Colonizing Hillside Elementary: The Figured World(s) of Parent Engagement as Hillside Begins Two-Way Bilingual Education

• In Event: Gentrification and Dual-Language Bilingual Education: A Texas Two-Way Bilingual Education School Across Seven Years

Abstract

Objectives: Prior to implementing TWBE, Hillside served fewer than 200 predominantly Latinx Spanish-speaking, working class/poor children. When the school began to implement TWBE in August 2010, approximately 40 new families came into kindergarten and first grade, most English-speaking or bilingual, middle-class. This influx delivered a shock to the school’s community identity. Thus began a shift as this first wave of “gentrifiers” (Stillman, 2012) worked to build relationships across language, culture and class boundaries, and as the “original” working-class mostly Latinx Hillside families, ironically those who worked hard to bring the TWBE program into the school, faded into the background.
Perspectives: l draw on Holland, et. al.’s (1998) conceptions of figured and cultural worlds and the visceral settler colonialism that manifested in the form of gentrification (Iyengar, 2014; Author & Redacteds, 2020) to explore the evolution of the community’s identity, and the displacement of original Hillside families as a lottery brought the new population in. Figured worlds are communities of shared understandings, such as ‘bilinguals’ or ‘engaged parents’, while cultural worlds are shared spaces or organizations like schools. According to Iyengar (2014), language policies have long been important to the “settler-colonial project” in both displacing original inhabitants and replacing them by white (English-speaking) colonial settlers. As research increasingly shows, this dynamic is manifesting in dual language education contexts, both metaphorically and actually (Menken, Freire & Delavan, 2021; Dorner et al., 2020)
Methods and Data sources: I conducted a language policy ethnography and discourse analysis (Hornberger & Johnson, 2007; Gee, 2005) during Hillside’s first year implementing TWBE (2010-2011). Among the data collected were 23 interviews of educators and parents, and field notes from 35 meetings/events that were (re)analyzed ten years later for this paper, guided by my dual frameworks.
Results: Hillside by all accounts was a small, caring community, and the community welcomed an enrichment-oriented DL bilingual program. Absorbing new families was also a welcome change as long-time parents and teachers were tired from ongoing struggles to keep the school open. Teachers did have trepidation that the families they had long served (racialized bilingual, primarily immigrant) would be marginalized in the new dynamic - and evidence demonstrated that they were. Spanish took a back seat to English in schoolwide events and discourse, and the money/power/influence of new families overshadowed the efforts of long-time families. Many were aware of the dynamics of replacement that were occurring and made efforts to counter these; what more could Hillside’s community have done to ensure continued focus on the cultures and lives of racialized bilinguals and their families?
Significance: This paper paints a clear portrait of the gentrification process in a TWBE school in its first year. Presenting ample evidence of settler-colonial displacement and replacement, I also present many examples of resistance; the story is never simple. I end with insights and recommendations for researchers and practitioners working together to center justice and equity: examples of how critical consciousness, coupled with acompañamiento, might have made the difference.

Author

• Deborah K. Palmer, University of Colorado - Boulder
  Presenting Author