 My name is Joseli Meiners, and I am Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin, Department of Spanish and Portuguese. And together with Flavia, who is going to introduce herself in a minute, we are the co-project directors for the Texas Coalition for Heritage Spanish, also known as TEX. So I will let Flavia introduce herself and then we will get started. Wonderful. Thank you, Joseli. My name is Flavia Belpoliti. I'm Associate Professor of Spanish as Texas NAM at Commerce in the Department of Literature and Languages. And I joined the core project a few years ago, and we started working with the TEX model. And today we went to showcase what have been doing in the past, in the past years. And this is our main, we'll say, mission statement, reduce building communities, because that's what we want to do. So to begin, we have a short outline for our presentation. We have like a snapshot of the Hispanics population in Texas regarding demography, Spanish use and heritage language education to see what's going on in our context, which is the state of Texas. Then we'll talk about the Texas background and why we started this coalition. Then we'll continue talking about the mission statement and the main goals and how we're working to fulfill them. And then we'll see how TEX really belongs to Coel and what's the important of open resources and open education for everyone, particularly for minority populations in the US. And then we will dedicate some minutes to basically see what we're being built in our website and we have like, I mean, this kind of a tour with different aspects of our project. And finally, we'll talk a little bit about the next years, what we plan to do. And of course we're open for questions or comments. So to begin with this snapshot. These are basically data from the 2020 census and there are several factors that are impacting the growing population of Texas, but particularly the growing of Hispanic population. As you can see the comparison in this small table, the overall population increase in the past 10 years, about 16%, which is a large, large, large increase. However, if we consider only Hispanic population will see that the increase is 21%. So two points above the general population growth. And in the map, you can see distribution, we have the historical areas where Hispanics are always being basically living there, which is across the border. But as you can see, there are more and more counties where the Hispanic population is above 10, 15, 25%. So far, we only identify five counties, very small counties on the east side of Texas, they had less than 5%, but they're really small counties. So basically, we can consider that in Texas, Hispanic are distributed across all the geographies. On the second table, you can see a little bit about the population diversity. Even when Mexico and Mexican people or people from Mexican origin is still the majority with about 85%. There have been some changes overall and we see an increased number of people coming from diverse areas. So I, we believe that basically Hispanic population is diversifying in the state. So considering education, we see that I mean there is still some progress to be made regarding how many people from Hispanic background really achieve higher education levels. Basically regarding poverty levels, which is always a point of discussion, particularly in political campaigns. You can see that 80% are above the poverty level. So it's just 20% or about 20% were below that was meant that the Hispanic population is doing is doing fine in that sense. So let's talk a little bit about what happening with the language with Spanish in in Texas. And if we consider only in these are responses from the census 2020, if we consider only those people that are older than five years old and they answer the question about whether the languages that they speak at home. We will notice that most people in Texas will speak English is about 6465% and other languages that are not English nor Spanish we see that they're about 66.5%. But finally, Spanish, we see that growing numbers if we compare 2010 with 2018 is using Spanish at home with above 29% of the total population of Texas, meaning that we have really an important Hispanic Hispanic speaking community here. And just to have like a kind of comparison if you see these monolingual or traditionally monolingual countries, where Spanish is the official language, we can see that Texas has more Hispanic speaking population that Paraguay, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Costa Rica, El Salvador so we're talking about a large Spanish speaking population here. However, and this is for us, one of the focus that takes has been working with, we found out that really the education of Spanish English bilinguals in the K-12 system in Texas is really no strong. And basically we're lacking support. And in here you have some of the main reasons and basically there is a lack of Spanish and bilingual education teachers overall in all areas of the state. There is not a clear framework for heritage Spanish, where we have so are basically a framework for Spanish as a second language, and that as it is is not enough for the needs of our Hispanic students. And then we know that most Hispanic students are basically enrolled in ESL programs, and those are very short, shortly they basically have pulled out two or three years after two or three years, or they have very early exit programs so most of them didn't finish their ESL projects correctly. Of course there is a limited budget dedicated to languages in Texas. And finally, and this is for us a point of a point of contention for the Texas Education Agency, knowing a language that is not English, knowing a