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A Guide of Anti-racist books for children

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A Guide of Anti-racist books for children

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Created by the Bankstreet Community with support of the Bankstreet Children's Book Committee

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A Sled for Gabo - Story Time with Emma Otheguy Event

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A Sled for Gabo - Story Time with Emma Otheguy Event

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Images of what I shared at this event https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/event/story-time-emma-otheguy-prof-carla-espa%C3%B1a

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Build Your Stack: Translanguaging in Latinx Children's and YA Books

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Build Your Stack: Translanguaging in Latinx Children's and YA Books

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of water with a bed of rock barely visible
from your surface. You are the only dark body

of water in a desert littered with bleeding cactus.
At your collarbones you carry a gulch, held up by a thread

of hair. You travel days drinking only from yourself,
because you are this land's only dark body

of water. At the crease of horizon you find a woman
in bed, her chest wet with saliva, you kick her

off the bed, and take her place among its sheets. A man
lies down in bed next to you. He swallows your dark body

of water and gives you a woman's body, a body you've
never known. As a woman he gives you sores, and through

the sores you breathe, and despite the sores you give birth
to a child stillborn for lack of water. You kick the child off

the bed, but it returns in the arms of the woman whose bed
you stole. You cry to be made again into a dark body

of water. The man kicks you off the bed, covers you
with dirt, and turns you desert. You cry for a bed he will never

let you sleep in again. You cry for your body's bed
of rock turned desert for lack of water.

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of water with a bed of rock barely visiblefrom your surface. You are the only dark body of water in a desert littered with bleeding cactus.At your collarbones you carry a gulch, held up by a thread of hair. You travel days drinking only from yourself,because you are this land's only dark body of water.

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LIVE WEBINARS:Temas, Textos, and Translanguaging: Storytelling and Social Justice 

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LIVE WEBINARS:Temas, Textos, and Translanguaging: Storytelling and Social Justice 

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Presented By Carla España and Luz Yadira Herrera

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Professional Development Services Menu

2020-21 Heinemann PD Catalog-Journal

Download and share the latest issue of our Professional Development Catalog-Journal, edited by Ellin Oliver Keene - now with even more articles and content to help advance your practice!

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Professional Development Services Menu 2020-21 Heinemann PD Catalog-Journal Download and share the latest issue of our Professional Development Catalog-Journal, edited by Ellin Oliver Keene - now with even more articles and content to help advance your practice!

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Historia de mi bilingüismo/ prácticas lingüísticas

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Historia de mi bilingüismo/ prácticas lingüísticas

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Sample assignment task and rubric sheet for autobiography of language practices (in Spanish)

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Task and rubric sheet for assignment that asks for narrative and presentation.

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Voice of Witness: Amplifying Unheard Voices

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Voice of Witness (VOW) advances human rights by amplifying the voices of people impacted by-and fighting against-injustice.

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Informational Articles for Students

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It's time to improve literacy skills during social studies instruction and ensure that readers of all abilities have what they need to access grade-level social studies concepts.

Join us on Thursday, December 7 for a look at scaffolded materials that provide extra literacy support while building key social studies concepts and skills.

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Newsela | Content and assessment platform

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Content Aligned To National & State Standard, Flexible To Support Relevant Curriculum. Find the Perfect Piece Of Content For Lessons. Go beyond the book.

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Statistics do not tell the story of immigration. People do. Since its inception, this nation has been continually infused with the energy of newcomers. Yet their assimilation has seldom been smooth. The challenges we face today are not new. Only the stories are.

IMPORTANT NOTICE
If you need legal advice on immigration law, please contact an attorney.

My grandparents were refugees at the time of partition in India from, what is now, Pakistan to present India. They worked long and hard days doing blue-collar jobs so that my parents would have a better chance at life. My parents chose to honor their sacrifices by seeking a better life in the United States. We came to this country because my mother had a fellowship. We landed with just over $800 in NYC. My father's MBA was not accredited in the United States so eventually he went back to school to repeat his degree. They recognized that the caste system in the US is based on where you go to school so they sent my sister and I to the best high schools and then the best colleges. I am now in law school working to make sure our systems provide everyone with a fair shot at success and my sister is teaching English helping the next generation learn empathy. We honor the sacrifices of our family by trying to make the world a better place. We believe that the promise of America can be a reality for all of us. We are Americans.
Aditi
New York, NY

My father was a bracero. He suffered a lot. He was far from his family in Mexico but convinced a good religious man to build a home for his family and brought his family home to the United States. Years later, my mother cleaned others people's homes and ironed other people's clothes: neighbors' homes and clothes, in a middle class neighborhood in a home my father purchased. I stand proud every day because of them. I am proud to be an immigrant.
Graciela
Los Angeles

After my family got a visa in Yemen, I was so glad that I would be going to the USA. All my family were happy for us but most of them were crying at the time we left. We left Yemen during the beginning of the revolution to change the president. Since then people are suffering from lack of food resources. Each year it gets worse. My father told us that we would not stay for a long time in NYC but since the war started in Yemen it's not safe anymore. We couldn't go back so we decided to stay. So for two years we have been hoping that Yemen will get better and it will be safe so we can go back and see my family after five years of being expatriates.
Basam

My dad was born in 1968 in Saigon, Vietnam during the Vietnam War. At that time grandpa was a soldier fighting for the South in the Vietnam War. My dad was 7 at the time when my grandfather was taken to a camp that was owned by the communists and was kept as a prisoner of war. He returned 10 years after when my dad was 17 years old and my dad's family opened up a salon. In 1993, when my dad was 24 years old, my dad and his whole family received airplane tickets to America to escape the communist takeover in Vietnam. My dad and his family chose to settle in California because he heard the weather was nice and there was a lot of job opportunities in San Jose. When my dad first arrived in America. They lived in an apartment in Blossom Hill. His first job was in electronic assembling. He says getting the job was easy since he had a friend who helped him. He wanted to learn the English language because he says living in America without knowing most of the words was difficult so he went to West Valley College for two years to learn English. Everyone has their own immigrant story.
Kelly
CA

I'm lucky. I'm 16, live in a small town and I am a daughter of an immigrant. Growing in a small town, when 96 percent of the population is white is tough. You turn white. Sure, the color of my skin will never be the color of a piece of printer paper but inside it feels like I'm all white. I guess the word "anchor baby" defines me.... sort of. I'm the president of debate club, where we talk about bills, current news topics, and political nominees. The hardest topic... Is immigration reform. People are so uninformed.. "Yes I believe we should deport all undocumented immigrants here, and they should get in line with all the other people to get their papers... LEGALLY" I find that easier said than done. I haven't seen my father since I was 8 and only spoken to him on the telephone. He was deported in 2009. The last day I saw him was in a train station... And I had no idea why I was saying good bye... and why everyone was crying. When my friends came over and asked where my father was I said he was "working". Every year on my birthday he calls me and I try hard not to cry because I know it's another year of him not being able to see me grow. My mother is a single mom. Terrified of being deported. Just a couple weeks ago she was caught. She was driving to work when a police officer pulled her over because she wasn't wearing her seat belt. For anyone else it's just a ticket. For a single mother that is illegal it's "I have to go to court, I have to show identification... They will find out I am illegal.. I will be deported... I have to call my lawyer... Who will take care of my daughters? " I hate seeing my mother in constant fear. I hate hearing family members and friends calling us to be careful because in Hudson ICE was seen deporting families. She's scared. I'm scared. We're all scared. Living the American dream shouldn't consist of being scared every second of the day.
E.G.
Albany, New York

I came to the United States as a child. My dad is a resident alien but could never fix my situation.
Since I have been here I've formed a family of my own. I don't know anything about Mexico because I was raised here and I find myself scared to be deported to a place that I do not know.
Gonzalo
South Bay, Florida

My parents moved to America when I was a year old and my sister was 2 1/2. I have 2 younger siblings who are born in America. Sometimes I hate how unknowingly privileged they are. They get free doctor and dentist visits while I haven't been to the doctor since I was 8 years old. I did not know about immigration until recently and I cried for days. My father, mother, sister, and I all have our passports. I am now 16 years old and counselors are telling me to start looking for college. My sister is a senior and she recently found out that we cannot apply for FAFSA. I don't know how I'm going to pay for college and I want to be an engineer. I don't even have my workers permit and it sucks to see everyone else getting jobs and licenses when I'm just stuck. I feel so helpless and sometimes I wonder why my parents even decided to come here. There is nothing for us here.
A Dreamless Child
Indiana

I came to the U.S. When I was 1 year old along with my 2 older brothers and my mom. My dad was working in the U.S. at the time so he never really had the chance to see me when I was born. My parents have had to go through so much just us. I admire them so much. They came to America seeking a future. I never went hungry. We came here with a tourist visa. I am 17 years old now and I want to travel the world but sadly I can't. There are so many risk factors that come with being an immigrant but my parents always managed to cope with them.
Maria
New Jersey

I never knew being illegal holds you back from many things you can do here in the states. I've been illegal all my life but found out when I was 15. I came to the United States when I was 5. I lived the life of a normal kid with school and friends and just being a kid. When I got older I couldn't get a normal job or even go to school or even get my first car. It is hard and it keeps getting harder for some reason. I'm 24 and don't really know where to turn to.
Jose
Orlando FL

I went to N.Y. in 2004 where I met my child's father. I stayed 90 days, came home then went back and fell pregnant in August 2005. I left of my own accord went back twice in 2006 then again in 2007. When I went to the US last month with my 9yr old whose father is an American citizen I was denied entry on the grounds of an overstay in the past. My child was seeing her father on father's day and meeting her brothers and great grandma. I am absolutely disgusted as to what they put my child through. Border control said get a visa you'll be back in 5 days. I don't know who to speak to what to do. The US consulate won't answer calls. I feel when you find yourself in a situation like this you need to speak to a human being not an automated service. I'm so tired been trying to fix this to no avail. The money for flights was a waste of £1000. I think it's disgusting.
Vicky
Scotland

I came to the States for the first time a couple days after I turned 18. I wanted to visit my uncle who lived in Seattle and thought I might get a bit lucky so then I could get a job and live there. I arrived legally on a tourist visa and I applied for an asylum 3 months after that. I really hoped I could get through the process and at the end I would be granted a US citizenship. I had a working permit which I had to renew annually and I never missed paying taxes. I saved up some money and I took classes from a top music college in Boston, MA but I couldn't graduate due to my financial situation. FAFSA couldn't approve my application at that time so I needed to reach into my own pocket to pay my tuition. I worked at a local restaurant 60-70 hours a week and I started my music career in 2012. I was a part of a band based in Seattle that was quite popular at that time and we got to play for famous comedians, big casinos and many others. They paid me really well and the manager of the band is just a great model of how America should be like. He would let me play as much as the others do without any exceptions. I paid my taxes as a sub-contractor of the band and I didn't mind. I wanted thank America for giving me chances! I would also like to ask why you would kick me out when my asylum case had been denied. Now I'm living in Asia not knowing what else to do other that teaching ESL because I actually speak English. I hope to see you again soon, America. I really miss you and all my relatives that are still there. Someday we'll see each other again.
No name given
Indonesia

I have been apart from my wife and kids for 4 years now. I got a letter from NVC long time ago says that my visa was approved but they asked for someone to sponsor me. Sometime I ask myself is the US of America is still on planet earth. If I start walking it's not going to take all this time to see my wife and my son for the first time. Maybe it is because my name is Mohamed & I am Muslim. If that the problem I am ready to change my name & religion if that will help me to see my family. I always imagine that moment of us together and that moment of me seeing my son for the first time. I really feel powerless that I just can't do anything about this and I really hate myself about how powerless I am.
Mohamed
Kasserine, Tunisia-North Africa

I am 16 years old. My mother and I are both from Guatemala. My mother was forced to have sexual intercourse when she was 14. She got kicked out and struggled trying to find a place to sleep. My father heard about it and didn't care. His sister gave her a place to sleep but the problem was that the place was really little and filled with bugs. She had to sleep with those bugs everyday .She was 15 with a new born. My father at the time was having dreams about me. He wanted my mom and I to come to the United States .I don't know why he didn't go to a lawyer and try to work things out. He is a citizen, and yet he decided to bring us illegally. I was five years old at the time .I remember the day. My mother just told me to be quiet if I wanted to see my father. I remember holding my breath for some time waiting for the car to cross. It was the most sad and yet happy day of my life. I think my mom just wanted a better future for me. She wasn't making much and she knew my dad would help out. I don't really remember the day i saw my dad for the first time, but the years with him were amazing. Everything changed when he left back to Guatemala and wanted us to go back. My mom saw how I was doing in school and how we didn't suffer like we did back home. She didn't want to go back and she didn't. She later on went to Chicago. Her sister let her stay with her, and it was awful. My aunt was really selfish and mean. My mom didn't like that at all. We later on moved to California and she met a guy. It was the worst five years of my life. The guy didn't treat her the way my dad did. She was scared and worried for her life, and so was i. I don't want to go more into that. We recently moved out. I think now that she is on her own, she is working hard and being the best mom. After all this my main focus is just doing well in school and going to college. It is my main goal to finish college and look and my mom and thank her for staying and making my dreams come true of being someone in life.
anonymous
San Bernardino California

I came to this country in May, 2001 on H-1B visa and my family members (wife and my 2 daughters) joined me 2 months later. My elder daughter, was almost 10 years and 5 months old at the time of her arrival to USA. The labor Department approved my Application for Employment in 2005. I filed my papers for I140 in 2006, and the approval was given in 2008. I could not file for my Permanent Resident Status (I-485 form) as the priority date for India at that time was June 2001. Unfortunately, we received the letter on October 17th, 2015 regarding denial of the Green Card for my elder daughter because her age was over 21 years. Considering the above situation, the USCIS gives us no choice but to send my elder daughter back to India. She grew up in America and asking one daughter to be separated from her whole family just because she is older than 21 is disheartening. Our family has always believed in going by the law and have put all our efforts forward in the last 15 years to stay legal in this country. Currently, illegal immigrant children who were educated in America from a young age have rights to work and receive financial aid. Why is it that a family who has worked hard to stay legal and always follow the law is being punished for doing things the right way?
Divya
California

You know sometimes it can get hard not having papers. I was brought to the U.S. at the age 3 because my mom saw a better future for me there. We lived in my uncle's house with his family which are legal. My mom worked really hard for me to have everything I needed. However she fell in love with my step-dad and so we moved together as a family with his daughter and two sons. At first he treated me well but then became so fake to me. I thought that I would actually have someone to care for me and call him my dad. I'm 13 and this immigration stuff gets to me every day. I just want to go back home with my real family. (I'm an only child if you were wondering)
Guadalupe
Michigan

My father is 52 years old now. He entered The US at the age of 16 with a 3rd grade education. He has always been a hard worker and had been trying to obtain residency since I could remember. He was deported 4 years ago. My younger brothers were 2 and 16 at the time and I was 20. My brother got a job to help pay bills along with me and my older sister. My 2 year old brother is going to be 7 now and barely even knows who our dad is. I have helped raise him and took both of my brothers under my wing. I graduated from a technical college the year he was deported and now I am back in college and plan to obtain a degree in teaching. My father didn't raise criminals, he set examples of what hard work can accomplish. We never received government help and he always paid his taxes. So my question is why not look further into his history here rather than just assume anybody here "illegally," is in fact not worthy of living and thriving in this unjust but beautiful country.
Richard
Dallas, TX

I came in the US 1988 at 12 and now today at 37. I'm still dealing with being an immigrant after being married with 4 kids. I have had lawyers take my money and scam me over and over. My recent lawyer was indicted for scam. I lost my job 5 weeks ago because my lawyer was arrested and he kept all my documents to return to work. I have done all I can the legal way to obtain a green card but I feel like the system has failed me. I have lived in a prison for 25 years and I have committed no crime. My daughter will be 17 soon and when I started this journey I was pregnant with her.
Denise
No location given

I came here in 2009 by myself from Iraq. I was 20 years old then. Now I'm 25 years old and pretty soon will become a citizen. I don't have family support or any kind of support. It was tough at times but quiet seas don't make good sailors. Life is going pretty well. I have a lot of experience in sales and customer service. I can work in any field I wish. I'm working full time and going to school part time. I made a really good plan for my future. I believe that my future is set.
Bashar
No location given

My father was heading to work when the immigration was waiting for him. They had a warrant for him. They took him even though he has been living here for 40+ years. Now he can't see his newborn grandson, nor me or my brother including my little sister. My parents are divorced and who is she supposed to give her advice, give her that comfort that my father did? He paid all of his taxes, did everything by the book. I just can't believe this is what we call justice in America. This isn't the land of the free anymore. My father is my role model he raised me and my older brother by himself. I just can't believe how they can do this to an innocent man. He's been in the immigration holding facilities for a year now!
Alejandro
Pasadena, Texas

I went school in Canada and moved to Texas in 2010. At that time I was thinking it will be hard to settle in because of my race. However this was not the case. Within 3 months I got my first job and from there on I am just progressing. My family moved here in 2012. I would just like to thank the US for giving me an opportunity to pursue my dreams. Of course all countries have pros and cons but I still believe US is the land of opportunities. It has all the tools and resources you need to succeed. You don't need to be rich to enjoy all the privileges this country has to offer. You can still live a beautiful life. People are so helpful here. You get the respect you deserve. I was not born here but I wish I did.
Thank you US for everything.
Texas

I was brought to the U.S illegally when I was 3 years of age. My father came to this country first before he brought my mother and I. My father and mother still continue to work hard every day to give me and my two younger brothers the absolute best. I thank my father every day for bringing us to this blessed and beautiful country and giving us a better quality of life. Throughout my life I never thought it would be such a big deal being illegal until I got to high school and staring applying for my licenses or college scholarships. Obviously I was denied for not having a social security number. Later on Mr. President Obama gave us an opportunity named deferred action and it has opened to many doors for me! I'm truly blessed. I was able to obtain my driver licenses and continue school. Honestly my life has completely changed.
Allison
North Carolina

I am from Somalia, endless battles forced me out of Somalia in March 11, 2011. I arrived Kenya and registered with the UNHCR as a refugee, many times i applied for a resettlement to a third country, due to the high number of Somali refugee the UNHCR was dealing with, i gave up and felt hopeless. One day in 2012 i applied for the diversity green card visa lottery, i was accepted, by 2014 i recieved my visa. I am now living and working in Portland, Maine. I am saving some money to go to college in the fall of this year, 2015.

Abdi
Portland, Maine

I was only a few months old when I was brought in the U.S with my mother my father and my big brother. I was born in Mexico DF on January 31. My mom thought it would be better to build a better life in the other side so we could have a better future. I am 20 years old now I've been waiting to get my papers for too long. I finished high school and got my diploma to be able to go to college. But I won't be able without my papers. Every day I cry because I can't help my mom with rent anymore. I don't work anymore. I want my mom to be proud of me but how can I if I'm not from here and they won't accept us. My mom was once deported when I was 10 years old. I found out the next day because she had not come home. I got a phone call from Mexico and she told me she wasn't going to come back until 3 to 4 month. Never in my entire life have I felt so mad, so mad because I was left without a mother for 3 month. After that I've been scared of cops because I don't remember anything from Mexico because I've been living in Houston for my entire life. I want to be able to enjoy my life and learn new stuff and travel, something I can't do.
Ivonne
Houston, TX

I met my husband a Mexican national in 2007 after having our daughter. We wanted to "fix" his status as he was illegal. He left the states in 2011 and was given a 10 year bar from reentering the US with no waiver. Living a nightmare of trying to keep our marriage together our kids happy and the inflow of money to the family. We will not be allowed to live "normal" until 2021. Immigration has robbed me of my children's daily growth and amazing first memories as I travel between Mexico and San Diego weekly. I simply want to see and hold my children daily and have the daily support of my amazing husband. Immigration is such a cold inhumane process... It's tearing families apart when it should be uniting them.
Stephanie
San Diego

My dad was deported when I was 16 years old. I know he is somewhere in the Dominican Republic, if he is still alive. I try not to think about it too much because there are so many questions and nobody to answer them. I'm now 22 years old and sometimes, I wonder where he is and what he is doing. I know that he would be proud of me getting my bachelor's degree and becoming a teacher and coach. Even though I don't have a good relationship with my mother and only lived with my father for a few years, I thank them wholeheartedly for their sacrifices. They had no idea where I would be at 22, but it was thanks to them that I was born and raised in a place with unlimited opportunities.
Emilia
Lawrence, MA

For as long as I can remember, I knew that my parents were undocumented. Growing up in New York City, so many of the people around me were undocumented I didn't really know what it meant. But, as I got older, I started to figure it out. My parents would tell my siblings that we wouldn't be able to fly to see our cousins in Florida or even take a bus to another state because they didn't have a state-issued ID. I have always feared my parents getting stopped by the authorities and then getting deported. When I left for Scripps College in August all the way in California (I was born and raised in NYC), my parents couldn't even accompany me into the airport. My mom was terrified of going into the terminal for fear that someone would ask her for documentation. I went alone. In November, when I heard President Obama issue an executive order that would help about 5 million undocumented people living in the United States come out of the shadows, I felt elated.
Henna
California

I came into this Country when I was 2 years of age, I am now 19 about to turn 20. Like everybody, my parents came into this country to seek for a better life and to provide me with a better quality of education and to make sure I had everything I could possibly need. The three of us came into this country illegally, they came here without knowing anybody or without speaking or understanding the English language. Since day one they've worked very hard every day to build our empire that we have now. I'm beyond blessed and grateful because every day we are living the American dream. All through out these years it has definitely not been easy but definitely worth it. I now have my SS thanks to DACA but I'm still hoping to have the opportunity to go back to my homeland and have the blessing to see my grandparents at least one more time. Even though I will never get 15-16 years back I pray every day to god to give me the chance to be able to see them someday because even though I have everything now I have an empty place in my heart of not being able to hug them or telling them how much they mean to me.
Allison
California
Like many others I came to the U.S at a young age, 6. My parents took me and my two sisters 9 and 1 at the time from Brazil. 15 years later we all got our green cards. In 2014, I was 22 years of age and met a beautiful girl. She was also an immigrant from Brazil. She and her family were here on a tourist visa and switched to the application of a religious visa. Her dad is a pastor. During the 8 months we dated, things were moving great until they were denied the religious visa and had to go back to Brazil. I proposed to her the day before she left in belief, I with a green card can legalize her. We were going to get married in 2016, but in March 2015 our lives changed. She still had a valid tourist visa, she was coming to celebrate our 1 year anniversary of the day we started dating. Coming from Brazil to the U.S. she was stopped at the airport for questioning. The officers asked her about her stay in the U.S, she admitted to having worked in the U.S. for a couple of months on a part-time job. She did not have employment authorization to have gotten the job. She was sent back that day to Brazil. I didn't get to see her and remember that as one of the worst days of my life. Now she can't visit me as her visa is cancelled. I went and got married July 2015. With the stain on her name, we were advised to wait for my citizenship before trying to legalize her. It will take 2 years for me to be eligible to be a citizen. I hope they will forgive her and let her live with me. I will continue to work and visit her periodically during these two years to build a future for us here in the U.S. It won't be easy but we are faithful things will work out and we can be together in the U.S. again.
Doug
Florida

My parents came here from Europe when I was just 3 years old. They haven't been back since and haven't seen their families in almost 20 years. It's been a very tough life for them and I almost wish they never came here. They have jobs they hate, no social life, and I have watched them grow to hate each other because of all these factors. I wish desperately there was some way to get them back home and to make them happy but there's not much I can do. Their mental energy is almost completely gone. I love them to death but can't handle seeing them so sad.
Ella
Colorado

I'm 22 years old and currently study Electrical Engineering. I was 8 years old when my parents decided to go to the Unites States. We lived there for almost ten years. Which means I lived my entire childhood there. Now we're living in Chile. I really feel like I don't belong here. It has been really depressing for me and my family. I have two younger brothers who were born in the US. I didn't get the chance to get my citizenship but I really miss the US and am struggling to leran Spanish and missing the life i had in New York. All my friends are over there and I feel more American than Chilean and hope one day I can go back to where I think I belong.
Bastian
Valparais, Chile

I am an American by heart, soul and hard work. I love my country but they apparently do not love. I moved to the US in 1984 with my girlfriend at that time. She had a GREEN CARD and was legal. I was a Canadian citizen. We married in the US and she started to work. In those times, I could work illegally easily until we had arranged for my legal status. My wife came home one day and said that she had my SSN that she had been working on for some time. I had no idea how the process worked (sticking my head in the ground a little of course) and utilized that SSN for the next 24 years while I worked, built a company, employed people, did year of volunteer work, paid all of my personal and corporate taxes fully (which for many years where substantial as I made a very good living). As a test to the reality of the SSN, I received 2 NASD licenses which required finger prints, FBI back ground, etc. to make sure I am who I say I am. I had no illegal activities and had renewed my driver's license a number of times without a problem. I was even audited twice. Then, when getting divorced I find out that it is NOT a good number. The person that really does have that SSN is alive and will receive the very handsome benefit of the taxes that I paid all those years. Now Canada, the country I was born in, says I do not have a very long history of work and very little contribution to my CPP so I will receive almost nothing in retirement. Having spent all my funds in my earlier years on my nieces and nephews to get them through school and university, I am up the creek without a paddle.
Warren
Canada

Both my parents came to the U.S illegally. After working in the U.S for over 20 years and paying taxes (even though they can never benefit from social security) they still cannot catch a break. My parents grew up poor in Mexico and both had to drop out of school to work to support their families. So before you judge, know that in Mexico it is a vicious cycle of not having an education because you don't have money and not having money because you don't have an education.
Israel
Portland, Oregon

My name is Vanessa and am an American citizen. I have a twin Samantha and we both are 16 years old and living with our grandparents. My mom and my other 2 sisters (also American citizens) live in Mexico with my Dad because he is deported and cannot come back. In 2005 they deported him and punished him for 10 years. On July 2015 he went to the Juarez Consulate and they denied his case. Since I was 6 years old I have been going to Mexico and coming to the US. I am a junior at Avenal High School. I get straight A's at school and life is hard without my family. My only dream since I was 6 is to have my Daddy here with me. Is it really much to ask for?
Vanessa
Avenal, CA

I immigrated to the Bronx, NY, in December 1984 when I was only fourteen years old after waiting 11 long years for my father to send for us. The wait was long but it was worth it. I come from a family of five children, I'm #4. I could not imagine life anywhere else. My home country (Dominican Republic) although beautiful, is corrupt and lacks education and job opportunities. I can honestly say that I have lived the American Drea. I took every opportunity available to me and have been able to experience a great education, have lived well and have benefited from all the work of all of those who came before me, including my father with his 2nd grade education, a hard worker who taught me the values of hard work and education. I am proud to be an American and to enjoy the freedom and wealth this country has to offer. God bless America.
Martha D.
West Palm Beach, FL

My mom brought me here along with my older sister. My mom was raped and forced to be with the guy that raped her. She did not get any counseling, left for the U.S and brought that same mindset. I have more siblings now. My oldest sister suffered from my mom's mindset of being abused. Our step dad forced himself on her. He left with three daughters and a son that were his. My mom has brought home a new dad. I think she doesn't realize how much it affects us.
Karen
Georgia

My father arrived illegally in New York about 18 years ago with his younger brother. My father worked hard upon arrival. He took jobs in New Jersey and New York City delivering packages. He then met my mother-disabled and born with only one arm-and fell in love. They had me and my sister only a year apart and started a family. Deportation was feared among my parents especially after so many tries with countless lawyers. How could my father leave his wife with one arm and two underage daughters alone?
Bianca
New York

I was born in Guadalajara Mexico. My parents came to the USA when I was 8 years old. I'm now 36 years old and unemployed. Being undocumented has made life so difficult. I became pregnant with twins at age 16 my kids are now 19 and my youngest 13. I have been living in constant fear of deportation and not been able to obtain stability and provide for my younger daughter. I feel like everyone around me is moving up in life and I'm stuck. I literally cry every day because of my immigration status, all my family is here legally except me. I want to do so much with my life but it seems impossible. I stay optimistic but it doesn't change the fact that I'm undocumented. Life is just so unfair.
Jessica
San Diego CA

I'm about to be 16. My dad has been trying to get his papers since I was born. They've gone to lawyers in New Orleans but all they do is say wait and to pay money when they don't do anything for us. At one point my dad was able to get his license but they never let him renew it. He's been working hard since I was born. We have a new house that we built. We can't buy a four wheeler or a truck since he doesn't have a license. He has DUI's from like 02-03 and that's it. I just want to get his papers for him so that I don't lose him. He deserves his papers being a hard worker and has done nothing wrong in his life.
Brian
Louisiana

