Language Ideologies and Language Learning: Planning a Course of Study

I’ve been thinking a lot about my roles as teacher educator, daughter, mother, partner and friend during these times. I’ve listened to my body closely (especially as a new parent) and like many of you, my mind, spirit, and body are so exhausted with the weight of it all that it takes a whole lot to focus. And so, here’s a little bit of what I’ve been directing a lot of my energy towards lately: planning my graduate course in a teacher education program.

This summer (which actually started yesterday for me on the college calendar), I’m teaching a course titled on language learning in a linguistically diverse society. For the last few months, I’ve been engaged in conversations with colleagues about racial literacy, emergent bilingualism, creative and experimental spirit, and developmental variations at Bank Street Graduate School of Education. We’ve conducted inquiries on our syllabi and really asked the tough questions about how we were addressing (or not) some of these in our courses.

• Is some of the work implied?

• Are we being clear about our goals and addressing racial literacy?

• There’s the conversation around intentionality and inquiry. For example, do we name critical lenses at the start or encourage/facilitate so that students come to these on their own (hopefully).

So here’s where I’m at with all of this. I’m guided by a sense of urgency, clarity and inspiration, some of which you’ll see here as I share my thought partners and co-instructors in this course! Hope you reach out if you’re on the same journey as we are in this course, whether on your own, with teachers, administrators or teacher-educators. Would love to learn of other texts, thought partners and ways that you center and validate the language practices of language-minoritized children in all learning spaces.

Course Description 

The language practices of language-minoritized students are often deemed incorrect as measured against white, monolingual norms. This course reimagines language learning by moving beyond the study of language as a system (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and discourse), and applying the critical lenses of raciolinguistic ideologies and translanguaging theory and pedagogy to the process of languaging. In the first part of the course, we’re focusing on processing language ideologies, identities and anti-Black linguistic racism. It’s really important to me that we address these matters at the start of the class, name them, and consider our roles/positionality in how we are moving towards a more equitable learning experience for all children. In the second part of the course, we will study how raciolinguistic ideologies take shape in curriculum and teaching and how we can disrupt these with translanguaging pedagogy and authentic assessments of bilingual and multilingual learners. We will study ways to integrate family and community literacies, the arts, and multimodal learning in the planning of instruction and nurturing relationships that validate linguistically diverse practices.

Sessions

First Week of the Course*

*Will be adding overview videos for the other weeks soon! First, need to reflect on week one with students and get a sense of what needs to be revised.

References

It’s been months of conversations on this with teacher educators who have taught this course and making sure I bring in the latest research and writing on the critical frameworks we are applying in the course. Really grateful to two colleagues, Pam Jones, instructor at Bank Street, and Amía Soto-Carrión, also an instructor at Bank Street and 4th grade bilingual dual language teacher in NYC (Amía was also my former student at Hunter College, CUNY so it was super special to get her feedback on the course as she taught it).

Who we cite matters! See #CiteBlackWomen.

I continue to revisit the texts and references making sure we do this right.

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Anzaldúa, G. (1987). How to tame a wild tongue. In Anzaldúa, G. Borderlands/La frontera: The new Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books.

Artiles, A.J. Reenvisioning equity research: Disability identification disparities as a case in point. Educational Researcher, 48(6), pp. 325 –335. DOI: 10.3102/0013189X19871949

Ayers, C. (2018, July 2). Don’t mind the gap. [Audio podcast episode]. In Vocal fries podcast. Halftone audio. https://vocalfriespod.com/2019/10/31/dont-mind-the-gap-transcript/

Baker-Bell, A. (2020). Linguistic justice: Black language, literacy, identity, and pedagogy. Routledge.

Burton, L. (Host). (2017, August 29). The paper menagerie by Ken Liu [Audio podcast episode]. In LeVar Burton Reads. Stitcher. https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/stitcher/levar-burton-reads/e/51277610

Busch, B. (2012). The linguistic repertoire revisited. Applied Linguistics, 1-22. 

