Forced to Code-Switch: The Protection and Resistance of Latinx Educators Amidst Relentless Pressures to Assimilate

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 1:45 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Against the Tide: Teachers of Color Navigating Challenging School Contexts

Abstract

Educators of color bring innumerable linguistic and cultural resources, talents, and abilities to K-12 schools in the United States. Nonetheless, teacher education programs frequently fail to recognize these ways of knowing, being, and speaking as the assets that they are, instead pushing educators to assimilate to whiteness. This study investigates how, in a year-long professional learning experience, a collective of early-career multilingual Latinx educators cultivated ways of being, speaking, and teaching that counter this ongoing push toward linguistic and cultural assimilation. It illuminates the ways these Latinx educators were impacted by raciolinguisitic ideologies, both as students and now as teachers, and then presents a framework outlining ways that they heal, thrive, and implement liberatory education for themselves and their students.

Author

• Paula Sevilla, University of California - Santa Barbara