La Colaborativa Cuauhtli Project: Creating a Sacred Space of Compromiso for Critical Educators

• In Event: (Re)Centering Our Collective Knowledge in a Tlahtocan Community Dialogue Circle: Indigenous Pedagogies From Central Texas

Abstract

Purpose
La Colaborativa Cuauhtli Project is the creation of a transformational space of compromiso (Díaz-Soto, Cervantes-Soon, Villarreal & Campos, 2009) where Spanish/ English bilingual educators come together. In this space, having a Latinx identity as an educator “implies taking on a strong political orientation and commitment to unlearn white supremacy” (Urrieta, 2007). Together we aim to support each other in coming into our own stories of identity as educators. We are drawn to Latin American indigenous pedagogies as praxis for what we believe is the call to one’s self. We seek to inform the ways we teach. U.S. educational and public policies have focused heavily on subtracting languages and cultural practices of the home (Valenzuela, 1999). The normalizing of Eurocentric practices as the standard for a “good education” along with the normalizing of monolingualism towards English ensures that our practices and classrooms remain colonized. As community members, parents, bilingual education advocates and scholar-practitioners we are moved by our cultural intuition that weaves together our intellectual, spiritual, political and community work to sustain and restore the languages and cultures in our communities.

Modes of Inquiry
The founders of La Colaborativa Cuauhtli Project sought to elaborate a third space, away from the dominating gaze of the white education system where the “diversity of perspectives, linguistic styles, and cultural tongues'' of Latinx bilingual educators could be elevated (Anzaldúa and Moraga, 1981). We choose to examine the following educational research questions that address collective understandings of the way language learning, learning histories and lived experiences influence educational opportunities for emergent bilinguals in the U.S. educational context.
- How do languages and cultures of Mexico inform teachers to develop a more critical view of pedagogies?
- In what ways does decolonizing physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual perspectives shape teachers' practices and their view of the communities they serve?
- In what ways does shifting our understanding of what language, learning, family/ community stories and experiences are, transform teacher use and design of curriculum and ways of teaching in the classroom?

La Colaborativa Cuauhtli Project initiated in the summer of 2022 as a transnational and transformational space for bilingual educators to embark in answering these questions.

Warrant for Argument
We find that the creation of a transnational sacred space for the purpose of educational transformation fosters and harnesses critical-consciousness in a unique way. La Colaborativa teachers seek to learn about and from indigenous epistemologies as a way to become authentic in our teaching in response to pervasive deficit notions of languages other than English have been pathologized, pushing English linguistic and cultural assimilation through subtractive bilingual education schooling for Spanish-English Latino children of immigrant parents (Gándara, 2018).

Scholarly Significance
This tejido (weave) allows us to collaborate in the creation of a decolonizing space for critical introspection and connectivity that facilitates a participatory communal circle of compromiso (Díaz-Soto, Cervantes-Soon, Villarreal & Campos, 2009) with the purpose of transforming public school educational spaces.

Author

• Patricia Núñez, University of Texas at Austin