CAST (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Retrieved from http://udlguidelines.cast.org

Cioè-Peña, M. (2017: The intersectional gap: how bilingual students in the United States are excluded from inclusion. International Journal of Inclusive Education 21(9), 906-919. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2017.1296032

Cioè-Peña, M. (2020). Raciolinguistics and the education of Emergent Bilinguals Labeled as Disabled. Urban Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-020-00581-z

CUNY-NYSIEB. (2019). Our teacher leaders. https://www.cuny-nysieb.org/classroom-videos/ambassador/

de los Ríos, C. & Seltzer, K. (2018). Translating theory to practice: Exploring teachers’ raciolinguistic literacies in secondary english classrooms. English Education, 49-79. 

de los Ríos, C. (2018). Toward a corridista consciousness: Learning from one transnational youth’s critical reading, writing, and performance of Mexican Corridos. Reading Research Quarterly 53(4), pp. 455-471. doi:10.1002/rrq.210  

Delpit, L. (2002). No kinda sense. In L. Delpit and J. Kilgour Dowdy (Eds.), The skin that we speak: Thoughts on language and culture in the classroom (pp. 32-48). New Press.

#DisruptTexts (2020, April 18). #Disrupttexts: Dismantling and reimagining the literary canon. The Educator Collaborative. https://gathering.theeducatorcollaborative.com/opening-keynote-distrupttexts-spring-2020/

Elhillo, S. [TED-Ed] (2019, February 2). To make use of water. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfKDBlK3EwQ&list=PLJicmE8fK0Egxi0hgy5Tw-NFyLcpJ4bzJ&index=6&t=0s

España, C. & Herrera L.Y. (2020). En comunidad: Lessons for centering the voices and experiences of bilingual Latinx students. Heinemann. 

Ferré, R. (2002). Coming up the archipelago. In Language Duel Poems. Vintage Books.

Flores, N. & Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 149-171. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17763/0017-8055.85.2.149 

Flores, N. (2020). From academic language to language architecture: Challenging raciolinguistic ideologies in research and practice. Theory Into Practice, 59(1), 22-31. 

Freeman, D.E. & Freeman, Y.S. (2011). Between worlds: Access to second language acquisition. Heinemann. 

Fu, D., , Hadjioannou, X., & Zhou, X. (2019). Translanguaging for Emergent Bilinguals: Inclusive Teaching in the Linguistically Diverse Classroom. Teachers College Press.

García, O., Ibarra-Johnson, S., & Seltzer, K. (2016). The translanguaging classroom: Leveraging student bilingualism for learning. Caslon Publishing.

García, O. & Otheguy, R. (2016). Interrogating the Language Gap of Young Bilingual and Bidialectal Students. International Multilingual Research Journal. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19313152.2016.1258190

García, O. & Leiva, C. (2014). Theorizing and enacting translanguaging for social justice. In A. Blackledge, A. Creese (Eds.) Heteroglossia as practice and pedagogy. Educational Linguistics, vol 20, pp. 199-216. Springer, Dordrecht.

García, O. (2015). Language. In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism at Wiley Online Library. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.central.ezproxy.cuny.edu:2048/doi/10.1002/97811186632 

Gee, J. (2001). Identity as an analytic lens for research in education. Review of Research in Education, 99-125.

Germán, L. (2019). The anti-racist teacher: Reading instruction workbook. The Multicultural Classroom. 

Gillon, C. (2020, March 31). Bilingualism is. It just is. [Audio podcast episode]. In Vocal fries podcast. Halftone audio. https://vocalfriespod.com/2020/04/10/bilingualism-is-it-just-is-transcript/

He, G. [Gabby He]. (2020, May 5). Gabby translingualism EDUC 546. [Video] YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHv5N6tDXC8

Jimenez, F. (1997). Inside Out. In The circuit: Stories from the life of a migrant child. University of New Mexico Press.

