Caldas Palmer Pallais bilingual selves in reflexion

Bilingualism and Bilingual Education Conceptos Fundamentales Edited by David Schwarzer, Mary Petrón, and Clarena Larrotta PETER LANG New York • Bern • Berlin Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw Embracing our Bilingual Selves in Reflection & Dialogue: Hacia una Praxis Bilingüe en Espacios de Preparación de Docentes B Y BLANCA C ALDAS C HUMBES , DEBOR AH PALMER & DESIR EE PALLAIS Research on bilingual teacher preparation programs se ha enfocado principalmente en eficacia (Athanases & Oliveira, 2008), inclusion of critical cultural consciousness (Cervantes-Soon, 2018; Dantas-Whitney & Dugan, 2009), bilingual teachers in-the-making, su desarrollo profesional (Varghese, 2006; 2004), and language and power dynamics (Perez, Bustos Flores & Strecker, 2003). Sin embargo, este body of research se ha concentrado en las experiencias de los pre/in-service teachers. Little is known about the role of the bilingual teacher educator and their individual histories—trayectorias lingüísticas, educación, experiencias profesionales and ideologies. Teacher analysis is crucial since the bilingual teacher preparation classroom is a site where both ideology (lived experiences, views of bilingualism, training, etc.) and language practices son decisivas en la formación de las prácticas lingüísticas, pedagogías e ideologías de los futuros docentes bilingües. Bilingual teacher educators perform ideologies a la hora de implementar políticas lingüísticas (Hornberger, 2006) y modelar pedagogías por medio de sus language negotiations, material choice and even in their dealings with their social position in terms of language expertise (Mick, 2011). While this site can be conducive to the reproduction of monoglossic approaches to language teacher training, they can also be spaces for collective and individual agency (Erickson, 2004) for disruption of uncontested dispositions enforced explicitly or tacitly. Por lo tanto, es necesario examinar el proceso en el cual individuals participate in their self-making while engaged in contentious local 66 BLANCA C ALDAS C HUMBES ET AL . practices, creating a historia en persona (Holland & Lave, 2001). Estas prácticas son respuestas dialógicas a los struggles individuals face, which shape subjetividades individuales. Understanding and examining instances of agency helps us understand not only the past identity-making but also the implications those moments have in the individual’s future: futures, like histories, are constrained and shaped by lived experience … discourses of the past and discourses of the future feed off of each other; indeed, they are often only different chapters of the same narrative story (Malkki, as cited in Holland & Lave, 2001, p. 28). Drawing on our identities, language ideologies, and moments of struggle and realization, nosotras, tres educadoras y formadoras de maestr@s bilingües, will engage in a conversation in which we share our own journeys to biliteracy in teacher education and research. Narratives, Reflexión y Bakhtinian Novelness Este trabajo compartido por las tres autoras nació out of the necessity to answer the question, ¿cómo descubrimos que éramos bilingües? in the most truthful way to embrace our moments of vulnerability and reflect on nuestras historias dentro de comunidades profesionales mayormente monolingües and how our learning about “being bilingual” (Auer, 1984) trajo cambios a nuestras ideologías lingüísticas, pedagogies y enfoques investigativos. We met remotely four times and took notes and audio-recorded the exchanges. Durante la primera reunión, we agreed en las siguientes preguntas y nos dimos un par de semanas to reflect privately and separately to be prepared to discuss in depth at the following meeting: 1. In our own stories, how did we move from monolingual to bilingual selves? 2. How did we discover that we are bilingual? 3. What do we think about bilingualism now? 4. How did we incorporate bilingualism in our teaching practices? 5. What are our consejos for fellow bilingual teacher educators/teachers? Siguiendo la tradición de investigaciones narrativas (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) in which narratives are crucial to make connections between el contexto local and wider societal issues (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996), nosotras usamos nuestras narrativas personales and engaged in what Espino, Vega, Rendón, Ranero and Muñiz (2012) llaman reflexión. Espino et al. define reflexión as “a complement to testimonio that focuses not only on the telling of lived experience but the (re)telling of those experiences to Embracing our Bilingual Selves in Reflection & Dialogue 67 a trusted dialogue partner” (p. 446). Testimonio, a first-person narrativa oral de raíces latinoamericanas (Gugelberger, 1996; Nance, 2006), comparte similar characteristics with its western counterpart narrative inquiry en las que se