Three female tenure-track faculty members at a Hispanic-Serving Institution explored how their cultural backgrounds inform their pedagogical approaches toward equity. They drew upon Mills's (1959) and Collins's (1993) frameworks to examine how their personal biographies, local social contexts, and broader systemic institutions affect their teaching processes for diverse students. These teaching processes include limiting assumptions about students, encouraging students to consider their own personal biographies in relation to the social world, welcoming students' multiple modes of expression, serving as role models, and challenging inequities in schooling. They conclude with recommendations for enhancing inclusivity in student learning and faculty development.

This study examines our experiences as female junior scholars with multicultural backgrounds teaching at the same Hispanic-serving institution. As education scholars with mixed-heritage families, we identify with the commitment to serving Latinos and the number of mixed-heritage people in the USA. The election of Barack Obama, whose racial background is both black and white, to the US presidency signifies the emergence of mixed-heritage people as a demographic presence in this country. Our research suggests that more understanding is needed about the experiences of mixed-heritage faculty in academia, as well as the ways in which faculty from any background may develop multiple affiliations with cultural communities and pursue professional agendas related to communities that they do not neatly fit into. Despite this variation in backgrounds and research agendas, we share our efforts in advancing Latin@ educational attainment.

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This case study examines José, a bilingual Latino fifth-grader, and his complex and dynamic engagements in travesuras (mischievous behaviors). José's travesuras served to disassociate him from being labeled a "schoolboy." This disassociation was evident in how José: (1) renounced "school-like" work and (2) downplayed his intelligence. José had been pigeonholed-for the most partas a smart student who should have known better than to behave inappropriately. Implications point to how to create more nurturing and enriching experiences for urban Latino youth such as José.

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Drawing on data collected during the second year of a longitudinal qualitative study that followed over 10 Latino/a bilingual students, this article foregrounds the experiences of participants during their sixth-grade year. The principle data sources included structured and unstructured interviews with teachers and students, school observations, and weekly small-group conversations in a courtyard outside of their classrooms. We focus on the experiences of Leila, Maricela, and Esperanza who were three of the sixth-grade girls actively recruited by their teachers to attend the district's magnet school program for their upcoming seventh grade-year instead of their neighborhood middle school. We found that much of the reasoning behind their decision-making process centered around issues of status (e.g., how the magnet school offered better academic, economic, and professional opportunities for their future) and solidarity (e.g., attending the neighborhood school with their friends and siblings). In conclusion, we problematize the very nature of these so-called educational 'choices' for bilingual Latino/a youth.

Drawing from sociocultural and anthropological perspectives, I present 3 case examples of bilingual, Mexican-origin students enrolled in a transitional bilingual educational program in an urban elementary school. By using the theoretical constructs of figured worlds, authoring, and formas de ser (ways of being), I examine how student identities were in a constant and dialogic state of formation by the students themselves and others. I discuss how high-stakes testing and other schooling practices narrowly authored students behaviorally, academically, and linguistically-bringing about schooling environments where students' strengths and multifaceted formas de ser were all-too-often overlooked.

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