Klingner, J. (2014, April). Distinguishing language acquisition from learning disabilities. Retrieved from http://gced.k12.mn.us/uploads/4/9/2/3/49230501/distinguish_language.pdf

Lankford. R. (Writer), & Braun, U.R. (Director). (July 15, 2019). Grandpa’s drum (Season one, episode one) [TV series episode]. In D. Gillim (Executive Producer), Molly of Denali. PBS Kids.  

Levien, R. (Director). (2009). Immersion [Film]. Widdershins film/Don’t foam productions. 

Live Nation. (2017, June 9). 102 Earthworks: Miguel: Mexico Chapter 1 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08vbGWfYFFI

Lo, A. (2016). Suddenly faced with a Chinese village: The linguistic racialization of Asian Americans. In H. S. Alim., J. R. Rickford, & A.F. Ball (Eds.), Raciolinguistics: How language shapes our ideas about race. Oxford University Press. 

Lorde, A. (1984). Age, race, class, and sex: Women redefining difference. In Sister, Outsider. Crossing Press.

Lyiscott, J. (2019). Black appetite, white food: Issues of race, voice and justice within and beyond the classroom. Routledge.

Lyiscott, J. (2014, February). 3 Ways to Speak English [Video]. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/jamila_lyiscott_3_ways_to_speak_english.

Martinez-Roldan, C. & Malave, G. (2011). Identity construction in the borderlands: The Acosta family. In V. Kinloch, Urban literacies: Critical perspectives on language, learning, and community (pp. 53-71). New York: Teachers College Press. 

Mayorga, E. (Host). (2020, April 22). Political encounters: Bilingual Latinx students (33) [Audio podcast episode]. In Encuentros políticos/Political encounters. Usalamedia Radio. https://edwinmayorga.net/?p=985 

Mena, M. (2019, January 31). Flores and Rosa: Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education (2015) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oPWMEJjGbk

Meraji, S.M. & Demby, G. (Hosts). (2020, April 29). When Poets decide who counts [Audio podcast episode]. In Code Switch. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2020/04/22/840958430/when-poets-decide-who-counts

Morris, M. (2019). Sing a Rhythm, Dance a Blues: Education for the Liberation of Black and Brown Girls. The New Press. 

NCTE. (2016). What anti-racist language teachers do. In the Committee against racism and bias in the teaching of English. NCTE.

Neal, H. & Cullinan, D. (2018). Talking Black in America [Film]. The language and life project at NC University.

Paris, D. (2016). “It was a Black city:” African American language in California’s changing urban schools and communities. In H. S. Alim., J. R. Rickford, & A.F. Ball (Eds.), Raciolinguistics: How language shapes our ideas about race. Oxford University Press.  

Phuong, J. (2017). Disability and language ideologies in education policy. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 32(1), 47-66. 

Smitherman, G. (2017). “Raciolinguistics,” “mis-education,” and Language Arts teaching in the 21st century. In Language Arts Journal of Michigan: (32:2,3), 4-12.

Suina, J. (2009). And Then I Went to School. In L. Christensen (Ed.), Teaching for joy and justice: Re-imagining the Language Arts classroom (pp. 230-234). Rethinking Schools. 

Tatum, B.D. (2016). The complexity of identity. In Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? and other conversations about race. Basic Books.

Timsit, A. (2019). The dad from that viral baby video is demonstrating a crucial parenting skill. Quartz.com. Retrieved from https://qz.com/1639907/the-viral-video-of-a-dad-talking-to-his-baby-demonstrates-a-crucial-parenting-skill/

Understood.org. (n.d.). Racial disproportionality in Special Education [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.understood.org/en/community-events/blogs/the-inside-track/2018/05/23/f

Vogel, S. & García, P. (2017). Translanguaging. In G. Noblit & L. Moll (Eds.), Oxford research encyclopedia of education. Oxford University Press. 

