The Power of a Transnational Exchange of Bilingual Poems to Build Climate Literacies with Educators

• In Event: Reading and Writing about Climate Change: Developing Teachers’ Literacies in/for a Warming World

Abstract

Overview
This paper explores the power of a transnational and translingual poem exchange between US and Colombian teachers for extending climate literacies. This paper is part of a collaborative inquiry project bringing a global lens to teacher education and professional development. For this project, we invited a group of five Colombian elementary in-service teachers, nine US in-service teachers, and teacher educators from both countries. The project consisted of virtual sessions where teachers engaged in critical literacy activities such as discussing children’s picturebooks. In this paper, we ask: How did the creation of poems about experiences with water and nature reflect and represent teachers’ memories, identities, and vision related to climate understanding and action?
Theoretical Perspectives
Collaborative learning communities support teachers’ inquiry of their learning processes (Tillema & van der Westhuizen, 2006). Using a translingual global lens (Oliveri et al., 2019), teachers can challenge “the taken-for-granted assumptions of teaching and schooling practices and imagining alternatives to change conditions” (Achinstein, 2002, p. 6). In this learning community, we explored how climate literacies can be cultivated through Language Arts.
Poetry can serve as a tool for teachers to explore their identities and share memories (Lemon et al., 2025). Since Aldern (2024) writes that memories are “written physically in the brain” (p. 31), writing poems that convey experiences and emotions associated with water enables educators to forge connections between memories and ecological identities.
Methods
Before the teachers met, we designed a poem-creation activity for teachers to reflect on their climate/nature identities. Based on George Ella Lyon’s example poem, teachers created De Dónde Soy/Where I am From poesías/poems. The Colombian and US teachers’ poems were translated into English and Spanish, respectively, and shared so each teacher could read some poems from the other group before the first virtual session.
Our analysis of the poems drew upon a critically-inspired discourse analysis approach (Fairclough, 2015). Analyzing each poem line-by-line (Creswell & Miller, 2000), we identified patterns regarding how nouns and verbs indexed participants’ past, present, and future relationships to water.
Findings
The poems represent a narrative dialogue between teachers and their ecological identities in formation. Teachers positioned themselves culturally in different ways: “I am from Imos pizza and soul food,” Carla declared. Teachers reflected on their daily interactions with water; “I am from the cool breeze, of the sun and of the waves of the sea…” (Dana). Some described ways they already work for water justice: “I am from caring for water purification and conservation” (Eva). Others asked questions they had for future actions: “How to improve your recycling practices? How to slow down the effects of climate change?” (Marta). By sharing, teachers remembered and envisioned their interrelationships with the natural world and built ecological identities.
Significance
The handling of memories supports forging ecological identities where people are moved to educate and act on climate crises (Cammarano & Stutelberg, 2020). Further, our collaborative analysis helped us understand cultural differences in teacher professional development since the two contexts assumed different perspectives on writing poetry about water justice.

Authors

• Lina Trigos-Carrillo, Universidad del Norte

• Nicole R. Misra, University of Missouri - St. Louis

• Luzkarime Calle-Diaz, Institución Educativa El Recuerdo

• Rebecca L. Rogers, University of Missouri - St. Louis