(Re)Imagining Latinx Teachers in Multiple Contexts: Cultural Resources, Testimonios, and Activism in Public Schools

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Today’s teaching workforce is only 8% Latinx and 7% African American while students of color are expected to make up 56% of the student population by 2024. This panel presents a portrait of current Latinx teachers who are working in diverse communities in Chicago and Texas; the researchers critically examine how Latinx teachers, and their students, experience subtractive practices of native language erosion as well as having their cultural identities [and brown bodies] viewed, managed, and contested within schools. Using a range of ethnographic and qualitative methodologies and stances, findings from these four papers point to the urgent need of expanding the teachers-of-color pipeline because their identities, past experiences, and pedagogical philosophies matter in today’s and tomorrow’s public school classrooms.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Hispanic Research Issues

Chair

• Patricia Sanchez, The University of Texas - San Antonio

Papers

• Authentic Cariño in a Case Study of a Mexican-Origin Bilingual Preservice Teacher - Dorothy J. Wall, California State University - Chico

• The Scientific Biliteracy of Preservice and Novice Bilingual Latinx Teachers: The Shaping of Pedagogical Stances - Jorge L. Solis, The University of Texas - San Antonio

• Testimonios del Barrio: Latinx Teacher Counternarratives in Chicago - Ramona Meza, University of Illinois at Chicago; Joanna Maravilla-Cano, University of Illinois at Chicago; P. Zitlali Morales, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Chicanx Educators Implementing Mexican American Studies: Identity, Agency, and Activism Make the Dream a Reality - Vanessa Sandoval, The University of Texas - San Antonio

Discussant

• Lucila D. Ek, University of Texas at San Antonio