Cultivating Teacher Candidates' Raciolinguistic Perspectives Through Social and Emotional Learning (Poster 5)

• In Event: Advancing Raciolinguistic Equity for Emergent Bilinguals While Cultivating Grassroots Knowledge and Expertise

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected the social and emotional divide, especially among the ELL [emergent bilingual] youth in immigrant families (Sugarman & Lazarin, 2020). In addition, these authors’ findings reveal that the increasing dearth of mental health support, food resources, and jobs, has naturally led to several interruptions in the classrooms for students, particularly those who come from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds. Hence, preservice teachers, in their quest to be fully equipped to teach in an equitable and inclusive classroom, should consider the value of cultivating raciolinguistic perspectives, as a way to mitigate the inequities faced by ELLs in the midst of the pandemic. One avenue to cultivate the understanding of race and language as co-naturalized categories toward imagining and creating a more just society (Rosa & Flores, 2017), is through Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). “SEL is a lifelong process of learning how to better understand ourselves, connect with others, and work together to achieve goals and support our communities” (https://casel.org/). According to Miller et al. (2021), SEL can help mitigate the students’ declining sense of belonging [particularly for emergent bilinguals] by being engaged in the initial preparation and ongoing development of culturally-relevant, technology-mediated care practices. Also, Farber & Rutter (2021) recommended ways to improve students’ social and emotional well-being with caring pedagogies through coursework. The authors suggested instructors to do the following: 1) Check-in often with students, 2) Rethink office hours, 3) Create an inclusive syllabus that emphasizes student success, 4) Model Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and Caring Pedagogies (CP), 5) Nurture students’ intrinsic motivations in courses, 6) Promote CP for all (p. 37). Moreover, Castek et al. (2021) argue that aside from CP, there is a need to foster mindfulness and compassion in teaching and learning which provide educators, specifically for aspiring teachers who are beginning to navigate the educational system, the avenue to face adversity and weather changing times, especially in the COVID-19 era. We realize then, that as educators, regardless of what stage we are in the field of education, we need to empathize, listen, and redesign to satisfy the diverse needs of our students, particularly among emergent bilinguals. Through the analysis of an online survey among various educators, we discover that some teachers were not completely exposed to the SEL approach, even though this term has been coined since 1994 and has been proven to make a positive impact on students, especially for emergent bilinguals. In addition, we find that only a few participating teachers have been fully immersed into the SEL framework. This well-structured framework is known to enhance the teacher candidates’ ability to communicate and build relationships with students and their families, regardless of racial and linguistic differences (https://casel.org/). Therefore, it is imperative that teacher preparation programs must cultivate teacher candidates’ raciolinguistic perspectives not only by being fully cognizant of SEL, but also by being confident enough to implement SEL in their future classrooms. This can be achieved through mentor teachers, research studies, and professional development training.

Author

• Nirmla Griarte Flores, California State Polytechnic University - Pomona
  Presenting Author