{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.020792563600782778, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0136986301369863, 'mean_word_length': 5.369158878504673, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 1, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
From the Editor’s Desk

Bienvenidos! Welcome to Volume 19, Number 3 of the Journal of Latinos and Education. With your support, the journal has continued to increase its stature and influence as the premiere research publication that examines the educational conditions of Latina/o communities in and outside of the United States. In this issue, we have 6 FEATURE ARTICLES, 1 contribution to ESSAY REVIEWS AND INTERVIEWS and 1 contribution to VOCES. In the first of the FEATURE ARTICLES, Leah Hollis and Velia Rincon offer a hermeneutic phenomenological study that investigated the lived-experiences of 12 Chicana/o students who completed a baccalaureate degree at a majority school. The strategies and experiences that the students used in persisting through a majority college environment were examined. To the purpose in so much as cultural code-switching is considered as a strategy that Chicana/os can use to maintain cultural pride to resist mental colonization, their contribution analyzes the participants’ code-switching as a strategy to persist through the educational environment. Four themes emerged: 1) family support; 2) sense of belonging; 3) belief in a better quality of life and family values; and 4) codeswitching behaviors. In the next article, Julia Smith and Guadalupe Cuesta engage our readers with the sad reality that albeit a labor force of migrant farmworkers, mostly of Latino origin, largely support the agriculture industry in the U.S., and is essential to the production of agriculture; food insecurity has been recognized to be high among the farmworker population and their young children. They present the results from a survey on food insecurity, food access, and farm-to-preschool involving a national sample of 32 farmworker parents attending a meeting as Policy Council representatives and affiliates for the Migrant and Seasonal Head Start program. The authors’ contribution underscores the problem of food insecurity and access in the farmworker population while suggesting ways in which parent activism coupled by food justice efforts and farm-to-preschool could potentially address food access and insecurity. The next contribution by Ricardo Gomez addresses the underrepresentation of Latinos in higher education and academia, despite continual growth as an increasing proportion of the US population. The study explores the trajectories and experiences of Latinx faculty, students and staff at a large, public university in the US. Using interviews combined with photo and object elicitation, the author documents the various origins of the Latino community and the different paths followed to make it into higher education and academic careers in different disciplines. The particular challenges faced by undocumented students is noted, and the important role played by role models and mentors in encouraging and promoting the participation of Latinos in higher education. The author reflects on the notions of success experienced by successful Latinx in academia, which are recurrently linked with altruistic values of service and support to others, and which needs to be proactively turned into effective mentorship. Next, James Van Overschelde and Ruben Garza address the outsized gap that exists between the percentage of Latino teachers and the students who are themselves Latino. To better understand this gap, the authors compared Latino preservice teachers’ motivation for becoming teachers and perceptions of the teaching profession to their White counterparts, during their application to a large traditional teacher certification program at a Hispanic-serving institution. Their analysis of 1,600 survey responses revealed many statistically significant differences, and many of the differences across ethnicity varied by the type of teacher certification sought. The authors offer and explore suggestions for how teacher preparation programs can design and market their programs to recruit more Latino preservice teachers. JOURNAL OF LATINOS AND EDUCATION 2020, VOL. 19, NO. 3, 217–218 https://doi.org/10.1080/15348431.2020.1785682