Alan Crawford & Kathleen Dyer

Crawford and Dyer’s culturally relevant project idea, “Voices of the Valley,” will incorporate rigorous academic development, student-directed investigations, and critical thinking skills as an impetus to self-reflection. Over 260 students will conduct interviews with local members of their community about their immigration experiences. High scholar students will follow a 5-step writing process to transform the interview transcripts into a vivid and well-written one-page narrative which will result in a 2,300-page book of the students’ writing to evoke community pride. Crawford and Dyer agree that the traditional curriculum often lacks characters and experiences to which their students can relate. The program will create high-level literature that explores the collective consciousness of the Mexican-American identity and address English language learning needs of the school’s migrant students through its intense translation component. Crawford and Dyer live in Rio Grande City.