different language, basically is educational disadvantage. And this monoglossic ideology permeates the state education across the board. So basically you have here the direct quote, and the idea of that having more than one language that is fantasies is really really problematic if we want to continue to grow bilingualism and multi multilingualism. What happened then in higher education, we did a very short project on on seeing what's going on with the universities at colleges across the state. We revised for two years, most of the catalogs as they were listed in each institution, and we select basically Spanish for her to speakers Spanish for Hispanic students and Spanish for native speakers those are the three common name for the classes dedicated to her to Spanish in these institutions. Overall, out of the 71 colleges that we revise only half when say 53% offers some kind of Spanish classes in average we noticed that there are only two classes those dedicated to the so called intermediate level. And they vary by institution of course, and there are some interesting exceptions here we have University of Houston, UT Rio Grande Valley and university of Texas at Austin UT where they are offering four to five classes in each program. So there are some institutions that are dedicated more resources to this kind of education. So we found out that just a few private institutions are offering her to Spanish for their students. Also, as another alarming fact that we are using orange to mark those in 2017 when text started actually the text educational board eliminated languages, such as Spanish friend German and others from the core curriculum and that has a strong impact in higher level language education. Considering all these factors and these and these particular issues. We, I mean, and when we see we is basically a group of instructors and professors in colleges and universities. We start discussing the need to create some kind of association or coalition to basically work with these particular needs that Texas has. And as you can see, I mean, and we just saw in the previous slides. The issues and population growth and the particular needs of Hispanics in in the state, then the lack of support for LUT education and the low percentage of Hispanic students that finish college level classes, and also the fact that most of us work alone in our own institutions to create and or have large initiative we are creating new classes, new materials, but mostly we tended to work by ourselves. So the idea of the coalition came out from from these, these particular needs and we started talking informally and then in 2017 it become a reality, because we actually found Texas, text. And so it's going to continue with basically the mission statement and our goals. Thank you Flavia so I'm going to talk to you a little bit about what text is all about what our mission is our goals. So first of all our mission statement is to seek and to provide a cooperative platform to support the success of Spanish heritage language speakers and their communities in existing and promoting by cultural and bilingual development in the state. And so right now we have representatives from maybe it's about 10 to 12 universities around Texas, and we're always looking to grow and make more connections but basically we have people who have already well established Spanish programs or at least courses, one, at least one course, and who have experience with trying to get the program started advocating for the program teaching the types of classes creating materials, because if we're all working in similar programs, we should be collaborating. So then I'm in the next slide I'm going to talk to you about some of our goals and we have a lot of different ones but here are a few. We want to be a platform for sharing ideas data and resources to advance the objectives of diverse as a chill programs. Like I said we have different types of populations and institutions and needs but we want to share the ideas that could be helpful for all of us. We want to design and disseminate effective procedures to create redesign and evaluate as a chill programs at all educational levels. So we really try to encompass from K through 12 and higher education. Right now the members of texts are all university professors, for the most part, but we are goal is to expand and include people from community colleges high school, middle school, etc. We want to help inform policymaking bodies and issues that relate to as a chill education in the state. And that's why the research that flow I mentioned about looking at the numbers and the policies and the support that as a chill education is receiving in Texas is so important. We want to actively support community led initiatives creating pathways to better connect Hispanic organizations with educational institutions. And to establish connections with other state associations to create more comprehensive frameworks for Spanish language education in Texas. So we're all about building bridges and communication between different entities who all support our mission. In the next slide, I'm going to tell you about the relationship between text and coral. So as you know, text is a part of coral the Center for open educational resources and language learning. And we realize that it's really a perfect fit. