Humanization, Cariño, and Multimodal Composition: Undocumented Immigrant Students and a Culturally Sustaining Bilingual Writer's Workshop

• In Event: Literacies of Liberation Through Writing, Poetry, and Counterstories

Abstract

Using a case study approach, I explore how a bilingual first grade teacher and an undocumented immigrant student interact across languages and modalities in a bilingual writer’s workshop in a low-income school. Through the lens of humanizing pedagogy, the writer’s workshop is a space where the teacher and student dialogue, work towards mutual humanization, and, ultimately, enact and sustain transnational, biliterate identities. Within the workshop, Ms. Villa* centered Roman*’s epistemic privilege while caring for his physical and emotional well-being; Roman utilized illustration to tell his immigration story, in his own languages and varieties. This study offers insight for teachers and teacher educators about how a culturally sustaining writer’s workshop can place immigrant students’ experiences at the center of the curriculum.

Author

• Rosalyn Harvey-Torres, Georgia State University