“We’re all collectively fearless”: Resisting restrictive language policies to imagine new futures

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 4:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Language, Pláticas, and Testimonios In School and Community

Abstract

This paper examines how a K-5 dual language school in Tucson, Arizona promoted Spanish and translanguaging through employing a critical translanguaging pedagogy to promote linguistic and cultural pride and the development of critical consciousness while situated in a state context that denigrated and othered Spanish and Spanish-speakers and maintained an English-only education policy. Analyses of observation and interview data demonstrated that teachers and students engaged in practices to normalize Spanish use and challenged raciolinguistic ideologies, recognizing the importance of historical movements against oppression as a basis for their current experiences and to create new futures. This research contributes to scholarship that examines schools as sites of counter-cultural practice and cultural and linguistic reclamation.

Author

• Neida Basheer Ahmad, Loyola Marymount University