Wager, A. C., Poey, V.M., & Berriz, B.R. (2017). Art as voice: Creating access for emergent bilingual learners (full issue). Journal of Pedagogy, Pluralism, and Practice. 9(1), Article 1.

Woodson, J. (2014). Brown girl dreaming. Puffin Books. 

Yule, G.  (2016). The sound patterns of language. In The study of language (4th ed., pp. 42-54; 6th ed., pp. 42-54). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 

This blog post is part of the #31DaysIBPOC Blog Challenge, a month-long movement to feature the voices of indigenous and teachers of color as writers and scholars. Please read yesterday’s blog posts by Colleen Cruz here and Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul here. Tomorrow’s blog post by Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas can be read here. Be sure to check out the link at the end of each post to catch up on the rest of the blog circle.

Learning in Community

“I’m reading kids’ narratives and just trying to think of ways to stay strong for them. Tengo varios sin papeles. One mentioned it in her narrative”

“I was hoping you would remember the name of the song/video that you shared with me a couple of months ago. The video showed the struggles of immigrants, but I can’t remember the name of the song.”

“I’ve been sad all day. Now I’m realizing why. How do you balance out the emotions seeing white little kids being privilege enough to learn Spanish while also seeing how native Spanish speakers are seen as having a deficit?”

These are some of the messages that came my way this month. This work is tough. We need to seek support, thought partners, and engage in consistent ways if we are to take care of ourselves to better teach the students in the classroom. Even though I’m thankful for the many communities that sustain me, I need to be reminded to not go about this work on my own. This month, I had four very different kinds of learning community experiences. I share my reflections on them, along with resources, hoping that you will also seek to partner with others in your journey!

September Learning Community #1

Social Justice Saturday: Leading in Troubled Times

Hosted by the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project

Cornelius Minor opened the day with some moving words (see my tweets for the day here) that set up the urgency for this gathering, the need for disrupting systems and the hope that he holds on to. “Not everything is lost” Cornelius shared, referring to poet Naomi Shihab Nye’s line from Gate A-4. Author Andrea Davis Pinkney and illustrator Brian Pinkney shared from their books in the keynote, #BooksBuildHope and I tried my best to keep up with their amazing texts here! I loved listening to their storytelling, getting lost in the illustrations, all the while being reminded of the power of culturally sustaining texts.

For the first session, I learned from Colleen Cruz and kept wanting to tweet “drop the mic” gifs through her workshop! Colleen discussed the master narrative present in children’s literature and presented ways to integrate counter narrative storytelling through mentor texts and writing instruction. She recommended the following for the times when we are teaching students how to collect ideas for stories: asking what if, consider settings that are hot spots for trouble, remember or create turning point moments, and share counter narrative mentor texts. She also had us practice these (my favorite part of these workshops is trying out the work before we go ahead and ask students to do something we haven’t practiced ourselves). Afterwards, she showed us how we can teach students to play with: active characters, arcs, obstacles, perspectives, alternatives, and solutions. I wish I had pictures and more notes on her other amazing tips but I had a panic moment with wifi issues on my laptop prior to me presenting next! So a quick shout out of immense gratitude to Tim (and team) at TCRWP for always being there for quick tech support!

Sharing examples of answers to those guiding questions on our ideas around language practices and their roots.

For my session, “Language and Power: Implementing Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies in Solidarity with Bilingual & Multilingual Students,” I walked participants through a reflection on their language ideologies, examples of my own students’ bilingual autobiographies, and mentor texts that help us process these issues. First, I asked:

1. What are our language ideologies?
2. How do these impact my teaching?
3. How does my teaching impact bilingual and multilingual students?

Then, I shared two text sets that help us get to know different experiences in order to better understand our own approach. Some of the texts are books, some poems, some video clips.

