ABSTRACT
In this chapter we argue that the MayaWest Writing Summer Institute offered at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez and the Proyecto Maestría program offered at the University of Texas in Austin provides professional development spaces where contested discourses on languages and literacies can safely and comfortably take place. In order to revision themselves and their classroom pedagogies, the teachers participating in both of these professional development projects planned to cross borders, including but not limited to linguistic, cultural, political, and technological borders. Teacher participation in these projects assumes teachers are serious about addressing inequalities in schooled literacy achievement. It also assumes teachers are willing to “try on” new forms of language use in order to learn about pedagogies that may better serve students whose repertoires put them at greater risk of failure to thrive within the larger society and dominant culture. The “trying on” of new ways of teaching was simply stated by a teacher during a “mock” demonstration of what occurred at the inaugural MayaWest Writing Project Summer Institute in 2008; “estamos aquí por ellos, los estudiantes/we are here for them, the students.”