South Koreans call United States Mee-Gook, which means "beautiful nation". America, the beautiful land of opportunity, is how I always envisioned my journey. I applied for jobs thinking I have 12 months to find a sponsorship. After several interviews, I realized that getting a job with H-1B sponsorship looming over my head is extremely difficult. Here is why: I'm a recent graduate from undergraduate with math degree, this severely limits my job options because USCIS determines what jobs math majors are allowed to work for H-1B visa through an occupational outlook handbook.
Charlie
Richmond, Virginia

My parents had left me at the age of 2 back in Mexico with my grandparents while they came to the U.S. They sent for me at the age of 4 and that is when I crossed the border with my aunt. It was hard at first but I got used to being here. I am now 18 years old and thankful that I was able to qualify for the DACA. With DACA I have been able to do so much. Thankfully I now have 2 jobs and I am in school. Although I am undocumented, I do not give up my hopes and dreams of a better life for my family. Although, it is difficult I was able to enroll into college and I am about to be done with my first semester. Hopefully I can continue my studies later on. As much as I would like to go visit my family in Mexico, I can't. That upsets me every day but I keep going strong for them. This isn't a sad story, this is just to let everyone know there is hope and to fight for what they want! Being undocumented shouldn't stop us, WE CAN DO IT! We just have to believe.
Wendy
New York

I am 19 years old and lived in the USA for 10 years of my life. I was deported alongside my mother and sister 5 years ago. My life has never been the same. When you realize how much your life is going to change in such a short period of time, you can only miss and mourn about the past, because that's what it is and will be. The past. There's not a day in my life, even though I don't necessarily want to, that I don't say to myself "what if I was still there...". Depression, came to me at a young age. Nostalgia was more than just a word at the age of 13. It is hard coping with a loss of what could've been a lifetime. I am doing my best to overcome reality and move along but all I seem to want is an opportunity to go back. I have no idea how or even if I can but it's a dream I wish came true soon enough.
Juan David
North Bergen, New Jersey

I was deported after being legally in the USA for over fifty years and receiving social security. They took my S.S. away. I am 69 years old and had not visited my country in all that time. My sons are all U.S. Citizens and my mother too. I do not know anyone in my country. It's been a nightmare. I sas hoping the plane would crash. That's how depressed I felt. I think it was an injustice to take my only source of income. I thought this was a just country.
Luis Eugenio
Dominican Republic

I came to the US on the Iraqi Young Leaders Exchange Program. I have been here since July, 23, 2014 and my visa was for 1 month. Right in the middle of the fun I was having around the US with 35 Iraqi students and 10 Americans, my family called me and told me that they have left home and they are refugees. Now my village was taken over by ISIS and they are killing people for their religious beliefs and thousands of the young girls are now taken as sex slaves. So I applied for asylum in US before my visa expired and I did my interview 2 months ago. Now I'm just waiting for the letter to come and if they say yes then I'm safe here. If not then I might have to go back and I could be killed there.
Azswan
Portland, OR

I came to United States at the age of 14 from Uzbekistan. The decision was my mother's; she felt like we needed a better life after my father died from lymphatic cancer. It was tough at first, but all I cared about is that I'm here now. I knew I had no future in Uzbekistan due to extreme corruption and broken education for which you can pay through. I am 17 now, on my way to college. Although current circumstances aren't as I'd want them to be, I will change that. After all, this is the land of opportunities.
Umar
Los Angeles

I was brought here when I was 2 years old. My dad came to New York a few years before but left my mom pregnant. Sadly, he couldn't see me when I was a baby due to him being illegal. He sent for us when I was 2 1/2 years old. I crossed the border with my mom and granddad and my aunt. Back then it was easier than it is now. My mom told me she was lucky that I was a quiet baby so we had no trouble. When we came to new York I lived in my uncle's house (who is a citizen) and I moved to new jersey 3 months later. I'm 15 now and I still get really upset because I want to be legal here. I want to help my parents out and get a good job and buy them their own house, but sadly I can't. I want to study cosmetology or psychology but me being illegal I can't.
Maria
New York

I went school in Canada and moved to Texas in 2010. At that time I was thinking it will be hard to settle in because of my race. However this was not the case. Within 3 months I got my first job and from there on I am just progressing. My family moved here in 2012. I would just like to thank the US for giving me an opportunity to pursue my dreams. Of course all countries have pros and cons but I still believe US is the land of opportunities. It has all the tools and resources you need to succeed. You don't need to be rich to enjoy all the privileges this country has to offer. You can still live a beautiful life. People are so helpful here. You get the respect you deserve. I was not born here but I wish I did.
Thank you US for everything.
Texas

My father was heading to work when the immigration was waiting for him. They had a warrant for him. They took him even though he has been living here for 40+ years. Now he can't see his newborn grandson, nor me or my brother including my little sister. My parents are divorced and who is she supposed to give her advice, give her that comfort that my father did. He paid all of his taxes and did everything by the books. I just can't believe this is what we call justice in America. This isn't the land of the free anymore. My father is my role model. He raised me and my older brother by himself. I just can't believe how they can do this to an innocent man. He's been in the immigration holding facilities for a year now!
Alejandro
Pasadena, TX

I came here in 2009 and immigrated by myself from Iraq. I was 20 years old then. Now I'm 25 years old and pretty soon will become a citizen. Don't have family support or any kind of support. It was tough at times but quiet seas don't make good sailors. Life is going pretty well. I have a lot of experience in sales and customer service. I can work in any field I wish for. I'm working full time and going to school part time. I made a really good plan for my future. I believe that my future is set.
Bashar
No location given

I came to the United States when I was only 4 years old. I have 3 siblings, 2 of them are apart of the dream act , they have their ss and worker permit for a limited time. My parents are illegal immigrants, but my father has his drivers license which expires 2017 and we don't know what is gonna happen after that. It was a miracle how he got his license back in 2007. My parents work as janitors because they can't get better jobs because of their status. I'm 18 years old, I recently just graduated high school. I'm very depressed because I see kids going to school, getting jobs, cars etc and I am stuck in my life. I can't work, I can't do a thing without being afraid of being deported. I feel very low. It saddens me everyday I sit at home wishing my life was better.
Anonymous

At the age of three, my mom left me and my twin brother in the care of my grandmother to find a better life. She worked day and night to have us back. Six months later my lovely, hardworking mother sent for us. Our trip to America wasn't nearly as hard as hers though. She had to walk the deadly trail, hoping she could make it is so she can see us again. Once we were all together life got better for a short time. Some years after my mother lost her job because of an on the job accident. My mother was fired and felt lost. Our life is now better, but all I want is to be able to keep my education going and to give back all I was given. It's a dream that may never come true, but my hope is there. May God help me and bless all of you.
Diana
No location given

I was born here in USA Northridge, CA in 1980 by immigrant parents. My mother came to the USA at the age of 15 and my father at the age of 16. Both of them should of been in high school but got here and started working. We never received any type of government help. We had to work very hard to survive and pay our rent until now. I heard on the news about what is going on at the border and didn't really care until I heard my cousin and her two young children were held. She and her husband and children are here because their lands were taken away and some bad people are trying to steal the rest of their lands. My cousin was able to get help but told me some really horrible stories about how they are being held in one small room and they are all crowded with moms and babies not being able to sleep and eat only once a day. I had no idea this was happening until today when she and her 2 children were released. The youngest of her children is a 1 1/2 yr old girl. They are here now but she was left with a real bad trauma. She wakes up crying asking for food, something that she never did until this happed. I really feel sad to know that people are not being treated right but worse than animals! We are children of God. What happened to one nation under God?
Yesenia
Northridge, CA

I'm 42 and live in Morocco with my deported husband. His visa had expired and he overstayed. He saved my life as I was divorcing an abusive husband of 20 years. I relocated and we married. He was taking care of me and my son. I was back in college. Until the day they found him. They deported him and left me homeless. I only had enough money to buy a ticket to his country as nobody would help me. We are now stuck here and making it but struggling. I say why would my country deport someone who was working and helped me a citizen make my life better. We are out of ways for me to come home and nobody to help us.
Julie
Morocco

I am a U.S. and Canadian citizen and have lived here in the U.S. for over 9 years now. My boyfriend was brought to the U.S. (without papers) when he was 17. He came with his dad, leaving his mom and siblings behind in Mexico. He has never been back and has now lived in the U.S. for over 14 years. When they arrived at the border town in Mexico, they were kidnapped for ransom. Their kidnappers started to take them out to the desert (which many times means death.) Thankfully, however, he and his dad managed to escape and continue their journey. Despite having had that harrowing experience, my boyfriend explained that he and his dad had a rather easy crossing, not suffering nearly as much as many do. Anyway, we plan to get married soon, but our future is uncertain. In the beginning of this year, he got pulled over for driving with a suspended license. Instead of just being given the standard fine, he was also given a court date. Before I met him, I had a very different perspective over illegal immigration. I was very "by the books" and not very understanding of what immigrants go through. But now I have a lot of respect for all immigrants; they are so determined and work so hard and are willing to suffer everything in order to provide a better life for their families. His story and his perspective have helped me broaden my perspective and have a greater compassion for others.
Katie
No city given

My parents and I arrived to the U.S with a visitor's visa. My grandfather was facing some serious times and my mother was 19 years old and not seeing her dad for 18 years decided to visit him. My dad was 22 and I was 1 year old! My mother tells me their intention was never to stay, but they did. It has been 19 years and I was excited when they passed the act where students could get a legal temporary stay ,DACA (deferred action for children arrivals). After all this time of feeling in the shadows and not really living "free" I went to see lawyers who could help me apply, but I couldn't because I visited my grandmother in Mexico for 7 months. Since I couldn't apply for the DACA my parents got me into an arranged marriage. At first i agreed but once I thought about it I changed my mind but it didn't matter. They took me into the office and I got married. I was manipulated in several was into doing so. What hurts the most is that not even seeing me crying did they not go through with it. But I didn't apply for my papers through my husband. I got the courage to stand my ground and not care about the consequences and even though people tell me " you're already married just do it" I say no. It is not right! I'm filling for divorce! And if there is no solution to my situation. I'm going back to Mexico. Starting fresh and trusting god! I'm 20 years old now, I'm waiting until my 26 birthday to make my final choice. Some people forget that the constitution of the United States starts with "We the people ..." not "We the American Citizens"
Liz
California

I came here when I was 3 years old. I'm currently 16. Everyone else in my family that is here with me is legal. Everyone but me. I'm close to finishing high school... too close. I love America, this is my home, but this is no way to live. I didn't choose to be here, they did... and now I'll have to deal with the consequences.I just want to go to college, study medicine and save lives. Is that too much to ask for? I just want to belong here, I want to be an American citizen.
Lost Dreamer
Somewhere within America

I came to America from United Kingdom London in 2005 for a holiday. I was 18 years old at the time I got a 3 months visa waiver, I had no plans staying over my visa but faith had its own plans. I meet guy and we married in 2007. We continued living together till we went to a lawyer and advised me to go back to England as that's the only way for my hubby to apply a petition for me. Meanwhile we took his advice I came back to UK so when he tried to process for me the petition we found out that I have ban for 10 years as I overstayed my visa more than 1 year.
Londoner
Oregon

My story starts in Haiti 1978. My mom was only 15 and pregnant. My dad 22. My dad left me and my mom and came to America for a better life. When I was about 7months old my mom decided to let my aunt take me to America under a different name. When I came to America I was passed around with no status or papers. My father later became a U.S. Citizen and never applied for me. I am now 35yrs old and I don't know any other country but here! And I don't have enough money to fix my situation either I feel lost.
Chenille
Boston

I was brought here when I was 10 years old. I am now 28yrs old. I went to elementary, middle and high school. I have three daughters with my fiance. He is a U.S citizen born in California. He wants to apply for my residency here, but we are scared that because I was brought here illegally they could send me back to El Salvador. I have been working as a Medical Assistant for 8 yrs and started taking courses at a local college to get my nursing degree. We want to get marry but we don't know if USCIS will sent me back.
Carolina
Wheaton, MD

I came to the U.S. when I was 7 years old. My stepfather was an american soldier who married my German mother in Germany and also adopted me before we entered the U.S. My mother passed away in 1968 and told me I was a citizen. Being a young girl and not knowing what credentials that were needed to get government benefits for Medicare and monthly Social Security payouts for later after all my husband and I have paid into the system since age 16. We have been married for 48 years. My husband is an American citizen, born in Tx.
Presently Homeland is supposed to look up my history in the U.S and finding info on permanent resident and citizenship through my mother. I was 18 when she received her citizenship. It has been 2 years that Homeland has had my info filled out by Catholic family services. I also applied for my permanent resident card. I really don't care at this point which one they send but it has been one year for the green card and everything is at a standstill for both applications. What does a person do with this Obama care? I am over 65 and cannot get Medicare through Obama and private insurance is very expensive!
Marianne White
Amarillo Tx

I'm married a wonderful citizen American for 8 years, live together for 10 years, but we are living out of states since 2004 due to visa denied. The reason is " sham divorce for immigration" from consulate officer...for 10 years my husband never go back to USA and I'm so scared to go to US consulate to interview for visa (for any kind of visa). I just feel so sorry for my husband. He could not see his parents for longtime... because we love each other so much no matter what we stay...but still...feel so sad and don't know what to do next.
Mai
Ho Chi Minh City

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Statistics do not tell the story of immigration. People do. Since its inception, this nation has been continually infused with the energy of newcomers. Yet their assimilation has seldom been smooth. The challenges we face today are not new. Only the stories are. SHARE YOUR STORY IMPORTANT NOTICE If you need legal advice on immigration...

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Helpful text to read alongside primary sources when using lesson sequence sample resources on immigration.

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By Yamile Saied Méndez

Twelve-year-old Minerva Soledad Miranda is determined to reach her goals, despite shouldering more responsibility than the other kids at school--like caring for her two sisters while her mom works two jobs. But one night, Minerva's mom doesn't come home, and Minerva has to figure out what to do. Was Mamá snapped up by ICE? Will the girls be sent to foster homes or holding centers for migrant kids? Minerva and her sisters can't let anyone know Mamá has disappeared. They'll just pretend everything is normal until she comes back.

Minerva's plan falls apart the first afternoon, when her baby sister throws a tantrum during Minerva's audition for Peter Pan. But as the days pass and Minerva grows ever more worried about her mother, something magical seems to be watching out for them: leaving them cupcakes, helping her find money, even steering them to friends and distant family who can help. Eventually, Minerva must make the hardest choice of her life. And when she does, she'll be prepared to face life's challenges--with friendship, hope, and a little bit of fairy magic.
Watch the book trailer:
About the Creators

Yamile Saied Méndez - Author

YAMILE (sha-MEE-lay) SAIED MÉNDEZ is a fútbol-obsessed Argentine American author who loves meteor showers, summer, astrology, and pizza. She lives in Utah with her Puerto Rican husband and their five kids, two adorable dogs, and one majestic cat. An inaugural Walter Dean Myers Grant and a New Visions Award Honor recipient, she's also a graduate of Voices of Our Nations (VONA) and the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adult program. She's a founding member of Las Musas, a marketing collective of women and non-binary Latinx children's authors. Find her online at yamilesmendez.com.

Photo: Erin Summerill

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By Yamile Saied Méndez Twelve-year-old Minerva Soledad Miranda is determined to reach her goals, despite shouldering more responsibility than the other kids at school--like caring for her two sisters while her mom works two jobs. But one night, Minerva's mom doesn't come home, and Minerva has to figure out what to do.

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Helpful text to read alongside primary sources with sample lesson sequence on immigration.

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Nine-year-old Betita knows she is a crane. Papi has told her the story, even before her family fled to Los Angeles to seek refuge from cartel violence in Mexico. He says that Betita and her family are cranes that have returned to their promised land, Aztlán, land of the cranes. But one day, Papi is arrested by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and deported to Mexico. Betita and her pregnant mother are left behind on their own, but soon they too are detained and must learn to survive in a family detention camp. Even in cruel and inhumane conditions, Betita finds heart in her own poetry and in the community she and her mother find in the camp. Their voices fly above the hatred keeping them caged, but each day threatens to tear them down lower than they ever thought they could be. Will Betita and her family ever be whole again?

From the author of The Moon Within comes a heartbreaking story in verse of those subjected to unimaginable cruelty, yet who still find the hope to dream and carry on.

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Nine-year-old Betita knows she is a crane. Papi has told her the story, even before her family fled to Los Angeles to seek refuge from cartel violence in Mexico. He says that Betita and her family are cranes that have returned to their promised land, Aztlán, land of the cranes.

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Six Practices to Center the Voices and Experiences of Latinx Students in the Classroom

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How can educators create a welcoming, liberating, and transformative environment for Latinx students? We can begin by learning to amplify the stories and identities of Latinx children. Carla España and Luz Yadira Herrera offer six practices that bring Latinx students' perspectives to the center of our classrooms.

Practice #1: Get to know your students' journeys.

Carla and Luz use journeys to describe those experiences that continuously shape and influence our students' realities. It may mean navigating identities that do not fit neatly into boxes that students check off on a form or questioning how others define them versus how they self-identify. Some students have had varied immigration experiences and may be growing up as the first generation in the United States. Perhaps it is a combination of experiences that include the ways their language practices have been interpreted, and other aspects of who they are, all of which impact their lives in various ways. These also reveal how students respond to issues of marginalization. As educators, we have to create meaningful spaces for the sharing and learning of all of our journeys.

Practice #2: Understand our students' language practices.

Carla and Luz use the phrase language practices to highlight how we engage with language and how languaging is a process that is performed differently depending on context. This helps us describe how we use language to communicate, convey emotions, and create or support relationships. Our language practices reflect our linguistic resources, some of which may be nurtured in our schooling or suppressed. A bilingual child, for instance, may have language features categorized as Spanish or English in their repertoire, and thus their language practices often involve the use of all of those features as they seek to communicate, make connections, and negotiate relationships.

Practice #3: Understand our students' (and their families') traditions of literacies.

In this book, Carla and Luz take a broad view of literacy, following the legacies of sociocultural approaches. These approaches consider that literacies happen in context, for example, the various practices that families engage in, such as oral traditions, including storytelling, proverbs, and elder and community wisdom that have been passed down through generations. These also include digital literacies as well as literacies most commonly associated with youth culture: you may have students who can fully explain the use of social media platforms, online gaming communities, music-related literacies (hip-hop, K-pop), and the informational how-to videos they watch repeatedly to learn more about their interests.

Practice #4: Affirm, be in solidarity with, and help create awareness of our students' language practices.

Sonia Nieto, one of the key figures in the field of equity in schooling, has encouraged educators to seek beyond "tolerance" in our work with children, especially languageminoritized students. Affirming our students' language practices means that we must get to know and validate their backgrounds and journeys and, most importantly in our work with Latinx students, learn about the varied experiences. In other words, in both of the following examples from our stories, language is intimately connected to place. Although this has been central to our understanding of ourselves, language practices, and family identities, it is also a privilege that we have had to be able to travel back and forth. We must be thoughtful in learning about different experiences so that we can be in full solidarity with students who may not have the same privileges or opportunities. Also, as thoughtful, critical thinkers, we can and should consider the reasons why we may have had opportunities our students have not.

Practice #5: See the connections between school and government policies and their direct effect on our students' lives.

Educators have to be aware of the policies, political climate, and national narratives that impact our students. The chart below identifies some policies that have negatively impacted Latinx students' lives.

Practice #6: Understand that our students live in the intersections of many cultural practices and identities.

Carla's and Luz's understanding of their students' identities and systems of oppression are informed by the foundational work of Kimberlé Crenshaw, professor at UCLA and Columbia Law School. Crenshaw uses the term intersectionality to "denote the various ways in which race and gender interact to shape the multiple dimensions of Black women's employment experiences" (Crenshaw 1991, 1244). Consider the intersection of race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, language practices, and documented status-among other ways of self-identifying-as you learn about the marginalization of Latinx students in both bilingual/multilingual and monolingual classrooms.
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Carla España is an instructor at the Bank Street College Graduate School of Education. Carla's teaching journey began in a bilingual classroom in Harlem, New York, continued at Teachers College Reading and Writing Project partner schools, and at the bilingual teacher preparation program at Hunter College, City University of New York. Finder Carla on Twitter: @ProfesoraEspana

Luz Yadira Herrera is an Assistant Professor at the Kremen School of Education and Human Development at California State University, Fresno. As a former teacher in NYC public schools and researcher at CUNY-NYSIEB, her teaching and research centers culturally and linguistically sustaining approaches to teaching emergent bilinguals, translanguaging pedagogy, and bilingual education policy. Find Luz on Twitter: @Dra_LuzYadira

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Six Practices to Center the Voices and Experiences of Latinx Students in the Classroom

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How can educators create a welcoming, liberating, and transformative environment for Latinx students? We can begin by learning to amplify the stories and identities of Latinx children. Carla España and Luz Yadira Herrera offer six practices that bring Latinx students' perspectives to the center of our classrooms. Carla and Luz use journeys to describe those experiences that continuously shape and influence our students' realities.

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Translanguaging and Latinx Bilingual Readers

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Translanguaging and Latinx Bilingual Readers

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A 501(c)(3) nonprofit, WNDB aims to create a world where every reader can find themselves in the pages of a book. To reach this goal, we've created programs to mentor diverse writers and illustrators, support diverse publishing professionals, and provide books to classrooms nationwide.

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Our Mission

Bilingualism and biliteracy are assets that all students in New York State should possess to meet the demands of the 21st century. Students who speak languages other than English and who are learning English at school are commonly referred to as "English Language Learners." We prefer the terms "emergent bilinguals" and "multilingual learners" because they acknowledge the ways these students draw on rich home language practices as they learn. We believe the education of these students must go beyond simply English language learning, to incorporate a challenging curriculum in the content areas taught through their home languages and English, which also meets their social and emotional needs.

From 2011 to 2016, we worked to support educators and administrators from partner schools across New York State as they became champions for emergent bilingual students. For more information on CUNY-NYSIEB's non-negotiable principles, and how we apply our vision of dynamic bilingualism to work with schools, please visit Our Vision page.

CUNY-NYSIEB is continuing until the 2019 school year with a focus on supporting and sustaining bilingual programs across New York State.

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Our Mission Bilingualism and biliteracy are assets that all students in New York State should possess to meet the demands of the 21st century. Students who speak languages other than English and who are learning English at school are commonly referred to as "English Language Learners."

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The Educational Linguist examining language and race in education

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The Educational Linguist examining language and race in education

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Dr. Nelson Flores - From academic language to language architecture

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Dr. Nelson Flores - From academic language to language architecture

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From academic language to language architecture: Challenging raciolinguistic ideologies in research and practice

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In this article, I argue that academic language is a raciolinguistic ideology that frames racialized students as linguistically deficient and in need of remediation. I propose language architecture as an alternative framing of language that can serve

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Digital Text for Lesson 1: Miguel Visits Michoacán, Mexico

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Digital Text for Lesson 1: Miguel Visits Michoacán, Mexico

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There are several videos in this series. We analyze a clip from these moments to help us develop our stance and consider life applications on issues related to language practices and identity.

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102 Earthworks: Miguel: Mexico Chapter 1

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Digital Text Option: Immersion - Media that Matters film

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Digital Text Option: Immersion - Media that Matters film

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about

After "The Entombment" by Raphael

The night my father died, I sat on a stool
at the Buckhorn, gazing
out the window's cool counter seat.
Like a funhouse mirror, you appeared.
I have a familiar-looking face; my father used to say-
his wish for me to blend in.
Late after an argument, I fled
and was found bound to a prairie fence
after eighteen hours.
My body is like a sock in the wind
in a field just a mile from here.
My face blooms, velvety
and light like a lamb's ear,

frozen with blood; down
my neck, it goes. A medley of ants shuffles
away. My body is rich with the sour smell
of urine on my head like a crown of daffodils. stachys byzantina; my ears

Copyright © 2023 by Ruben Quesada. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 27, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.

One does such work as one will not,
And well each knows the right;
Though the white storm howls, or the sun is hot,
The black must serve the white.
And it's, oh, for the white man's softening flesh,
While the black man's muscles grow!
Well I know which grows the mightier,

O, rich young lord, thou ridest by
With looks of high disdain;
It chafes me not thy title high,
Thy blood of oldest strain.
The lady riding at thy side
Is but in name thy promised bride.
Ride on, young lord, ride on!

I'm in my room writing
speaking in myself
& I hear you
move down the hallway
to water your plants

I write truth on the page
I strike the word over & over
yet I worry you'll pour too much water on the plants
& the water will overflow onto the books
ruining them

If I can't speak out of myself
how can I tell you I don't care about the plants?
how can I tell you I don't care if the books get wet?

I have folded my sorrows into the mantle of summer night,
Assigning each brief storm its allotted space in time,
Quietly pursuing catastrophic histories buried in my eyes.
And yes, the world is not some unplayed Cosmic Game,
And the sun is still ninety-three million miles from me,
And in the imaginary forest, the shingled hippo becomes the gray unicorn.
No, my traffic is not with addled keepers of yesterday's disasters,
Seekers of manifest disembowelment on shafts of yesterday's pains.

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Home The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets.

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MG/HS Mentor Text Recommendation: LatiNext

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MG/HS Mentor Text Recommendation: LatiNext

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Varied Latinx experiences, identities, language practices, journeys expressed in these poems. Some great for teacher study groups, others best for MG, others for HS.

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HaymarketBooks.org

The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4

In the dynamic tradition of the BreakBeat Poets anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext celebrates the embodied narratives of Latinidad. Poets speak from an array of nationalities, genders, sexualities, races, and writing styles, staking a claim to our cultural and civic space. Like Hip-Hop, we honor what was, what is, and what's next.

Other books Edited by Felicia Chavez, José Olivarez, et al.

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HaymarketBooks.org The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4 In the dynamic tradition of the BreakBeat Poets anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext celebrates the embodied narratives of Latinidad. Poets speak from an array of nationalities, genders, sexualities, races, and writing styles, staking a claim to our cultural and civic space.

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Digital Mentor Text: Animated poem "To Make Use of Water" by Safia Elhillo

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Digital Mentor Text: Animated poem "To Make Use of Water" by Safia Elhillo

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Part of Ted-Ed series of Animated poems

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SoundCloud for Poetry Friday Anthology - Bilingual Spanish-English poems

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SoundCloud for Poetry Friday Anthology - Bilingual Spanish-English poems

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published on

Genre

Poetry

Contains tracks

published on

published on

published on

published on

published on

License: cc-by

published on

published on

published on

published on

published on

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Bilingual Poem Performances from The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations by Pomelo Books

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published on Genre Poetry published on published on published on published on published on License: cc-by published on published on published on published on published on

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Poetry Book Recommendation: Poetry Friday Anthology

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Poetry Book Recommendation: Poetry Friday Anthology

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Providing pre-K — grade 12 teachers with poetry across the curriculum

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Providing pre-K — grade 12 teachers with poetry across the curriculum

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Poetry/Picture Book Recommendation: Bravo! in Spanish

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Poetry/Picture Book Recommendation: Bravo! in Spanish

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Available in English. See publisher website for samples.

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¡Bravo! (Spanish Language Edition): Poemas Sobre Hispanos Extraordinarios a book by Margarita Engle and Rafael López

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Con poemas traducidos por Margarita Engle, Bravo! brilla en esta versión al español. Músico, botánico, jugador de béisbol, piloto--los Latinos incluidos en esta colección provienen de muchos países diferentes y de muchos backgrounds diferentes. Celebre sus logros y sus contribuciones a la historia…

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Poetry/Picture Book Recommendation: Bravo! 

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Poetry/Picture Book Recommendation: Bravo! 

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Available in Spanish as well! Roberto Clemente, Pura Belpré and so many others!

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Book Details

Musician, botanist, baseball player, pilot-the Latinos featured in this collection, Bravo!, come from many different countries and from many different backgrounds. Celebrate their accomplishments and their contributions to a collective history and a community that continues to evolve and thrive today!

Biographical poems include: Aida de Acosta, Arnold Rojas, Baruj Benacerraf, César Chávez, Fabiola Cabeza de Baca, Félix Varela, George Meléndez, José Martí, Juan de Miralles, Juana Briones, Julia de Burgos, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, Paulina Pedroso, Pura Belpré, Roberto Clemente, Tito Puente, Ynes Mexia, Tomás Rivera

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Musician, botanist, baseball player, pilot-the Latinos featured in this collection, Bravo!, come from many different countries and from many different backgrounds. Celebrate their accomplishments and their contributions to a collective history and a community that continues to evolve and thrive today!

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Teacher Study Group Option: An African American and Latinx History of the United States

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Teacher Study Group Option: An African American and Latinx History of the United States

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An African American and Latinx History of the United States

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An African American and Latinx History of the United States

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Paul Ortiz is a professor of history and the director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida. He is the author of Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 and coeditor of the oral history Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South.