Checking Our Language Ideologies: K-5 Text Set

1. My Name is Yoon by Helen Recorvits and Gabi Swiatkowska
2. The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi
3. Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation by Edwidge Danticat & Leslie Staub
4. I Hate English! by Ellen Levine and Steve Bjorkman
5. Stepping Stones: A Refugee Family’s Journey by Margriet Ruurs and Nizar Ali Badr
6. Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation by Duncan Tonatiuh

Checking Our Language Ideologies - MS & HS Text Set

1. Narrative: “Inside Out” by Francisco Jimenez
2. Narrative: “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldúa
3. Poem: “Tongue Tactics” & “Abuela” by Mayda del Valle
4. Poem: “3 Ways to Speak English” by Jamila Lyiscott
5. Nonfiction Excerpt: “The Skin that We Speak” by Lisa Delpit
6. Narrative: Chapter 1 from Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez
7. Bilingual Poem: “Coming Up the Archipelago” / “Subiendo por el archipiélago” por Rosario Ferré

For the next session I loved being a part of a conversation around texts! Audra Robb and Emily Strang-Campbell from TCRWP discussed ways we can teach students how to have book club conversations around social issues. First we began with a study on communication or how a book club talks about texts. Audra and Emily showed us a video clip of a book club and had us analyze by each of us (in groups of 3) focus on content, communication, and what they call citizenship moves in the book club. Then, they recommended that we start with a discussion on individuals and studying issues of power, followed by groups. We can show students a video clip (as an example they used one of the video clips from the NY Times 25 mini films exploring race and short video clip of Sam Gordon discussing what she liked about football) and ask “what about this feels like there are personal issues vs. issues related a group they belong to?” Audra and Emily finished the workshop with a read aloud of Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Shoulders” and asked group members to share their interpretation of it.

Teacher Love, Poetry Love, Book Love, Janet Wong Love! Friends and Hunter College students, instructors & alumni with the biggest smiles holding some amazing texts!

It’s really tough for me to put into words what I felt throughout the closing keynote with poet, author, speaker, Janet Wong. You can read what I tweeted throughout the keynote but I want to emphasize two things: the power of poetry and the importance of reading poetry, writing poetry, and listening to poetry in our classrooms! I’ve been immersed in poetry since my childhood. I loved writing poetry growing up and completing the tasks in The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron the last six weeks has revealed that this is one of the practices that makes me the happiest. So when Janet Wong went through poems from her books, had us read along with her, showed the poetry in protests, and shared creative ways to weave this in our classrooms, it all really touched me.

Some of my loves from this summer reading. 

I write this as I look at books on my desk (those I reread/read this summer), some of which include poetry such as Brown Girl Dreaming by Jaqueline Woodson, Solo by Kwame Alexander with Mary Rand Hess, and Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall. I haven’t yet processed this feeling and it’s been almost two weeks. But I know this: I need to make more room for my own poetry writing and sharing it. I have already added Janet Wong’s Poetry Anthology texts to my wish list for the texts for my Read East Harlem teachers (see September Learning Community #4 below). Janet Wong left us with the following call: “every day present a call to action.” Let’s do this!

September Learning Community #2

Bi-Coastal Writing Partnership

Last month, my friend/writing partner/future co-author of our first book, moved across the country and we had to rethink the way we share ideas! Thanks to a co-created writing plan and checking in with weekly feedback, I feel less alone in this writing journey. I also feel excited to write and to get to those days when we share, work through some tough questions, and check in on our lives as we try to balance our many responsibilities.

September Learning Community #3

#TheEdCollab Gathering

#TheEdCollabGathering live from Queens, NY with Luz (on the west coast) on Decolonizing Bilingual Curriculum and Pedagogy, September 23rd

Another unique way of learning was The Educator Collaborative’s #TheEdCollabGathering. It was a Saturday of online keynotes and workshops all on topics connected to literacy and teaching. Take a look at the agenda here and consider partnering with a friend, colleague, teacher team or study group to watch some of the sessions. Just click on any and you’ll be directed to the archived keynote or workshop. Luz and I loved planning and leading the workshop titled “Decolonizing Bilingual Curriculum and Pedagogy (K-12)” and later reading tweets from those who were watching!

