Todd Fletcher, an associate professor of special education
rehabilitation and school psychology at the UA since 1985, was recently
in the town of Cajones, in Guanajuato, Mexico, to open the Resplandor
International Cultural and Education Center. The community-development
center is a UA-sponsored project focused on literacy, technology and
health-education training. The next step is a library and mobile rural
classroom. For more information on Resplandor, visit www.resplandorinternational.org,
or call Fletcher at 621-0939.
How did this UA relationship begin with the community of
Cajones?
One graduate student attended my program for four consecutive
summers. She fell in love with Mexico and the people, and decided that
she and her family would move to Mexico to live and work. … Under my
supervision, she is completing her doctoral-dissertation research in
Cajones. It just so happened that they were able to rent a house in
Cajones last June. I visited them last October, and walking around the
area, I came across an unfinished building and location that struck me
as an ideal place for an educational and cultural center.
It took off from there?
Everything continued to unfold, and through discussions and
synchronicity, everything seemed to be in place. The idea behind it was
to establish a permanent presence in the area. I was inspired, because
I had lived and worked in Mexico for the past 25 years and wanted to
return and give something back to the Mexican community. I began to
converse with students and colleagues about how this could be done. …
In January 2009, the inauguration day of President Obama, I was in
Cajones and signed a long-term lease for the property. Construction
began two days later.
How did your relationship with Mexico begin?
I ended up finishing my undergraduate degree in Mexico at the
Universidad de las Américas in Puebla. That began my career
looking for bridges that could be built between Mexico and the United
States. … After I completed two postgraduate degrees in Oregon, I was
hired by the special-education department in the UA’s College of
Education to begin a program focusing on the preparation of
special-education teachers focusing on cultural and linguistic
diversity.
You got a grant in 1986 for Verano en Mexico, a study-abroad
program to take grad students to Mexico.
I wrote that proposal to the federal government for a bilingual
special-education program. … The purpose was to take graduate
students enrolled in the program to Mexico to learn about the Mexican
educational system and work with children and families in clinical and
educational settings. … On a personal level, they could better
understand and relate to some of the issues faced by immigrant students
in our schools.
Has it always been UA students?
No. This year, I have five students from the University of Minnesota
studying in a graduate program in the area of speech and hearing
sciences.
But Resplandor is primarily run by UA students?
Juliana Urtubey is an undergraduate student in bilingual education.
Susan Baker is a master’s student in my program, and Jacqueline
MacKenzie is completing her doctoral dissertation under my supervision
in Guanajuato. They have been strategically involved. This summer, I
asked Elizabeth Salerno, a recent UA graduate in Latin American
studies, to serve as a program-development specialist to begin to
organize educational activities for Resplandor. It has been a huge
success. We have had a tremendous amount of support in Cajones. We are
currently offering English, dance and music classes, and we have had up
to 60 kids from the local community attending.
Why is the project important to you?
I want to see something concrete that I can do to make a difference
in the world by providing opportunities to those who otherwise would
not have them. … I was also inspired by the book Outliers. …
The point that (the author) makes is that we need to find ways to
provide equitable opportunities to all individuals, because in any
given population, there could very well be a budding or potential Diego
Rivera, Albert Einstein, Beethoven or Octavio Paz. … Therefore, the
name of the center—Resplandor International: Maximizing Human
Potential.
This article appears in Jul 2-8, 2009.