Disrupting White Supremacy: A Second Language Teacher's Experience Creating a Bilingual Parent Working Group

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: Language Policies and Educational Equity for Bilingual Education in the United States

Abstract

This paper reports on our efforts as researchers to build collaboration among bilingual parents within a rural school community in order to transform deficit beliefs about bilingualism. We drew on theories of coalition work (Johnson, 1983; Campano et al., 2016), and transformative learning (Steyn, 2017; Goulah, 2008) to inform the design of workshops for parents and teachers for engaging as partners to disrupt white supremacy. We documented how this collaboration supported ally building through cross cultural communication and mutual activity. These efforts included collecting teachers’ ideologies, designing parent workshops, and dialogic planning with parents on participatory action research projects that hold potential to shape ideologies supportive of “additive learning environments” (de Jong, 2011, p. 79).

Authors

• Maria Geueke, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Theresa Y. Austin, University of Massachusetts - Amherst