“Era como si esas casas no encajaban con la comunidad”: Caminatas with Futurxs Maestrxs Bilingües in a Gentrifying Latinx Community

ABSTRACT

Although direct engagement with neighborhood espacios deepens student understanding, less is known about the benefits of this approach to bilingual teacher preparation programs. Our article addresses this gap by highlighting community walks, or caminatas, as a pedagogical approach with futurxs maestrxs bilingües (FMBs). Specifically, we propose an espacio emergente in the preparation of FMBs, and we examine how two Latinx professors used caminatas through a historically Latinx community in a rapidly gentrifying area to support the development of students’ critical consciousness. Our findings indicate that the caminatas allowed students to historicize the local neighborhood, interrogate power and their own deficit conceptions of minoritized communities, critically listen to the sounds and voices of the community, and experience discomfort in nuanced ways. We argue that caminatas deepen FMBs’ understanding of community assets and are an innovative way to support the fourth goal of preparing FMBs: developing critical consciousness.

KEYWORDS:

• Bilingual education
• bilingual teacher preparation
• critical consciousness
• dual language bilingual education

Notes

1. As a way of unsettling the field of bilingual education, which is prone to neoliberal hijacking (Cervantes-Soon, 2018), we offer no English translations or italics for Spanish in this article.

2. We make use of the “x” ending to challenge the gender binary in standardized Spanish and in solidarity with the transgender and LGBTQ communities. We realize that the use of “x” originated in the United States and is not common in Spanish-speaking countries, where it is sometimes even looked upon with distrust (Heiman & Urrieta, 2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel Heiman

Daniel Heiman is an Assistant Professor of Bilingual Education at the University of North Texas (Denton). His research uses critical ethnographic methods and examines how stakeholders make sense of and interrogate neoliberal processes and policies in Dual Language Bilingual Education contexts, and critical pedagogies in bilingual teacher preparation.

Eric Ruíz Bybee

Eric Ruíz Bybee is Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University, where he teaches courses in multicultural education. Dr. Bybee’s research interests include the social foundations of education; Latinx education; bilingual teacher education; and transnationalism and identity, belonging and cultural knowledge in education.

Haydeé Marie Rodríguez

Haydeé Marie Rodríguez is Clinical Assistant Professor at The University of Texas at Austin. Her work focuses on bilingual education and ESL teacher preparation, and the induction and mentorship of novice bilingual teachers. Her research explores issues of linguistic identity as it relates to teachers’ practice, community engagement and social justice.

Luís Urrieta

Luís Urrieta (P’urhépecha/Latinx) is an interdisciplinary scholar studying identity, agency, social movements related to education, and learning in family and community contexts. He is specifically interested in Latinx and Indigenous cultures, migrations, and knowledge systems, and oral and narrative methodologies.