Trenzas para un Nuevo Sol: Critical Bilingual Professional Development for Solidarity, Transformation, and Equity

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

To pursue equity, bilingual teachers must challenge pervasive deficit and racist ideologies, cultivate students’ identities/knowledges, and thwart oppressive ideologies through counter-hegemonic pedagogies. This symposium presents a six-year study of El Instituto, an immersive critical professional development program conducted in Spanish in Los Angeles and its endeavor to center bilingual teachers’ sociocultural realities and honor their linguistic capital while preparing them to challenge and thwart pervasive deficit and racist ideologies in two-way immersion programs. By highlighting a unique approach to bilingual teacher professional development, we illuminate changes to support bilingual teachers in critical practices that enact social change. Building solidarity amongst researchers through this session strengthens critical professional development initiatives, dismantles hegemonic strongholds, and reimagines bilingual learning.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Bilingual Education Research

Chair

• Yesenia Fernandez, California State University - Dominguez Hills

Papers

• Critical Professional Development: Fostering Anti-Oppressive Inertia in Teacher Solidarity, Activism, and Ideological and Pedagogical Transformation - Yesenia Fernandez, California State University - Dominguez Hills

• The Power of the Word: Reimagining DLL Teacher Identity Within Ideological and Political Struggle - Miguel Casar, University of California - Los Angeles

• El Instituto: Cultivating Bilingual Teachers' Linguistic Capital Through a Raciolinguistic Approach - Nallely Arteaga, California State University - Dominguez Hills

• "This Is My Spanish. That's Part of Who I Am": Sociocultural Languaging in Professional Development - Jennifer Stacy, California State University - Dominguez Hills

• Rejuvenated Praxis: Bilingual Teachers Pedagogical Transformation Through Critical Professional Development - Cynthia Y. Lozano Correa, Los Angeles Unified School District; Natalie Núñez, Lynwood Unified School District

Discussant

• Jennifer Stacy, California State University - Dominguez Hills