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Teacher Study Group Option: Harvest of Empire by Juan Gonzalez

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Teacher Study Group Option: Harvest of Empire by Juan Gonzalez

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Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America a book by Juan Gonzalez

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A sweeping history of the Latino experience in the United States- thoroughly revised and updated. The first new edition in ten years of this important study of Latinos in U.S. history, Harvest of Empire spans five centuries-from the first New World colonies to the first decade of the new millenniu…

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Teacher Study Group Recommendation: Rethinking Ethnic Studies 

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Teacher Study Group Recommendation: Rethinking Ethnic Studies 

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Great examples of counter-narratives and lessons!

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"This book is food for the movement. It is sustenance for every educator committed to understanding and enacting Ethnic Studies. We take this gift as a guide for the needed work ahead."

Django Paris
James A. & Cherry A. Banks Professor of Multicultural Education, University of Washington

"Ethnic Studies as a field is about a half century old. Some may think it has outlasted its usefulness. However, in these times with a resurgence of hate crimes and vicious rhetoric, we need clear and cogent understandings about race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, culture, ability, religion and all kinds of human differences. This volume lifts our discourse and our discernment. It is a significant contribution to our understanding of ourselves and each other."

Gloria Ladson-Billings
Professor Emerita University of Wisconsin-Madison,
President, National Academy of Education

" Rethinking Ethnic Studies provides an excellent resource for teachers, students, and activists who wish to critically understand and engage the fundamental issues and questions that frame the field. The volume brings together theory and practice in ways that are both engaging, as well as extremely practical for classroom use. Overall, this is precisely the book that Ethnic Studies educators and advocates have been waiting fora powerful pedagogical contribution that embodies a genuine tribute to an abiding historical commitment to cultural democracy within education and the larger society."

Antonia Darder
Leavey Endowed Chair of Ethics & Moral Leadership
at Loyola Marymount University

" Rethinking Ethnic Studies is one of the most comprehensive, insightful, critical, and important books on Ethnic Studies in education. It charts a bold new path forward for the current Ethnic Studies resurgence that both builds off of and develops the scholar/activist history of the discipline."

Nolan L. Cabrera, PhD
University of Arizona

"In this moment of rising visibility and normalization of systemic, intersectional, and organized racism, we must more deeply understand the legacies of white supremacy, colonization, and imperialism that have long shaped U.S. schools and society, and the equally long legacies of anti-oppressive struggle. With brilliant insight, stirring passion, and evidence for hope, Cuauhtin, Zavala, Sleeter, Au, and dozens of colleagues share here a compelling framework, analyses, and examples of precisely that. Rethinking Ethnic Studies does nothing less than build our collective capacity for rethinking education more broadly."

Kevin Kumashiro
Author of Bad Teacher!: How Blaming Teachers Distorts the Bigger Picture

Table of Contents:
Section 1: Framing Ethnic Studies

"The Movement for Ethnic Studies: A Timeline" By Miguel Zavala, R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, Wayne Au, and Christine Sleeter

"Multicultural Education or Ethnic Studies?" By Christine Sleeter, Joni Boyd Acuff, Courtney Bentley, Sandra Guzman Foster, Peggy Morrison, and Vera Stenhouse

"Ethnic Studies: 10 Common Misconceptions" By Miguel Zavala, Nick Henning, and Tricia Gallagher-Geurtsen

"What Is Ethnic Studies Pedagogy?" By Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, Rita Kohli, Jocyl Sacramento, Nick Henning, Ruchi Agarwal-Rangnath, and Christine Sleeter

"Ethnic Studies Pedagogy as CxRxPx" By R. Tolteka Cuauhtin

"Counter-Storytelling and Decolonial Pedagogy: The Xicanx Institute for Teaching and Organizing" By Anita E. Fern‡ández

"The Matrix of Social Identity and Intersectional Power: A Classroom Resource" By R. Tolteka Cuauhtin

"Creating We Schools: Lessons Learned from Critically Compassionate Intellectualism and the Social Justice Education Project" By Augustine Romero and Julio Cammarota

"Six Reasons I Want My White Child to Take Ethnic Studies" By Jon Greenberg

"Revisiting Notions of Social Action in Ethnic Studies Pedagogy: One Teacher's Critical Lessons from the Classroom" By Cati V. de los Rios

"The Ethnic Studies Framework: A Holistic Overview" By R. Tolteka Cuauhtin

Section 2: Indigeneity and Roots

"Collective Healing: Release the Tears, Confront and Bypass the Fear" By Rose Borunda

"The Kids 'n Room 36: Cognates, Culture, and the Ecosystem" By Jaime Cuello

"'My Family's Not from AfricaWe Come from North Carolina!': Teaching Slavery in Context" By Waahida Tolbert-Mbatha

"Barangay Pedagogy: Teaching as a Collective Act" By Arlene Sudaria Daus-Magbual, Roderick Daus-Magbual, Raju Desai, and Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales

"Do I Need to Mail in My Spit?: The Importance of a Teacher's Roots in Teaching Ethnic Studies" By Dominique A. Williams

"Our Oral History Narrative Project" By Aimee Riechel

"Rethinking Islamophobia: A Muslim Educator and Curriculum Developer Questions Whether Religious Literacy Is an Effective Antidote to Combat Bigotries Rooted in American History" By Alison Kysia

"Hmong Club: Empowering Us" By Pang Hlub Xiong

"Critical Family History" By Christine Sleeter

Section 3: Colonization and Dehumanization

"Burning Books and Destroying Peoples: How the World Became Divided Between 'Rich' and 'Poor Countries'" By Bob Peterson

"Genocide of Native Californians Role Play" By Aimee Riechel and interview by Miguel Zavala

"The Advent of White Supremacy and Colonization/Dehumanization of African Americans" By Deirdre Harris

"Challenging Colonialism: Ethnic Studies in Elementary Social Studies" By Carolina Valdez

"Cherokee and Seminole Removal Role Play" By Bill Bigelow

"Sin Fronteras Boy: Students Create Collaborative Websites to Explore the Border" By Grace Cornell Gonzales

"The Color Line" By Bill Bigelow

Section 4: Hegemony and Normalization

"Connecting the Dots" By Stephen Leeper

"History TextbooksTheirs' and 'Ours': A Rebellion or a War of Independence?" By John DeRose

"Learning About the Unfairgrounds" By Katie Baydo-Reed

"Whose Community Is This?: The Mathematics of Neighborhood Displacement" By Eric "Rico" Gutstein

"Reclaiming Hidden History: High School Students Face Opposition When They Create a Slavery Walking Tour in Manhattan" By Michael Pezone and Alan Singer

"Teaching a Native Feminist Read" By Angie Morrill with K. Wayne Yang

"Teaching John Bell's Four I's of Oppression" By R. Tolteka Cuauhtin

"Ethnic Studies Educators As Enemies of the State and the Fugitive Space of Classrooms" By Tracy Lachica Buenavista, David Stovall, Edward R. Curammeng, and Carolina Valdez

Section 5: Regeneration and Transformation

"Reimagining and Rewriting Our Lives Through Ethnic Studies" By Roxana Due–ñas, Jorge L—ópez, and Eduardo L—ópez

"Regeneration/Transformation:Cultivating Self-Love Through Tezcatlipoca" By Mictlani Gonzalez

"Happening Yesterday, Happened Tomorrow: Teaching the Ongoing Murders of Black Men" By RenŽée Watson

"We Have Community Cultural Wealth!: Scaffolding Tara Yosso's Theory for Classroom Praxis" By R. Tolteka Cuauhtin

"Standing with Standing Rock: A Role Play on the Dakota Access Pipeline" By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

"Tipu: Connections, Love, and Liberation" By Curtis Acosta

"Teaching Freire's Levels of Consciousness: A Lesson Plan" By Jose Gonzalez

"Chicana/o-Mexicana/o Resistance and Armation in the Post-Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo Era: Curriculum Unit Narrative" By Sean Arce

Section 6: Organizing for and Sustaining Ethnic Studies

"Moving Ethnic Studies from Theory to Practice: A Liberating Process" By Guillermo Antonio G—ómez and Eduardo "Kiki" Ochoa

"Missing Pages of Our History" By Kaiya Laguardia-Yonamine

"The Emergence of the Ethnic Studies Now Coalition in Yangna (Los Angeles) and Beyond: Two, Three, Many Tucsons" By Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona and R. Tolteka Cuauhtin

"The Struggle for Ethnic Studies in the Golden State: Capitol City Organizers and Activists" By RubŽén A. Gonz‡ález, Maribel Rosendo-Serv'ín, and Dominique A. Williams

"Ethnic Studies in Providence Schools" By Karla E. Vigil and Zack Mezera

"We Don't Want to Just Study the World, We Want to Change It: Ethnic Studies and the Development of Transformative Students and Educators" By Kyle Beckham and Artnelson Concordia

"Ethnic Studies and Community-Engaged Scholarship in Texas: The Weaving of a Broader 'We'" By Emilio Zamora and Angela Valenzuela

"For Us, by Us: Ethnic Studies as Self-Determination in Chicago" By Noem' CortŽs, Jennie Garcia, Stacey Gibson, Dua'a Joudeh, Lupita Ramirez, Cecily Relucio Hensler, Cinthya Rodriguez, Maraliz Salgado, David Stovall, JohnaŽ Strong, Jessica Suarez Nieto, Aaron Talley, Lisa Vaughn, and Asif Wilson

"Victory for Mexican American Studies in Arizona: An Interview with Curtis Acosta" Interview by Ari Bloomekatz

At a Seattle School Board meeting, students, teachers, and parents held signs reading "Teach Us Real History," "Decolonize Seattle Public Schools," and "Ethnic Studies Is the Truth." In Portland, Oregon, students yelled, "Fists up, everyone!" and cheered as the Portland Public School Board passed a resolution in support of Ethnic Studies. Students descended on the California State Capitol in Sacramento to testify about how Ethnic Studies taught them about their histories and cultures and encouraged them to perform well in schools. In Providence, Rhode Island, student activists rallied for Ethnic Studies outside the Providence School Department, with one speaker proclaiming , "I deserve an education that makes me feel powerful." In Texas, as the State Board of Education was considering the adoption of Ethnic Studies, student and community activists rallied with signs reading "We Are MAS [Mexican American Studies] Students, Hear Us Roar!"

On the heels of the banning of Ethnic Studies in Arizona in 2011 and atop a wave of California school districts making Ethnic Studies a graduation requirement, a movement has been unleashed in the United States. It is a powerful movement for K-12 Ethnic Studies that has sprung from students, teachers, and community activists seeking to transform curriculum and teaching into tools for social justice in public schools.

The Tucson Unified School District in Arizona is a touchpoint for K-12 Ethnic Studies. Although not the first to offer high school Ethnic Studies classes, Tucson Unified was the first to do so at a districtwide level with its Mexican American Studies program. Tucson's Ethnic Studies program had a powerful impact on students that was documented by several studies: In Tucson's schools, Mexican American Studies reversed the low-achievement/high-push out levels and general intellectual stagnation for Latinx/Chicanx students typically produced by the Eurocentric, standards-based curriculum and test-driven teaching of the past three decades.

In short, Latinx/Chicanx students who had seemed apathetic came alive through Ethnic Studies classes.

Teachers across the nation who had been teaching Ethnic Studies in their own classrooms already knew of its positive effects. Many teachers knew their textbooks fell far short of including Ethnic Studies knowledge. Many teachers viewed their purpose as not simply to raise students' test scores but rather to equip students with the knowledge and experiences they would be able to use to improve conditions in their communities and their lives. These teachers knew from their own teaching that when students of color see their experiences, realities, histories, and intellectual frameworks represented in the classroom, they wake up and dive in.

In response to the progressive politics of the Ethnic Studies program, right-wing conservatives in Arizona viciously attacked the program and eventually banned Ethnic Studies in Arizona's K-12 schools through state law HB 2281 in 2010. This law essentially outlawed Ethnic Studies for several years. The uproar it caused had a tremendous effect around the country, however, inadvertently launching what has become a national movement.

In a short period of time, the Ethnic Studies movement has spread like wildfire. Numerous school districts across California now require Ethnic Studies, and the state of California is in the beginning stages of developing model Ethnic Studies and Native American curricula. Oregon has a statewide requirement to develop and offer Ethnic Studies K-12, and in Kansas there are efforts to introduce statewide legislation. Indiana high schools will soon be required to offer Ethnic and Racial Studies as an elective course. States with large Indigenous populationslike Montana, Washington, and Alaskahave standards for including Indigenous knowledge in the curriculum. Seattle is in the process of implementing Ethnic Studies across the district; students in Providence, Rhode Island, have successfully lobbied for an Ethnic Studies pilot; and Albuquerque, New Mexico, is launching Ethnic Studies courses in all of its high schools. There are also individual Ethnic Studies courses popping up in individual schools around the country.

An Ethnic Studies Framework

The growing movement to bring Ethnic Studies into K-12 schools raises many important questions for teachers. What does Ethnic Studies mean and how should it be taught? Does Ethnic Studies mean teaching separate units about the cultures and histories of different ethnic groups? Does it have to be a separate class? Can one Ethnic Studies curriculum be developed, packaged, sold, and taught everywhere? Can anyone teach Ethnic Studies? If not, what kind of training and knowledge do Ethnic Studies teachers need? Is Ethnic Studies just for social studies or is it a way of envisioning and teaching the entire curriculum? Is Ethnic Studies the same as multicultural education or something else entirely? These are the kinds of questions we address in the pages of Rethinking Ethnic Studies.

Rethinking Ethnic Studies is organized around a holistic Ethnic Studies Framework that was initially proposed by co-editor and high school Ethnic Studies teacher R. Tolteka Cuauhtin. The framework connects directly with a review by co-editor Christine Sleeter on themes that run across the literature in African American, Latino, Asian American, and Native American Studies. Principles within this framework have been articulated by co-editor Miguel Zavala's conceptualization of a rehumanizing and decolonizing pedagogy for Ethnic Studies, as well as co-editor Wayne Au's ongoing work in anti-racist teaching and education for social justice. The framework is based on four basic premises:

1. All human beings have holistic, ancestral, precolonial roots upon our planet.

2. For many students of color, colonization, enslavement, and forced diaspora attempted to eliminate and replace their ancestral legacies with a Eurocentric, colonial model of themselves.

3. This Eurocentric, colonial model has been normalized for all students, translating to a superficial historical literacy and decontextualized relationship to history today and negatively impacting academic identity for students of color in particular.

4. In order for colonized students to initiate a process of regeneration, revitalization, restoration, and decolonization, they must honestly study this historical process as an act of empowerment and social justice.

Language and Ethnic Studies

We also need to address how language is used in this volume. Our language very often fails us. This book is written in English a linguistic vestige of settler colonialism and white supremacy in the United States. It is the language of the "victors," and it was used to carry out attempted cultural genocide. Our use of English carries this legacy with it. We recognize that when we use English to communicate, we are fundamentally bound by the politics of racism, patriarchy, sexism, capitalism, and colonization buried within the English language. Indeed, even when communicating in Spanish (which three of us also do), we are also using a Eurocentric language of colonization. Because Ethnic Studies is so strongly centered on anti-racism, cultural revitalization, and decolonization, it has always (and rightfully) struggled with the inherent contradiction of our use of the language of the colonization: Fundamentally we are trying to use what historically has been a tool for domination as a tool for resistance and liberation.

The word "ethnic" in Ethnic Studies symbolizes this contradiction perfectly. Although we currently use "ethnic" to refer to culture or a cultural group, the origin of the term is imbued with politics and power: Originally it meant "heathen" or "pagan"both terms used to refer to non-Christian groups. More specifically, "ethnic" comes through the Latin and Greek ethnikos (heathen) to ethnos (nation), connoting a non-Christian (and, we might argue, non-Western) "other." The politics of this should not be lost on us considering that "ethnic" is most often used to refer to non-white groups.

That said, Ethnic Studies is both about the critique of unequal power and the reclamation of power by marginalized and oppressed communities. In this way, the term "Ethnic Studies" itself is an example of one such reclamation. We've taken the word "ethnic" back, flipped the old meaning on its head, and are using it to build a movement that focuses on anti-racist and decolonizing curriculum and teaching. A term of oppression has been transformed into a term of potential liberation.

The chapters in Rethinking Ethnic Studies embody the overall struggle between Ethnic Studies and the English language in two ways. The first has to do with terminology. The English language categories for talking about race, culture, and gender are rigid, constrictive, and built on legacies of racism, patriarchy, sexism, and white supremacy. They are too inflexible to really describe our realities, especially if we want to name ourselves in ways that move beyond gender binaries and challenge the politics of race. In response to the confines of English, Ethnic Studies has pushed on the spellings and pronunciations of many commonly used racial and cultural categories and the gendered nature of the English language.

For instance, here in the pages of Rethinking Ethnic Studies, you will find a range of terms being used to identify the Indigenous and colonized peoples of the Americas (even the Italian roots of the term "America" communicate the political legacies of naming; Abya Yala, Turtle Island, and Ixachilan are three Indigenous names for the continent). While no Rethinking Ethnic Studies authors use the term "Hispanic" (which problematically means "of Spanish origin"), authors use "Latinx" or "Latin@" or "Latina/o" for peoples commonly referred to as Latin American. We see the limits in this terminology as well, given that the root of all these terms is "Latin"thus based in a language of colonization, since Latinxs can actually be of any precolonial continental ancestry, which the term obscures. For these reasons, several authors also use "Chicana/o" or "Chicanx" or "Xicanx" to challenge gender binaries and to move closer to more Indigenous words, spellings, and identities.

Authors in this volume also try to challenge the gendered nature of several terms, including "history." So you will see the term "herstory" used as a gendered counterpart, or even "hxrstory" (still pronounced herstory) as another step beyond the gender binary. Out of respect for the variety of terms and the politics and power of naming, we as editors of Rethinking Ethnic Studies have chosen to follow the lead of our contributors in how they've named many of these categories. This means that terms may shift from chapter to chapter.

In addition to new terminology, the second way the chapters here embody the struggle between Ethnic Studies and the English language is through the use of more academic and intellectual language. Ethnic Studies rests on the foundational understanding that education has been used for colonization and white supremacy, and as part of these processes, knowledge has either been kept from communities of color or offered up in safer, tamer forms that keep us from struggling for liberation.

So there is a tradition in Ethnic Studies of recognizing that those in power do not want us to know particular hxrstories, theories, politics, cultures, and forms of resistance; do not want us to be "smart"; do not want us to be intellectuals capable of thinking deeply about our existence. In response, Ethnic Studies has developed its own tradition of using academic and intellectual language as a point of resistance-a way to say, in the face of racism and white supremacy, "Yes, we are smart, and we have a right to understand the world in complex ways too." As such, while Rethinking Ethnic Studies is not an academic text, it respects students and teachers enough to recognize that we can learn important and powerful concepts that can help us understand ourselves and the world.

Organization of the Book

Although Rethinking Ethnic Studies is not based on all the dimensions in the comprehensive Ethnic Studies Framework (see p. 65 for a more detailed discussion of the framework), elaborations of central elements are present throughout the volume.

Chapters in Part I, "Framing Ethnic Studies," offer holistic conceptualizations of Ethnic Studies that connect curriculum, pedagogy, students, and community. Prior to the chapter that elaborates on the Ethnic Studies Framework that organizes Rethinking Ethnic Studies, chapters explain what Ethnic Studies is and is not, the centrality of students' lives and student activism to Ethnic Studies, why Ethnic Studies matters for everyone, and what it means to teach Ethnic Studies. The four subsequent sections of the book are expressions of the four "macroscales" or "macrothemes" in the Ethnic Studies Framework.

Part II develops "Indigeneity and Roots"the recognition of the sovereignty of the Indigenous nations on whose land teaching is taking place, as well as the identities, ancestral roots, and intergenerational legacies of students in the classroom. Chapters describe various strategies used by teachers from elementary through high school levels to help students explore their family backgrounds, in some cases opening up space to consider painful experiences of family members, such as having fled a war, having been enslaved, or having been forced to forget their ancestral family languages and stories. Chapters illustrate tapping into ancestral knowledge students may have learned at home or community members may hold and be willing to share.

Part III delves into "Colonization and Dehumanization"the historic processes through which peoples of color have been robbed of land, labor, dignity, and autonomy. If students are to heal from the historic traumas of colonization and racism and learn to work for justice, they need to be able to understand oppressive relationships in historical terms. Chapters in this section take on issues such as genocide, segregation, institutional racism, and white supremacy, with some drawing connections to oppressive systems such as capitalism.

Part IV unmasks "Hegemony and Normalization"the processes through which oppressive relations have come to be seen as normal or natural. Some chapters in this section critique and move beyond textbooks; others engage students in activities such as simulation and role play that are designed to prompt students to question "realities" they had previously taken for granted.

Part V addresses "Regeneration and Transformation"the potential of working toward rehumanization and social justice activism. Chapters show multiple processes and concepts teachers have used to help students claim powerful identities of themselves as historically and culturally located people who are intellectually as well as politically capable of making a difference. Through combinations of hxstorical study, community study, role plays, and humanizing experiences in the classroom, young people learn to take on pressing issues in their own communities such as militarization of schooling and police violence.

The last section, Part VI, looks at the work of "Organizing for and Sustaining Ethnic Studies." Here, authors from diverse parts of the countryranging from San Francisco to Providence, from Chicago to Austin, from Sacramento to Portlandreflect upon their efforts alongside students and communities to advocate for and build Ethnic Studies programs. We envision this last section as an opportunity for organizers working for Ethnic Studies to learn from counterparts who have engaged in that work themselves. We envision this last section as an extension of the fourth macroscale, Transformational Resistance, and as an opportunity for organizers working for Ethnic Studies to learn from counterparts who have engaged in that work themselves.

Limitations of Rethinking Ethnic Studies
We recognize that there is a tension here: Our teaching is often contradictory in that we take part in designing lessons and developing units that are linear and exist within the standardization of public schools, yet we are also interested in being creative, engaging, and responsive, if not also liberating, in our teaching. Our hope is that our vision and orienting frameworks embrace a particular kind of "visionary pragmatism," in the words of Patricia Hill-Collins, in which we keep our hearts in and our eyes on Ethnic Studies as a movement while also respecting the planning and carrying out of instruction that teachers must do within their specific contexts, institutions, and communities.

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"This book is food for the movement. It is sustenance for every educator committed to understanding and enacting Ethnic Studies. We take this gift as a guide for the needed work ahead." Django Paris James A. & Cherry A. Banks Professor of Multicultural Education, University of Washington "Ethnic Studies as a field is about a half century old.

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Picture Book Option for Lesson 1: All Around Us

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Picture Book Option for Lesson 1: All Around Us

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Sorry, the page you’re looking for doesn’t seem to exist. If you’re looking for a specific book, you may find it by searching by title or author below:

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The Moon Within by Aida Salazar - Teacher Guide

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The Moon Within by Aida Salazar - Teacher Guide

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Mentor text

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Why is bringing poetry into the classroom important? Puerto Rican poet, Piri Thomas, said, "Every child is born a poet." In our rush to educate for tests, we forget this truth, we forget to...

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Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico by David Bowles

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Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico by David Bowles

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Mentor text recommendation

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Mexican myth in the house! Today is the official publication day of FEATHERED SERPENT, DARK HEART OF SKY!

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Mentor text recommendation (available in Spanish and in English)

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"La prosa densa y lírica de Bowles eleva la narración a un nivel apto para la tradición mitológica más respetada, e ilumina los fundamentos sobre los que reposa la cultura mexicana contemporánea".
- Kirkus Reviews

" Serpiente emplumada, corazón del cielo presenta los antiguos mitos de México, no como fábulas improbables, sino como narraciones de carne y hueso. Grandes escritos, personajes espectaculares y un final sorprendente y estimulante, muy pertinente a nuestros tiempos".
-Gustavo Arrellano, autor de Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America y columnista de Los Angeles Times.

" Serpiente emplumada, corazón del cielo de Bowles será crucial para los estudios literarios y culturales mesoamericanos, así como para los redescubrimientos mexicanos y mexicoamericanos de un antiguo pasado... Académicos y lectores de mitología y folklore: agreguen esto a los clásicos".
- World Literature Today

" Serpiente emplumada, corazón del cielo de David Bowles merece ser un éxito de ventas por todos los motivos correctos: es accesible, informativo, esencial".
- La ​​Bloga

"Vibrante y vital, esta colección es una adición esencial a las colecciones de cualquier biblioteca".
- School Library Journal

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Serpiente emplumada, corazón del cielo by David Bowles: 9780593081570 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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"La prosa densa y lírica de Bowles eleva la narración a un nivel apto para la tradición mitológica más respetada, e ilumina los fundamentos sobre los que reposa la cultura mexicana contemporánea". - Kirkus Reviews " Serpiente emplumada, corazón del cielo presenta los antiguos mitos de México, no como fábulas improbables, sino como narraciones de carne y hueso.

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Great mentor texts for lesson 1: Exploring how to better understand ourselves and our community

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Tres Cuentos Literary Podcast - Bilingual Latinamerican

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Tres Cuentos is a seasonal and bilingual literary podcast dedicated to Latin America's Literature. The program is conducted by storyteller Carolina Quiroga-Stultz. In each episode we narrate a short story and later we talk about the author, culture or history behind the story.

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Helpful text to read along the primary sources following the sample lesson sequence on immigration.

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On the Podcast: Carla España and Luz Yadira Herrera on Centering Bilingual Latinx Students

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On the Podcast: Carla España and Luz Yadira Herrera on Centering Bilingual Latinx Students

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Today on the podcast we are excited welcome Carla España and Luz Yadira Herrera, authors of En Comunidad: Lessons for Centering the Voices and Experiences of Bilingual Latinx Students. Both Carla and Luz infuse their own experiences as bilingual Latinx students into their writing and teaching, urging teachers to create liberating spaces for their students by embracing a practice known as translanguaging.

They assert that educators must center and study the "language practices in students' lives and texts, helping both children and teachers think about their ideas on language."

Our conversation began with by talking about the school experiences of US Latinx students...
Below is a full transcript of this episode.
Carla: I think the experience for U.S. Latinx students is really complex and varied. Just like how we talk about the complexity of Latinx identities, we also have to talk about the complexity of those experiences in schools. You have some students who might go to school where there might be bilingual programs, and those bilingual programs might be very open to welcoming their full linguistic repertoire and the language practices. And so they might flow and use their entire language repertoire in those programs. You might have programs with the same names across state district and the school in across a few blocks away. Like I am in New York city and I see this all the time where the programs might be named the same, but their experiences might be very different because they might be called dual language bilingual programs, but it might have very fixed language separation.

And so the students might be told, "You cannot speak in English on a Spanish day or you cannot speak a Spanish on an English day." And that is very confining, constricting to their language practice and their identities and the ways they've grown up. And those are some of the experiences around specific programs and the way they look like and how that affects U.S. Latinx students. But I know Luz can also talk about students outside of those programs and what their experiences might be like.

Luz: I do want to add a little bit about the difference in California that we have. Because California just got out of a almost 20 year essential ban on bilingual education because of Proposition 227, which was recently overturned with Proposition 58 in 2016. So now we're seeing a huge expansion of bilingual programs across the state to the point where we can't keep up with the demand. I'm at a school right now, it has five classes in kindergarten that are bilingual, five in first grade, five in second grade. And every year they're going to add a new grade. So that's huge.

That's one of the biggest class numbers that we've had that I've seen personally and I've been able to work with that school closely this semester because I'm a professor in residence for their bilingual teacher residency program. But like Carla says, you can't really boil it down to one experience. We have to recognize that bilingual Latinx children experience their bilingualism in schooling in different ways. Sometimes their schooling does value their bilingualism, sometimes schooling does not at all recognize that. And that's something that's very real for Latinx students across the country.

Carla: And I also think that, like I was just talking about bilingual dual language programs, but there are students who go into schools that don't have that kind of support. And so it might look like they're being pulled out or getting support with an extra adult in the classroom that meets with them in small groups. And there's so many co-teaching models that schools have supported teachers with. And in some of those spaces, those students feel really welcomed and they're in classrooms with students who speak other languages and they don't feel alone and like a newcomer in that sense. But in other cases they might not. And so they might be completely ignored or they might not receive any kind of support in terms of text availability or curriculum where they see themselves represented.

And so that's an experience that's very real. Especially when I was thinking about when I was working with teachers in New York City and they had a selection of curriculum and they're always looking at, does the curriculum really represent our students that we're teaching? And so that's a very real issue that we take on in this book.

Brett: And on that note, Carla, how can schools center bilingual Latinx students?

Carla: Yeah, so I think one of the, for us, it was really important that we began our book with talking about the work that we have to do as teachers. I mean it's something that both of us do in our teacher preparation programs, with graduate students, whether they might be in-service or pre-service teachers, undergrads or graduate students. Meaning that I refuse to go into lesson planning and give you like, "Let me give you the top five strategies," without first us unpacking our own assumptions, our own ideas, our own language ideologies. A lot of us, we all bring them to the classrooms and we sometimes re-inscribe them or we make this vicious cycle that keeps going on if they go unchecked.

