"To Teach in a Language That Is My Own...": Toward a Felt Theory of Dual Language Teaching

• In Event: 51.078 - MTCC Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: 51.078-7 - Insights and Agency of Teachers of Bilingual Learners

Abstract

Novice dual language teachers inhabit, embody and negotiate teacher identities which guide their classroom practice (Varghese, 2008; Urrieta, 2007). These identities are built upon their individual histories and personal experiences, as well as their ideologies, beliefs and emotions (Alfaro & Bartolome, 2015; Palmer & Martínez, 2013). Drawing on feminist theory, I take all of the aforementioned to be forms of knowledge, and suggest that this knowledge is central to the work of dual language teachers. I use poetic inquiry to forward a “felt theory” of dual language teaching (Million, 2009). Culminating in a series of translingual poems, this study highlights teachers’ voices, emotions and daily lived experience.

Author

• Rachel D Snyder, University of Washington - Seattle