Immigration Stories in the Emergent Bilingual Classroom: Revealing Funds of Knowledge Through Literacy Curriculum

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Promise and Complexities of Culturally Sustaining and Responsive Pedagogies Toward Transformation

Abstract

This practitioner inquiry study seeks to learn from students as they shared their life experiences, drawing from their immigration stories to develop an asset-based curriculum in an emergent bilingual classroom. I argue that when relationships are prioritized with diverse students using a pedagogy of acompañamiento (Sepulveda, 2011), classrooms become spaces where students can share family stories, life experiences, and funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992; Gonzalez et al., 2005).
The focal student, Ali, created literacy projects about her mother and father’s immigration journey, completed personal interviews, and told other family stories during the two years of this study. After coding and classifying data into emerging themes (Creswell & Poth, 2018), result suggest a need for brave spaces in classrooms.

Author

• Erin McNeill, Indiana University - Bloomington