Pure Poetry
Program helps Latino high school students achieve the rare feat of publishing their work in an academic journal.
By Bridgette A. Lacy
Publishing a research article in a peer-reviewed journal is not a typical project for a high school student. But Kevin Garcia-Galindo did just that, working with a program at NC State called Juntos that provides Latino students and their families with the resources and knowledge they need to pursue a college education.
Kelsey Dufresne ’18, ’20 MA, a doctoral student in communication, rhetoric and digital media, worked as the project manager with Garcia-Galindo and four other students at Garner High School in Wake County, N.C., to produce a peer-reviewed article, “Poets as Proponents: Creating Safe Spaces for Minorities.” It was published in the fall 2020 issue of Fringes: The North Carolina English Teachers’ Association Journal. Dufresne was a part of the university-led program, the Literacy and Community Initiative.
The research paper examined what it meant for first-generation Latino students to have the support of Juntos. The students wrote poems about their experiences navigating their families, culture and ancestry in the U.S.
“We wrote in various coffee shops, the Transfer Co. Food Hall, researching, brainstorming and writing,” Dufresne says. “We wrote using a little bit of everything. All five [students] wrote one poem together with pen and pencil, passing it around in the circle. Sometimes, we all worked together on different computers.”
It was first submitted to the Harvard Educational Review and rejected, but Dufrense says Garcia-Galindo had already started making revisions. “He took ownership of the document . . . ,” she says. “He started modifying and making it more of his own piece, it was all coming from him.”
Garcia-Galindo, now a Davidson College freshman, was confident about his writing abilities because of the skills he gained by participating in the Juntos program for four years. But Dufrense says she also learned from the experience. “It shaped who I am as a teacher,” says Dufresne. “I was using literature to talk about life . . . with Juntos, we start by talking about life and then dig deeper into their stories.”
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