Circles de Confianza: Promoting the Well-being of Latine Youth via Multimodal Testimonio

ABSTRACT

In the Spring of 2021, five Latine high school students gathered over Zoom to discuss experiences of confianza (trust) and desconfianza (distrust) with a team of researchers. Via multimodal testimonios, students built a community of confianza and convivencia (togetherness). Students identified this process as healing and offered suggestions on how to address desconfianza in school spaces and how to leverage confianza, creating a process by which to imagine schools de confianza. This research illustrates the potential of community building characterized by trust and belonging and oriented toward activism. This opportunity can support students to recontextualize their past experiences, feel validated in their experiences, and feel a sense of belonging.

KEYWORDS:

• student well-being
• confianza
• convivencia
• trust
• community
• testimonio
• school culture

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge our high school participants and collaborators for trusting us with their stories and thank them with deep gratitude for collaborating in this work. We thank Monica Lozano, whose photographic expertise, commitment to equity, and compassionate vision helped guide this project, and we thank Manuela Carrasco Gaytan whose dedication to transcription helped make the analysis of the data possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ We use the term Latine as a gender inclusive term. We recognize that in different communities and contexts, there are many variations of this term, and in this article, we include some of those variations as they arise in our data (e.g., Latinx). Our intention in using a gender-neutral term is to create inclusiveness and awareness about the power of language as a way of manifestation and imposition.

² We have used pseudonyms for all local place names and people.

³ All proper nouns are pseudonyms, selected by the students and researchers, used to protect participants’ identities.