Relationality as Mediating Change: Bilingual Teacher Agency in Educational Organizing

• In Event: 14.043 - Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: 14.043-20 - Roundtable 2: Language

Abstract

This paper analyzes the role of relationality for bilingual teachers in a community organizing effort. Using the example of an effort to establish two-way dual language programs in their school, I ethnographically analyze and describe bilingual teachers’ perceptions of how relationships with community members and other teachers transformed their perceptions and organizing work. I argue that bilingual teachers’ attention to relationality provided an epistemological framework through which to engage with their contradictory positionality in relation to the working class Latino student population and school community.

Author

• Christopher Milk Bonilla, Texas State University - San Marcos