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about why. So, we have an issue here that, as Flavia was showing the population is growing the need for the population of Hispanics and heritage the need for these courses for Spanish courses for heritage speakers keeps growing and resources to teach these courses and training for instructors to teach the classes as well at all levels from K to 12 and higher ed. And so a lot of times instructors at all levels have a hard time finding a textbook or resources to teach these courses. As we know there is no one size fits all textbook, especially for this type of population, not just in the state but if you think about it. And the national level, our populations of heritage learners are so different if you see, for example, the students who are learning Spanish as a heritage language in Texas and you compare with Florida. In the Northeast California, they all have different needs because it's based on the reasons why the families immigrated, how much education they've had the parents had, and how much Spanish is being actually spoken at home, etc. And even within Texas there's large differences. So it's really, you have to do whatever fits the needs of your particular student population, and instructors are constantly creating materials for their students. And so if everybody is creating materials for their students. Why not just share right and so how do we share through open educational resources that's why this is a great solution. Because if you're working on a textbook that or activities that you're using for your class, I could very easily use your resources adapt them to my needs to my student population, instead of reinventing the wheel we can all keep sharing. So, one of the goals for Texas to promote the creation and sharing of OER for SHL, and something that is really interesting is that students can be involved in the creation of OER as well this promote student agency, this movement of open pedagogy is growing and particularly the students who grew up with Spanish at home, they come already to the classroom with such a great wealth of background in cultural knowledge and linguistic knowledge that they could really use to to help create OER for other courses other purposes. So, on our website you can find many examples of OER that have been created by instructors and some even with student support as well. And so now is the time when we want to point out the website and here there's a number right here that says it's more than 1100 people who have joined the text community so every time somebody joins one of our webinars comes to our workshops we add them to the community and I think now fly is going to open up the website so I'm going to show you some of the resources we have there and we're constantly looking for more people to contribute and promoting all the resources we have to share. So this is our website and this is the welcome page. And one of the, one of the things we have is a forum where people can come and ask questions. This is a way to do some networking and reach out to other people. This is an issue where you're trying to start a program in your school or district, then other people can help you give you advice, talk about their experience. So you can sign up and be able to post and receive notifications when somebody posts on the on the forum. I don't know what else you want to focus on Flavia since you are. I think that we can I mean we have so many different type of materials and we're basically working on a really sign of the website so it's more user friendly. At this point it takes a little while to find everything but we're been collecting for five year wonderful materials from all over the United States not only presenters and people working here in Texas. Can you visit the instructor resources? I don't know if you can follow. Yeah. Yeah, maybe you can look at the textbooks and show one of the newest ones which is Janina and Esteban's. Yeah. Open source textbook from. Exactly. If you visit the instructor resources you can find all the different I mean kind of materials we've been sharing under this level. And in here we have open textbooks which is I think one of the most attractive component of our website is the direct connection with I mean different textbooks created for professors in Texas in outside as well for specifically for Spanish as a heritage language. So the one that we have here is the latest one is reflexiones sobre nuestra lengua by two of our colleagues who are part of text. And then in Landis and Jose Esteban and Landis and let me open the site so you can see how to how to looks and this is the entry point and then you have a little liberal and then you can continue unit by unit with the different materials. And it's a wonderful project they started working with it I think five years ago four years ago and finally it was published last last year here in our site. Other resources that you can find in in this particular tab is our workshop information we have materials for the different webinars and workshops that were run across I mean through the year. And there are both the videos in the PowerPoint slides and extra materials that the presenters share with everyone. And there are different different approaches to teaching Spanish as a heritage language, making different kind of connections focusing in diverse very different I mean aspect of this of this kind of teaching. And I think before we move on you should show that yes the modules. Another another project that needs an in progress is the professional development models. Those are based in the workshops that we did since 2017 on summers, we have all the materials and the videos and we started creating different different actually models that people that have no experience or want to refresh their knowledge can visit and follow and so far we have five, and we're building up another five these these spring semester we hope to have them published by by the end of May. Then we have classroom resources and again in here you will find many different activities small projects for projects multimedia that have