Centering Immigrant Voices and Experiences in a Dual-Language Bilingual School: Teachers as Critical Pedagogues and Policy Makers

• In Event: Enacting Critically Conscious Policies in Practice: Four Cases From Dual-Language Bilingual Education Contexts

Abstract

Objectives
This paper presents a case study of the work of a Spanish-English dual language bilingual school that takes a strong stance on political issues that impact minoritized immigrant families. This means that teachers take on “controversial” topics, even if it means making some families uncomfortable in the interrogation of white privilege, which often intersects with US citizenship and middle-class socio-economic status. We highlight how this approach manifests itself with one teacher who dealt with parent pushback to a read aloud.
Theoretical Framework
The conceptual framework for this paper draws on the literature of teachers as policymakers, the development of critical consciousness, and the concept of embracing discomfort in dual language bilingual education. Policy-as-practice scholarship has troubled the notion that the investigation of policy is merely an analysis of policy texts. It shifts analytical attention to the interaction and intersections between texts and the actors who interpret and give meaning to them across educational contexts (Levinson et al., 2009). Within the context of dual language bilingual education, Authors (2019) have elaborated four key elements of critical consciousness: interrogating power, historicizing schools, critical listening and embracing discomfort. We use this framework to understand the policy and curriculum decisions made by Mx. B, their colleagues and the principal at Entre Mundos.

Methods and Data Sources
This paper is based on a case study of a public bilingual school in New York City (VanWynsberghe & Khan, 2007). Data sources include unstructured interviews with teacher, conversations with principal, curriculum artifacts, and classroom observations over the course of a thematic unit on immigration.

Results
For the unit on immigration, Mx. B decided to draw upon the experiences of many of their immigrant students in the first-grade classroom to engage in a read aloud about a child whose parent was being detained. Soon after, they receive a complaint from a white US-born parent who thought this topic was too contentious. For school leaders and teachers at Entre Mundos, the mission of their bilingual school encompassed a critical understanding of power and the centering of immigrant families and students in their curriculum. Mx. B’s decisions about the authentic literature they would use—to not only engage in meaningful literacy practices, but also discuss an important issue that affect many of their immigrant-origin students—reflected a particular interpretation of policy and what it means to be a bilingual teacher. Their response to a white middle class parent’s discomfort with their curricular choices illuminates how bilingual teachers negotiate policies across educational contexts and bring them to life in their classrooms (Menken & García, 2010; Varghese & Stritikus, 2005).

Scholarly Significance
The ways in which Mx. B responded to a white parent’s complaints about this text illustrates how bilingual teachers can productively engage with and embrace the discomfort that can result from interrogating power and challenging the status quo through their pedagogy. Much research has pointed to the importance of critical approaches to education, but the reality of what this means for teachers who take a firm stance is often missing.

Authors

• Dina A. Lopez, City College of New York - CUNY
  Presenting Author

• Tatyana Kleyn, City College of New York - CUNY
  Presenting Author