And so what we do, one of the things we talk about in the book, and that's our first and second chapters that really set this up, is saying, how can we as teachers first unpack our own language ideologies? So think about our own moments where we feel that our language practices and our identities have been privileged. Well it's where they haven't been. Why not? So issues of language and power come up. And so that's one of the, for us, is like the starting point. Start with ourselves and that way we reject that deficit approach that usually says, "Well the problem is the children and we have to fix or add on or give them this academic language."

And what we're saying is that, "No, the students aren't an issue. The issue here is that us, as adults, as teachers, as educators, we must start with our own language ideologies." And so that for us is one of the major approaches that we take is consider how we can unpack those and from there we can then start getting to know our students. So Luz will talk a little bit about what we talk about in the book and in terms of addressing how we can get to know our students better.

Luz: Yes, absolutely. I think, well of course, we have to start with ourselves and then we have to think about how we can approach the teaching of our students and just creating spaces for them to tell their own stories and creating a classroom community where they feel that they are a valued and trusted and loved. One of the things that we talk about in our book is you approach the three T's, I think Ofelia García, that's what she ended up calling it. We approach our lessons thinking about a topic, texts and translanguaging. A topic that is relevant to students experiences, students varied experiences, topics that are relevant to their lives and their communities, et cetera, as well as texts that celebrate these identities and these varied experiences.

And finally translanguaging, that really honors a student's language practices and uses those language practices in the classroom, really centering them in the classroom.

Brett: Luz, I want to stick with that actually. A large portion of, of how you get a sense of the beginning of the book is translanguaging. and it's very important in the element of your book. Can you talk a little bit more about what is translanguaging and how does it help students?

Luz: Translanguaging is simply the way bilingual people communicate. Translanguaging is both a pedagogical approach, but also a theory and a philosophy. And translanguaging is the way that I think bilingual people just make sense of their bilingual worlds. And Ofelia García is the one that really has pushed this concept forward. And it's really about using our entire linguistic repertoire to make meaning to connect, to learn, and to teach. It's about erasing some of those linguistic boundaries that sometimes schools or other institutions impose on people, especially bilingual children.

Carla: And so those boundaries are really important to consider. When you think about bilingual and multilingual learners, do you think about these like boundaries around named languages? So there's Arabic and there's Spanish and there's English and there's these like confined, bounded languages. And that just doesn't work for bilingual, multilingual beings. So we don't think in these like boxed categories. There's no switch in my brain for me to go to like Spanish thinking, English thinking. And so with translanguaging, it looks at these language practices as along one language repertoire.

And I love clarifying, at least the way I've been doing this with students and teachers, the distinction between using the term translanguaging and code switching. And so a lot of people will say, "Oh, that's the same." And I loved sharing that. Well for us, the way we've been using translanguaging, translanguaging is an insider's view of our own bilingual multilingual practices, code switching as an outsider's view of what someone is doing. Because they're seeing these as separate codes. And for us we don't see this as separate, it's just one.

Another a reference we make in our book, lest we define translanguaging, is to a beautiful article written by Camila Leiva, a former New York City high school teacher and Ofelia García where they looked at translanguaging in three parts as those mentioned, translanguaging, communicate the ways that bilingual multilingual beings communicate, to translanguaging as pedagogy. So I think of my days when I was teaching sixth grade and I would be reading a read aloud in Spanish and some of the students, when they would break out into their conversations with their notes, their note taking would reflect Spanish and English features and it would be Spanish features from different parts of Dominican Republic and different parts of Mexico.

And I would respond with Spanish teachers from Chile, where I'm from. And so there was a lot of translanguaging happening there as I taught and as they communicated. And the third part, translanguaging as social justice, is really using this concept, this pedagogy, this communication as a way to validate the language practices of so many of us where our language practices have been minoritized, have been set aside, have been marginalized. And so it's time to elevate it and increase basis for it.

Brett: I'd like to come back to identity. You both spoke about how powerful it is a minute ago. And really in your book it is also a powerful element throughout as you both write about each of your personal journeys as bilingual students. Could you each sort of take a moment now and just sort of share with us a little bit about each of your journeys?

Luz: Well, I moved to the United States, to LA specifically, from Mexico when I was a little girl. I started third grade here and my third grade teacher didn't speak any Spanish even though I grew up in a community where it was probably half immigrant, from Mexico mostly. But she was able to sit me next to a bilingual buddy, Harvey. I'll never forget his name. And he's just kind of the person that I always think about through like the beginning of my journey, just kind of helping me navigate this new environment, this new language, new just everything. And I think that's where my journey kind of began. But I think what was most important for us is our ability that we had a growing up to go back and forth to our home or home country. And this was something that we did every year around Christmas time.

We pack up our SUV or van or whatever car we had at that time and drove for two days down to Mexico. And for me that was a really an essential part of this journey because it made me feel connected to my homeland, it made me feel like I belonged somewhere. It made me feel like I really was proud of my language and my culture and my identity because I had that close connection and I valued my language because I wanted to be able to communicate with my cousins, with my family. And I think that's one way that that has helped me, at least in this bilingual journey, in really making sure that I held it in a high kind of regard, I guess. And I didn't really experience bilingual education myself, but I was able to of course use language at home and I kept up my own reading just so that I can keep improving on it. Again, just my close connection to home just really helped. And just my overall development as a bilingual person.

Carla: For me, I came from Chile to New York City when I was five years old and I arrived with my mom. We had been separated from my dad for about a year and my mom said she couldn't continue living that way and she really wanted us to be closer to my dad and to raise me with him. And so we made it to New York City. We arrived as undocumented immigrants and that identity marker was very real. And I felt it and I continue to feel it even though I am now documented. I remember every time I drive past this... on Queens Boulevard in Queens in New York, this place where my mom and I had gotten lost and I was little, I still feel like I had this physical reaction to the fear and the tears start flowing anytime I pass by that place. And so growing up with that, I knew that there were sort of spaces we couldn't go to, I obviously from the travel for a while to Chile.

And I ended up going to a school in Queens that had representation from so many different languages and I made friends from people from all over and it made me feel less alone. But I felt very frustrated because all of the instruction was in English. I remember being taken with a group of students from different countries who were learning English to like the smaller room, which seemed like a closet. And we would just do worksheets and English grammar, that kind of support. And my parents decided to put me in Saturday school, it was fully in Spanish and it was this Argentinian school. And every Saturday I would go and I would learn like Argentinian history and music and dance. And as a Chilean it was great because it connected me to our neighbors. Not only neighbors like country-wise Chile to Argentina neighbors, but also our neighbors from our building were from Argentina who told us about the school.

And so I grew up, Monday to Friday, feeling really much like not enough or less than, like I still had to work really hard and really frustrated as a child in school. But Saturdays I felt like super smart and I was participating and I danced and I sang. And I think to this day that's plays a big role as to why I love performing. But later on as I was able to get my papers with my family and we started just like Luz, traveling and visiting family became a huge part of my identity as this connection. And I know that's a privilege that I have now and I'm constantly aware of it and saying how the big impact it had that I was able to see my grandparents and I was able to communicate with them and continue and I wrote letters to them.

But it really was something that growing up has really informed my own practice as a teacher to consider that journey across not only geographical regions but also journeys from within and trying to figure out like who am I. That question of like what does it need to be an American? How do I fit into this culture and are people going to welcome me? And should I change for people or should I not? And that's something that we constantly grapple with and I constantly grapple with that question with my students as well.

Brett: What about you Luz, how did your experience form your journey to becoming a bilingual teacher educator?

Luz: That's a great question. I think I didn't originally intend to be a teacher. I wanted to actually go into education, but into counseling. When I was in high school, I was a peer counselor, so that was just kind of in my mind, I'm going to be a counselor. I wanted to work in education in some way and definitely through counseling I thought. And so when I went into undergrad, I was able to work with this program that outreached into high schools, like the one that I went to, Inglewood High, and advise students on college applications, FAFSA and all of those things. And it was just kind of like, "Yes, for sure I need to be a college counselor or some sort of counselor." But I had the opportunity after college to begin a Master's program and go into teaching and that completely changed my trajectory.

I taught for about seven years in Harlem, in New York City. And I think it was just that moment that, or that time that I realized that I wanted to pursue higher education so that I could have just a larger impact in my own way, I guess, with teachers and education. And so that's why I joined the doctoral program too, to become a teacher educator. And I didn't actually start as a bilingual teacher. I was never a bilingual teacher. I was an ESL teacher or they call it a ELD teacher now, english language development teacher.

Carla: Or English as a new language teacher.

Luz: Oh, right.

Carla: So much terminology everywhere.

Luz: Different terms, yeah.

So English as a new language teacher. And I think it was that experience of working with those groups of students that I realized that we were not doing enough. It wasn't enough just to teach English. It was important to also think about ways for students to develop, maintain their bilingualism. And so that's what turned me around. That's what led me to a path to pursue research and more teaching around bilingualism and bilingual education because of those injustices that I really witnessed and I felt like I took part in.

Brett: You both mentioned the terminology a second ago. And in your book you note the importance in your work about using the term emergent bilingual learner or E-B-L, rather than the term E-L-L for English language learners. So why is it important to you? Why is it important in your work to use emergent bilingual learner?

Luz: So this is another term that was actually coined by Ofelia García. And of course she is our mentor. She was our graduate dissertation advisor as well as she's also the forward author for our book. So you'll hear us talking a lot about Ofelia García. Ofelia García coined this term emergent bilingual learner as a way to move away from sort of deficit perspectives like English language learner that focuses on learning English and attaining English and really shifting our perspective to developing a bilingualism or bilingual outlook. Really centering students bilingualism and looking at their home language practices as something that is valued and important to maintain and sustain and develop. Do you want to add anything, Carla?

Carla: No, I think for me it's important to also connect it to that line that you just said earlier. Respond to the other question saying it wasn't enough. And I feel like sometimes we go through the motions of just teaching and going through with the terminology that might be in our graduate programs or in our schools. And I think one of the ways that we can push against that, is really changing the ways that we're labeling students. And I think it's a big deal and students are more than just a bot, a learner that's focusing on learning English. Like they're bringing something to the table there, navigating tremendous things in their lives, considering they're, just like Luz was discussing her own journey, like navigating multiple cultures, languages, experiences. And so I think pushing against those labels that come from really a deficit mindset is powerful. And I would even push further and say like, yeah, we use EBL as an umbrella term, emergent bilingual, but also acknowledging that a lot of students might be multi-lingual.

A lot of students are navigating multiple language practices. When I was teaching in Harlem, just like Luz was also teaching there, I had students who were not only speaking two languages like Spanish and English, but I have students who are speaking different languages from Mexico that were in Spanish. And so as a teacher it put me in a position to learn from them and be aware of their really complex language practices.

Brett: With that, Carla, how can teachers who don't speak Spanish use translanguaging in their classroom?

Carla: Oh, you just reminded me. I was once in this coaching group with Colleen Cruz, who we love, another high-demand author too. And Colleen had encouraged us and this coaching group to take up an activity where we would be learning something that was challenging for us and that would put us in a position to like grow in empathy of our students who are also learning and so many things in our classrooms. And at that time I took a guitar because I didn't want it to learn. And I love observing the teacher and how the moves that the teacher was making in making you feel like very welcomed and that I could play these chords. And she sat me next to the students who were just like approximating where I was, which is great. And so that's what I think of when teachers who say, "Well, I'm not a bilingual speaker, I'm a monolingual teacher."

And we acknowledge that, like most of our teaching courses, like white monolingual women. And we're saying with our book, "You too can do this. In fact, like you too should do this." And so that might mean, like I had to do this when I had to learn for my students who are from Yemen to speaking Arabic, might mean I have to learn the language practices of my students. And so grab a little notebook and start listening to them, get some phrases. It also means engaging in what students are producing texts that show their full linguistic repertoire. So the student is writing in Spanish and English and us saying, "Let me welcome that kind of writing and I can learn from that as well."

Taking up that kind of practice. I also think if we are literacy teachers, if we are historians and we're teaching our social studies teachers, whatever content area we teach, we also see ourselves as like, "Well, I'm engaging in reading history articles and I'm teaching these history articles. Well I am in any content course in an English language arts classroom, I'm also teaching how you communicate these things. I should also be a part, as a learner, be a part of this community."

So just as I walked into schools with my reader's notebook, my writer's notebook, the books I'm reading, I also walk in these spaces like we're also continuing to learn these language practices. And so what that might look like for some teachers, we engage in some book clubs. That was one of my favorite things to do with teachers, and hearing teachers saying like, "You know what? I started with a podcast or I started with an app." And I say, "Great, you're listening to a podcast, that has the transcription in English and Spanish for these investigative journalism stories from Latin America. Beautiful. Now here you have the texts on the screen, you're listening to this in Spanish. Now we can grab some articles and some books and so it will be from there." But I think that would help the teachers grow in empathy and also establish the connection with the students.

Luz: Just to add to that, it really takes a teacher that sees themselves as a co-learner. That sees their children or their students as a resource in a way. So students are the experts, students are the language experts in this case. And teachers can use that expertise to add to her teaching practice. Teachers can also think about how to bring in the caregivers. So the community into the classroom to help with the translanguaging aspect of it. And also CUNY NYSA launched a web series to address a specific topic like how can I engage in translanguaging even when I'm not bilingual or multilingual. So that's a worthy resource to check out as well.

Brett: I want to end with this. You quote in the book, author Meg Medina, in referring to the importance of using bilingual language saying that this shows trust. Can you speak a little bit to the issue of trust and how important that is in this work?

Carla: Oh, we love Meg. Meg is like madrina of our children's literature. We wanted to include that quote from Meg Medina and really talking about trusting students. And for us it means that we are centering the students. So that means when you center something, just like that's in our title, you have to take something away from there. So we are de-centering this like typical teacher authoritative figure that bearable knowledge and teaching English to these English language learners as has been painted this narrative. And instead we're saying, "We will trust that students are coming into our classrooms as complex human beings who I'm acknowledging their full humanity. I'm acknowledging that they communicate in these ways that they have these stories to tell. And I need to remove myself from that long-held space or idea or notion that I am the variable knowledge and I'm going to teach them.

And so that trust means letting go. And it's really tough, it's to let go. And it's really tough because we're doing this within this larger narrative in society that is painted bilingual and multilingual learners, especially in the U.S., as deficient, as lacking as opposed to painting them as like these human beings who are just navigating so many complex systems in society and that we can learn from it. Really it's going against the current in doing this, in this kind of approach where you trust your students and say, "I will center your experiences and your lives are valid. And I will listen and I will use that in instruction. And that means I will go find texts that reflect that. I will create curriculum around that."

And that's tough work because some curriculum that we have doesn't do that. And so it requires us to go against a lot of what we've been trained in. And so I'm very honored that like Luz and I are in spaces, graduate schools and teacher ed programs and visiting schools where we are able to have these conversations. And we talk in one of our chapters, like creating these counter narratives because that trust is a counter narrative to the master narrative of what the learning experiences are in the classrooms.

Brett: And Luz, at the same time, there's a level of importance there protecting the student's safety and how they share their stories too. Isn't that right?

Luz: Absolutely. I think when we think about the rhetoric, the narratives that we hear, just sociopolitical concepts that we are living in, it's important to consider students' safety. There's a lot of immigrant communities that do not trust institutions and rightfully so. And so it's important that we are able to respect boundaries to, well, first, create a community in the classroom where students feel protected and feel safe and fell loved, like I said before. But also just kind of not really force anybody to share their stories. Be patient, create multiple opportunities for children to be able to share their stories in different ways and with different people. Maybe they wanted to share it in their notebooks by themselves. Maybe they want to share with a partner. And little by little maybe they will open up to a larger audience.

But it's something that we just have to be careful about. Just not pushing anybody to share more than they want and more than they're ready for. And just be really open with the community, with the parents about which projects you're engaging with so that they can also support and feel part of this community.

Carla: And I think that's really impactful thinking about that because if I plan, let's say, a personal narrative or memoir writing unit to start like day one of school. And I'm having students share without me listening and getting to know their experiences or would they be comfortable doing that? Really, I'm putting them in positions where it shows that I am not listening, I'm not getting to know them. And so I think that's really important. We're just really excited. We're really thankful for the support for this book. I mean it's been a journey where we've been really thankful that we've had this space to really go through our own journeys as students within systems of schooling, whether they've been welcoming or not, and then also our own journeys as teachers. And then I'm just really excited to share this, especially considering the political climate that we're in right now.

I think it's important to acknowledge that our students are taking in messages and are also responding in different ways. And I think it is definitely our responsibility. Just like Luz was saying, like sometimes it's not enough. And it's not enough for me to just say, "Okay, I grabbed this strategy or I got this worksheet." And it's like, no, we have to do more work to unpack some of our own narratives and journeys around the identities and language practices of bilingual Latinx students. And so for me, I'm just thankful that I had this writing partner, Luz, and then we have this space. And we're excited to keep the discussion going.

Luz: Yes, definitely. We look forward to the conversations that will pop up when people start getting their hands on the book. And we're just so thankful for everything. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us.
Una transcripcíon en español.
Carla: La experiencia de los estudiantes latinos de U.S. es realmente compleja y variada. Al igual que hablamos de la complejidad de las identidades latinas, también tenemos que hablar sobre la complejidad de esas experiencias en los centros educativos. Así, tienes a estudiantes que pueden ir a centros donde puede haber programas bilingües, y esos programas bilingües pueden ser muy abiertos para dar cabida a todo su repertorio lingüístico en sus prácticas idiomáticas, y para que puedan fluir y usar todo su repertorio lingüístico en esos programas. Puedes tener programas con los mismos nombres a través del distrito estatal, y la escuela a unas pocas manzanas de distancia. En plan, estoy en la New York City, y veo esto siempre, los programas pueden tener el mismo nombre, pero sus experiencias pueden ser muy diferentes, porque podrían ser lenguaje dual, programas bilingües, pero podría haber una separación de idioma muy específica.

Y se les podría decir a los estudiantes: "No puedes hablar en inglés en un día de español" o "No puedes hablar en español en un día de inglés." Y eso es muy limitador, restrictivo con sus practices lingüísticas y sus identidades y las formas en que han crecido. Y esas son algunas de las experiencias alrededor de programas específicos y su percepción, y cómo afecta a los estudiantes latinos de U.S. Pero sé que Luz también puede hablar sobre estudiantes fuera de esos programas y cómo podrían ser sus experiencias.

Luz: Quiero hablar un poco sobre la diferencia que tenemos en California. Porque California acaba de salir de una prohibición de casi 20 años en educación bilingüe, debido a la Proposición 227, que fue revocada recientemente con la Propuesta 58 en 2016. Así que ahora estamos viendo una gran expansión de programas bilingües en todo el estado hasta el punto en que no podamos cubrir la demanda. Estoy en un centro ahora mismo. Tiene cinco clases en jardín de infancia que son bilingües, cinco en primer grado, cinco en segundo grado, y cada año van a agregar una nueva calificación. Entonces eso es enorme.

Ese es uno de los números de clase más grandes que hemos tenido y que he visto personalmente, y he podido trabajar con esa escuela muy estrechamente este semestre, porque soy profesor residente dentro del programa de residencia de docentes bilingües. Pero, como dice Carla, realmente no puedes reducirlo a una experiencia. Tenemos que aceptar que los niños bilingües latinos experimenten su bilingüismo y escolaridad de maneras diferentes. A veces su escolaridad, ya sabes, A veces la escuela no lo reconoce en absoluto, y esa es una realidad para los estudiantes latinos de todo el país.

Carla: Y también creo que, solo he hablado de programas bilingües de lenguaje dual, pero hay estudiantes que van a la escuela y que no tienen ese tipo de apoyo. Y podría parecer que están siendo marginados u obtener apoyo con un adulto adicional en el aula que se reúne con ellos en pequeños grupos. Y hay tantos modelos de enseñanza conjunta que las escuelas han apoyado a los maestros. Y en algunos de esos espacios, esos estudiantes se sienten verdaderamente aceptados y están en aulas con estudiantes que hablan otros idiomas, y no se sienten solos y como un recién llegado. Pero en otros casos, puede que no. Y entonces podrían ser completamente ignorados, o pueden no recibir ningún tipo de apoyo en términos de disponibilidad de texto o plan de estudios donde se ven representados.

Y esa es una experiencia muy real. Especialmente cuando estaba pensando en... Cuando trabajaba con maestros en la ciudad de Nueva York, y tenían una selección de currículum en la que me planteé, ¿realmente el currículum refleja lo que nosotros enseñamos a nuestros estudiantes? Y ese es un problema muy real que asumimos en este libro.

Brett: Y con respecto a eso, Carla, ¿Cómo pueden centrarse en los estudiantes bilingües latios?

Carla: Sí, una de las... bueno, para nosotros fue muy importante que empezamos nuestro libro hablando sobre el trabajo que tenemos que hacer como docentes. Es decir, es algo que ambos hacemos en los programas docents con estudiantes graduados, ya sean maestros en servicio o en prácticas, estudiantes de pregrado o posgrado. Por lo que rechazo entrar en la planificación de la lección y decir algo tipo: "Déjame darte las cinco estrategias principales" sin primero exponer nuestras propias suposiciones, nuestras propias ideas e ideologías lingüísticas. Y muchos de nosotros, los llevamos a las aulas, y a veces los reinscribimos, o caemos en este círculo vicioso que continúa si no se les controla.

Y entonces lo que hacemos, una de las cosas de las que hablamos en el libro, y eso viene en los capítulos primero y segundo, que sirve para arreglar esto, es explicar cómo podemos, como maestros, expresar nuestra propia ideología lingüística. Piensa en esos momentos en los que sentimos que nuestras prácticas e identidades han sido un privilegio. Esos momentos en los que no han estado y por qué no. Entonces, surgen problemas de lenguaje y poder. Y entonces ese es... para nosotros ese es el punto de partida. Comienza en nosotros mismos y de esa manera rechazamos ese enfoque de déficit que generalmente dice: "Bueno, el problema son los niños, y tenemos que arreglar o agregar o darles este lenguaje académico." Y lo que estamos viendo es que no, el problema aquí no es que los estudiantes sean el problema, no lo son. El problema aquí es que nosotros, como adultos, como profesores, como educadores, debemos comenzar con nuestras ideologías lingüísticas. Y para nosotros uno de los principales enfoques que tomamos es considerar cómo podemos aplicarlas, y a partir de ahí, podemos comenzar a conocer a nuestros estudiantes. Entonces, ahora hablamos un poco sobre lo que hablamos en el libro, y en términos de acercamiento, de cómo podemos conocer mejor a nuestros estudiantes.

Luz: Si, absolutamente. Creo que, por supuesto debemos comenzar con nosotros mismos, y luego tenemos que pensar cómo podemos acercarnos a enseñar a nuestros alumnos, simplemente creando espacios para que cuenten sus historias y creando una comunidad de aula donde sientan que son valorados, confiables y amados. Una de las cosas de las que hablamos en nuestro libro, es el enfoque, las tres Ts, Creo que Ofelia García, así es como terminó llamándolo. Nos acercamos a nuestras lecciones pensando en un tema, textos y translenguaje, ¿verdad? Un tema relevante para las experiencias de los estudiantes, para las variadas experiencias de los estudiantes, temas que sean relevantes para sus vidas, y sus comunidades, etc. así como textos que celebran estas identidades y estas variadas experiencias. Y, finalmente, el translenguaje, ¿verdad? Eso honra las prácticas lingüísticas de los estudiantes y aplica esas prácticas de lenguaje en el aula, centrándolos de verdad en el aula.

Brett: Luz, quiero seguir con eso en realidad. Una gran parte del inicio del libro se basa en el translenguaje, y es muy importante en el elemento de tu libro. ¿Puedes hablar un poco más sobre lo que es el translenguaje y cómo ayuda a los estudiantes?

Luz: El translenguaje es simplemente la forma en la que las personas bilingües se comunican. El translenguaje es un enfoque pedagógico, pero también una teoría y una filosofía y el translenguaje es la forma en que, creo, las personas bilingües simplemente sacan sentido a sus mundos bilingües, ¿verdad? Y Ofelia García es la que realmente ha empujado este concepto hacia adelante. Se trata de usar todo nuestro repertorio lingüístico para dar sentido, conectar, aprender y enseñar. Se trata de borrar algunos de esos límites lingüísticos, que a veces, ya sabes, escuelas u otras instituciones imponen a las personas, especialmente a los niños bilingües.

Carla: Y entonces esos límites son realmente importantes. Cuando piensas en estudiantes bilingües y multilingües, piensa en los límites alrededor de los idiomas. Están el árabe y español, y está el ingles y están los idiomas limitados y confinados. Y eso no funciona para personas bilingües y multilingües, ¿verdad? No pensamos en estas categorías de manera cerrada. No puedo cambiar mi cerebro para cambiar al pensamiento español o al inglés. Y así con el translenguaje, contempla estas prácticas de idioma a lo largo de un repertorio de idiomas.

Y me encanta aclarar, la forma en que he hecho esto con estudiantes y profesores, la diferencia entre utilizar el término translenguaje y cambio de código. Y mucha gente dirá: "Oh, eso es lo mismo". Y me encanta hablar de eso, bueno, para nosotros, la forma en que hemos estado usando el translenguaje, el translenguaje es una visión interna de nuestras propias prácticas bilingües y multilingües. Un cambio de código como una visión externa de lo que alguien está haciendo, porque los ven como códigos separados. Nosotros no vemos esto como algo separado, es una sola cosa. Otra referencia que hacemos en nuestro libro al definir el translenguaje es un hermoso artículo escrito por Camila Leiva, una ex profesora de secundaria de la ciudad de Nueva York, y Ofelia García, donde analizaron el translenguaje en tres partes como mencionó Luz, El translenguaje como comunicación, cómo los seres bilingües y multilingües se comunican, al translenguaje como pedagogía. Entonces, pienso en mis días cuando daba sexto grado, y leía una lectura en voz alta en español, y algunos estudiantes, cuando salían a hablar con sus notas, sus apuntes reflejaban características en español e inglés. Y serían características españolas de diferentes partes e la República Dominicana y diferentes partes de México.

Y respondería con profesores de español de Chile, de donde soy. Y entonces hubo mucho translenguaje allí, por cómo enseñé y cómo se comunicaron. Y la tercera parte, el translenguaje como justicia social está usando este concepto, esta pedagogía, esta comunicación como una forma de validar las prácticas lingüísticas de muchos de nosotros, donde nuestras prácticas lingüísticas han sido minorizadas, han sido puestas a un lado, han sido marginadas. Y es hora de darle valor y aumentar los espacios para ello.

Brett: Me gustaría volver a la identidad. Ambos hablaron sobre lo poderosa que es hace un minuto, y, realmente, en el libro, también es un elemento poderoso todo el tiempo, pues ambos escribís sobre vuestros viajes personales como estudiantes bilingües. ¿Podrías dedicar un momento a compartir un poco con nosotros sobre vuestros viajes?

Luz: Yo me mudé a los EE. UU, a Los Ángeles específicamente, desde México cuando era una niña pequeña. Empecé el tercer grado aquí, y mi maestra de tercer grado no hablaba español, aunque crecí en una comunidad que probablemente era mitad inmigrante, ya sabes, de México, en su mayoría. Pero ella pudo sentarme junto a un amigo bilingüe, Harvey. Nunca olvidaré su nombre. Y él es la persona en la que siempre pienso hasta el comienzo de mi viaje, me ayuda a navegar en este nuevo entorno, este nuevo lenguaje, en todo lo nuevo. Y creo que ahí es donde comenzó mi viaje. Pero creo que lo más importante para nosotros es la habilidad que teníamos para crecer, ir y venir a nuestra casa o país de origen. Y esto era algo que hacíamos todos los años, alrededor de las Navidades.

Cargamos el equipaje, ya sabes, en nuestro SUV o camioneta o el auto que teníamos en ese momento y condujo durante dos días a México. Y para mí, eso fue realmente una parte esencial de este viaje, porque me hizo sentir conectada a mi tierra natal, como si perteneciera a alguna parte. Me hizo sentir como si estuviera realmente orgulloso de mi idioma, mi cultura y mi identidad, porque tuve esa estrecha conexión. Y valoré mi idioma porque quería poder comunicarme con mis primos, con mi familia, y creo que eso es algo que me ha ayudado, al menos en este viaje bilingüe, para asegurarme de que yo, ya sabes, lo tuviera en gran estima. Y yo realmente no experimenté la educación bilingüe, pero pude, por supuesto, usar el idioma en casa, y seguí leyendo, solo para poder seguir mejorando. De nuevo, solo mi estrecha conexión con mi hogar me ayudó en mi desarrollo general como persona bilingüe.

