This article focuses on the lived experiences of multilingual writing teachers and presents what we, the authors, call “A Rhetoric of Accent Fear,” which introduces accent fear as a form of linguistic racism. Through this framework, we reflect on our stories of accent fear as multilingual writing teachers; we practice forming relational connections across our experiences; and we use this relational connection to offer strategies for other multilingual rhetoric and writing scholars and teachers to navigate these sites of tension and in turn, challenge students’ accent fears.

In this collaboratively composed article, we both theorize and dramatize the act of paying attention to scalar dynamics. In particular, we draw on the concept of transacting scales in order to complicate how “ethics” materialize in technical and professional communication (TPC). Because ethics materialize in relation to particular contexts and events, in the second half of this article, we show affordances of our approach for TPC through case studies animated by personal stories. We hope this will encourage readers to stay attuned to the particularities of embodied experiences as we theorize with unwieldy complex systems. Our cases speak to international student enrollment, matriculation, and retention in TPC programs and also general education TPC pedagogy.

Located in Austin, TX, Latinitas describes itself as one of the only bilingual tech organizations in the U.S. and prides itself for creating the first digital magazine made for and by Latina youth. In 2002, Latinitas was developed as a project by a group of undergraduate students in a Latinos in Media course at the University of Texas at Austin.  Founders of Latinitas saw a need for more representation and stories by Latinas. Prior to the organization receiving its non-profit status, the organization ran as a student-led group. Since 2003, the organization has grown and adapted to the needs of the community and has provided an assortment of writing, leadership, tech, STEM, and college preparation workshops for Latina youth in middle school and high school. Through these workshops and the online magazine, “Latinas discover their voice and develop media skills while building a solid foundation for their future” (Donelly 2017). In addition to serving 3,000 girls annually through a variety of workshops, their online magazine continues to be a key tool for sharing multimedia content that represent the evolving digital landscape and what it means to be a Latina[1]. The work by the magazine’s editors and writers support and circulate the organizational identity[2] of Latinitas. In this article, we focus on how Latinitas, as a Latinx[3] organization, challenges the deficit perspective of Latina youth while trying to keep up with a changing digital landscape.

During the Summer 2019 semester, Writing & Rhetoric students at Florida International University, a public Hispanic-Serving Institution in Miami, Florida, engaged with Muted Group Theory to both understand and challenge the silencing of immigrant voices. Specifically, the FIU students, the majority of whom identified as Hispanic, created video messages for a local third grade class predominantly made up of immigrant students. The videos spotlight the students’ personal experiences with immigration, incorporate multiple languages, and explore themes such as cultural diversity and welcoming immigrant students into the classroom. Following the creation of the videos, the college students participated in a video chat with the third graders. This article offers an overview of the video project, student reflections, and guidelines for future pedagogical implementation. In addition, I reflect on the importance of pedagogical flexibility in the classroom and the ways in which multilingualism can expand our understanding of multimodality.

This paper traces strategies and successes—for both students and community partners—in the implementation of service learning within my English 353: Chicana/oLatina/o Literature classes at California State University Channel Islands. In order to bridge university culture and the farmworker communities that work and live alongside the university, in consultation with community partners, we created bilingual reading circles where students went in to read and discuss works of Chicana/o literature with residents in low-income farmworker housing. Using a critical framework of Freirian pedagogical practice in the classroom and in the community, I explore how first-generation Latina/o students’ participation in service-learning enabled them to counter a cultural deficit model of thinking about farmworkers. In the process, students learned how to value their own rich cultural wealth and the familial assets they bring to the university and society as a whole.

Review of Brokering Tareas: Mexican Immigrant Families Translanguaging Homework Literacies (2017a) and Community Literacies en Confianza: Learning from Bilingual After-School Programs (2017b) by Steven Alvarez.

This study examines the intersection of the “bootstraps” American Dream1 and the América envisioned by four first-generation U.S. Latinx sixth graders in an urban English Language Learners class. The students participated in a joint Photovoice writing and photography project about the American Dream with students from a liberal arts college and articulated the importance of the journey toward their dreams. Sharing their narratives and photographs in public forums, the students challenged the individualist American Dream discourse, underscoring a collective approach instead. The outcomes foreground previously-silenced voices and provide an example of culturally relevant pedagogy within a structured literacy curriculum.

Since 2006, Open Borders Project/ Proyecto Sin Fronteras has used digital storytelling in our work with teens and adult learners in summer workshops, computer courses and ESL classes. Participants write stories or interview others about their immigrant experience, record, edit and mix their stories on an open-source program, and create short audio stories. Their stories are published on our website, used to stimulate discussions, shared in public forums, and played on the radio. The process of creating stories and sharing them has been profound. Listening to each other's stories and reflecting on our common experience is an act of honoring our lives and affirming our sacrifices and dreams. Through our stories, we build a collective identity as immigrants. Telling our stories allows us to take risks, to talk about missing our families, our isolation, our frustrations as we try to feel at home in our new world. Our stories create openings for conversations with our friends and family, to say things unsaid. Our biggest challenge: how to use our stories as instruments for change, to give us a voice, to be heard, to organize, to become actors responding to issues that affect our lives. This article is accompanied by a CD of several of the stories produced at Open Borders Project and referred to in the text.

Based on the belief that students produce better writing when they are personally engaged in the writing topic, the University of Arizona’s Composition program is working to integrate service-learning into a variety of the courses it offers. Research to date suggests that composition students and instructors feel a greater sense of purpose and meaning when they believe that their work will have tangible results in the lives of others.