Art and Imagination for Validating Language and Literacy Journeys of Latinx Bi/multilingual Preservice Teachers

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Collective Reimaginings: Women of Color Storying and Transforming Teacher Education

Abstract

Apparent in the literature is a need for more investigations examining the use of the art and creativity when developing biliteracy practices for Latinx bi/multilingual students (Chappell & Cahnmann-Taylor, 2013). Using the arts and multimodal approaches allows for an imaginative and transformative way of communicating and expressing inner and outer experiences. Borrowing from Anzaldúa’s (2015) and Pérez’s (1999) conceptualizations of imagination provides an avenue and tool for navigating the conscious and unconscious - the real and the imagined. When redesigning a language arts methods course for preservice Latinx teachers in elementary bilingual education in a large university in Texas, I reconceptualized pedagogical practices incorporating these Chicana Feminist conceptualizations, specifically imagination and nepantla (Anzaldúa, 2015).
Anzaldúa (2015) reimagined nepantla, as a liminal space sitting in between ideologically opposed physical and metaphorical borders. By using the arts and artistic exploration in the language arts course, Latinx bi/multilingual preservice teachers had a supports and scaffolds for their written expressions and spoken reflections, which legitimized their community language varieties from home. By aligning humanizing pedagogies and research (Paris & Winn, 2014), imagination, and nepantla, this course opened up a place to investigate the use of multimodal approaches (i.e., art making, zine, and libro cartonero creation) as tools for self-discovery and validation (Barone & Eisner, 1997). In this language arts methods course, preservice teachers explored their own and their communities’ language and literacy histories, while simultaneously understanding painful wrongs tied to their ancestors’ languages.
In an effort to sensitively gather the knowledge produced in this course, through the support of a research team, we recorded, listened to, transcribed, and visually mapped teachers’ voices. Through arts-based methods and utilizing Anzaldúa’s (2015) creative process of transformation, I analyzed the spoken, visual, and written discussions and assignments in the course. I mapped themes of community cultural wealth including familiar and linguistic capital (Yosso, 2005). This study weaves in creative use of pedagogy, with the sole purpose of centering Latinx bi/multilingual voices in education, amplifying their written and visual stories.
As Anzaldúa (2015) mentions, imagination is liberation, freeing us from the confines of daily life. For too long, dominant educational practices, particularly those for Latinx bi/multilingual students, have denied their realities, language varieties, and experiences as legitimate in the classroom. It is imperative that Latinx bi/multilingual preservice teachers are allowed to portray and share their lives, especially as they become future teachers for other bi/multilingual students, in an effort to disrupt the silencing and negating of our communities knowledge. As we prepare future teachers, their personal and community history matter, so they can imagine a different reality for their own students.

Author

• Paty Abril-Gonzalez, University of Texas at Austin