Carla: Yo vine de Chile a la ciudad de Nueva York cuando tenía cinco años, y llegué con mi mamá. Estuvimos separados de mi padre durante un año y mi mamá dijo que no podía seguir viviendo así, ella quería que estuviéramos más cerca de mi papá, y criarme con él. Y así llegamos a la ciudad de Nueva York. Llegamos como inmigrantes indocumentados, y ese marcador de identidad era muy real, y lo sentí y sigo sintiéndolo a pesar de que ahora estoy documentado. Recuerdo conducir al pasar cada vez que paso por delante de aquel lugar, en Queens Boulevard en Queens, Nueva York, el lugar donde mi madre y yo nos habíamos perdido cuando era pequeño. Todavía siento que tuve esta reacción física al miedo, y las lágrimas comienzan a fluir cada vez que paso por allí. Y al crecer con eso, sabía que había ciertos espacios a los que no podíamos ir, había ciertas cosas. Obviamente no pude viajar por un tiempo a Chile. Y terminé yendo a una escuela en Queens que tenía una representación de muchos idiomas diferentes, e hice amigos de gente de todas partes, y me hizo sentir menos solo, pero me sentí muy frustrado porque toda la instrucción fue en inglés. Y recuerdo que me llevaron con un grupo de estudiantes de diferentes países para aprender inglés a una pequeña habitación, que parecía casi un armario. Y solo hacíamos, ya sabes, fichas de deberes y gramática inglesa. Ese tipo de apoyo. Y mis padres decidieron apuntarme a clases los sábados. Eran completamente en español, y era una escuela Argentina, y todos los sábados iba y aprendía historia argentina, y música, y danza, y como chileno, fue genial, porque me conectó con nuestros vecinos. No solo vecinos del país sabio, Chile y Argentina como vecinos, sino también con los vecinos de nuestro edificio, eran de Argentina y nos hablaron sobre la escuela. Y así crecí, de lunes a viernes, sintiéndome realmente sin lograr llegar a lo suficiente. Como que todavía tenía que trabajar muy duro y realmente frustrado como niño en la escuela, pero los sábados me sentía superinteligente y participaba, bailaba y cantaba y creo que hasta el día de hoy eso juega un papel importante en cuanto a por qué me encanta actuar. Más tarde, cuando pude conseguir mis papeles con mi familia, empezamos, como Luz, viajando, y visitar a la familia fue una gran parte de mi identidad, fue una conexión. Y sé que es un privilegio que tengo ahora, y soy constantemente consciente de ello y poder expresar el gran impacto que tuvo que pudiera ver a mis abuelos, y pudiera comunicarme con ellos y seguir con ellos, y escribirles cartas.

Eso fue algo que, al crecer, realmente formó mi propia práctica como profesor considerar ese viaje a través de no solo regiones geográficas, sino también viajes interiores, y tratando de descubrir quién soy yo. Preguntas como: ¿qué significa ser estadounidense? ¿Cómo encajo en esta cultura? ¿La gente me va a dar la bienvenida? ¿Debería cambiar por la gente, o no debería? Y eso es algo con lo que lidiamos constantemente, y constantemente planteo esa pregunta a mis alumnos también.

Brett: ¿Y tú, Luz? ¿Cómo influyó la experiencia de tu viaje para convertirte en una docente bilingüe?

Luz: Esa es una buena pregunta. Originalmente no tenía la intención de ser maestra. Yo realmente quería ir a la educación, pero en orientación. Cuando estaba en la escuela secundaria, era orientadora. Así que eso estaba en mi mente, "Voy a ser una orientadora". Quería trabajar en educación de alguna manera, y pensé en hacerlo a través de la orientación. Y así, cuando fui a la universidad, pude trabajar con este programa que se extiende a las escuelas secundarias, como en el que estuve, Englewood High, y orientar en las solicitudes universitarias, FAFSA, y todas esas cosas. Y fue algo así como: "Sí, claro, tengo que ser una orientadora universitaria, o una orientadora de lo que sea". Pero tuve la oportunidad después de la universidad de cursar un programa de Master y comenzar a enseñar, y eso cambió completamente mi trayectoria.

Enseñé durante unos siete años en Harlem, en Nueva York, y creo que fue en aquel momento o en aquella época cuando me di cuenta de que quería ir a educación superior para poder tener un impacto mayor a mi manera, supongo, en los profesores y la educación. Y por eso me apunté al programa de doctorado, para convertirme en una formadora de docentes. En realidad no comencé como maestra bilingüe. Nunca fui una maestra bilingüe. Inglés como segundo idioma en inglés lo llaman ELD ahora, ¿verdad? Que es "English Language Development teacher".

Carla: Inglés como nuevo idioma aquí .

Luz: Oh, sí.

Carla: Mucha terminología por todas partes.

Luz: Hay diferentes términos, sí.

Entonces, de inglés como nuevo idioma. Y creo que fue en esa experiencia de trabajar con esos grupos de estudiantes cuando me percibí que no estábamos haciendo lo suficiente. No bastaba con enseñar inglés. También era importante pensar en métodos para que se desarrollara y mantuviera el bilingüismo. Y eso fue lo que me cautivó. Eso es lo que me llevó a un camino para seguir investigando y formándome más sobre el bilingüismo y la educación bilingüe, por esas injusticias que realmente presencié, y en las que sentí que participé.

Brett: Ambos habéis mencionado la terminología hace un momento, y en tu libro, notas la importancia en tu trabajo sobre el uso del término estudiante bilingüe emergente, o las siglas en inglés, EBL, en lugar del término ELL, para estudiantes de inglés. Entonces, ¿por qué es importante para vosotros? ¿por qué es importante en vuestro trabajo utilizar ese término?

Luz: Este es otro término que en realidad fue acuñado por Ofelia Garcia originalmente en inglés, y por supuesto ella es nuestra mentora. También fue nuestra asesora de tesis de posgrado, y ella también es la autora principal de nuestro libro. Por eso nos escucharán hablar mucho sobre Ofelia García. Ofelia García acuñó el término "Emergent Bilingual Learner" como una forma de alejarse de las perspectivas de déficit como estudiante de inglés que se enfoca en estudiar inglés y asimilarlo y realmente cambiando nuestra perspectiva para desarrollar un bilingüismo o una perspectiva bilingüe. Centrándonos realmente en el bilingüismo de los estudiantes y viendo la práctica de su lengua maternal como algo valioso e importante que mantener, sostener y desarrollar. ¿Quieres añadir algo, Carla?

Carla: No, creo que para mí también es importante conectarlo con esa línea que acabas de decir, respondiendo a la otra pregunta y diciendo que no fue suficiente. Y siento que a veces pasamos por los mecanismos de solo enseñar y seguir con la terminología que podría estar en nuestros programas de posgrado o en nuestras escuelas, y creo que una de las formas de luchar contra eso es cambiar la forma en la que etiquetamos a los estudiantes. Y creo que es un gran problema, y los estudiantes son más que solo un alumno que se está centrando en aprender inglés. Ellos también aportan. Están atravesando cosas tremendas en sus vidas, considerando todo, tal como Luz contaba antes su propio viaje, navegando por múltiples culturas, idiomas, experiencias. Entonces, creo que luchar contra esas etiquetas que vienen de una mentalidad muy deficitaria es poderoso. Por eso yo presionaría más incluso, como usar EBL como un término general, o emergente bilingüe, pero también reconociendo que muchos estudiantes pueden ser multilingüe.

O muchos estudiantes, ya sabes, están pasando por múltiples prácticas lingüísticas. Cuando enseñaba en Harlem, al igual que Luz también enseñaba allí, tenía estudiantes que no solo hablaban dos idiomas, como español e inglés, tenía estudiantes que hablaban diferentes idiomas de México que no eran españoles. Y como docente, eso me puso en una posición para aprender de ellos, ¿vale? Y ser consciente de sus complejas prácticas lingüísticas.

Brett: Carla, ¿cómo pueden los maestros que no hablan español utilizar el translenguaje en su aula?

Carla: Oh, me acabas de recordar a una vez que estuve en un grupo de coaching con Colleen Cruz, a quien amamos. Otra autora de Heinemann, también. Y Colleen nos había animado en este grupo de entrenamiento a emprender una actividad en la que estaríamos aprendiendo algo que fuese desafiante para nosotros, y eso nos pondría en posición de aumentar la empatía de nuestros estudiantes que también están aprendiendo muchas cosas en nuestras aulas. Y en ese momento, cogí la guitarra, porque quería aprender y me encanta observar al profesor y los movimientos que el maestro estaba haciendo, que me hacían sentir muy partícipe y que yo sería capaz de tocar estos acordes. Y ella me sentó al lado de los estudiantes, que simplemente se aproximaban a donde estaba yo, lo cual era genial. Y eso es lo que pienso cuando los maestros que dicen: "Bueno, no soy un hablante bilingüe. Soy un docente monolingüe".

Y lo reconocemos. Como, la mayoría de nuestros cursos de enseñanza, como mujeres blancas y monolingües. Y estamos diciendo con nuestro libro: "Tú también puedes hacer esto. De hecho, tú también deberías hacer esto". Y eso podría significar que tenía que hacer esto cuando tuve que aprender de mis alumnos que eran de Yemen y hablaban árabe, o que tendría que aprender las prácticas lingüísticas de mis alumnos. Y así cogeré un pequeño cuaderno y empezaré a escucharlos, a anotar algunas frases. También significa participar cuando los estudiantes producen textos que muestran su repertorio lingüístico completo, en los que escriben en español e inglés, y que digamos: "Voy a aceptar ese tipo de escritura".

Y también aprender de eso, tomando ese tipo de práctica. También pienso que si somos maestros de alfabetización, si somos historiadores y enseñamos, somos profesores de estudios sociales, cualquier área de contenido que enseñemos, también nos vemos a nosotros como por ejemplo: "Estoy leyendo artículos de historia, y estoy enseñando estos artículos de historia. Bueno, si estoy en algún curso de contenido en cualquier aula de inglés, también estoy enseñando cómo comunicas estas cosas, también debería ser parte, como aprendiz, ser parte de esta comunidad." Y así, justo cuando entro a las escuelas con el cuaderno de mi lector, el cuaderno de mi escritor, los libros que estoy leyendo, también camino en estos espacios diciendo: "Proseguimos aprendiendo estas prácticas lingüísticas".

Y entonces, para algunos maestros podría desembocar en participar en algunos clubes de lectura. Esa ha sido una de mis cosas favoritas con los maestros, con maestros que te dicen: "¿Sabes qué? "He empezado un podcast o comencé con una aplicación". Y yo digo: "Genial, estás escuchando un podcast que tiene la transcripción en inglés y español por estas historias de periodismo de investigación de América Latina. Maravilloso. Ahora, aquí tienes el texto en pantalla, estás escuchando esto en español, ahora podemos tomar algunos artículos y algunos libros y así te haré salir de allí". Creo que eso ayudaría a los maestros a crecer en empatía y también establecer una conexión con los estudiantes.

Luz: Solo para agregar a eso, ya sabes, realmente se necesita un maestro que se ve a sí mismo como un compañero de estudios, ¿verdad? Que ve a sus hijos, o sus estudiantes, como un recurso de alguna manera. Entonces, los estudiantes son los expertos. Los estudiantes son expertos en idiomas en este caso, ¿no? Y por eso los maestros pueden usar esa experiencia para agregarla a su práctica docente. Los maestros también pueden pensar cómo atraer a los cuidadores, la comunidad, al aula para ayudar con el aspecto translingüístico. Y también CUNY-NYSIEB lanzó una serie web para abordar este tema específico. Preguntando: ¿cómo puedo involucrarme en el translenguaje si no soy bilingüe o multilingüe? Así que también es un recurso valioso que ver.

Brett: Quiero terminar con esto. Citas en el libro a Meg Medina, al referirte a la importancia de usar el lenguaje bilingüe, diciendo que esto muestra confianza. ¿Puedes hablar un poco sobre el tema de la confianza y cuán importante es eso en este trabajo?

Carla: ¡Oh, adoramos a Meg! Meg es como de madrina la literatura de nuestros hijos. Queríamos citarla, incluir esa cita de Meg Medina y hablar de confiar en los estudiantes. Y significa que estamos centrándonos en los estudiantes. Eso significa que cuando te centras algo, así como lo hicimos con nuestro título, tienes que sacar algo de ahí. Entonces, estamos descentrando esta típica figura autoritaria del maestro, ese portador de todo el conocimiento, que enseña inglés a los estudiantes de inglés, que es como se ha pintado siempre. Y en cambio estamos diciendo que confiaremos en que los estudiantes entran a nuestras aulas como seres humanos complejos, a quieesn reconozco su humanidad plena, Estoy reconociendo que se comunican de esta manera, que tienen estas historias que contar, y necesito alejarme de esa larga distancia, de la idea de ser el portador de todo conocimiento y que solo yo les voy a enseñar.

Y la confianza significa dejarse llevar, y es realmente difícil, dejarse llevar. Y es realmente duro porque estamos haciendo esto dentro de esta narrative más amplia en la Sociedad que ha caracterizado a los alumnos bilingües y multilingües, especialmente en U.S. como deficientes, como carentes, en lugar de pintarlos como estos seres humanos que solo navegan en muchos sistemas complejos en la sociedad de los que podemos aprender. Hacer esto es ir en contra de la corriente, de este tipo de enfoque donde confías en tus estudiantes y dices: "Me centraré en tus experiencias, y vuestras vidas son válidas, y os escucharé, y lo usaré en la instrucción". Y eso significa que iré a buscar textos que reflejen eso. Crearé un plan de estudios sobre eso.

Y ese es un trabajo duro porque el plan de estudios que tenemos no hace eso, y nos obliga a ir en contra de mucho de lo que nos han enseñado. Y me siento muy honrada de que Luz y yo estemos en escuelas de posgrado y programas docentes, y visitemos escuelas donde podemos tener estas conversaciones. Y hablamos en uno de nuestros capítulos, de como crear estas contranarrativas. Porque esa confianza es una narrativa que va contra la narración maestra de lo que son las experiencias de aprendizaje en el aula.

Brett: Y, Luz, al mismo tiempo, hay un nivel de importancia en proteger la seguridad de los estudiantes y cómo comparten sus historias también, ¿no es así?

Luz: Absolutamente. Creo que cuando pensamos en la retórica, en las narraciones que escuchamos, son solo conceptos sociopolíticos en los que vivimos, es importante considerar la seguridad de los estudiantes. Hay muchas comunidades de inmigrantes que no confían en las instituciones, y con razón. Y entonces es importante que seamos capaces de respetar los límites, ¿verdad? Para así, primero crear una comunidad en el aula donde los estudiantes se sientan protegidos y seguros, y se sientan apreciados, como dije antes. Pero que también no obligaría a nadie a compartir sus historias, ¿verdad? Ser pacientes. Crear distintas oportunidades para los niños para poder compartir sus historias de diferentes maneras, y con diferentes personas. Quizás prefieran compartirlo en sus cuadernos solamente. Quizás quieran compartirlo con un compañero, ¿sabes? Y poco a poco, tal vez se abran a un público más amplio.

Pero es algo con lo que debemos tener cuidado. Y no presionar a nadie para compartir más de lo que quiera o pueda, y ser realmente abiertos con la comunidad, con los padres, sobre los proyectos en los que se involucran para que también puedan apoyar y sentirse parte de esta comunidad.

Carla: Y creo que es realmente impactante pensar en eso, porque si planeo, digamos, una narración personal o sistema de escritura de memorias para el primer día y hago que los estudiantes compartan sin yo escuchar y conocer sus experiencias, o saber si se sentirían cómodos haciendo eso, realmente los estaré poniendo en posiciones donde se verá que no estoy escuchando, no estoy llegando a conocerlos. Y creo que eso es muy importante. Estamos muy emocionadas. Estamos realmente agradecidos por el apoyo a este libro. Ha sido un todo un viaje y damos las gracias por haber tenido este espacio para realmente repasar nuestros propios viajes como estudiantes dentro de los sistemas de escolarización, hayan sido agradables o no. Y luego también nuestros propios viajes como profesores. Y me ha emocionado mucho de compartir esto, especialmente teniendo en cuenta el clima politico que tenemos en este momento.

Creo que es importante reconocer que nuestros alumnos reciben mensajes y también están respondiendo de diferentes maneras, y creo que definitivamente es nuestra responsabilidad, tal como decía Luz, entender que a veces no es suficiente, ¿verdad? Entonces, no es suficiente para mí solo decir: "Vale, usé esto como estrategia" o "recibí esta hoja de trabajo" y no, tenemos que hacer más trabajo para sacar algunas de nuestras propias historias y viajes en torno a las identidades y prácticas lingüísticas de estudiantes bilingües latinos, y por eso doy gracias por tener a esta compañera de escritura, Luz, y que tengamos este espacio. Nos ha encantado tener este debate.

Luz: Sí, definitivamente. Esperamos con interés los comentarios que surgirán, ya sabéis, cuando la gente empiece a echarle mano al libro, y estamos muy agradecidos por todo. Muchas gracias. Gracias por invitarnos.
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Carla España is an instructor at the Bank Street College Graduate School of Education. Carla's teaching journey began in a bilingual classroom in Harlem, New York, continued at Teachers College Reading and Writing Project partner schools, and at the bilingual teacher preparation program at Hunter College, City University of New York. Finder Carla on Twitter: @ProfesoraEspana

Luz Yadira Herrera is an Assistant Professor at the Kremen School of Education and Human Development at California State University, Fresno. As a former teacher in NYC public schools and researcher at CUNY-NYSIEB, her teaching and research centers culturally and linguistically sustaining approaches to teaching emergent bilinguals, translanguaging pedagogy, and bilingual education policy. Find Luz on Twitter: @Dra_LuzYadira

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On the Podcast: Carla España and Luz Yadira Herrera on Centering Bilingual Latinx Students

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Today on the podcast we are excited welcome Carla España and Luz Yadira Herrera, authors of En Comunidad: Lessons for Centering the Voices and Experiences of Bilingual Latinx Students. Both Carla and Luz infuse their own experiences as bilingual Latinx students into their writing and teaching, urging teachers to create liberating spaces for their students by embracing a practice known as translanguaging.

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On the Podcast: The Transformative Power of Translanguaging in Literature with Carla España and Luz Yadira Herrera

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On the Podcast: The Transformative Power of Translanguaging in Literature with Carla España and Luz Yadira Herrera

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Today on the podcast we're joined by Carla España and Luz Yardia Herrera, co-authors of En Comunidad: Lessons for Centering the Voices and Experiences of Bilingual Latinx Students. Heinemann colleague Jaclyn Karabinas joined Carla and Luz to talk about choosing texts that speak to and honor the multilingual students in your class. Throughout their conversation, they describe the importance of translanguaging, provide helpful tips for choosing multilingual texts while teaching remotely, and explain how you can teach these texts even if you yourself are monolingual.

Their conversation started with explaining what translanguaging is, and the role it plays in multilingual education.

Below is a transcript of this episode.
Luz: In our book, we define translanguaging in three ways, and we go back to Ofelia Garcia and in the definition from 2014 where they define translanguaging as linguistic practices of bilinguals, a pedagogical approach and as a means for social justice, where students' language practices are honored. So that's really how we navigate this entire book.

And in terms of what it means for bilingual students, it just means that they are seeing their languages, their language practices or community language practices represented in their schooling. They're seeing that there are clear connections between what they experience outside of schools and inside of schools. And we think that's a really powerful thing to have.

Carla: We see translanguaging as being very disruptive of the monolingual curriculum, of the monolingual assessments, of monolingual pedagogy. And this happens in any space. You can be a monolingual teacher teaching in a class that's just an English language arts class, but you might have bilingual and multilingual speakers, and in that space, you can create translanguaging spaces within that. You can employ translanguaging pedagogy. You can create those times where students can engage using their full linguistic repertoire that uses features from different languages, right? And that can happen in your "monolingual", quote unquote, right, classroom, but also it can happen in bilingual settings. And we've also seen how even in classrooms that might be labeled bilingual dual language or transitional bilingual classrooms, even those spaces sometimes tend to be very monolingual, very with the philosophy of assimilation, of trying to push towards this English. And so we're very thankful for all the research, all the practice that goes into this and all the teachers employing translanguaging in all kinds of spaces.

Jaclyn: What unique challenges are multilingual students facing right now and how can we provide support to multilingual students, not just online now, but how can we provide support to them in general?

Luz: Well, I think we have to be very flexible, right, in terms of our ... and I think we're seeing that we must be very flexible in terms of what's happening with remote learning, virtual learning spaces. What it means for bilingual or multilingual students is that while they're probably getting a lot less support than they would in their regular school day, right, often students who are identified as needing additional supports and services do have an extra adult in the classroom or sometimes maybe they get pulled out for special services or different services and so they don't have those kinds of things, like other students who are also missing out on various services, students with disabilities for instance, right?

Carla: I think that's something you mentioned, Luz, that's so important to think about is being flexible with the time that's available with the resources that are available and thinking really carefully about people as resources, as the knowledge base that we have in teachers, right? And so what you mentioned reminded me of one of my grad students who is also a bilingual dual language teacher in the Bronx in New York, and that was one of the first challenges that she faced after the big issue that we talk about with having access to devices.

But once the school made sure that every single student had the devices, the next challenge was how do you meet with students when they've had so much support with support staff at school, right, in person. And so in this case, the teachers, they shared a schedule and then they had all the support staff come in and that was really helpful for them because once that kind of communication happened, the students were able to take part of the whole class meeting where the teacher, who was my grad student, was reading aloud a book and students were able to engage with it live while others were able to watch and engage with it at another time. But there were moments where support staff would come into those meetings or into small groups. And that's super helpful, and that's something that I've been thinking about that challenge a lot because it's coming up in my courses with teachers, but it's also something that I've been very thankful for, the creativity and the flexibility, not only from teachers but also from families and thinking about that.

And I think the other one that we talk a lot with Luz because it's a big part of our book is just the resources that are available. I get updates from New York State, TESOL organization. I get updates, right, New York State Association of Bilingual Ed, [inaudible 00:04:51] website, right? Lee and Low books. And so thinking about all these organizations and resources that have support for this population of students, and I'm just thankful that they're sharing that, but I also know that for the most part, like I mentioned earlier, most curriculum tools are in English, and so how do you navigate that space? Because then it's requiring so much more work on top of what teachers are already dealing with to provide for the support. I'm just thankful for those who are sharing the tech tools that are helping us with translations, that are helping us make education more interactive for this population.

Luz: I wanted to add one more thing that we've been thinking about, and it's just the interaction piece. A lot of our students, a lot of bilingual and multilingual students, they really thrive on this interaction. And I think all children probably also thrive in interaction. They learn and grow with each other through one another and that's definitely is something that they miss. I think that students help each other out, especially in translanguaging spaces, right? They help each other make sense of what they're engaging with, what they're reading, what they're learning, and this is part of translanguaging, being able to use each other, students, each other as a resource. Especially if the teacher is monolingual or doesn't know the student's languages, that's one way that they can facilitate, right? They can pair up students, they can group students to support each other, and of course, that's not going to be very possible in a remote learning space.

Jaclyn: Yeah, I was thinking about that a little bit actually, thinking about the importance sometimes when students have a buddy learner in the classroom as they're beginning to navigate this and thinking about how challenging that would be to schedule online, but it would still be really valuable. Can you talk about the different ways that authors translanguage and how you did this in your book?

Luz: Well, we actually recently wrote about this in an upcoming publication, academic publication, and so we're really excited to share that soon. But we talk about the ways that authors engage with translanguaging in their texts and children's literature, YA, middle grade and children's picture books. And we really like how our colleague, a professor at Brooklyn College, talks about how translanguaging is used. And she argues that translanguaging is often used in Latinx literature for literary effect in order to convey authenticity in the communication between characters in a book, and we see that happening a lot in the texts that we chose, that we amplify in our book for instance. We have an example of Monica Brown, right? Monica Brown writes the Marisol McDonald series, and do you want to talk about that, Carla?

Carla: Yes, and she's also making those readings available on YouTube, so subscribe to Monica Brown's YouTube channel and you're able to view the bilingual readings. And so in some of those examples that we've been looking at, like in Marisol McDonald or Marisol McDonald and the Clash Bash, which is one text that has the English and Spanish within it, right? I'm trying to think. Is that the book? Yes. I was like, "Is it side by side? No, or top to bottom? Yes," because I don't have my books. They're in the office. Can we all have a moment of silence for all the ... We're just missing our books that are not with us.

So in that book, right, Marisol has these beautiful birthday plans and her mother has to break the news to her, right, that Abuelita can't take part in that because her Abuelita is not in the country. And so there's this line that Monica Brown writes that says, "Marisol, it isn't just the money," Mommy explains. "It's hard to get papeles to come to the United States. Abuelita needs a special document called the visa to visit us, but sometimes it takes a long time for the visa to arrive." Speaks to a lot of our realities.

And then later on, there's the birthday, and Abuelita, they communicate through the way we've been communicating a lot these last few weeks, right, through a computer. And Abuelita says, "feliz cumpleaños, Marisol. I'm still waiting for my visa, but I used some of the money you sent me to buy my first computer and get internet connection. "Te quiero mucho," I tell Abuelita. "I love you so much." And I just wanted to share some of those excerpts, because I want you to go read these books and read them with children.

But also thinking about how translanguaging is used to show this way of communicating with family and it shows a family connection. It shows authenticity. It shows relationships, and it's also character development. So it's this really thoughtful craft from thinking about the writer's perspective, and as a reader, I'm also connecting with it and thinking about authenticity. And so for us, it's really key that we search for these texts and also amplify these voices and these stories, especially own voices, own texts. And so we wanted to share that brief example with you.

Luz: And another thing that we want to point out and like to point out, which we do in our book as well, is how the choice that authors often make more recently, more than ever, to not italicize, right? And Yuyi Morales' book, Dreamers, is a really beautiful example of this. In that book, she takes us through her own immigration journey and what the library as a public space meant for her and her son to find her own space, to just regain her confidence. And that's how she eventually found her livelihood, right, as an author and illustrator. But the way that she uses her language just reminds us that as bilinguals, there's not an on or off button, right? There's just language and the way that she writes it is exactly how bilinguals think, how bilinguals speak, and communicate with each other.

So for instance, there's a really short excerpt that we love to highlight from her 2018 book Dreamers, she says, "We are stories, we are two languages, we are lucha, we are resilience, we are hope. We are dreamers, soñadoras of the world." And just in that little excerpt or that little, few phrases, right, she engages her entire linguistic repertoire. And it's just a reminder that there's no boundaries in language. There's no boundaries in the ways that we use language. And so it's an important thing to point out. And in our book we chose to do a similar approach because again, as bilinguals we wanted to present ourselves as authentically as possible.

Jaclyn: And I think you don't want to admit the words that are in their realities and their memories of what they're telling, because I remember... Side story, I'm sorry, I have to. When I was studying abroad, I remember that I studied abroad in Ecuador and there were so many words from the Quechua language that made their way into Spanish there, and they didn't have a direct translation to Spanish, let alone to English. And so I remember coming back thinking, this is that word, but I don't have an English word for that. I don't even have a Spanish word for that. I have a Quechua word for that. And I was just reading your book, just thinking about that, how you have to speak with and write with the words that are of your reality.

Carla: Just thinking about that words from your reality, reminding me of My Papi Has a Motorcycle by Isabel Quintero, illustrated by Zeke Pena because that opening line of, "My Papi Has a Motorcycle. From him I learned words like carburetor and cariño and dedication." I was just like, "You had me Isabel Quintero, in this first part." Right? That word cariño and it's such a key word throughout the books that we think about this relationship between father and child and also this relationship between a family and a community and things that are changing. And yet you go all the way to the end and towards the end it reminds you of this word cariño and things that don't change. So that's another text we love.

Jaclyn: Carla, you begin chapter three with your momento de aprendizaje, your aha moment. You invite students to use translanguaging when telling their own stories. And you modeled doing this yourself, teacher vulnerability, by sharing your own writing, sharing your carburetor. And it really seemed to invite students and give them the permission almost to include the repertoire of language that they have in their writing. And it struck me as a really critical piece to plan for. Can you talk more about this?

Carla: Yeah, that was a really special moment in middle grade classroom, right? And so I was doing a teaching demonstration as I was curriculum planning with some middle grade teachers in a suburb of Chicago. And as always, I never want to ask students to engage in any literacy practice that I haven't tried myself. And so I had my writer's notebook with me, I had some mentor texts and I shared with them a moment from my life and that had words ... it has some dialogue. So I was working through balancing the dialogue and setting description and just emotions that I felt at the moment when I came to this country with my mom from Chile and we spoke Spanish. And so I had the dialogue there in Spanish and I just read it ... I didn't call attention to it. I just read in that moment, and then I asked the students to name what they saw that I did as a writer. And so we created a nice little chart together about what we did.