interrogan y desafían a las narrativas dominantes o mainstream. No debe ser una coincidencia que decidamos unir ambas como reflection of las autoras; Blanca y Desiree se criaron en países latinoamericanos (Perú y Nicaragua) y Deb es estadounidense. Both narrative inquiry approaches are grounded en las experiencias vividas de las autoras de este capítulo, quienes hacen un llamado a la vulnerabilidad desde sus historias as an act of defiance and resistance sobre lo que se considera el discurso “académico” y knowledge production. Para continuar, en la línea de esta publicación netamente heteroglósica en todo el sentido de la palabra, este trabajo also found its inspiration in the work of Kim (2006) and her narrative configurations in which la escritora “extracts an emerging theme from the fullness of lived experiences presented in the data themselves and configures stories, making a range of disconnected research data elements coherent, so that the story can appeal to the reader’s understanding and imagination” (p. 4– 5). Esta configuración narrativa se basa en what she calls Bakhtinian novelness. Bakhtinian novelness emplea los conceptos de polifonía, cronotopo (the time-space context that shape life experience; see Bemong and Bakhtin, 2010) y el concepto del carnaval, en los que la contra narrativa tiene el mismo peso que las narrativas oficiales. With these elements, en las narrativas presentadas en su propia armonía/cacofonía se puede dilucidar las tensiones, resistencias y salidas the authors have reflected on “raising questions about the topics under discussion, challenging the reader to rethink the values that undergird certain social practices" (Barone, 2001, p. 157). En las siguientes reflexiones/narrativas se escuchan tres voces diferentes ponderando sus experiencias como mujeres bilingües in academia who work directly with pre- and in-service bilingual teachers. Blanca is an assistant professor, especialista en la preparación lingüística, académica y activista de Mexican-American/Latinx future bilingual teachers, minoritized language practices y pedagogía crítica freireana y boaleana (Caldas, 2019). Déborah es una profesora con amplia experiencia trabajando en la preparación de maestr@s bilingües and whose research interests are focused on teacher leadership and agency, educación bilingüe de lenguaje dual y también política y pedagogía de la enseñanza de estudiantes bilingües emergentes. Desiree, an assistant professor of instruction, teaches and mentors undergraduate students preparing to become bilingual teachers and is interested in language and cultural aspects of teaching and learning in minoritized populations. 68 BLANCA C ALDAS C HUMBES ET AL . Embracing Translanguaging —Blanca Yo comencé a aprender inglés a los 16 años y la enseñanza de idiomas always had that paradigm de separación de lenguas. Actually, yo recuerdo cuando comenzaba a enseñar inglés, my colleagues and I would be proud of saying que no utilizamos una sola palabra del otro idioma, so it comes from that formation. I started seeing myself as bilingual as I learned English, aunque de manera separada, como mi propio aprendizaje y la forma en que me formé como maestra de idiomas. Pero mirando a mi historia, I was always bilingual. Mis abuelos, especialmente por la parte de mi papá, spoke quechua. So, we have words in Quechua that we incorporated en nuestro español y es algo que descubrí mucho después, that I speak more Quechua than I thought. So, el bilingüismo siempre ha estado allí de una forma inconsciente y está imprinted in my Spanish sin que me diera cuenta. But I never considered that bilingualism, al menos no la clase de bilingüismo de so-called 'prestigio.' Las lenguas indígenas en mi país son marginalizadas y sus hablantes estigmatizad@s; es por eso que my parents — por presiones sociales y económicas— did not cultivate mi idioma original en casa. A veces I catch myself usando palabras quechuas, porque son mucho más fáciles de retrieve than words en inglés o español, to my utter delight. En cuando a mi bilingüismo castellano-inglés— o mejor dicho, when I realized que soy bilingüe de una forma fluida, fue when I caught myself while I was recording a video during a class. I was teaching a group of bilingual pre-service teachers en español y cuando revisé el video I noticed I had already switched to English during the first minute. En ese tiempo consideraba que esa fluidez del lenguaje era una práctica más íntima. Por ejemplo, la lengua materna de mi esposo es inglés, pero habla español so we mix them all the time porque es una forma de construir puentes entre nosotros, pero en general era una práctica privada y era consciente. When I watched that video at home, I realized that I do it unconsciously too in the professional sphere with other bilinguals like myself. Una de las cosas que también me hizo reflexionar cómo enseñar español a los bilingual preservice teachers, fue durante el fieldwork de mi investigación. I had an assistant recording everything for me. El nació y se educó en Latinoamérica y recuerdo que cuando escuchaba a mis estudiantes decir que se sentían mal por su español, he was like ‘pobrecitos tus estudiantes. Voy a hacer unas tutorías, cualquier cosa que tú quieras I can help.’ And I remember my first thought was ‘wait a minute, ellos no son pobrecitos. Ellos tienen esta riqueza lingüística, este tesoro, an unearthed treasure. They shouldn’t be pitied.’ Entonces la pedagogía que apliqué fue creada con mis estudiantes y para ell@s. It was actually their abilities to poder analizar su propio lenguaje y su Embracing our Bilingual Selves in Reflection & Dialogue 69 capacidad de mirar críticamente su producción escrita y oral. They were using translanguaging when we were discutiendo sus textos, y editándolos. So, that validation that they did not have a wrong Spanish I think was empowering for them and triggered a spark, like ‘I’m not bad, I can do this.’ Es por eso que cambiar el código has nothing to do with the messages that we communicate. Using translanguaging, has nothing to do with how intelligent a person sounds like, the claims they make, the inferences they make, the production of knowledge that they make. I was also using it together with them, inventando palabras, divirtiéndome con mis mezclas, highlighting that I was doing it and I was proud of those practices; there was no reason to be ashamed. At the same time, we need to remember that they will have to go through those hoops, los que nosotros ya pasamos quizás. Like taking the licensure exams, taking the BTLPT (Bilingual Target Language Proficiency Test, Texas’ required language proficiency test for bilingual teachers), which should also be problematized as a gatekeeper ya que no permite que l@s maestr@s bilingües que no se adhieren a cánones monolingües puedan acceder a puestos en las escuelas públicas. En ese espacio nació mi research interest: ‘cómo hacer que este grupo de estudiantes bilingües que vienen desde un background in which schools took away their Spanish and the pride of their own linguistic and cultural practices, puedan ser mejores maestras bilingües?’. Cómo prevenir que sus historias de linguistic and cultural deprivation se repitan? This is why I do research with pre-service and in-service teachers. Es@s maestr@s van a reach out to veinticinco niños, veinticinco sets of papás y mamás cada año. Y las universidades para mí son los lugares donde se puede ver esos momentos de transformación. If my research does not serve the community I will serve, there is no point of doing that. Research to me has to do with praxis. And the praxis has to be embedded in communities. I’m just thinking that to do that kind of critical work takes a lot of mistakes. El self-reflection debe ser constante y aceptar que we are going to make mistakes. Si queremos convertirnos en los educadores que queremos ser en el futuro estaremos en constante deconstrucción. And that deconstruction is painful sometimes. Por ejemplo, I remember thinking and talking about errors when teaching. I remember stopping myself, but I didn’t have any other vocabulary because of my own training. Mi propio entrenamiento me decía que los estudiantes cometían errores. There was no vocabulary. As scholars you need to create that vocabulary para abrir ourselves to nuevos understandings. Cuando leí a Soltero et al. (2012) hablando sobre aproximaciones was when I got the vocabulary: this is an approximation, not an error. This shows intelligence and creativity, no que somos tontos o que es un crutch y que no 70 BLANCA C ALDAS C HUMBES ET AL . sabemos producir el lenguaje. Te das cuenta por supuesto que te da vergüenza lo que has hecho antes, but you need to remember que estas son etapas que teníamos que pasar to learn/unlearn. That archaeology of self (Sealey-Ruiz, 2017) es importantísima de manera individual y también dentro de un programa de preparación de educación bilingüe. Yo siempre recuerdo de dónde yo vengo y toda la lucha que he tenido para poder tener una educación. I never in my life would have thought I was going to become a doctor, ever! So, entiendo la necesidad de resistencia y resilience. It was clear to me que todos los maestros bilingües tienen que estar preparados para luchar. The certification is not going to save them against linguicism and racism and xenophobia outside the same way my doctorate will save me as a brown woman with an “accent” in the United States. So, they need to learn about the struggles within the field of bilingual education in order to know how to defend themselves, help others and transform the field. They need to have that knowledge to act. So that has always been my drive. Porque si nosotros no nos defendemos y luchamos, who is going to do it? And I am also thinking about the future: I want my children to be taught by people who see them as capable human beings. Me horroriza que alguien