September Learning Community #4

Read East Harlem Second Grade Planning & Teaching

My weekly partnership with a second grade team in a neighborhood close to my heart, El Barrio, East Harlem in New York City, is one that may sound familiar to those of you with weekly team meetings at your schools. We plan lessons, co-teach or give each other feedback when one of us teaches a lesson, listen to students together, and analyze student work. What I find super inspiring from my moments in the classroom is the thoughtfulness across the classrooms. Teachers think carefully about our book selections for shared reading or interactive read alouds and ways to make sure students have time to engage in a variety of literacy practices. I always leave the building with excitement and gratitude. If you’re not leaving your teacher team meetings or co-teaching experiences the same way then let’s rethink the work that happens! Here’s a brief overview of my second grade team’s experience yesterday and you can read more about our Read East Harlem partnerships here:

1. Quick update on reading and writing workshop (2 teachers) - After giving a few hugs (I love hugs) and greeting some of the teachers on the same floor (students were lining up outside of the classrooms preparing to go inside), I went into one of the bilingual dual language classrooms. Both classroom teachers give me the weekly update which includes which interactive read aloud text they’ve read, the lessons they’re up to, and the student work they have already looked at or just collected.

2. Morning meeting and Word Study (2 teachers) - Both teachers lead this time and I contribute some ideas, challenging students with their word study work.

3. Shared Reading Demonstration/ Bilingual Celebration (me) - I did a quick (15 mins) bilingual shared reading activity with Tortillas y cancioncitas / Tortillas and Lullabies by Lynn Reiser and "Corazones Valientes" (artists in Costa Rica) just to show some of the beautiful work we can do with texts.

4. Teacher Feedback on My Teaching (2 teachers and myself)- The teachers first of all were shocked to see how engaged the students were throughout the reading, especially with the part of the book in Spanish. They had been concerned that most of them felt uncomfortable speaking in Spanish during other activities. This time though, the students were eager to read together. Although one teacher was concerned that a lot was happening throughout the demonstration, I clarified that I was just showing some of the work they could do throughout the week when they return to a text (song, poem, big book, scene from an interactive read aloud, picture book). The teachers were so enthusiastic with what they saw in the students during the shared reading that they began to look for bilingual texts in their library! I almost cried. Well I kind of did once I walked on third avenue towards the 6 train in El Barrio. I was really worried about the children's bilingual journeys and I’m happy that we could be purposeful about our teaching even if it begins with just 15 minutes a day with this kind of work. I was also emotional because some of the students brought up Mexico, the earthquake, Puerto Rico and the hurricane. That was the way we started the shared reading experience and we then transitioned to talking about our traditions with families.

5. Professional Development Planning Meeting (grade team and AP) - Part one of this planning was with the whole grade team where we first asked each teacher what they were doing with regards to word work, discussed the rationale for a consistent approach across the classrooms, and shared some recommendations for what can happen for the next two weeks before grades one and two launch a consistent approach. Part two of this planning continued with one teacher representative from the team, an assistant principal, and myself. We looked at the school calendar and considered a feasible way to launch this with both grades.

6. Narrative Writing Planning Meeting with a Teacher (teacher and myself) - one of the new teachers to the second grade team is coming from the first grade, moved up with her students, and her most pressing questions were around supporting students in small groups and writing conferences. We discussed two different ways for setting up this support and keeping track of our notes: google forms (creating checklist with the characteristics of narrative writing) and spreadsheet (list of students with writing moves across the writing process). We then looked at sample narrative writing at the first and second grade levels. We compared these with student writing.