been used by different instructors for different levels of education with diverse population though so they're open and anyone can basically download the materials and start revising remixing and recreating what they have provided. So if you ever looking for some resources please visit our website and also if you create resources we invite you to use a creative Commons license to share your resources with us we have a new review process where if you submit an activity or you know any kind of resource a book or. And here exactly happy to give you feedback review it and help you improve it and publish it on our website. I am very interested in, in this point to start having a strong review process for all the materials that we're publishing. We believe that everything is great but we really want in depth analysis and we started with some of the books and some of the materials and this is a project this ongoing. And of course we need reviewers so if you feel interested in doing this kind of work with us. I think it would be wonderful if you apply the same as just a little saying sharing your materials if you have OER resources design. I think we can go back to the PowerPoint for because we are running out of time. Yeah. So these numbers we just were discussing because we were not very I mean we were very focused on exactly how many people are being are being involved with us. And we just found out that so far there are more than 1,100 participants that they're been doing different activities through these through the five years that we're working with with the project. I think that this is a good number and we hope to continue growing it. We have people from all over the country who visit our website and use our resources and also attend some of our events we try to hold two one or two webinars per semester online webinars where we invite a speaker to share about an event regarding pedagogy or anything related to teaching Spanish as a heritage language and then Flavia is going to highlight a little bit about our summer workshops which are our big event every summer. And we think that our summer workshops are really I mean the core and the origin of our whole project because basically we started collaborating. Thank you to the possibility of visiting UT Austin on the summer for working with heritage teachers, and we had started in 2015 to 2019, a two day in person workshop. We started with a small number participants you can see we have 2021 people and we grew to 65 in 2019, when the pandemic started. So, after that we had to full online workshops in 2020 and 2021 using zoom and we have more than 100 participants for the two days. In this case, the interesting thing was that we receive people from all over the world we have people connected from Italy from Spain from Mexico from Chile. So we have a very diverse group of participants attending the workshops. Now we are hoping that if the, all the conditions are given in June, this year we will again re start our in person workshops and we're very excited to really welcome everybody back, back to normal in June 23 and 24 in Austin. This year the, the summer workshops, our, our big event because we feel like in doing this kind of activities, we basically are achieving our goals because we are helping with professional development and doing a strong connection between research and teaching which is always kind of a divider so we bring researchers and teachers and we connect. It's an open forum is a very social mean environment for forcing new connections and people start to get involved in small projects and, and sharing what they have. We do several sessions has a particular design of OER materials and participants create those materials and also distribute them so we are having them to create open resources actually and and publishing them. And also it's important that we are keeping the recordings and the materials that we created for a dancing master project on professional development. Okay, future projects. Yes, we have a lot of ideas for future projects we have a lot of room to grow. Like I said earlier we want to recruit new members to grow the coalition at all different levels. And we want to continue providing professional development opportunities and we do this through our webinars workshops we have the online modules and we something new that we want to create now is on site trainings for different school groups in Texas. And we want to apply for funding to develop new projects we have one in particular that is an idea of creating a reading database where people can come and find readings to support their heritage Spanish classes in all kinds of subjects We want to develop that project. We want to research more on classroom practices in the state what's going on throughout the state for heritage Spanish learners, and to continue promoting the creation and dissemination of OER for heritage Spanish courses at all levels. This is just a few. These are a few of our ideas for the future but we come up with new ideas and we welcome also new ideas on how we can grow. To finish up then we want to say that OER is really a fundamental component to achieve educational equity. That's why we are very happy to be a part of coral equity fairness and opportunity for all. And this can be particularly beneficial for heritage Spanish education in Texas and all over the country. And we feel like there is a great need for this type of partnerships and coalitions throughout the country. And we hope to inspire others to create similar partnerships to collaborate. And so, as we continue to grow and to learn we always welcome your feedback and participation and are happy to answer any questions as well. Thank you. Thank you everyone.