vea de forma negativa a una persona que se parece a mí o que habla como yo. So, to me this work is personal and political and it has definitely influenced my teaching and research. Para mí, es un moral duty aun cuando nadie me escuche. My Role is More of a Bridge—Deborah I feel like I come from the opposite perspective than Blanca because I grew up in a very monolingual English space. I had a privileged education and a white middle-class experience in northern Massachusetts. None of my family members, except my little sister spoke Spanish since I brought her to México with me one summer to learn it. She was infected with the same passion I had para aprender más sobre Latinoamérica y México. There were a few words in Yiddish I learned from my grandparents during my childhood, but I had no formal language education. However, when I first began to learn Spanish, it was in monolingual spaces. It was teaching in a dual language program in the 1990’s with strict language separation. I was learning Spanish in Mexico in the summers, and speaking English in the United States, so it was very much a monolingual paradigm. Then when I moved to Texas to be an assistant professor in a bilingual education program, the bilingual paradigm was so much more prevalent. I did not have the same preconceived biases against it as some Spanish dominant folks, especially Tejan@s, often come in with. I did not have the sense that it Embracing our Bilingual Selves in Reflection & Dialogue 71 was somehow improper or wrong to mix languages so naturally, when I heard it, I did it! In that sense I did not feel the stigma. But I sensed it from those around me when I started noticing bilingual practices happening. And then I started to question my own monolingual biases from previous experiences. There is a tension between preparing university students for a monolingual standardized test in Spanish and preparing them to be strong, proud, bilingual educators. Antes, el enfoque del TOPT (Texas Oral Proficiency Test, former Spanish language proficiency test for bilingual teachers) evaluaba la manera de hablar y entender de los estudiantes solamente, y ellos tomaban una clase para el desarrollo oral, pero fue como performative. El asunto era enseñarles how to perform this particular kind of professional Spanish for this particular kind of prompt. They had to do practice tests three times during their semester. They were lined up outside the office to come in to record for this machine, igual que en el examen. It was like performing — and then they had to do presentations in front of the class. That was their chance to use Spanish. En puro español, en un español estricto y estándar. Then, the TOPT went to BTLPT (current Texas Language Proficiency Test) de repente tuvimos que pensar en el desarrollo de la escritura de los futuros maestros bilingües y no solamente su producción oral. Working with Latinx bilingual students is a joy because you get to watch them come out of their shells and embrace these empowered identities and understand what we are talking about — that it is not the caliber of their academic language, it is the ideas that matter. Nevertheless, they also have to learn these academic languages in order to get through all the hoops and meet their goals. It is an ongoing process. I think it is also extra work to prepare bilingual teachers because everyone’s path to bilingualism is different and you have multiple dimensions of it. It is not just where they start in their pedagogical philosophies and their content knowledge. It is also where they start in their language practices and their identities around language. Language and identity come with so many emotional layers, so close to the heart, because it is who you are. And it is all ideological and enlaced with power. For example, la idea de academic language está entrenched y alineada con todo lo de colonialism and hegemony que tenemos en todos los aspectos de la vida. It’s not the register of the language that gives depth to the intellectual’s thinking. It is just a matter of which register you value, and which one has power in the space. Give the discourse that is labeled as academic language more power than the others, and you undermine a lot of Latinx students’ identities. So, to prepare bilingual teachers we need to interrogate our own identities and understand where we come from because it is important to know 72 BLANCA C ALDAS C HUMBES ET AL . who we are and how we got where we are —to help others get where they want to get. They need the space to interrogate the same power dynamics that we’re seeing them struggle against. I think that if we don’t do our own work, then we can’t help them do theirs. There is a deep connection in the power behind understanding our own identities and where we come from to better help and serve preservice bilingual teachers. We can not pretend that we are giving bilingual preservice teachers good readings that