Wow, that was a lot! This first month of school (for those of us in NYC) has taught me so much and I just had to share! Remember, you are not alone in this journey. Like I told my second year teachers/New York City Teaching Fellows/students this week in class: find ways to be in community with other educators! For some of you it might look like what I just described through teacher team meetings. For others it might be more online through social media (see #EduColor #TCRWP #TheEdCollabGathering #HipHopEd for some chats on twitter). Or maybe you are like my students who have a more structured community through a course or book club (we are reading Jose Vilson’s This is Not a Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education this fall).

Thank you to those that have contributed to my sense of community in person, online, through phone calls and texts.

Nos vemos,

Carla

Back to School & Being Schooled

con mamá y papá este verano en un partido de NYFC (sí estamos en el estadio de los Yankee porque no tenemos nuestro propio estadio) / with mom and dad this summer at an NYCFC game (yes we are at Yankee Stadium because we don't have our own stadium)

“¡Miren somos famosos!” Mamá and papá looked towards where I was pointing and they quickly saw what I saw: our picture up on the Yankee Stadium jumbotron! Papá was the first to laugh and mamá as always first to comment with "que lindos nos vemos.” We were all at the New York City Football Club game and even though our team wasn’t doing well in the first half (we won 2-1 with exciting two goals in the second half), seeing our picture up there was a first half highlight.

When I was about seven years old we would go to a different kind of soccer event at a different location. At that time, papá was a referee on weekends and we would go watch him and the games at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, NY. After each match, papá would join us and we’d walk or bike around the park. We’d talk about the games and sometimes end up at a Chilean restaurant in the neighborhood (it’s no longer there but there is another one we go to in Astoria now in case you are reading this, live in the area, and get a craving for empanadas).

cuaderno de escritura (uno de varios) personalizado con fotos y palabras que tienen gran significado para mi (también con llaves que me prestaron por el día en un colegio) / personalized writing notebook (one of many) with meaningful pictures and words (also with keys that I had for a day at a school) 

I have so many memories like this one, enjoying New York City with my parents. But I often think about how this is not the case for so many of our students or how there are some painful memories around my own transition to the US from Chile. For example, the time mom and I stood lost on Queens Boulevard not knowing how to get back home and afraid to call local authorities for help, thinking our undocumented status would lead to our family being separated. To this day, I get emotional every single time I pass by that spot. 

I remember my sixth graders’ writing entries from every September when I would ask them to collect ideas for stories they wanted to tell. Some had just left a parent in the Dominican Republic. Some hadn’t seen a sibling in years after they came to this country. Some of their “fun” or “playtime” memories were bittersweet with them trying out the “last time” writing strategy, thinking of the last times they played with a friend or the last time they were at a large family gathering. I couldn't help but think of my own experiences. My undocumented journey as a five year-old was a lot to process on top of a new school, shifting language practices, the very cold winters of our new home and the lack of family around. 

la famosa piedra que ahora la tengo en mi escritorio para que siempre me recuerde de la lección que me enseñó Chris (me regaló la piedra al final de nuestra unidad de escritura) / the famous rock that now sits on my desk so that it always reminds me of the lesson Chris taught me (he gave me the rock at the end of our writing unit)

“¿Chris, por qué trajiste esta piedra?” I asked my student on the second day of school. I really was thinking, “oh great, now this kid wants to be funny and will totally throw off my class." I put forth a forced smile not knowing yet that kids see right through you. On the first day of school, after having read El Camino de Amelia/ Amelia’s Road, I explained to my students that this classroom would be a place where they could share, question, and grow together. The book (read aloud) and our discussion afterwards were really powerful ways for us to discuss what "home" meant to us and how we wanted to feel in this space.

I asked them to bring a picture of a place or person that they love or an object that was meaningful to them. We would use this for our writing task (writing teachers you know where this is going). I thought I was being clever by combining my lesson with my “getting to know you” activity. What I wasn’t prepared for or what took me a bit to learn was the lesson that Chris would teach me.

