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This paper discusses Texas Examinations of Educator Standards Program Languages Other Than English – Spanish exam (TExES LOTE – Spanish) and its potential bias, particularly against teacher candidates with Spanish as a heritage language (HL) background. In Texas, most teacher candidates, or college students of Spanish preparing for secondary teacher certification, are heritage speakers of Spanish. However, while they are competent Spanish speakers, many fail their TExES LOTE – Spanish exam. In light of recent demographic trends and a growing body of research on HL learners, Spanish teaching in higher education and, to a lesser extent, in secondary schools has begun to move away from teaching so-called prestigious varieties of Spanish (e.g., Spain) toward inclusion of other varieties of Spanish, especially those spoken in the U.S. and those that reflect students' heritage. Despite this pedagogical shift, we posit that TExES LOTE – Spanish exam does not reflect current Spanish curricular content, which negatively affects these students' performance. We provide examples and available exam statistics to support our claim. Through this conversation about the mismatch between student background and TExES LOTE – Spanish content, we hope to start a dialogue about a much-needed revision of this exam in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S. Utilizing family health history in cancer prevention holds promise in lessening the burden of cancer. Nevertheless, family health history is underutilized in public health and preventive medicine. Community health workers, also known as lay health educators, are ideal candidates to offer basic cancer family history-based education and services to the general public. The authors developed the first cancer family history-based genomics training program in cancer prevention tailored for community health workers. This paper details the development and pilot testing findings of the training. Specifically, a multidisciplinary research team of geneticists, genetic counselors, health educators, community health workers, and community health worker instructors developed a 7-module, 6-hour, bilingual (English and Spanish) cancer family history-based training focusing on cancer family history-based risk assessment, lifestyle recommendations, and genetic evaluation and testing. The curriculum was based on an integrated theoretical framework, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines, the community health worker core competencies, and the 4MAT instructional model. The Texas Department of State Health Services approved and certified the curriculum with 2 delivery formats: in-person/face-to-face workshops and online training. A total of 34 community health workers completed the pilot training in person (n=17) and online (n=17) in 2018 and 2019. Participating community health workers' knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, and intention in delivering basic cancer family history-based genomics education and services significantly increased on the immediate post-test measures compared with their pretest data. Positive ratings and feedback were also reported by the community health workers. Findings from this pilot study suggest that wider training is warranted for educating more community health workers in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The Hispanic community is the fastest growing ethnic group in the USA and is currently the largest minority group with tremendous buying power. This trend has seen a significant growth with respect to the Spanish-language media in recent years. Along with the media's ability to entertain, comes the responsibility to educate and warn its audiences of eminent threats and disasters. The aim of this paper is to look at the Spanish-language media's efforts to warn and prepare its listeners for local and national emergencies. Design/methodology/approach – Using descriptive and explanatory methods the author looks at the failures of the Spanish language media to communicate emergency warnings in both the Saragosa, Texas tornado and in the case of hurricane Katrina. Findings – Research indicated that pressure from constituents, however, forced a change on the Spanish language industry. Research limitations/implications – The research was limited by not having first hand contact with the Spanish language media. Practical implications – The practical implication of this research which has social overtones is that providing disaster warnings to the non-English speaking population in the USA is achievable. Emergency managers and first responders need to be aware of issues regarding non-English speakers. Social implications – The implications for this research is that all individuals will be notified of emergencies even non-English speakers. Originality/value – The issues on non-English speakers in emergency situations have come up before. Nevertheless, this work identifies a practical solution by involving the Spanish language media in emergency alerts. It is essential that this tremendous resource be involved in emergency alerts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of Spanish in an academic community in Southwest Texas in order to demonstrate how power, history and place affect linguistic attitudes. The changing status of Spanish from being an index of low wage paying jobs to being a marker of membership in an exclusive academic community serves as a case to investigate how power relations and history interact to shape linguistic attitudes of individuals and groups. Members of the Bilingual Creative Writing Graduate Program at the University of Texas, El Paso, were interviewed to identify the prevalent attitudes towards bilingualism, Spanish in the community and Spanish language users. A discourse analysis of the interviews revealed that participants in this community value Spanish use and bilingualism in the academic context, but have mostly negative attitudes towards local varieties of Spanish and monolingual speakers. This study demonstrates the importance of history, power and place in understanding language attitudes as shared evaluations of language users and uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]