help them interrogate power and not put ourselves into it at all. You need to be authentically invested in supporting them reach their goals to become the people they want to become, and to change the world together; because our larger goal is to create agents of change that will teach future children to create a better world. Y entonces estos maestros que están en preparación will seek you out porque saben que estás pensando en ellos como personas, como seres humanos. I know who my DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) students are. I know which students are struggling financially or emotionally. A veces los estudiantes que quieren ser maestros bilingües, o maestras bilingües, son los que sufren más en la vida y se debe a los mismos factores de poder que los han marginalizado desde niños. Tienen que luchar contra la pobreza, no tienen apoyo del gobierno para asistir a la universidad, muchas veces sus padres tampoco tienen experiencia con la universidad. Son los primeros de sus familias en estudiar en la universidad. Cada quién tiene su rumbo, cada quién tiene su misión, y cada una de nosotras tenemos different goals or different perspectives of where we come from. My role is more of a bridge. I can embrace, be fascinated by, articulate and contribute to the conversations that scholars who are pushing our conceptions of critical frameworks and pushing us to really go beyond the ways that we are still centering these dominant ideologies. However, I am not sure I am going to be that kind of intellectual. I have tried and I have pushed some limits but it will probably not become my role because of the identity I had and the way that I have entered this field. I can view new perspectives, speak to that audience a little more than others. I have noticed in my teaching that if you can manage to get your voice, your critical, clear, angry, voice into a legitimate academic space such as an article in a peer reviewed journal that’s respected broadly like American Education Research Journal or Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages Quarterly, you get a seat at the table. If I am not going to be using my own voice to struggle against injustice and express my anger against what is wrong, then I am going to enter a different profession. Perhaps I will go back and teach fourth grade or work in a non-profit organization or do something else where I can feed my passions Embracing our Bilingual Selves in Reflection & Dialogue 73 because that’s why I’m here. If it was not for my passion in critical education, I would not want to work in this field. I would not want to deal with all the other work. I am not just interested in doing research. I’m actually interested in accomplishing social justice goals and that is why I do this work! Self-reflection: Combating Dominant Ideas About Bilingualism—Desiree We must think of the bilingual identity as something that emanates from a deeper contextualized conception of being bilingual. I feel that I am constantly becoming a bilingual self and that is why I am constantly moving from a monolingual to a bilingual self. Porque claro, si me pongo a pensar desde pequeña yo también usaba palabras en inglés, pero no con la conciencia de que eso era parte de un sistema único que me permitía utilizar recursos lingüísticos para comunicarme de forma contextualizada. Even though Spanish is natural and common to me on the one hand, when speaking with friends from Latin America, on the other hand, I am speaking in English to my colleagues in the United States, who I believe are more bilingual than me. They constantly speak back in Spanish thereby inviting me to be more bilingual than I am. I think I am an aspiring bilingual who is struggling to be bilingual, who is challenging her preconceptions of bilingualism as two monolinguals in one. I do not think that I have completely moved to a bilingual self. I still act as two monolinguals in one, as traditional as that may seem. Although, I find myself, less and less traditionally bilingual as I get more immersed in the bilingual world of Texas. A pesar de que vengo de clase acomodada y con tradición oligarca en Latinoamérica, he vivido otras realidades debido a guerras, inmigraciones y por participación en cambios sociales en Nicaragua. Estas experiencias me dejaron un compromiso muy fuerte que relaciono con la situación de las comunidades bilingües en Estados Unidos. When I decided that I was going to promote Spanish in the United States I thought that I was being rebellious. And then I found out I have to encounter my privilege in a different way, which has to do with the different types of Spanish dialects present in the United States. This was something different for me because I did not feel that my native Spanish dialect had been silenced or marginalized. Como maestra de Español me tomó tiempo desarrollar amistad con mis estudiantes porque creo que había una percepción de que yo les