Latino Voices of High School Students: Overcoming the Culture of Silence

A study-with Latino high school students sought to provide a forum for student expression and to examine factors that tend to silence Latino student voices. It explored how students perceive their cultural and linguistic reality, their family history, and the home experiences within the educational system. It also looked at what students see as alternatives for promoting educational reform, legitimizing their voices, and deconstructing practices that encode privilege, power, and marginality in public schools. The researcher developed a series of research questions in these areas, shared them with students, and asked students to prepare interview questions to guide dialogue between researcher and students. The dialogue process was then carried out, and the resulting conversations transcribed and analyzed. Four major themes emerged: (1) a desire to have adults elicit and legitimize student voices in the classroom setting; (2) students felt teachers were afraid they would lose power if students ' voices were heard; (3) culture