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

UNITED States; MEXICO

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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