Testimonio y Teoría: Creating Bridges with Bilingual Communities in DeKalb County

DeKalb County has transformed significantly over the past 80 years. There have been flows of immigrants and transnationals into the area since the late 19th and early 20th centuries, making present-day DeKalb a very diverse community. The children of transnationals in the U.S. find themselves at once students and teachers of their cultures and languages. Whether we speak our family’s languages or not, many of us born to parents from another country desire a connection to our linguistic heritage so that we can journey towards comfort and a sense of belonging. Drawing from the revolutionary Latin American literary genre, Testimonios (Saavedra, 2011), we share our stories with the hopes of planting a seed for new directions. From a decolonizing, postcolonial framework, we suggest ways to support bilingual and transnational students and groups by connecting to their cultural and linguistic assets through Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) and Funds of Knowledge (Ladson Billings, 2009; González et al., 2005). The article begins with our theoretical framework, followed by an overview of DeKalb County’s history and demographics. We continue with our testimonios and conclude with suggestions for connecting with bilingual students and communities.

The Quietening of Languages: How Can We Celebrate and Welcome Them?

In this editorial, the senior editor discusses linguistic neo-imperialism and indigenous languages and how this concept relates to an interview she conducted with author Nury Castillo Crawford and the feature article for the 2019 issue of GATESOL in Action titled "Testimonio y Teoría: Creating Bridges with Bilingual Communities in DeKalb County."

New State Records and Habitat Characteristics for Kloosia Kruseman (Diptera: Chironomidae) from Wadeable Streams in Missouri

First records of occurrence of the midge genus Kloosia Kruseman in Missouri are reported based upon aquatic macroinvertebrate community samples collected during April 2012 and October 2015 from reaches of Grindstone Creek in Dekalb County and South Blackbird Creek in Schuyler County in the Central Dissected Till Plains. Select physical and water quality characteristics from the reaches are also provided.

Fetal death certificate data quality: A tale of two US counties

PurposeDescribe the relative frequency and joint effect of missing and misreported fetal death certificate (FDC) data and identify variations by key characteristics.MethodsStillbirths were prospectively identified during 2006-2008 for a multi-site population-based case-control study. For this study, eligible mothers of stillbirths were not incarcerated residents of DeKalb County, Georgia, or Salt Lake County, Utah, aged > 13 years, with an identifiable FDC. We identified the frequency of missing and misreported (any departure from the study value) FDC data by county, race/ethnicity, gestational age, and whether the stillbirth was antepartum or intrapartum.ResultsData quality varied by item, and was highest in Salt Lake County. Reporting was generally not associated with maternal or delivery characteristics. Reasons for poor data quality varied by item in DeKalb County: some items were frequently missing and misreported; however, others were of poor quality due to either missing or misreported data.ConclusionsFDC data suffer from missing and inaccurate data, with variations by item and county. Salt Lake County data illustrate that high quality reporting is attainable. The overall quality of reporting must be improved to support consequential epidemiologic analyses for stillbirth, and improvement efforts should be tailored to the needs of each jurisdiction.Abbreviations and AcronymsCCCconcordance correlation coefficientCDCCenters for Disease Control and PreventionFDCFetal death certificateNCHSNational Center for Health StatisticsSCRNStillbirth Collaborative Research Network