Reframing success: participatory impacts of storytelling in a PAR collaborative with Latinx middle school students

ABSTRACT

This article examines the participatory impact of a storytelling project on a small group of Latinx English learners in a sixth grade classroom. The storytelling project unexpectedly emerged as a positive ripple effect from a Participatory Action Research (PAR) initiative to foster civic empowerment among middle school students in an English Language Development classroom in Northern California during the 2014–2015 academic year. As the university researcher and classroom teacher worked together on the PAR project, they came to understand the importance of storytelling for this group of students and agreed to create a safe classroom space with appropriate instructional support for the students to develop and write their stories in English. Although the PAR project failed to produce an Action Plan based on students’ research findings, the storytelling ripple effect from the PAR initiative had a transformative impact on the students as they constructed counter-stories to dominant discourses that marginalize and dehumanize Latinx immigrant students and their families. Through the process of writing and reading their stories aloud in English, the Latinx English learners successfully positioned themselves as resilient, hard-working students who are fully capable of participating in civic programs, projects, or debates with their native English-speaking peers.