method program of research including the survey responses of 236 Spanish-speaking
children, as well as extensive interviews, participant observation, and audioraped data gathered in four different
communities, we unpack the ways in which bilingual youth use their knowledge of English and GT.S.cultural/
institutional practices to speak, listen, read, write, and do things for their immigrant parents, mostly from Mexico.
We demonstrate how immigrant children's work as translators and interpreters opens families' access to resources,
knowledge, and information in a wide range of domains: educational, medical/health, commercial, legal/state.
financiallen~ployment, housing/residential, and culturallentertainment. In discussing the realm of each
domain, we consider how negotiations both within the family and between the family and the public sphere are
variously shaped by power relations. We consider how youth's social positions as children, and as children of
immigrants, may constrain their ability to access certain institutionalgoods, at the same time as we demonstrate
their active and powerful involvement in family decision-making processes both inside and outside the home.

Year-Round Schools and the Politics of Time

co-authored with Barrie Thorne

This ethnographic study explores the politics of time in a multitrack, "year-round" school in inner-city Los Angeles. We analyze different types and experiences of time within the school and time collisions across institutions in this densely populated immigrant community. Viewing time as a contested commodity, we examine the politics behind the presumed impartiality of the clock and calendar. The school's year-round schedule is especially problematic, involving multiple tracks with lengthened days and a shortened school year. We show how issues of educational equity go to the core of debates over alternative school schedules.