And when I asked the students to then work on their own writing, that beautiful part of where a child from the back of the room raises her hand and she's sitting with a staff member who was teaching but also was the literacy leader there in that school. And so she calls me over, I walk over and she asked me if it's okay for her to use Spanish. And I thought, "Well of course if this is part of your life and we're using all of our language features that we know and how beautiful it is that you can include that. That's part of your story." And I was like "I can't wait for you to work on this. And let's share it later if you'd like to share it."

But one, I think ... So key things that happened there. One, as a teacher, I was purposeful in making sure I shared my own writing, right? Two, I made sure that I allowed student choice and student participation in that kind of process to look at my piece and also think about what they wanted to write. And three, it was just that creating the space for students to engage in the same. And so when I've shared this with teachers who say, "Well, my writing might not have lines in Spanish because that's not my experience." And I say, "Well, that's why we bring in other authors, right?" So I'm Chilean, I was born in Chile, came to the U.S. when I was little. But I'm always sharing Naomi Shibab Nye's Gate A-4 piece that it has Arabic, and we talk about a different perspective and we talk, and we do and use that as a mentor text because I want to show carburetor in different kinds of texts and show students who are bilingual and multilingual that they too can do this as writers.

Jaclyn: It seems as though for teachers who aren't bilingual or even if teachers are but don't speak the language of the students that they're working with at that time, that it's even more important then to include a variety of bilingual texts, of mentor texts, so that they can read like writers in a variety of ways.

Luz: Right. And I think, well that's one of the things about remote learning that can be challenging, right? Which we talked about before. This interaction piece is going to be missing, who knows for how long, but for now it's going to be missing. And so that chance that teachers can have in the classroom to, again, to interact with the text, with children in small groups and who can then support each other. That's going to be a challenge obviously with remote learning.

But if teachers are not themselves bilingual or multilingual, they can still create spaces within their assignments for children to use their entire linguistic repertoire, whether they're responding to a text of any assignments, a variety of kinds of responses, right? Not only written but also maybe video or through any kind of way that allows them to express themselves and use their entire linguistic repertoire. So those are the kinds of spaces that the teachers can still facilitate, regardless of the learning spaces that they're interacting with.

Carla: I was thinking about that same example from the teacher in the Bronx that does her live readings of books in English and Spanish and she'll have them at different points in the day and it's over second graders and their morning closing meetings, they're very short. But in those moments, students are engaging in a carburetor lesson that the teacher might be reading the texts. Let's say she's reading Sembrando Historias, right? The Pura Belpre book By Anika Aldamuy Denise illustrated by Paola Escobar, and they're talking about Pura Belpre and they're learning about libraries, they're learning about books and the role of books in her life and how she was writing. Great. So they're interacting. She might be reading in Spanish, students might be responding using features of Spanish and English that's live. Wonderful.

Then there are the other 20 out of the 25 students who couldn't be online at that time, which has been the case these past few weeks. And so she posts that video and students respond in different ways. And so they're either commenting through writing or they're doing ... In that class they're using, I believe it's Flipgrid on the Seesaw platform, they're posting it. If it's a Flipgrid video response that they're recording and kids can add emojis, they can add little Post-it Notes on it. So I've been ... I'm meeting with them later. This today is our next session. So I'm excited to hear from the teacher as to how this kind of interaction has been changing and what it looks like, so it gives me a little bit more hope as more students get to engage with them as well.

Luz: One thing that I wanted to just include, we actually wrote about this recently, Carla and I, and it also is coming from Ofelia Garcia's latest work on carburetor and how she points out that just because students are presented with something monolingually doesn't mean that they themselves are not engaging or are not carburetor, right? That they themselves are not engaging with that material bilingually. So students are already doing that naturally as bilinguals, multilinguals. So that's just an important thing. An important reminder I think for all educators that students are already doing this. The key is how can we support and facilitate that whenever possible.

Translanguaging and code switching are different, epistemologically. Translanguaging is in internal perspectives. It's what bilingual people do, their bilingual language practices, language practices of the community that they engage with every day. Whereas code switching is sort of the external perspective, what outsiders feel bilinguals or multilingual people are doing. Code switching brings up the notion that we can just turn on and off our language or we can turn our language on and off. Whereas carburetor is sort of a dynamic fluid languaging practices, which is more reflective of what bilingual people actually are doing.

Jaclyn: In chapter three, you talk a lot about your planning process, so I'm really looking forward to sharing with all of our listeners. What does the planning process look like to achieve all of these things?

Carla: Well, the first thing that we're thinking about in chapter three was starting from what students already teach us, right? And that's why we titled it "Telling Our Stories," and students as bilingual, multilingual, Latinx students, they have experiences, they have different journeys. And so once we already know that from students, we want it to be really purposeful in thinking about which texts can we select to read together? Not so much that I would read out loud and you just listen and I'm going to do all of this reading and writing work, but that we together read and engage with it. And so we thought, what if we really think about what we know about the students, we know we want to pick texts that employ carburetor, right? And so that something about their language in there. We want to select texts that really help us talk about issues of journeys and how journeys are very varied. And so you read it in chapter one of the book, Luz and I may have met in our grad program and we both were teachers in New York city, but before ... our journeys are different.

And so we had different kinds of schooling, our families had different journeys. And I think that's really important that we pick a variety of texts to show that complexity and that's why I'm thankful for those publishers and those organizations like like Latinx in publishing that are amplifying all of these stories because we need more of these stories. You can't just say as a publisher or as an organization, "Wow. Yes, we have this one book about immigration from, I don't know, Mexico. Yes, that's it. We're done." No, actually we have a lot of stories of immigration migration. So for us as step one, we're thinking about really purposeful text selection.

So that's what we share in the beginning of chapter three and give you alternate texts for elementary and middle grades and then really thinking about planning that reading in communities. So I know that on the Heinemann website where the book is featured, we have a sample template that's available for download and that's called a sample plan for reading in community. And what we set that up for that plan is really thinking about steps of setting up for reading in community, thinking about the themes of the book and involving the community. Thinking about your typical book introduction, but in this case also thinking about translanguaging and making a note into the language practices of the authors, of the characters in the book. And then being purposeful about those moments where you will select places where students can actually join you and participate. And so being thoughtful about when we read texts along with students, is it mostly my voice that they're hearing or are they hearing each other's voices? Can they read along with me in some places and having a final discussion on those themes. So that's a little bit of the start, but I'll let Luz talk a little bit about what would follow the reading of the text because we found beautiful resources with the authors that we select. So she could tell you a little bit about lessons two and three.

Luz: So for lessons for lesson two, on chapter three we talk about writing our own stories. This lesson really focuses on giving or creating that space in our classrooms, whether it is in person or virtual for students to write their own stories and thinking about how they can look at the craft moves from these metric texts and employ some of those. So maybe it's through dialogue, maybe it's through thinking about themes that they want to highlight about their own lives and making some connections with the authors and seeing how they go about introducing and navigating these themes.

We also consider the ways that students can develop characters. Maybe it's their own stories, but maybe they want to make several focal characters as part of their central stories. For instance in Alma y cómo obtuvo su nombre or Alma and how she got her name by Juana Martinez Neil, Alma's shares ... it's a father-daughter story. The father shares the story of how Alma got her name and each name is symbolic and means something really special in their family. And so maybe that's one way students can share the history of their names for instance. And it would be a fun way to just share of themselves and also create opportunities for them to not only share these stories in writing but through video perhaps, especially with remote learning. I think it invites those kinds of spaces to occur through video, maybe through art as well and not only through writing.

Carla: So in addition to using that guide to planning a reading in community, experience with students, whether it's synchronous or asynchronous and students are interacting with a text after they've viewed you reading it or an author reading it. We also wanted to call your mention in chapter six of the book. It is our poetry chapter, so if you want to hear a little bit more about poetry, we know that that's going to be our next podcast episode, so we'll talk a little bit more about that. But there is a really helpful planning for shared reading across a week using poetry in chapter six and that's on page 145. We have [inaudible 00:26:38] because ... a concern that we had was that in our school visits ... so Luz and I because we're in teacher education, we do a lot of business throughout different grades.

One of observations that we've had when we were visiting schools was that a lot of the participation by bilingual and multilingual students was happening in the lower grades with shared reading experiences, especially kindergarten and first grade. And the higher grade you went up, the less of that we saw. And so especially now I talk with my students who have been in residency programs with high school they haven't ... they want more of that participation as well. And so we wanted to be purposeful and that guide really thinks about how can we take a text, for example, we can take an excerpt from My Papi Has a Motorcycle. We can take one of the scenes from Monica Brown's book that we were talking about earlier. We can take any extra from a book that we've already engaged with and return to it and really take our time rereading it together every single day.

So you would practice reading it in community together, but also taking each day to focus on maybe one day we think about meaning and we discuss what this means to us. Another day we think about figurative language or author's craft moves and the last day thinking about a response a little bit in response to it. So I just wanted to call attention to that being a different but a purposeful as well tool besides those reading and community plans that would be for an entire text. This one could be just how you can revisit an excerpt of a larger text or ... like in chapter six, we have examples of how we use poetry, so we can't wait for it our next podcast episode where we can talk a little bit more about what that sounds like and how to use poetry across the school year, not just April.

Jaclyn: Our options for literature are somewhat limited now that most teachers and students in the US are doing remote learning. But what are some creative formats you've used or what are some texts you recommend?

Luz: Sure. And I've actually been able to take advantage of a lot of these myself with my son since I'm also home. But a lot of authors that we actually feature in our text have been so generous in sharing of their craft and their time and their art, and their writing. So they've been doing read-alouds, like Michael Lapiña has been doing read-alouds, Jacqueline Woodson has been doing read-alouds. Monica Brown has her own YouTube channel. So there's a lot of these big name authors that are really sharing their books and some of them have given special permissions for teachers to record themselves doing read-alouds of their books to share with their classrooms or their classes for a limited amount of time. And publishers have also come out and supported this practice to an extent. So we have to keep those things in mind. But yeah, seeking out some of these authors and seeing some of the resources that they've uploaded or posted on their social media, their Facebook, YouTube, and things like that would be a really good starting point. Of course, people don't always have access to the kind of technology that you'll need for this or perhaps the social media accounts that you'll need for these kinds of resources, but it's a pretty good starting point.

Carla: A conversation that I keep having with Luz, weave discussed both our gratitude for all of these exciting online opportunities to engage with authors and illustrators, but also holding this tension with that gratitude comes this immense awareness that even though we're thankful for authors, poets, illustrators being generous with their craft, we're also keeping in mind that a lot for a lot of them ... well, for everyone right now, all school visits, talks, conference, presentations, all of those have been impacted. And so yes, we're thankful and along with that, we should try to find ways to support, especially our small publishers and our authors that are new authors and those whose entire livelihoods depend on their school visits and conference and all of that. And so besides seeking out those that are sharing, we've also been recommending visiting bookshop or IndieBound websites to look at ways to support our independent booksellers or smaller publishing houses like Cinco Puntos Press, Arte Publico that are publishing these kinds of books that we're recommending.

And also I know for New York residents we've been using the simply ... the New York public library app. That's been really helpful. So I was on a video conference call with some of my teacher friends and we decided to start a book club because we're all reading these different books and I mentioned a book and immediately once I mentioned it, I put it up to the screen and it was Children of the Land. So I'm reading that memoir by Marcello Hernandez Castillo, I hold it up to the screen and my friend within seconds was like, "Oh, I got it." She puts up her phone on the screen because she got it through the Public Library app. And so we're also recommending people look at their ... try to find texts and supporting those places as well.

Jaclyn: Yeah, that was great because I think both of you sharing those two pieces of it, and it's the and, right? Yes, we're excited about the access and we need to keep in mind that in many ways they're giving away work for free, which is an ideal.

Carla: Yeah. And for some that's quite completely fine because they're in a position where for some they're like ... they're okay financially. But for most authors, that's not the case.

Luz: Some authors have also been doing some book talks and in order to get access to those book talks, you might have to purchase a book through one of these independent bookshops and things like that. So they've been trying a little bit of that. But it's still very much not a widely implemented practice yet. And I think to end, we want to just emphasize the transformative nature or the transformative power of translanguaging and literature. And I want us to think about the waste that we can use texts like the ones that we share in our book and the ones that we shared today to explore and make connections between what students read and students' family journeys, right?

And again, remembering that students have widely different and varied experiences, and we cannot lump all immigration experiences into just one category. We have to think about the varied experiences even within that. And another way that it really is powerful is that it affirms our students' community language and literacy practices. Often students feel that there's a deep disconnect between school and home. And so this is one powerful way that we can really affirm our students' language practices, their community language practices and also just.. Often especially in certain settings, classroom settings, language is very much structured in a way that it's... language is separated. What am I trying to say here? There's a lot of bilingual settings that actually insist on a language separation.

And, often that is very difficult for bilingual children because they don't live as two monolinguals in one, right, as we all know, and they exist as bilinguals. And I think this kind of literature reminds children that their language practices are great, that they're fine, that they're part of their identities and culture and part of, again, their community language practices.

And I'm thinking about.. We shared a piece by Monica Brown and we shared a little piece from Isabel Quintero's book, My Papi Has A Motorcycle. And, one of the things that they do in their books is critique some injustice, sort of social structures, whether it's gentrification or you know, the flawed immigration system. So it provides students the opportunities to engage with these kinds of conversations that might be important for their families, for their communities as well.

Jaclyn: It seems like it would only strengthen the community to make, to consistently bring in texts that represent the languages in the classroom because it's not, I mean, just like you said, don't just do poetry in April. You know, we're not just going to have bilingual texts in Spanish and English in September. You know, it's important year round. It's not just important in one single month. And the message that sends, you know, when you do this regularly, whether you are bilingual or not, the message it sends that you also see it as, you know, an important part of the literature in the classroom.

Carla: So we've also been.. As we're both raising bilingual children and in these times we've also, besides having conversations about lesson planning, we've also been having conversations from the perspective of a parent and also talking with our students in our teacher ed programs who are parents themselves, or who are teaching. And they also engage with families who have school-aged children at home. This is something we also been thinking about is.. You know, our students with their families at home have engaged with multiple literacies before school went online. And so I think we just have to be very cautious about that in the language that we use without making assumptions that like students.. Oh, they're at home, they're not getting that kind of like deficit framework that we hear a lot about, especially in our work with bilingual, multilingual, Latinx children.

And so, like I think about my own childhood at home. My mom was, and continues to be an amazing storyteller. And so, storytelling is one kind of literacy that was very prominent in my childhood. My father is, was always, at the time when I was a child, he was always listening to like, church sermons on cassette tapes. Now, he's like so fancy on these, like, Facebook live groups with these, like, spiritual religious communities that are, you know, doing their Zoom or Facebook live gatherings. And so, music was a big part of my childhood and I would always be singing and dancing. And when I was in Chila, I was in this folklore group and I was engaging with a lot of poetry and song as a child.

And so, even I think about my childhood and I think about the childhood of my grad students, students now in their schools, and how we can think about all those multiple literacy practice that we want to continue encouraging families to highlight with their children, so that the children can also talk to their teachers about that. And teachers reminding teachers that this is, these are, different literacy practices and that we can get to know our students better by incorporating those in our instruction. So really taking a moment to continue getting to know students in their multiple literacy practices at home and bringing that into our instruction.

Luz: And I think just as a reminder, Carla and I are both parents, we're scholars, we're educators as well. So in addition to parenting our own bilingual children at home, we're also working, we're teaching online our own grad students, in-service, pre-service teachers. And so I think it's just an important reminder for working parents or for all parents, whether you're an essential worker, or you're working from home, to just be very, very kind and forgiving of yourselves.

You know, at first I was really, I was okay, I was really kind of buying into the really acute structural, structured schedule for the day, and then realized it was just impossible to maintain with my six year-old. He's in kindergarten. And so we absolutely scaled back. We decided that we were going to pick, you know, four activities per day that we were going to have fun with, whether it was reading, or maybe it's math or science experiments. We just kind of went about it that way and just.. And maybe he's in kindergarten, so that's why we have a lot more flexibility. But I think flexibility is key and just being kind with yourselves is key and just doing the best that you can with what you've got. Jaclyn, thank you again for having us.

Jaclyn: Great to talk to both of you.

Carla: We're also super thankful for Heinemann using this platform really to amplify these stories, these experiences, and especially during these times. I think it's important that we use these platforms to highlight the experiences of communities, especially those that are most marginalized. So we're really appreciative of this.

Jaclyn: Well, it's our pleasure and an honor for sure.
...Learn more about En Comunidad at Heinemann.com

Follow us on Instagram @heinemannpub to stay up to date on the latest books, your favorite authors, and upcoming events!

Carla España is an instructor at the Bank Street College Graduate School of Education. Carla's teaching journey began in a bilingual classroom in Harlem, New York, continued at Teachers College Reading and Writing Project partner schools, and at the bilingual teacher preparation program at Hunter College, City University of New York. Finder Carla on Twitter: @ProfesoraEspana

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On the Podcast: The Transformative Power of Translanguaging in Literature with Carla España and Luz Yadira Herrera

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Today on the podcast we're joined by Carla España and Luz Yardia Herrera, co-authors of En Comunidad: Lessons for Centering the Voices and Experiences of Bilingual Latinx Students. Heinemann colleague Jaclyn Karabinas joined Carla and Luz to talk about choosing texts that speak to and honor the multilingual students in your class.

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Session Spring 2020

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Language Ideologies in My Life: A Study for Teachers of Bilingual and Multilingual Students

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Political Encounters Podcast with Dr. Edwin Mayorga

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Political Encounters Podcast with Dr. Edwin Mayorga

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Bilingual Latinx Students

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Download Sample Chapter 1

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"Here's our book, at last! España and Herrera's engaging narrative, and the voices of teachers and students, remind us that we are en comunidad when we express our care, love, and understanding for emergent bilingual learners of Spanish, English, and all world languages. En Comunidad confirms that students possess intellect, creativity, and imagination across their language assets and repertoires. We educators were waiting for España and Herrera as our colleagues, guides, and seers, and they're here at last. Thank you for guiding us further in our journeys toward literacy, libertad, and equity through your humane work, vision, and practices."-R. Joseph Rodríguez, author of Enacting Adolescent Literacies across Communities: Latino/a Scribes and Their Rites

"It shouldn't be a mystery or a chore to educate secondary Latinx bilingual learners. To this end, teachers need to learn how to center their students' voices and experiences in their classrooms, and in so doing, to make education meaningful to them. Kudos to Carla España and Luz Yadira Herrera for this conceptually rich, beautifully written, and highly accessible text that indeed charts a new way forward."-Angela Valenzuela, College of Education, University of Texas at Austin

"Somehow this book manages to be at once deeply personal and profoundly practical all at the same time. Carla and Luz weave their own stories as Latinx educators and students with concrete, transformative suggestions for making all students feel welcome, honored, and supported in our schools. Each year there is one book that comes out that makes me wish I could go back to my first year teaching and do it all over again - to do it better. This is the book for me this year. How I wish I had had Carla and Luz in my ear, and how glad I am they are here for you now." -Kate Roberts, author of A Novel Approach

"This book centers around how to empower minoritized Latinx students as learners by helping them value their own language, their own history, their own community and themselves in a system that has marginalized them for centuries. En Communidad is not just for Latinx students or teachers who teach Latinx students, but for all American students and teachers who desire to bring real democracy to this country and make this world justice for all people. This is indeed a wonderful book."- Danling Fu, Professor of Language and Literature in the College of Education, University of Florida

"In this incredible book, Carla and Luz remind us that, like in all good teaching, the most effective classrooms place students at the center of teaching and learning. In a mix of critical pedagogy and inspirational practice, they demonstrate ways to build curriculum around students' lives, to avoid the trap of monolithic thinking, and to trust-truly trust-students to fill in knowledge gaps (including our own) through shared discussion and inquiry. Carla and Luz guide us to consider: when classrooms are shared spaces, when children teach as much as they learn, we, as a community, can thrive."-Chris Lehman, coauthor of Falling in Love with Close Reading

"Dr. Espana and Dr. Herrera hit a home-run. Together they beautifully bridge the gaps between theory, policy, practice, and personal experience. Their work evokes untold Latinx histories, and offers culturally sustaining pedagogical approaches to classroom practice. It's clear this work is not only about sustaining Latinx raciolinguistic ways being, rather it's also about sustaining researchers and classroom practitioners as well. This work reminds us that we are here and we belong."- Steven Arenas, English Teacher and Recipient of the NCTE 2016 Early Career Educator of Color Leadership Award

"In this book, grounded in research and lifted by story, Carla and Luz provide compelling rationales and practical ideas for valuing students' and colleagues' linguistic repertoires and identities. As a monolingual teacher, this book exponentially expanded my growing understanding of best practices for teaching all children and for building inclusive and appreciative learning communities in which everyone is seen, heard, and valued."-Kathy Collins, coauthor of I Am Reading

"This book is a radical departure from every other professional development book I've read about teaching about emergent bilinguals. Carla and Luz's embrace of each student they work with and their staunch belief that every child brings an abundance of value to our classrooms, not in spite of, but because of their linguistic heritage, feels revolutionary in this day and age. Then they went one step further and made those ideals tangible by providing engaging, practical lessons about language, identity and literacy. Every educator who reads this book will be changed by it. And perhaps most importantly, so will our students."-Colleen Cruz, author of The Unstoppable Writing Teacher

"As a scholar who seeks to challenge racial and linguistic hierarchies in the education of Latinx children, the most common question that I receive from teachers and administrators is how they can work to dismantle these hierarchies in their day-to-day practice. Now the answer has become more simple: En Comunidad. In this book, España and Herrera treat seriously the idea that the cultural and linguistic practices of Latinx children are legitimate and should be made central to their educational experiences. It is a must read for all educators who work with Latinx students."-Nelson Flores, Ph.D., Penn Graduate School of Education

"En Comunidad pushes beyond the common notions of learning language, using language, or having language. Authors España and Herrera send the invitation to live language. When we are safe to live our languages inside classroom spaces, we can live a more represented, connected and liberated life. And I can't imagine a greater gift to give students. Thank you, Carla and Luz, for writing a book that not only offers an insightful course on language, but helps us take the power off the page and into the classroom with a series of researched, dynamic lessons."-Maggie Beatty Roberts, coauthor of DIY Literacy

"Have you ever wondered what bilingual education would look like if it were intentionally designed to sustain the rich practices and identities of Latinx children, families, and communities? If so, you will definitely want to read En Comunidad. In this engaging book, you will be introduced to a critical bilingual literacies approach to curriculum and teaching. Intentionally centering bilingual Latinx voices, values, practices, and experiences, this approach invites us to consider robust pathways for engaging in teaching that honors bilingual Latinx students' full identities. En Comunidad offers us powerful lessons for transforming the education of bilingual Latinx students in the pursuit of justice."-Mariana Souto-Manning, Teachers College, Columbia University

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"Here's our book, at last! España and Herrera's engaging narrative, and the voices of teachers and students, remind us that we are en comunidad when we express our care, love, and understanding for emergent bilingual learners of Spanish, English, and all world languages.

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Undoing Appropriateness: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and Language Diversity in Education

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Undoing Appropriateness: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and Language Diversity in Education

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Guide to Reading in Community (Figure 3.7)

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Guide to Reading in Community (Figure 3.7)

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Download the guide under "Companion Resources"

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"Here's our book, at last! España and Herrera's engaging narrative, and the voices of teachers and students, remind us that we are en comunidad when we express our care, love, and understanding for emergent bilingual learners of Spanish, English, and all world languages. En Comunidad confirms that students possess intellect, creativity, and imagination across their language assets and repertoires. We educators were waiting for España and Herrera as our colleagues, guides, and seers, and they're here at last. Thank you for guiding us further in our journeys toward literacy, libertad, and equity through your humane work, vision, and practices."-R. Joseph Rodríguez, author of Enacting Adolescent Literacies across Communities: Latino/a Scribes and Their Rites

"It shouldn't be a mystery or a chore to educate secondary Latinx bilingual learners. To this end, teachers need to learn how to center their students' voices and experiences in their classrooms, and in so doing, to make education meaningful to them. Kudos to Carla España and Luz Yadira Herrera for this conceptually rich, beautifully written, and highly accessible text that indeed charts a new way forward."-Angela Valenzuela, College of Education, University of Texas at Austin

"Somehow this book manages to be at once deeply personal and profoundly practical all at the same time. Carla and Luz weave their own stories as Latinx educators and students with concrete, transformative suggestions for making all students feel welcome, honored, and supported in our schools. Each year there is one book that comes out that makes me wish I could go back to my first year teaching and do it all over again - to do it better. This is the book for me this year. How I wish I had had Carla and Luz in my ear, and how glad I am they are here for you now." -Kate Roberts, author of A Novel Approach

"This book centers around how to empower minoritized Latinx students as learners by helping them value their own language, their own history, their own community and themselves in a system that has marginalized them for centuries. En Communidad is not just for Latinx students or teachers who teach Latinx students, but for all American students and teachers who desire to bring real democracy to this country and make this world justice for all people. This is indeed a wonderful book."- Danling Fu, Professor of Language and Literature in the College of Education, University of Florida

"In this incredible book, Carla and Luz remind us that, like in all good teaching, the most effective classrooms place students at the center of teaching and learning. In a mix of critical pedagogy and inspirational practice, they demonstrate ways to build curriculum around students' lives, to avoid the trap of monolithic thinking, and to trust-truly trust-students to fill in knowledge gaps (including our own) through shared discussion and inquiry. Carla and Luz guide us to consider: when classrooms are shared spaces, when children teach as much as they learn, we, as a community, can thrive."-Chris Lehman, coauthor of Falling in Love with Close Reading

"Dr. Espana and Dr. Herrera hit a home-run. Together they beautifully bridge the gaps between theory, policy, practice, and personal experience. Their work evokes untold Latinx histories, and offers culturally sustaining pedagogical approaches to classroom practice. It's clear this work is not only about sustaining Latinx raciolinguistic ways being, rather it's also about sustaining researchers and classroom practitioners as well. This work reminds us that we are here and we belong."- Steven Arenas, English Teacher and Recipient of the NCTE 2016 Early Career Educator of Color Leadership Award

"In this book, grounded in research and lifted by story, Carla and Luz provide compelling rationales and practical ideas for valuing students' and colleagues' linguistic repertoires and identities. As a monolingual teacher, this book exponentially expanded my growing understanding of best practices for teaching all children and for building inclusive and appreciative learning communities in which everyone is seen, heard, and valued."-Kathy Collins, coauthor of I Am Reading

"This book is a radical departure from every other professional development book I've read about teaching about emergent bilinguals. Carla and Luz's embrace of each student they work with and their staunch belief that every child brings an abundance of value to our classrooms, not in spite of, but because of their linguistic heritage, feels revolutionary in this day and age. Then they went one step further and made those ideals tangible by providing engaging, practical lessons about language, identity and literacy. Every educator who reads this book will be changed by it. And perhaps most importantly, so will our students."-Colleen Cruz, author of The Unstoppable Writing Teacher

"As a scholar who seeks to challenge racial and linguistic hierarchies in the education of Latinx children, the most common question that I receive from teachers and administrators is how they can work to dismantle these hierarchies in their day-to-day practice. Now the answer has become more simple: En Comunidad. In this book, España and Herrera treat seriously the idea that the cultural and linguistic practices of Latinx children are legitimate and should be made central to their educational experiences. It is a must read for all educators who work with Latinx students."-Nelson Flores, Ph.D., Penn Graduate School of Education

"En Comunidad pushes beyond the common notions of learning language, using language, or having language. Authors España and Herrera send the invitation to live language. When we are safe to live our languages inside classroom spaces, we can live a more represented, connected and liberated life. And I can't imagine a greater gift to give students. Thank you, Carla and Luz, for writing a book that not only offers an insightful course on language, but helps us take the power off the page and into the classroom with a series of researched, dynamic lessons."-Maggie Beatty Roberts, coauthor of DIY Literacy

"Have you ever wondered what bilingual education would look like if it were intentionally designed to sustain the rich practices and identities of Latinx children, families, and communities? If so, you will definitely want to read En Comunidad. In this engaging book, you will be introduced to a critical bilingual literacies approach to curriculum and teaching. Intentionally centering bilingual Latinx voices, values, practices, and experiences, this approach invites us to consider robust pathways for engaging in teaching that honors bilingual Latinx students' full identities. En Comunidad offers us powerful lessons for transforming the education of bilingual Latinx students in the pursuit of justice."-Mariana Souto-Manning, Teachers College, Columbia University

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En Comunidad brings bilingual Latinx students' perspectives to the center of our classrooms, and offers classroom-ready lessons that amplify the varied

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Picture Book Option for Lesson 1: Mango, Abuela, and Me

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Picture Book Option for Lesson 1: Mango, Abuela, and Me

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Also available in Spanish as Mango, Abuela y yo

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Medina artfully weaves a few Spanish words and phrases into her mainly English sentences in a way young Latinos take for granted, and most English speakers should understand...
-The New York Times

With its emotional nuance and understated, observant narration-especially where Abuela's inner state is concerned-Medina's ( Tia Isa Wants a Car) lovely story has the feel of a novella.
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Pura Belpré Award winner Medina (Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, 2013) and Pura Belpré honoree Dominguez (Maria Had a Little Llama, 2013) have created a poignant tale of intergenerational connection, transition, and patience. The language and vivid illustrations (a colorful blend of ink, gouache, and marker) are infused with warmth and expression, perfectly complementing the story's tone. Abuela's adjustment to her new home is sensitively portrayed as she and Mia bond over their different cultures and shared heritage. Pair with Matt de la Peña's Last Stop on Market Street (2015) for another look at urban multiculturalism. Heartfelt, layered, and beautiful-a must for library collections.
-Booklist (starred review)

This uplifting and affirming tale makes clear that connecting with someone sometimes takes work and ingenuity, but the payoff is priceless.
-Shelf Awareness (starred review)

Readers from multigenerational immigrant families will recognize the all-too-familiar language barrier. They will also cheer for the warm and loving relationship between Abuela and Mia, which is evident in both text and illustrations even as the characters struggle to understand each other. This warm family story is a splendid showcase for the combined talents of Medina, a Pura Belpré award winner, and Dominguez, an honoree.
-Kirkus Reviews

Medina honors the beauty of holding onto one's history while also making room for new traditions. She demonstrates the richness to be gained by bridging two generations through the language dear to each. Her deceptively simple story models a way to close the communication gap and respect two languages and ways of life...This uplifting and affirming tale makes clear that connecting with someone sometimes takes work and ingenuity, but the payoff is priceless.
-Shelf Awareness

In this tale, Medina blends Spanish and English words together as seamlessly as she blends the stories of two distinct cultures and generations. Dominguez's bright illustrations, done in ink, gouache, and marker, make the characters shine as bright as the rich story they depict...Everything about this book will make readers want to share it with someone they love. A timeless story with wide appeal.
-School Library Journal

Medina (Tía Isa Wants a Car, rev. 7/11) tells a heartwarming story about intergenerational relationships, finding common ground, and adapting to change. Dominguez's (Maria Had a Little Llama, rev. 11/13) digitally adjusted ink, gouache, and marker illustrations capture the various emotions and moods of the characters, from shyness to frustration to happiness...Young readers will enjoy seeing the relationship between Mia and her grandmother develop-with the help of Mango.
-The Horn Book

Dominguez's easy- going illustrations (in ink, gouache, and marker) have a casual yet precise style; there are touches of humor in Mia's English labeling of nearly every object in the apartment, and the occasional perspectival shift (looking down on a wistful Abuela as she sits in the park with her granddaughter) adds emotional resonance. There are a lot of families negotiating language and cultural divides, especially with extended family, so plenty of kids will sympathize with Mia's situation and appreciate her growing relationship with Abuela.
-Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Family stories warm the heart and help to remind us about our own family memories. The colorful artwork is much like the relationship created in this story.
-School Library Connection

Medina pays careful attention to what it means to live in a new language.
-Literacy Daily

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Mango, Abuela, and Me by Meg Medina: 9780763695132 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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Medina artfully weaves a few Spanish words and phrases into her mainly English sentences in a way young Latinos take for granted, and most English speakers should understand...-The New York Times With its emotional nuance and understated, observant narration-especially where Abuela's inner state is concerned-Medina's ( Tia Isa Wants a Car) lovely story has the feel of a novella.-Publishers Weekly (starred review) Pura Belpré Award winner Medina (Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, 2013) and Pura Belpré honoree Dominguez (Maria Had a Little Llama, 2013) have created a poignant tale of intergenerational connection, transition, and patience.