iba a corregir si me hablaban. Todavía me acuerdo de una alumna con quien desarrollé una relación de amistad y a quien le tengo cariño. Cuando era su supervisora de campo de ella, me dijo: “Oh no! Me va a venir a corregir mi español.” Yo 74 BLANCA C ALDAS C HUMBES ET AL . contesté: “Wow! ¡qué horrible este rol! No quiero ser policía del español.” Con otros alumnos no había mucho tiempo. Con ellos enfatizábamos la práctica para el examen y hacíamos ejercicios para el examen. Creo que también tuve un enfoque más pragmático cuando sentí que el espacio estaba más reducido para otros dialectos en la clase. Entonces, yo les reforzaba la idea de que había que tener ese certificado bilingüe pero que no representaba necesariamente que ese fuera un español superior al que ell@s ya hablaban. También creo que muchos estudiantes habían logrado una concientización más profunda porque ya venían preparados a las tutorías, dispuestos a ser críticos debido a algunos cursos que ya habían tomado. Me acuerdo con claridad de un estudiante que salió muy bajo en comprensión de lectura en el BTLPT conmigo. Pero venía ya con la actitud de ‘No, no soy yo. ¡Es que ese español es muy raro!.' For me, that was transformative. Analizamos la sintaxis del español estándar y él decía que rara que era. Eso a mí me impresionaba muchísimo. Y por primera vez dije en realidad sí. Y comencé a decir el español del BTLPT es muy raro. Desde entonces ese es mi enfoque. Comencé a tener discusiones de una manera más ideológica. Les comencé a hablar de la historia del español, de cómo un dialecto de Toledo se volvió el español estándar porque lo decidieron los reyes y cómo un dialecto puede convertirse en lo que el mundo considera el estándar por decisión de gente poderosa. As teacher educators, I think it is important to create the space for that hidden talent— that dialect to come out (Flores, 2018). It is amazing when you see it coming out, but we do not excavate deep enough. I am struggling because I think I may be fantasiosa porque I do not want to give up on engaging in some kind of dialogue con personas cuyas perspectivas son diversas y hasta opuestas— aunque en algunos casos coincidamos explícitamente hacia la equidad. Esto último tiene que ver con experiencias de cuando vivía en Estados Unidos y el esfuerzo oficial para que la educación bilingüe mejore, pero ¿es válido esto cuando se propaga el racismo de forma solapada? One challenge for myself is to keep the dialogue with people who may have apparently good intentions but for whom el racismo is unconsciously permeating their ideologies. Porque yo trabajé con gente así, sé lo que digo, y a lo mejor yo fui una de estas personas. Pensaba que empoderaba a otros y no me daba cuenta del racismo que yo misma estaba promoviendo. Entonces, tengo la meta de entrar en todo diálogo posible porque aspiro, tal vez románticamente, a que consideren algún aspecto de su ideología racista y haya algún tipo de transformación positiva. Another aspect is an invitation to be aware of how we carry internalized ideas from these sedimented notions of bilingualism that are derived from static and separation of languages. Por ejemplo, el modelo de las jerarquías Embracing our Bilingual Selves in Reflection & Dialogue 75 en el español está por todos lados, y Faltis (2013) me lo recordó en su obra: Demystifying the power of academic language, al tratar temas relacionados con clase social y racismo que giran en torno al español académico. Yo hago este tipo de lectura para desafiarme a mí misma porque creo que los discursos de la sociedad están tan asentados en la mente y por eso hay que estar desafiándose permanentemente. ¿No será que propagamos ideas sin darnos cuenta de dónde vienen muchas veces? Por eso creo que es bien importante estar consciente y reflexionar sobre la discrepancia entre las discusiones explícitas que tenemos sobre el bilingüismo y los mensajes implícitos e inconscientes que transmitimos y que muchas veces están en contradicción con esas políticas o decisiones explícitas. An important thing is just to be aware that there are not sufficient theoretical or practice-oriented models toward bilinguals, and especially toward simultaneous bilinguals. Heritage Spanish speakers are not adequately assessed. And so, assessing reading behaviors can easily lead to distorted interpretations and miss the richness, the intelligence, of simultaneous bilinguals. And because of how we have all been schooled, we carry those dominant ideas and it is important to have self-reflection. Conclusiones As Deborah pointed out, the path of bilingualism is different not only for futur@s docentes bilingües but for teacher educators as well. A deep examination of these three reflexiones show historias divergentes que se juntan (without mixing) en el mismo programa de preparación para maestr@s of Mexican-American/ Latinx descent. Even though las autoras’ accounts speak of an early exposure to a monolingual