Looking Into Oneself: Impacting Preservice Teachers' Spanish Language Development

• In Event: Latinx Teachers: Using Culture and Language to Uplift

Abstract

Professors in the field of Bilingual Education are being called to prepare highly effective bilingual teachers who can perform in academic settings to support the ever-growing English Learner (ELs) population across the nation. As a result, we, two Bilingual Education professors working at two different institutions along the Texas-Mexico border, conducted a duoethnography study to explore the question: “How are our practices impacting the linguistic development of the students we teach?” In our paper, we describe: the pedagogical activities we use with our students that have the greatest impact on their language and literacy development in Spanish, as they face the rigorous challenge of pursuing bilingual certification in the state of Texas.

Authors

• Gina Garza-Reyna, Texas A&M University - Kingsville

• Zulmaris Diaz, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley