Unforgetting Language Inheritance and Building Raiz Pedagogy Futures

• In Event: Unforgetting our Language Inheritance: Imagining Multilingual Teacher Education Futures in the Midwest

Abstract

This paper engages testimonio methodology (Blackmer Reyes & Curry Rodríguez, 2012) to argue that Chicago falls short in supporting the language development of emergent bilingual students. Simultaneously, efforts in an urban teacher licensure program to prepare future bilingual educators to go into dual language teaching settings are constructing new visions for bilingual possibilities and what counts as academic success. As part of my testimonio, I include the journey of a large urban school community from having no services for emergent bilingual students to implementing a dual language program. In my current role as placement coordinator for the urban teacher licensure program, I understand the critical role that teacher preparation programs play in closing dual language implementation gaps.

As a bilingual male of color, I have been a student, teacher, and administrator in Chicago Public Schools (CPS), and a doctoral student in the College of Education at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). My own journey mirrors that of one neighborhood school that underwent a reversal in its language ideological stance. When I was in 7th grade, my neighborhood school lacked a bilingual program. Years later, I became a teacher there, but the school still had an English-only environment in the classrooms, primarily reflected in English-only textbooks. Teachers expressed discomfort with students speaking Spanish in the hallways, and the administrators believed that placing emergent bilingual students in English-only environments was best for their learning. Eventually, a new administration was forced, by law and the school district, to implement a Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) program. The school purchased teaching materials in Spanish, and teachers began teaching in the students’ home language, following the time allocation of the TBE. Years later, I became an assistant principal, and we applied for and received permission to become a dual language program.

We made the school-wide curricular switch towards a dual language program to promote multiliteracy and ways of thinking that addressed the multicultural aspect of the school. Reflecting on how my identity was positively shaped by participating in mitotiliztli (“danza Azteca”), we hired a staff member familiar with mitotiliztli, who created an afterschool program. This program ultimately sought to promote students’ culture, language, and sense of self (Colín, 2014).

I take this learning with me in my role as a teacher preparation placement coordinator, working with schools to build partnerships for our preservice teachers to have powerful fieldwork experiences in bilingual schools. This opens the possibility to shape the dispositions of future bilingual teachers to teach hasta la raíz. An example of raíz pedagogy can be found in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, Mexico, from descendants of those who were never conquered by the Spanish colonizers. Fragments of these knowledges can be found thriving across the Americas. Only by purposefully acknowledging future teachers’ own linguistic and cultural knowledges can we reach the goal of having prepared bilingually endorsed candidates ready to teach in dual language settings.

Author

• Zitlaltoka Ramírez Huerta, University of Illinois at Chicago