“Great, here we go with who is going to be the class clown,” was what I thought when Chris put that rock on his desk as other students took out pictures from their homework folders and placed them on their writing notebooks. After I showed my students my picture from my writing notebook and how they could list moments with the people in the picture (or at their favorite place), I walked around to see how students were doing. “¿Y por qué esta piedra?” I asked Chris to explain why this rock. “Profe, recuerda que ayer escribí del río en la República Dominicana con mis primos? Esta es la piedra del río,” he explained. "Oh," I said. 

On the first day of school, I asked students to share with me one of their favorite memories. I used this writing task as a way to get to know them and their writing. Chris (as many other students) missed his family. He missed the fun moments with cousins at the river, outdoors. At his table, once he explained where the rock was from and how special those moments were for him with cousins playing at the river, students joined in and told us that they too hadn’t seen most of their family and missed nature. For some, traveling back to see their abuelita, abuelito, and other family members was not an option.

This was not your traditional “Research-Compliment-Teach-Practice” writing conference (or the structure I learned in my literacy coaching group with Colleen Cruz: "Research-Compliment-Ask Permission-Teach-Practice"). Neither was this a planned small group strategy lesson. This was me being schooled by students. This was me listening to how their experiences impact them, how they respond, how writing can be a path to healing and community-building, and how classroom instruction needs to move beyond a superficial awareness. Our teaching must acknowledge their full humanity and the full range of the human experience. 

Here are some recommendations thanks to what I learned from Chris and hundreds of other bilingual students and teachers:

My favorite plan book! Plan Book for Social Justice Teachers available as pdf download here.

1. Get to Know Your Students - Use the information from "get to know you" activities to inform your lessons and include students' voices and knowledge in future learning experiences. See Chris Emdin's For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education for examples of what this might look like as we build relationships with students (chapter one) and welcome them as co-teachers (chapter four)!  You also want to see the City University of New York-New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals (CUNY-NYSIEB) for resources on students' language practices (with the Languages of New York State Guide) and sample K-12 lessons in the Translanguaging Guide (versión abreviada en español) that build on a "multilingual ecology" for your classroom.

2. Tell Our Stories - Provide opportunities throughout the school day and year for students to share their experiences. Create writing partners or writing groups and schedule time for them to meet. See the work of Jim Cummins and Margaret Early in Identity Texts: The Collaborative Creation of Power in Multilingual Schools for examples of ways students can work with writing partners/groups to tell their stories using their entire linguistic repertoire. Teachers have loved looking through the Thornwood Public School Dual Language Showcase for ways that their bilingual students can "publish" their writing in ways that honor their writing process, language practices, and experiences.

3. Take a Culturally Sustaining Approach to the Classroom - H. Samy Alim and Django Paris, editors of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World, note that to teach from a culturally sustaining stance, "calls for schooling to be a site for sustaining the cultural ways of being of communities of color" as the "future is a multilingual and multiethnic one regardless of the attempt to suppress that reality." This is an urgent call. It is a call for the revisiting and dismantling of destructive ideologies around languages, cultures, and students' knowledge systems. I'm thankful for the communities of educators, administrators, families, and students that continue to keep this at the forefront of our efforts. For example, developing bilingual programs in schools that celebrate and encourage students' full linguistic repertoire (as opposed to having the "bilingual" label but pushing for student literacy practices only in English) or integrating discussions on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and next steps (as opposed to ignoring the recent announcement on ending DACA - how many of our schools discussed this at staff meetings this week?). I'm excited to use this blog as a space where I can share examples of culturally sustaining pedagogies across the K-12 grades and in undergraduate and graduate classrooms! 

What are some lessons your students have taught you during this back to school season?

What was a moment that wasn't written in the lesson plan but that revealed to you a lesson you'll keep for life? 

Please comment below!