The Muted Group Video Project

During the Summer 2019 semester, Writing & Rhetoric students at Florida International University, a public Hispanic-Serving Institution in Miami, Florida, engaged with Muted Group Theory to both understand and challenge the silencing of immigrant voices. Specifically, the FIU students, the majority of whom identified as Hispanic, created video messages for a local third grade class predominantly made up of immigrant students. The videos spotlight the students’ personal experiences with immigration, incorporate multiple languages, and explore themes such as cultural diversity and welcoming immigrant students into the classroom. Following the creation of the videos, the college students participated in a video chat with the third graders. This article offers an overview of the video project, student reflections, and guidelines for future pedagogical implementation. In addition, I reflect on the importance of pedagogical flexibility in the classroom and the ways in which multilingualism can expand our understanding of multimodality.