Nepantla in a Fifth-Grade Pop Choir: A Space for Convergence of Ideas, Languages, and Identities

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: Pushing Boundaries in Bilingual Elementary Education

Abstract

We challenge the idea of using written and oral text as the only symbolic way of encoding and sharing knowledge in schools. To shut out a world of non-linguistic dialogue and creative possibility arising from artistic creation, nonverbal expression and musical communication is to limit what might be the only way that emergent bilingual children can communicate. Using the concept of nepantla as a conduit to engage multiliteracies in a low-performing school in the southwest, we created a 5th grade “pop choir.” Using qualitative methods that included participant observation, interviews, surveys, and performance tapes, we analyzed how musical performance and expression within a social group fostered a love of languages and personal accomplishment through enlaces (ties that bind).

Authors

• Leila Flores-Duenas, University of New Mexico

• Karol Ibarra Zetter, University of New Mexico