Teaching From Their Funds: Bilingual First-Year Teachers From an Alternative-Route Program

• In Event: Learning and Linguistics: Teachers' Identities and Beliefs in Language Spaces

Abstract

After completing an Alternative Route to Teaching (ART) partnership at a nearby university, four bilingual first-year teachers—themselves former paraeducators—engage their classrooms with substantial expertise. This qualitative, multiple-case study considers the Funds of Knowledge (FoK) that these teachers draw upon within a challenging first year of instruction. Preliminary findings suggest that the teachers engaged several community and parent connections to foster student learning and support, negotiated an emerging curriculum through relationships with cohort members and school staff, and enacted a wide variety of classroom adaptations to coalesce several mentor teachers’ skills into their practice. Further implications and consideration on the importance of these findings to ART programs, FoK research, and practice will be discussed in the presentation.

Author

• Steven Morrison, Washington State University