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Culturally Responsive Curriculum Scorecard from NYU Metro Center &  Education Justice Research and Organizing Collaborative (EJ-ROC) 

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Culturally Responsive Curriculum Scorecard from NYU Metro Center &  Education Justice Research and Organizing Collaborative (EJ-ROC) 

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Source for Lesson Sequence on Representation of Black Children in Books and Curriculum

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Source for Lesson Sequence on Representation of Black Children in Books and Curriculum

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/ CBS News

For 11-year-old Marley Dias, a good book opens the world.

"You always have words. You're able to express your emotions when you read," Dias said.

But there are some books she's assigned in school she's grown tired of.

"When we actually got into the classroom, the books were just mainly about white boys and dogs," Dias said.

Marley wanted books she could relate to - with characters like her.

"So I just went to my mom and then she told me, 'Well, what are you going to do about it?'" Marley said.

She started a book drive. The idea was simple, but ambitious - to collect 1,000 books about black girls.

"And we started posting pictures on Instagram of me holding black girl books and pretending to read them. And then, flash - we added a hashtag, and now it's become a full-on book drive," Marley said.

She came up with the hashtag, #1000BlackGirlBooks.

"Well, we know that social media is like the main outlet for us to get anything that we want now, so it needed to be fun, catchy and just something easy to remember. So we wanted 1,000 books and wanted them to be black girls, so you just kind of smack them together and you got a hashtag," Marley said.

Marley's initial apprehension about finding 1,000 books has now been replaced with excitement. First, local media got wind of her drive, which led to appearances with Larry Wilmore on The Nightly Show and with Ellen DeGeneres.

The books began arriving and stacking up. By the time "CBS This Morning" visited, Marley had collected close to 1,300 books. Marley's favorite among them is "Brown Girl Dreaming" by Jacqueline Woodson.

Woodson - who won both the prestigious Newbery Award and a National Book Award for "Brown Girl Dreaming" - knows the importance of identifying with characters in a book.

"Seeing a story on a page about a black child written by a black author not only legitimizes your own existence in the world, because you're a part of something else. 'Look, I'm here in this book,'" Woodson said.

Last week, Marley donated the 1,000 books to a primary school in rural St. Mary, Jamaica, where her mother is from. Marley and a team of volunteers gave them away to many Jamaican children with limited access to books.

Marley said she loves "being the boss" and reading and writing, and aspires to be a magazine editor for her own magazine. She also said she will consider writing her own book, "when I am ready."

And it's fair to guess that book will have a very impressive main character.
Those who would like to donate books to Marley's drive can sent them to:
GrassROOTS
#1000blackgirlbooks
59 Main Street
Suite 323
West Orange, NJ 07052

Trending News

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Eleven-year-old launches #1000BlackGirlBooks social media book drive - CBS News

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CBS News For 11-year-old Marley Dias, a good book opens the world. "You always have words. You're able to express your emotions when you read," Dias said. But there are some books she's assigned in school she's grown tired of. "When we actually got into the classroom, the books were just mainly about white boys and dogs," Dias said.

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Download the study guide under "samples"

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"Here's our book, at last! España and Herrera's engaging narrative, and the voices of teachers and students, remind us that we are en comunidad when we express our care, love, and understanding for emergent bilingual learners of Spanish, English, and all world languages. En Comunidad confirms that students possess intellect, creativity, and imagination across their language assets and repertoires. We educators were waiting for España and Herrera as our colleagues, guides, and seers, and they're here at last. Thank you for guiding us further in our journeys toward literacy, libertad, and equity through your humane work, vision, and practices."-R. Joseph Rodríguez, author of Enacting Adolescent Literacies across Communities: Latino/a Scribes and Their Rites

"It shouldn't be a mystery or a chore to educate secondary Latinx bilingual learners. To this end, teachers need to learn how to center their students' voices and experiences in their classrooms, and in so doing, to make education meaningful to them. Kudos to Carla España and Luz Yadira Herrera for this conceptually rich, beautifully written, and highly accessible text that indeed charts a new way forward."-Angela Valenzuela, College of Education, University of Texas at Austin

"Somehow this book manages to be at once deeply personal and profoundly practical all at the same time. Carla and Luz weave their own stories as Latinx educators and students with concrete, transformative suggestions for making all students feel welcome, honored, and supported in our schools. Each year there is one book that comes out that makes me wish I could go back to my first year teaching and do it all over again - to do it better. This is the book for me this year. How I wish I had had Carla and Luz in my ear, and how glad I am they are here for you now." -Kate Roberts, author of A Novel Approach

"This book centers around how to empower minoritized Latinx students as learners by helping them value their own language, their own history, their own community and themselves in a system that has marginalized them for centuries. En Communidad is not just for Latinx students or teachers who teach Latinx students, but for all American students and teachers who desire to bring real democracy to this country and make this world justice for all people. This is indeed a wonderful book."- Danling Fu, Professor of Language and Literature in the College of Education, University of Florida

"In this incredible book, Carla and Luz remind us that, like in all good teaching, the most effective classrooms place students at the center of teaching and learning. In a mix of critical pedagogy and inspirational practice, they demonstrate ways to build curriculum around students' lives, to avoid the trap of monolithic thinking, and to trust-truly trust-students to fill in knowledge gaps (including our own) through shared discussion and inquiry. Carla and Luz guide us to consider: when classrooms are shared spaces, when children teach as much as they learn, we, as a community, can thrive."-Chris Lehman, coauthor of Falling in Love with Close Reading

"Dr. Espana and Dr. Herrera hit a home-run. Together they beautifully bridge the gaps between theory, policy, practice, and personal experience. Their work evokes untold Latinx histories, and offers culturally sustaining pedagogical approaches to classroom practice. It's clear this work is not only about sustaining Latinx raciolinguistic ways being, rather it's also about sustaining researchers and classroom practitioners as well. This work reminds us that we are here and we belong."- Steven Arenas, English Teacher and Recipient of the NCTE 2016 Early Career Educator of Color Leadership Award

"In this book, grounded in research and lifted by story, Carla and Luz provide compelling rationales and practical ideas for valuing students' and colleagues' linguistic repertoires and identities. As a monolingual teacher, this book exponentially expanded my growing understanding of best practices for teaching all children and for building inclusive and appreciative learning communities in which everyone is seen, heard, and valued."-Kathy Collins, coauthor of I Am Reading

"This book is a radical departure from every other professional development book I've read about teaching about emergent bilinguals. Carla and Luz's embrace of each student they work with and their staunch belief that every child brings an abundance of value to our classrooms, not in spite of, but because of their linguistic heritage, feels revolutionary in this day and age. Then they went one step further and made those ideals tangible by providing engaging, practical lessons about language, identity and literacy. Every educator who reads this book will be changed by it. And perhaps most importantly, so will our students."-Colleen Cruz, author of The Unstoppable Writing Teacher

"As a scholar who seeks to challenge racial and linguistic hierarchies in the education of Latinx children, the most common question that I receive from teachers and administrators is how they can work to dismantle these hierarchies in their day-to-day practice. Now the answer has become more simple: En Comunidad. In this book, España and Herrera treat seriously the idea that the cultural and linguistic practices of Latinx children are legitimate and should be made central to their educational experiences. It is a must read for all educators who work with Latinx students."-Nelson Flores, Ph.D., Penn Graduate School of Education

"En Comunidad pushes beyond the common notions of learning language, using language, or having language. Authors España and Herrera send the invitation to live language. When we are safe to live our languages inside classroom spaces, we can live a more represented, connected and liberated life. And I can't imagine a greater gift to give students. Thank you, Carla and Luz, for writing a book that not only offers an insightful course on language, but helps us take the power off the page and into the classroom with a series of researched, dynamic lessons."-Maggie Beatty Roberts, coauthor of DIY Literacy

"Have you ever wondered what bilingual education would look like if it were intentionally designed to sustain the rich practices and identities of Latinx children, families, and communities? If so, you will definitely want to read En Comunidad. In this engaging book, you will be introduced to a critical bilingual literacies approach to curriculum and teaching. Intentionally centering bilingual Latinx voices, values, practices, and experiences, this approach invites us to consider robust pathways for engaging in teaching that honors bilingual Latinx students' full identities. En Comunidad offers us powerful lessons for transforming the education of bilingual Latinx students in the pursuit of justice."-Mariana Souto-Manning, Teachers College, Columbia University

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En Comunidad brings bilingual Latinx students' perspectives to the center of our classrooms, and offers classroom-ready lessons that amplify the varied

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Digital Text Option for Lesson 1: Molly of Denali episode Grandpa's Drum

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Digital Text Option for Lesson 1: Molly of Denali episode Grandpa's Drum

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Digital Text Option for Lesson 1: LeVar Burton Reads "The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu

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Digital Text Option for Lesson 1: LeVar Burton Reads "The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu

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54 minutes | Aug 21, 2017

"The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu

An immigrant mother tries to bond with her American-born son by creating a magical paper menagerie. This story appears in Ken Liu's collection THE PAPER MENAGERIE AND OTHER STORIES, available now from Saga Press. Thanks to our presenting sponsor Audible. Start your free trial and get a free audiobook at audible.com/levar.

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LeVar Burton Reads - "The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu on Stitcher

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An immigrant mother tries to bond with her American-born son by creating a magical paper menagerie. This story appears in Ken Liu's collection THE PAPER MENAGERIE AND OTHER STORIES, available now from Saga Press. Thanks to our presenting sponsor Audible. Start your free trial and get a free audiobook at audible.com/levar.

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Digital Text Option for Lesson 1: Ana Tijoux "Somos Sur" featuring Shadia Mansour

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Digital Text Option for Lesson 1: Ana Tijoux "Somos Sur" featuring Shadia Mansour

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Ana Tijoux - Somos Sur ft. Shadia Mansour (Official Music Video)

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Primary Source: Black Girls Breaking Silence on School Push-Out

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Primary Source: Black Girls Breaking Silence on School Push-Out

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Text for lesson sequence addressing systemic racism in schools.

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Black Girls Breaking Silence on School Push-Out

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Digital Option: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Opening Scene 

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Digital Option: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Opening Scene 

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For analysis/reading in community (first 4 minutes) to study language practices and identities.

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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Opening Scene (2019) | FandangoNOW Extras

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Picture Book Option: My Papi Has a Motorcycle or Mi Papi tiene uno moto

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Picture Book Option: My Papi Has a Motorcycle or Mi Papi tiene uno moto

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My Papi Has a Motorcycle a book by Isabel Quintero and Zeke Peña

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A celebration of the love between a father and daughter, and of a vibrant immigrant neighborhood, by an award-winning author and illustrator duo. When Daisy Ramona zooms around her neighborhood with her papi on his motorcycle, she sees the people and places she’s always known. She also sees a commun…

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Picture Book Option: Drawn Together by Minh Lê, illustrated by Dan Santat

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Picture Book Option: Drawn Together by Minh Lê, illustrated by Dan Santat

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Drawn Together a book by Minh Lê and Dan Santat

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The recipient of six starred reviews and the APALA Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature! Named a Best Book of 2018 by the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Smithsonian, Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, Booklist, the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, BookRiot, the New York Public Lib…

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Short Film and book recommended as mentor text for storytelling elements, study of craft (across book and film), family and relationships.

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Hair Love | Oscar®-Winning Short Film (Full) | Sony Pictures Animation

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Noticing story elements across texts, including opening sequence to the Avatar: The Last Airbender series.

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"Avatar: The Last Airbender" Theme Song (HQ) | Episode Opening Credits | Nick Animation

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Consider Dulce-Marie's words as you read the "Protecting Students' Safety" section at the start of chapter 3.

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Vocal Fries Podcast Episode: Interview with Drs. Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa

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Vocal Fries Podcast Episode: Interview with Drs. Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa

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Helpful to consider with the guiding questions in each of the "what this means in our work" sections as you consider the different practices. Also helpful to select excerpts to apply the framework from chapter 2.

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Megan Figueroa: Hi, and welcome to the Vocal Fries podcast, a podcast about linguistic discrimination.

Carrie Gillon: I'm Carrie Gillon.

Megan Figueroa: I'm Megan Figueroa. How you doing there, Carrie?

Carrie Gillon: Better today. Yesterday was rough. I mean, I'm pretty convinced that I have COVID, even though I have not been tested because I'm not sick enough to get tested. I don't wanna walk around and infect other people unless I absolutely have to go to the hospital.

Megan Figueroa: Right.

Carrie Gillon: It's been pretty mild. Then, yesterday, you and I had this awesome conversation with two guests - it's gonna be in six weeks, probably - and it was an amazing conversation. But then afterwards I had lunch and then I just crashed, and I got much sicker, and I'm like, "Ugh!"

Megan Figueroa: You exert yourself and then there you go and get it.

Carrie Gillon: And exerting myself was just conversation. It's just - oh, man. It just depressed me.

Megan Figueroa: I know. I have heard that a lot of people, they describe not being able to do any sort of task because it's just too much. I'm like, "Oof." I mean, that kind of sounds like the flu but in the way that people are describing it, it sounds like nothing I've ever experienced.

Carrie Gillon: For me, whatever this is, it is not the flu because all it did at first was just attack my lungs. I felt like they were on fire. Then, it was just more tight and I had some fatigue but not like flu fatigue. It's just - I dunno. It's very different.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah.

Carrie Gillon: Anyway, in better news, we have an email from, let's see, I think it's /silʌm/. So, "Hi. Big fan of the podcast. I was actually planning to send a message just last week to ask if you had any plans to do an episode about names, so I was really excited when I saw the title of the newest episode." By the way, we got this email a while ago, and I meant to read it on the last episode and just plum forgot. That's why it's a little bit delayed.

"They're something I've always been interested in and I wanted to share some things about my name(s) in case you found it interesting. I'm Chinese Canadian, Cantonese and Hakka specifically, and like many others, I grew up with a 'Western name' that I used in everyday life and Chinese ones that I use with my family. My name is pronounced super differently in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Hakka." I'm not even gonna try because it involves tones and I really suck at tones. Anyway, there's three different pronunciations.

"I'd been thinking about ditching the Western name for a while, especially since coming out as agender, since it's very gendered and my Chinese name is gender neutral. I was hesitant because I didn't know which Chinese name to use and I wasn't really used to hearing non-Chinese speakers pronounce any of them. It's a bit silly but seeing Hasan Minhaj correct everyone's pronunciation of his name and seeing people reacting" - I think - "positively to that gave me a confidence boost and I've been using my Cantonese name full time for most of the last year.

People have been pretty good about pronouncing it, although it took me a while to get used to hearing it without the tones." Exactly! We're not good at tones most of us who -

Megan Figueroa: Who didn't grow up with it.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah, especially each tonal language is different too, right, so even if you speak a tonal language, you're still gonna have to learn a whole new system. However, if you don't grow up with it at all, it's just really hard. "I went back and forth on the spelling between S-E-E and S-I for the first syllable and L-A-M and L-U-M for the second, but I think I've ultimately settled on S-I-L-U-M, although I've only been using this spelling for a couple months so I'll let you know if I change it." It's fun. I love it.

Megan Figueroa: Oh, my gosh. I feel so happy that someone would share that with us. Thank you so much.

Carrie Gillon: There's a lot more, but I think that's the gist of it. That's really great! We need to talk to people who are speakers of any of the Chinese languages. Silum mentions, for example, that people often haven't heard of Hakka before, which is true. Most people haven't. I only have because I'm a linguist.

Megan Figueroa: Right. And I haven't at all and I'm a linguist.

Carrie Gillon: I'm also from an area with a lot more - I don't know if this person is from Vancouver area, but there's a lot of people from China in the Vancouver area. You do encounter more things. But they mention a language that I have never heard of before - Teochew? I'm not even sure how to pronounce it. There's lot of Chinese languages and we'd love to talk with them.

Megan Figueroa: Yes. We wanna talk to everyone.

Carrie Gillon: There's too many things.

Megan Figueroa: Consider this your invitation if people wanna reach out because there're so many areas that we have not yet touched at all. Again, another reason why I feel so happy that they would share that with us because, yeah, learned a few things and then I get to hear something very personal about a listener. Awesome. That name episode was fun. It's good to think back onto to it.

Carrie Gillon: Yes.

Megan Figueroa: Speaking of names -

Carrie Gillon: Ugh! Oh, god.

Megan Figueroa: I know. I mean, I hate to say it out loud to give it any sort of -

Carrie Gillon: I know, but you have to say it out loud to address it, sadly.

Megan Figueroa: So, "Chinese Virus" - [sighs] words matter.

Carrie Gillon: My favorite thing is that he's like, "Well, we call it 'Lyme Disease'" - how many people know that Lyme is a place?

Megan Figueroa: Yeah, I didn't know that. Although, I knew "Lyme" wasn't spelled like limes that you eat, but I've never really looked into why it's L-Y-M-E.

Carrie Gillon: I'm certain about a decade ago I found out that there was a town called "Lyme," and then I promptly forgot because that's how little that matters. "Ebola" also is named after a location. But, note, it's not an entire country in either of these cases. It's not "US Disease." It's not - I dunno which part of Africa; I don't remember - "Sierra Leone Disease" or something. It's not an entire country, it's just one location, which is maybe still problematic. I don't know. But we don't have the same racial associations at least. So, no, Trump, you're wrong.

Megan Figueroa: And any person that wasn't just a raging racist would see what was happening. There are literal hate crimes - physical hate crimes, verbal - all of these hate crimes that are being committed against people that others perceive to be Chinese. I'm sure they're not even very discriminatory on this at all.

Carrie Gillon: No. Basically any East Asian or someone of East Asian descent. That's all. They don't know what a Chinese person looks like versus a Japanese person versus Korean.

Megan Figueroa: Any person that actually cared would step it back, but we all know he doesn't.

Carrie Gillon: He has stopped - shockingly, he did stop call -

Megan Figueroa: Did he?

Carrie Gillon: Yes. He has stopped calling it the "Chinese Virus." I don't know why. I think maybe - he said something like, "Oh, it's not okay to hurt Asian people" or something like that. Ever since then, he hasn't used it. I'm pretty sure - unless he's reintroduced it. But he definitely stopped.

Megan Figueroa: Well, who knows why, but the damage has been done because all of his little minions - supporters - are calling it the "Chinese Virus." That's not okay. I don't know why anyone would feel like that's okay.

Carrie Gillon: Because they're racist. I mean, it's not even a question!

Megan Figueroa: I know.

Carrie Gillon: I mean, as bad as that is, there's actually something that's even worse, in my opinion. Some people are calling it the "Kung Flu."

Megan Figueroa: Oh, god.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. It's so gross, it makes my skin crawl.

Megan Figueroa: I haven't heard that.

Carrie Gillon: Well, I haven't actually heard it. I've only read it. But it's definitely on Twitter, although less so recently. Around the time Trump was saying "Chinese Virus" all the time that was coming up a lot.

Megan Figueroa: Oh, my god.

Carrie Gillon: People are gross.

Megan Figueroa: People are gross. Words matter. That's racist.

Carrie Gillon: We already have a name for it - COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2, which is such a mouthful. "COVID" is better, in my opinion. Don't, obviously - who among our listeners are gonna be calling it the "Chinese Virus"? Nobody. I don't know what we're -

Megan Figueroa: We're just rage venting. Make sure to call people out if you do see it. It's fucking racist. It's gross. It implies that somehow some people are more susceptible or - there's so many implications in calling it the "Chinese Virus" that are so -

Carrie Gillon: Blaming. It's basically blaming all of Chinese people for a virus that comes from bats. Nobody got it on purpose. No one spread it on purpose. It's just a thing that happens because we live in proximity to animals and sometimes animal viruses jump to humans. Sometimes, they mutate and then go human to human. It's nobody's fault.

Megan Figueroa: It's definitely a blaming thing.

Carrie Gillon: Anyway, please - [Laughter]

Megan Figueroa: Let's take a break from COVID-19 for a minute. Got a very special episode today. I talk with Drs. Jonathan Rosa and Nelson Flores. It was an amazing chat.

Carrie Gillon: It was pretty fun. And I wasn't in this conversation because you guys were gonna talk about Latinx, and then you didn't talk about it!

Megan Figueroa: I know.

Carrie Gillon: I could've been part of this conversation.

Megan Figueroa: I know. I'm so sorry! [Laughter] I thought we were gonna get - yeah. But, yes, you would've enjoyed being there, I'm sure. So, I'm sorry about that.

Carrie Gillon: It's all right. It was very long, so I ended up cutting out a significant portion, which we are going to put in our bonus episode this month.

Megan Figueroa: Yes!

Carrie Gillon: If you wanna get access to that, and you don't already have access, then you can join us at patreon.com/vocalfriespod at the $5.00 level.

Megan Figueroa: We forgot to say it at the end, so don't be an asshole.

Carrie Gillon: Oh, yeah! That is true. Definitely. Definitely do not be an asshole.

[Music]

Megan Figueroa: We have Dr. Nelson Flores, who is an associate professor of educational linguistics, and we got a title change over here. We have Dr. Jonathan Rosa, who is now an associate professor because you were an assistant last time we chatted. That's exciting.

Jonathan Rosa: Yes. I was recently promoted. I mean, now, technically, as to whether the promotion takes place in a couple of months - you know but maybe by the time the episode airs. But, yeah, it's more or less a for sure -

Megan Figueroa: Okay. Nelson's at Penn and Jonathan is over at Stanford. But you're on sabbatical in Chicago right now, right?

Jonathan Rosa: I was in Chicago. Now, I am traveling for conferences and other things, so I'm actually here in the multilingual bastion of Miami - the fraught, let's say, multilingual space of Miami.

Megan Figueroa: The theme of this almost could be misconceptions because both ya'll are talking, that means there's two of you. I think a lot of people didn't know there were two of you. I feel like a lot of people think that either you're one person, which is what I've seen on the internet, confusing ya'll. And you said "married" or also "related" you've gotten too?

Nelson Flores: Yeah. I don't think people know what to make of us. I think part of it is that we both have flower last names, and so people get the "Flores" and the "Rosa" confused. I've gotten "Nelson Rosa." I know that Jonathan has gotten "Jonathan Flores." I don't think people know what to make of us sometimes because, of course, we've very close. We clearly have a lot of love for each other. But we're also queer, and so I think people are kind of like, "There must be some type of marriage or something." Just to clarify, we're not married.

Megan Figueroa: Could it just be a marriage of ideas and love?

Nelson Flores: I mean, we're academically married, I suppose, but not married in the heteronormative ways that people oftentimes mean it.

Jonathan Rosa: Let me say one thing about Nelson's and my presumed inter-changeability, or perhaps a couple of things about it. In one sense, I think this is a very common phenomenon that happens with marginalized populations where people who are marked in particular ways based on race, gender, and sexuality, especially, there's this sense that you're all the same and you all could be a spokesperson for whatever set of ideas.

I guess, if I'm being generous, then I would say, "Oh, well, maybe because there are so few of us or because we've been positioned as the spokespeople for particular kinds of stances or ideas that we get equated with one another." My much less generous take on this is that it demonstrates the ways that we get recruited to enact or inhabit these tokenized positions where, essentially, the kinds of contributions that we could make are already predetermined and the question is which of us is needed to make that contribution on which day at which time - this sort of thing.

I think it's a very troublesome situation. It happens with a whole range of colleagues where we get equated with one another and the sense is just that we could all be one another - any distinctive contributions we might make. That has concrete kinds of consequences in one's professional life but also in terms of broader political struggles. Professionally, when so much of what we're up to - or the assessment of what we're up to - is based on whether you've made a unique contribution and you're equated with someone else constantly, then that can be tricky.

But on a much - I don't wanna frame academics as the most marginalized or something like that or I don't wanna say that the goal, then, is to secure the individuality of our contributions. It's more politically that I'm interested in the ways that our contributions to the world or the kinds of struggles in which we could engage are really narrowly defined and constrained and that this equation of us or interchangeability is a reflection of that.

Megan Figueroa: I'm not even in ya'll's field and - because I've kind of gotten a little bit of a platform now speaking about these things, but I'm speaking about them personally, so I don't study it in the way that you do - that I'm often included now when people @ you on Twitter. They'll put me now, too. I love to talk about these things when it's right for it, and if I'm emotionally available for it, but I noticed that ya'll might not always be emotionally available for that and you get dragged into it a lot - "dragged." I say "dragged." But a lot of times it might feel like that, right?

Nelson Flores: I mean, I think Twitter in particular is an interesting platform. I mean, clearly, I love Twitter. I mean, it's connected me to people like you, Megan, who I didn't know before I was on Twitter. It's connected me to a lot of interesting people, and I've learned a lot off of Twitter. At the same time, I think sometimes people take Twitter way more serious than maybe it's intended to be. There's this - like, I just write a tweet that's kind of like an off the cuff tweet, and then people are like, "Send me 10 references to what you just said so that I can read up on it."

And it's like, "Well, you know, I'm not in class right now. I'm just writing some tweets." If you wanna learn more about it, you can certainly google and do some of that work for yourself, but I don't know if - almost coming from a sense of entitlement in terms of like, "You need to teach me this because your tweet made me uncomfortable. So, you need to further clarify what you mean so that maybe I can feel a little less uncomfortable with what you just said."

