Resisting Subtractive Language Policies Through Relationships With Bilingual Adult Mentors

• In Event: From District Leaders to Classroom Discourse: Policies and Practices in Multilingual Learner Education

Abstract

This study explores the role of bilingual adult mentors in helping multilingual youth navigate harmful language and educational policies lives in U.S. high schools. Although scholarship has established the importance of adult mentors for the academic and social well-being of linguistically minoritized youth (Garcia et al., 2012; Noddings 1988; Valenzuela, 1999), few studies have focused on emergent bilingual youth voices when seeking to understand the unique support bilingual adult mentors offer to youth. This study centers the experiences of multilingual youth as they describe the role of bilingual adult mentors in their lives. Findings show that for many multilingual students, bilingual mentors were a resource for articulating injustice in their school and strategizing how best to resist inequity.

Authors

• Avary Carhill-Poza, University of Massachusetts - Boston

• Vannessa Quintana Sarria, University of Massachusetts - Boston