I don't think that that's always coming from a bad place. I think people sometimes feel uncomfortable and they wanna know more. I just don't know if Twitter is actually the best venue for doing that. Maybe they need to do some of the work for themselves rather than expecting people on Twitter to do extra labor and getting them to really understand things that maybe they really need to do the work for on their own.

Megan Figueroa: How does that play out for you in your job as a professor or as an academic that travels to conferences? Are you asked to do a lot of that emotional labor for people when it comes to Latinx issues?

Jonathan Rosa: Well, it's interesting. I mean, I think that it requires us to do a lot of careful, strategic engagement where you say - yeah, there are invitations that ask you to represent a certain perspective or recruit you to represent a certain perspective. There're also efforts to invite you to participate in mentoring activities that are based on a presumed shared experience. There're some of these efforts that feel really substantive and meaningful where you say, "Okay, wait. There's something that I have to say here that I think contributes to this dialogue or contributes to this bigger project."

There're other moments when you say, "Oh, they just want someone else to read the script. They just need another person to read the same script. Am I just gonna be that person today?" I'll never forget when one of my mentors, Melissa Harris-Perry, who used to have her show on MSNBC, when she was leaving MSNBC based on some fraught relationships there, I'll never forget when she was very public about saying that she was not going to be anyone's little brown bobblehead. She was not going to be this ornamental piece and really an object.

I think that that's the part that's deeply concerning in some situations where you become an object, and you don't have anything to say. The on-demand part of it is also tricky because I think we want to make meaningful contributions and we want to engage with publics, but there's an accessibility issue that could be complex to navigate as well where you're on the clock or on call or you're expected to be the go-to person on such and such issue.

I found that has happened to me in certain situations as well where the expectation is that anything related to any language and identity issue I should just speak to casually. I worry. In some situations, some of my ideas about these topics - and this is why I appreciate Nelson's comments about Twitter. Sometimes, I just wanna be irreverent. Sometimes, I just wanna make a joke about language.

I mean, I said it after the Joe Biden landslide victory on Super Tuesday that one of the things that's most interesting to me about his success there is it demonstrates how irrelevant language is in some situations because, from many people's perspectives, he's been more or less incoherent in a range of situations. Yet, his incoherence has not prevented his political ascendance.

In some cases, I just wanna be flippant about language. And other moments, I've done a tremendous amount of research, and I wanna be careful, and I wanna weigh in on a debate in a nuanced way. But I think that the on-call part of things invites people to offer their opinion constantly as though they had carefully developed a serious perspective. In many situations, people haven't developed that kind of a careful perspective and yet are asked to be the expert on something.

Megan Figueroa: Do you feel like there's different work going into it when you're being flippant? Because I feel like, sometimes, I'll say something on Twitter or even around colleagues and I feel like it takes less emotional toll on me than if I really wanted to get into something. That's why I feel like I really appreciate Twitter because, when I put something out there, I feel like I'm not actually having to do as much emotional work. I feel like I can get something quick out of there and then maybe someone will learn something.

But it always becomes more emotional. I had a tweet the other day that said - so this gets into the idea of semilingualism, which I wanna talk to ya'll about. I said that that's not a thing. You can't have kids that end up in school and have low skill in both languages. That's the idea of semilingualism. I wanna get into it with you. And someone retweeted me and was like, "I'd like to know what my language acquisition colleagues think." And I'm like, "I'm a fucking language acquisition expert."

I really sometimes wonder, "Oh, are they seeing my last name and all of a sudden I'm not taken as seriously because I'm too emotional about this?" I really, honestly, feel that sometimes. Do you have that happen as well?

Nelson Flores: I have been accused of being a bully.

Megan Figueroa: Which is so funny to me. You're so kind. But, yes. [Laughs]

Nelson Flores: I think a lot of that stems from precisely my resistance to feel like I need to do the emotional labor of making people feel comfortable about what I'm saying. In particular, as a Latino scholar doing work in bilingual education, I'm particularly resistant to the idea that I need to make white people feel comfortable doing work in bilingual education. I put my work out there. I let it speak for itself. I certainly have never targeted anyone individually and personally insulted them, which is what bullying actually is, right? "Bullying" actually has an actual meaning.

As a gay person, I've experienced it personally as a gay person. I know what bullying is and I know that what I'm doing, which is working to dismantle white supremacy in how we think about issues in bilingualism, is not bullying anybody. I do think that there are these strong emotional reactions that people have to my work in both ways. I've also had people tell me that it's given them a vocabulary for making sense of things that they kind of always knew didn't make any sense and had visceral reactions against but really didn't have a vocabulary for thinking about.

I mean, in the end, I think what it boils down to is that all researchers have emotional investment in the work that we do. It's that people who are coming from marginalized positions, oftentimes, that emotional investment is marked in ways that it's not marked for white researchers, but they also have an emotional investment, oftentimes, in whiteness and the objectivity that oftentimes ascribed to whiteness.

When that's called into question, and the ways that Jonathan and I have called into question in our work, that oftentimes leads to strong visceral reactions. Oftentimes, people feel personally attacked when it's really not a personal attack at all.

Megan Figueroa: Let's ignore my sloppy definition. Will you tell me, Nelson, what semilingualism is?

Nelson Flores: Well, we can trace the discourses of semilingualism back to the origins of European colonialism. That's something that Jonathan and I wrote about in our 2017 piece, which is essentially one of the primary mechanisms for dehumanizing indigenous populations, African populations, by calling into question their language practices and suggesting that their language practices were somehow illegitimate or subhuman.

Now, the concept of semilingualism itself emerges within the context of the Bilingual Education Act in the United States. It actually emerged originally in Scandinavia, but I'll focus on the work in the United States. The term itself emerges in Scandinavia. Within the context of the Bilingual Education Act, which was passed in 1968, they were accountability metrics that had to be used to show that these programs were being successful. One of the things that they had to do was assess students to see if they were Spanish dominant or not because if they were not Spanish dominant, then they wouldn't be eligible for most of these programs.

Some of these students were assessed and their assessment suggested that they were not proficient in either English or Spanish. The discourse that was developed by scholars at the time to make sense of that was to say that they were semilingual, that they didn't have full competency in any language. That was quickly critiqued by other scholars who said you really can't describe people that way. That's not really a thing.

Then, the discourse shifted to the discussion of basic interpersonal communication skills, or social language, and cognitive academic language proficiency, or academic language. The discourse shifted towards they have BICS, or social language, but they don't have CALP, or academic language. You can trace directly that discourse. I'm not making a leap there. Scholars who originally used the term "semilingualism" shifted towards a discussion of social and academic language.

Whenever we talk about social and academic language today, that's really the legacy that we've inherited - a legacy of semilingualism, of suggesting that there's something illegitimate about the language practices of racialized bilingual students.

Megan Figueroa: I just had a friend tell me that the latest TESOL conference, a major theme was semilingualism.

Nelson Flores: As a good thing or as a bad thing?

Megan Figueroa: I asked him. I said, "Were they debunking it?" although - even though we still have to debunk it in 2020. But he said, "No. I don't think so." He said that his friend was not happy.

Jonathan Rosa: Semilingualism. I think actually my experience with this conversation ties together the previous dialogue that we were just having about the ways that we're positioned as ideological or overly emotionally invested in certain topics which then is presumed to distort our opinions on these topics. I was writing an article a few years ago that Nelson and I have been in conversation with about ideas related to semilingualism. I was writing about what I called, "ideologies of languagelessness," that just framed certain populations as deficient in any language that they use. It's not just certain populations. It's racialized populations.

I think, for example, Nelson invoked the ways that the discourse of semilingualism emerged in Scandinavia. Part of what's distinctive about how it gets enacted in the European context versus in the Americas and elsewhere is that it's framed in the Americas as a highly racialized concept that maps onto a population across generations and is presumed to be somehow inherent to particular populations in ways that really articulate alongside race or in concert in with race.

This notion, for me, of an ideology of languagelessness is reflected in the ways that semilingualism is taken up in the United States, reflected in the ways that particular populations are framed as "non-nons" in the United States, or non-verbal in English and their so-called native language. "Linguistic isolation" is a category that was used by the census for about 30 years to designate certain households as lacking language altogether.

Megan Figueroa: That happens to real populations, too. That's really offense. There're deaf children that are actually experiencing language isolation, and yet this is where they're using that.

Jonathan Rosa: It's problematic in every direction. There're people who are really being denied access to language learning and meaningful cultural opportunities that are mislabeled because of these sorts of stereotypes about isolation but also isolation in terms of the ways that it articulates in relation to policy. It's messed up because it's intended to serve as a tool for ensuring compliance with the voting rights act - to make sure that you have resources in languages other than English. You need to designate the number of households within a community that require those resources.

In order to access those resources in languages other than English, you have to be designated as "isolated" rather than designated as "using languages in addition to English." I've found that these sorts of stereotypes map across a whole range of institutional contexts. In everyday discourse you hear people say, "So-and-So doesn't speak English well. They don't speak Spanish well." In a school where I was working, the principal, who had a doctorate in education and was a Puerto Rican woman, one teacher said, "She speaks English like one of our ninth graders. From what I understand, her Spanish isn't that good either."

When I was writing about this, I said, "These are these ideologies of languagelessness that map onto people regardless of their credentials, regardless of what might seem to be their empirical linguistic practices." The initial response to that article, when I tried to publish it, from reviewers was that I was ideological, that I was imposing an analysis onto these situations and imposing this idea, this attribution of deficiency that wasn't really there. But for me, I was observing connections across all of these spaces.

I think that for scholars who are attentive to particular patterns of marginalization - that we're drawing connections that aren't observable from other perspectives and so we look like conspiracy theorists, or we look as though we're over-generalizing, or over-applying, or over-reaching in our analyses when, in fact, I think part of what is so troublesome about normative social-scientific and scientific research more generally is that the kind of empiricism that it embraces recruits you to accept the world as it is and to naturalize that world and then to observe things in such a way that allows us to reproduce that world at the same time that we proport to just be noticing things that are happening within it.

For me, drawing connections across these patterns is essential to my critique of the way that this world has come to be structured. I've found that a lot of reviewers are unwilling or not inclined to engage in that kind of a critique.

Megan Figueroa: I had a moment of realization here too that that's happening to me because I spent a lot of time in psychology because I did study psycholinguistics and do language development. It is fraught with really disgusting views of communities that they've marginalized. These are marginalized speakers and they're always looking for disorder in some way.

I have a background, too, in speech and hearing so there are legitimate concerns to be had about children that do have language disorders, right, but that's not what's happening here. These are neurotypical hearing children that people are looking for a disorder at every turn and they're finding it because it's easy to find it when you're looking - you'll find evidence for anything that you're looking for.

Every time I say something about this, I do feel like some people think I'm a conspiracy theorist and they're saying - like, when I say, "Talk to your children however you want and however you feel comfortable with," people think that that's - they're like, "We have all this evidence that suggest that some input is just not as good." They really want that to live on.

Nelson Flores: Well, I think that connects back to the emotional investment in whiteness's objectivity. I think that that really throws people off when we refuse to allow whiteness to be framed as objective. If your position is that these ways are better input because they're more normative and they're more aligned with whiteness, then say that. I would be okay with you. We would disagree, but at least you're being honest with what your perspective is, what your ideological position is.

I always say - I own my ideological position. I own where I'm coming from, and I own my locus of annunciation. I just push other scholars to do the same thing. If you're using discourses that come from the specter of semilingualism, then just own that ideological position and say what you're essentially saying is that everyone should speak like a normative white person. That's not progressive and that's not liberal, so don't pretend that you're progressive or liberal if you're actually promoting an agenda that supports white supremacy. At least don't be disingenuous and try to proport that what you're saying is some type of objective representation rather than an ideological one.

Megan Figueroa: Right. Exactly what they're saying when they say, "No, there is a right way to speak to children," is there is a white way to speak to children because that's what we know of all of these studies on language development. I mean, I don't know the exact number, but it's in the 90% of - it's been done on white, middle-class, suburban babies. Yeah. That's one way of talking to children, but it's not the only way. We are continually investing in speaking like white, middle-class parents when we say that these studies are basically how it should be for everyone. People don't really like to hear that. You're right. I'm realizing this now.

Sometimes, I still feel very naïve because I'm like, "Oh, well, they'll just hear it once and then that'll be enough," like people will stop and reflect. That's not what's happening. I'm always a little bit surprised because I'm hoping that it just takes one moment of reflection and then you can start dismantling. We're really invested in these things, in these ideas.

Nelson Flores: The challenge is that we continue to frame things as empirical questions that are really ideological questions. You can keep trying to disprove an ideology, but if it's an ideology, it's kind of, by definition, something that you can't really disprove because people have really deeply ingrained investment in those beliefs. At this point, we're not really having an empirical question.

I think, empirically, we have the data that shows that all communities have complex, rich language practices that they engage in, but people don't believe it because they don't wanna believe it because they have deep investment in these ideas that certain communities have more rich language practices than other communities. At that point, you can't disprove white supremacy. If people are invested in white supremacy, then they're gonna be invested in white supremacy. That's the challenge that I think we're trying to highlight in our work is what do we do in that context. How do we intervene in that context?

Jonathan Rosa: Part of, I think, what's particularly challenging about this ideology is the way that it is associated with a liberal benevolence where the people who are perpetuating it are deeply invested in staking a claim to helping. They see themselves as really participating in projects that are progressive or even projects that are aimed toward social justice, this kind of thing. They really want to understand themselves as addressing the marginalized.

I think when Nelson was talking about having been called a bully in the past or this kind of thing, I think part of why some people are so off put is that even the remote suggestion that linguists - sociolinguists, linguistic anthropologists, applied linguists, psycholinguists - that we have, in fact, contributed to the problem. Many scholars want to understand themselves as the people who are solving problems, but I think one of the things Nelson and I - that brings us together in our work is our deep suspicion that many of the scholarly labels and categories and approaches have in fact emerged from the very systems of power that we're trying to critique here.

I think we have a long way to go in terms of trying to unsettle some of these assumptions. I encounter this constantly, the sense - Ana Celia Zentella always says - a mentor of mine - always says, "The helping hand strikes again." In so many of these situations, when we're talking about bilingualism and multilingualism and standard language and academic language, just educational language learning, it's the helping hand strikes again. It's we wanna help the kids. We wanna help their families use more quality language with them. We wanna help them to become proficient users of such and such language.

I think when we keep pushing - and we always push - "What's your theory of change? What is it that changes?" These families use language in this way, so this school institutionalizes language in this way to change these behaviors. Then, what happens? Then, people have access to a different world? Then, the structure of the economy transforms? Then, stable housing and living wages and political representation - then that emerges from language use? Or are we facing a fundamentally different kind of challenge? Should our critique, should our efforts towards promoting language learning and our engagement with language, be oriented towards those bigger challenges? Or should they be narrowly focused on changing people's language practices in their homes, in classrooms - really changing the behaviors of the marginalized?

I think this so much of what Nelson and I have been trying to call into question - just fundamentally rethinking the project of educational language learning.

Megan Figueroa: We're in the epicenter of funding for things like Closing the Word Gap. I'm like, if we spent that money towards universal housing or some sort of universal basic income, it would go way further than spending money on fucking trying to close the so-called word gap. But that's where people wanna spend the money. That's where funding agencies are funneling the money because, you're right, they feel like they're the helping hand that's gonna fix the marginalized.

Another buzzword term that I wanted to bring up - "bilingual brain." Jonathan, what is a bilingual brain?

Jonathan Rosa: It's interesting. I was mentioning to both of you that I sometimes make flippant comments about these sorts of catchphrases. This notion of the bilingual brain, like the language gap or word gap, I've often had a knee-jerk reaction to it where I felt as though it were locating language within a cognitive system rather than within a historical and cultural system. To be clear, I'm really interested in the cognitive dimensions of language, but that's not the primary focus of my research. It's something that I've certainly studied and something that I respect research in this area.

However, sometimes, when I talk about it, I'm more concerned with the slogans, with the ways that it's turned into this commodified project. As soon as it becomes a slogan, then very quickly we see which populations will benefit from that kind of a project of turning something into a commodity that you could achieve somehow. If this is a justice project, if part of what we're up to is trying to address marginalization, then these notions of a bilingual brain, I don't know how far that will get us.

Now, I was saying to you all that a colleague recently was pushing me on this to say, look, there're different ways that that kind of notion has been developed within, say, psycholinguistics or within psychology of language versus, say, within neurolinguistics - neurolinguists who understand themselves to be more attuned to some of these cultural and historical issues and are not trying to promote the narrow view of what bilingualism is.

I will say I continue to be concerned, regardless of the meaningful work that people might be doing in these areas. I continue to be concerned abut the ways that "bilingualism" is defined and the ways that languages are separated from one another in order to reproduce this notion of bilingualism. I wonder what languages even count as legitimate in this research. When you're staking claims to a bilingual brain, which languages are involved? Are they languages like Chatino that my close colleague Emiliana Cruz studies in Oaxaca in Guatemala? Which languages are we staking these claims to cognitive advancement based on?

That's one piece of - yeah, just this notion of who is a legitimate bilingual such that we could study their brain. It frankly reminds me in my most - perhaps not my most critical take on it - but it reminds me of some of these genetic ancestry tests which proport to find race in your genes but, in fact, have to presume that race already lives in your genes in order to then find it there. If you understand race to be something historically constructed, then it doesn't live in your genes.

Similarly, you have to presume that bilingualism lives primarily in the brain in order to then measure it - measure what it's doing there. I think bilingualism lives between people not within people. My neurolinguistics colleagues were saying - the colleague who was pushing me on this - was sort of saying, "No, I understand brains to be across people not just within an individual" and that from the perspective of psychology, often, it's on that individual basis. So, I think that there are interesting debates to have. I continue to be concerned about the slogan though.

Nelson Flores: Of course, I agree with everything Jonathan is saying. This whole idea of a bilingual brain is still, from my opinion, coming from a monolingual perspective in the sense that most of the world is bi- or multilingual. Why are we exceptionalizing the, quote, "bilingual" brain instead of the quote, "monolingual" brain to begin with? Why aren't we saying, "What are the unique cognitive traits of monolingual people who are the minority of the population?"

Maybe a bilingual brain is just a brain and it's the monolingual brain that's actually this weird thing that we need to study. Of course, I don't actually believe that, but I feel like some of the discourse exceptionalizing bilingualism, when we reverse it and really think about, well, if we describe monolingualism in that way, that would be really strange. Yet, "bilingual" describes more of the world's population than "monolingual." What exactly are we doing there?

Of course, connecting to something Jonathan was saying before, the bilingual brain discourse, I would trace its origins to the classic Peal & Lambert study that found cognitive advantages to bilingualism. In that study, they threw out more than half of the sample because they weren't appropriately monolingual or bilingual. From there on, we already inherited this idea of bilingualism that's coming from a very normative idea of what bilingualism even is to begin with.

Then, I would add to that whenever we ask the question about whether bilingualism has cognitive advantages, it always opens up the question of whether there are disadvantages. It's a slippery slope. If we're willing to ask the question if there are advantages, then it opens up the question of whether there are disadvantages. I think that we shouldn't do that. We should just say, "bilingualism is," it just is. Most of the world is bilingual, multilingual, it's just what human societies are. There are no advantages or disadvantages. It just is.

We start from that perspective, and I think that would allow us to ask different questions about cognitive processes of language learning and whatnot.

Megan Figueroa: This is where we got ourselves into trouble because all of a sudden Pete, in all of these polls, people are saying that they think he's the smartest and I really believe it's tied to his so-called multilingualism. Then, you're right that it's so ideological because Spanish in Pete's brain is beautiful and amazing, but in my father is somehow a deficit and they beat it out of him when he started school.

It was really frustrating to see that play out on the national stage. I'm like, "That's what we're doing" - a lot of academics are doing. We're perpetuating this by asking these bilingual brain questions or what are the cognitive advantages. It always just seems to steer toward, okay, there're cognitive advantages for people like Pete but, all of a sudden, it's a disorder or deficit when it's someone like my dad.

Nelson Flores: This is why, whenever people ask me to speak on my analysis of multilingualism and politicians, the first question that they wanna ask me is how good their Spanish is. I always say, "That's actually not the question I'm interested in" because how good someone's Spanish is is connected to the social status of that person. Whenever we begin to sort people into good Spanish speakers versus bad Spanish speakers, it's always the most marginalized that are going to be most victimized and receive remediation for it.

I actually never - even though people insist that I do this all the time - I 1.) never evaluate the Spanish of white politicians and 2.) never say that they should never speak Spanish because 1.) I don't have the power to tell them that they can't. They can do whatever they want. They're white. That's kind of the definition of whiteness in the US. But I don't think that that type of language policing is productive anyway. I'm more interested in how bilingualism is talked about differently depending on the race and social status position of people. That's my primary focus in analyzing these things.

Yeah, Mayor Pete, people are like, "Wow! He speaks like a gazillion languages. Isn't he so smart?" And I'm like, "Well, actually, you could go to many places in the world where people speak those gazillion languages, right, and they're not positioned as smart in the same way."

Jonathan Rosa: Part of what's so striking to me about some of these popular discussions of language - whether we're talking about Mayor Pete or if you're talking about Donald Trump - if you're talking about someone whose speech is seen as more sophisticated or more cognitively advanced and multilingual or you're talking about someone whose language use from a liberal perspective is often derided as somehow non-grammatical or unintelligent, this kind of thing, that in each of those cases it seems to me again, as Nelson was saying - the discussions of language seem to miss the point in many situations. It's less about language and more about a whole range of other issues that we're not paying attention to.

These discussions about a particular politician - non-Latinx politician's - use of Spanish in the United States often have nothing to do with what they're actually saying in Spanish or communicating in Spanish. It's more about the idea of Spanish that positions them somehow as a particular kind of person. As Nelson was saying, we get roped into playing the game when we start assessing how good their Spanish is and suggesting that, no, they should improve their Spanish. That's not the point. The point is to ask why it is that, based on their position, this ends up being advantageous for them or seems to become framed as a benefit.

Similarly, with Donald Trump, I think a lot of the discussions about his language use miss the point fundamentally when people are saying, "Ugh! We need a more respectable, intelligent person in office." Well, you're totally missing the point. Donald Trump is a television show host and a celebrity and he's very effective at those roles. His performance of being a buffoon in some situations or being a clown in some situations is very politically strategic just like George W. Bush was very politically strategic in his dissimulation in certain ways. He comes from -

Megan Figueroa: In his folksiness, right?

Jonathan Rosa: In his folksiness. He comes from an incredibly wealthy family with access to a range of educational opportunities and then plays off of this persona - an imagined folksy persona. I think we miss the point sometimes when we critique or celebrate language use. We're not paying attention to the performance that's happening. We should be thinking about what makes those performances possible, what makes them valuable, and what makes them strategically useful. Perhaps, we should be attacking that system rather than just focusing narrowly on language use.

Nelson Flores: I think that's something that you were talking about. The idea of Spanish in liberal politicians is an interesting one because, oftentimes, I think Pete did this, and Joe Kennedy and Tim Kaine, where they use Spanish to directly speak to Dreamers, which is interesting because of course the whole narrative around Dreamers is that they grew up in this country and so their English is just fine. Of course, not all dreamers are Latinx and wouldn't be expected to be Spanish-speaking anyway.

They're not actually directly addressing Dreamers there. They're directly addressing white liberals who feel good about themselves because a politician is bilingual. It's not actually serving what would seem to be the explicit - what they're saying explicitly is not actually what they're communicating because they actually don't need to communicate in Spanish with Dreamers. It actually doesn't make sense because a lot of Dreamers wouldn't understand what they were saying anyway. It's just to show - look at me! I speak Spanish.

That's where I say, "Well, you don't get a cookie." People took my "You don't get a cookie" as to be like "White people shouldn't speak Spanish." It's like, well, no. If they're speaking to the Spanish language media and are trying to actually engage a Spanish-speaking audience, that's great! But to randomly do it in a speech of people who are not Spanish-speaking, to an audience that you're imaging is an audience of Spanish speakers who most of them probably - or many of them - are probably not Spanish speakers, then that's disingenuous. That's more you want the props for being bilingual rather than you're using your bilingualism to actually communicate with a marginalized community who may actually benefit from knowing more about your policy positions.

Megan Figueroa: Well, I really appreciate both of you being here. I mean, I know it's hard for you to see each other, I'm sure. I heard that you've never skyped together.

Nelson Flores: Yeah! We never skyped together. We text a lot, and I said - on occasion, we'll talk on the phone if we set it up in advance. We put it on our calendars. But we do audio. I said we're old millennials. We don't do the FaceTime stuff. Oh, last thing. Something else that people confuse us. People think I'm an anthropologist because Jonathan is an anthropologist. Just to clear the record, I am not an anthropologist and I don't really have any particular investment in contributing to the field of anthropology, though I find some of the frameworks helpful.

Megan Figueroa: Okay. Yes. [Laughter]

Nelson Flores: I mean, I get interpolated as an anthropologist a lot now. That's only because of the collaboration with Jonathan.

Megan Figueroa: Or the fact that they just think you are Jonathan.

Nelson Flores: Right. I think that that's - I mean, I'm not hating on anthropology. It's just not my training, it's not my discipline, and I don't have any particular vested interest in that disciplinary perspective and its contributions.

Jonathan Rosa: We see you, Nelson. Welcome. [Laughter]

Nelson Flores: I haven't gone to the dark side of linguistic anthropology.

Jonathan Rosa: We see you Nelson!

Megan Figueroa: Next time we chat in a year from now, you're gonna be like -

Nelson Flores: I'm gonna be like Boas. Yes, Boas is my godfather.

Megan Figueroa: [Laughter] Well, thank you, again.

[Music]

Carrie Gillon: The Vocal Fries podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon, for Halftone Audio, theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @vocalfriespod. You can email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com and our website is vocalfriespod.com.

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https://radiopublic.com/the-vocal-fries-GOoXdO/s1!5b7af Megan Figueroa: Hi, and welcome to the Vocal Fries podcast, a podcast about linguistic discrimination. Carrie Gillon: I'm Carrie Gillon. Megan Figueroa: I'm Megan Figueroa. How you doing there, Carrie? Carrie Gillon: Better today. Yesterday was rough. I mean, I'm pretty convinced that I have COVID, even though I have not been tested because...

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Picture Book Option for Lesson 2 (Elementary - MG): Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family's Fight for Desegregation by Duncan Tonatiuh

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Picture Book Option for Lesson 2 (Elementary - MG): Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family's Fight for Desegregation by Duncan Tonatiuh

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Also available in Spanish: Sylvia Mendez y la lucha de su familia por la integración.

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Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation a book by Duncan Tonatiuh

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Seven years before Brown v. Board of Education, the Mendez family fought to end segregation in California schools. Discover their incredible story in this picture book from award-winning creator Duncan Tonatiuh A Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor Book and Robert F. Sibert Honor Book! When her family mo…

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Novel in Verse/ Poetry Option for Lesson 2 (MG): They Call Me Güero by David Bowles

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Novel in Verse/ Poetry Option for Lesson 2 (MG): They Call Me Güero by David Bowles

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Novel in Verse/Poetry Option for Lesson 2 (MG/HS): The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

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Novel in Verse/Poetry Option for Lesson 2 (MG/HS): The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

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Listen to audio excerpt on publisher's page for the book here.

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Winner of the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, and the Pura Belpré Award! Fans of Jacqueline Woodson, Meg Medina, and Jason Reynolds will fall hard for this astonishing New York Times-bestselling novel-in-verse by an award-win

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Blog post by Heinemann

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Translanguaging is when a multilingual person’s full linguistic repertoire is used and honored, instead of trying to keep narrowly focused on a single language.

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The City University of New York - New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals (CUNY-NYSIEB) has several Translanguaging guides. We recommend these for study groups and planning instruction.

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Teaching Bilinguals (Even if You're Not One): A CUNY-NYSIEB Webseries

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Teaching Bilinguals (Even if You're Not One): A CUNY-NYSIEB Webseries

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Episode 4: Knowing Your Students

Ms. Charene Chapman-Santiago, an 8th grade English Language Arts teacher at Ebbets Field Middle School in Brooklyn, tells us how she gets to know her students - despite not always sharing their language backgrounds.

For more information, see: Chapter 3: Documenting Students' Dynamic Bilingualism from: García, O., Johnson, S. I., & Seltzer, K. (2016). The Translanguaging Classroom: Leveraging Student Bilingualism for Learning. Philadelphia: Caslon Publishing.

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Teaching Bilinguals (Even If You're Not One) | CUNY-NYSIEB

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Ms. Charene Chapman-Santiago, an 8th grade English Language Arts teacher at Ebbets Field Middle School in Brooklyn, tells us how she gets to know her students - despite not always sharing their language backgrounds. For more information, see: Chapter 3: Documenting Students' Dynamic Bilingualism from: García, O., Johnson, S.