approach to second language learning as sequential late bilinguals and through subsequent second language training, ellas parten de distintos contextos socioculturales que las sitúan en posiciones del espectro bi/multilingüe. Blanca desde el inicial bilingüismo Spanish-Quechua (y la eventual adición del inglés) and her work in English as a Foreign Language, English as a Second Language and immersion contexts. Deb, una estadounidense de clase media, aprendió Spanish como adulta y trabajó en programas de lenguaje dual, y Desirée, a Central American woman with an upper-class origin who went on to become an ESL and Spanish teacher. The monolingual approach to their training as educators was the common denominator en sus trayectorias profesionales. The saliency of the authors’ bilingual selves became more predominant the more they engaged with bilingual students. Their linguistic practices, beliefs, and ideologies were contested even when having the responsibility to support bilingual pre-service teachers to excel en el examen de competencias 76 BLANCA C ALDAS C HUMBES ET AL . en español para poder licenciarse de maestr@s. Es en este contexto que, for example, Blanca catches herself using translanguaging practices in front of the class, pese a que ella lo consideraba una práctica íntima y la reconoce como válida y legítima al usarla y promoverla con orgullo dentro del salón de clase. Deborah, cuya competencia en el inglés como idioma de poder en los Estados Unidos de América le daba el privilegio de explorar language mixing among bilingual individuals, noticed the stigma associated with Spanglish among brown bodies. This is true when she retells the history of Spanish language support within the bilingual teacher preparation program donde las tres autoras se conocieron, whose practices policed students’ Spanish proficiency aún cuando se requería que fuera una competencia performativa. Por otro lado, Desiree describe su propia disyuntiva between her articulated and embodied language ideologies: su empeño para “deshacerse de esas armaduras” al empeñarse en recordar the hegemony of the monolingual approaches to language learning in the literature on second language learning para abrirse a un nuevo paradigma basado en el multilingüismo. These discoveries/reclamations/contestations transformed the configuration of the teacher preparation program in the kind of support students received for language development — debido a modificaciones en los requerimientos de la licenciatura that provided the impetus for change. La inclusion de translanguaging pedagogical approaches and deeper examination of discourses surrounding asuntos como language proficiency, discurso académico, identidad, prácticas e ideologías lingüísticas reflejan la necesidad de un enfoque multidimensional en la preparación de futuros maestr@s bilingües. Esta multidimensionalidad también incluye las tensiones de preparar future teachers to develop their Spanish language while supporting and embracing multilingual practices. The shifts the authors undertook are also reflected in their research and advocacy work in the field of bilingual education, highlighting constant self-reflection and interrogation of their positionality and privilege. Blanca highlights the importance of acknowledgement of the mistakes made as a byproduct of growth, lo que requiere unlearning and the use of research to acquire a new vocabulary to talk about bi/multilingualism. She also recalca la necesidad de transmitir los legados de resistencia y resilience a los futuros maestr@s bilingües contra el racismo, lingüicismo y xenofobia contribuyendo a la humanización de los estudiantes bilingües en las escuelas. Por otro lado, Deborah proposes genuine caring as a fundamental practice in bilingual teacher preparation and describes her advocacy-oriented research como un puente que intenta llevar mensajes de concientización de una manera accesible to audiences such as teachers and school leaders —her voice is more accepted in the mainstream, due to her privileges as a White scholar. Finally, Desiree Embracing our Bilingual Selves in Reflection & Dialogue 77 describes her mission to use her scholarship and established relationships with scholars with cognitive and innatist perspectives on second language learning in order to help them consider sociocultural and multilingual approaches to address the damage that perceived deficit views can do on bilingual individuals. Implications for Bilingual Teachers Mientras que las historias de las autoras tienen puntos de partida divergentes, en ellas se encuentran convergencias en sus trayectorias personales y profesionales and their effect on their approach en la formación de docentes bilingües. Por tanto, estas reflexiones muestran cuatro consideraciones for bilingual teacher educators. First, that an examination of self and identidad es sumamente importante in the work of bilingual teacher educators, especially when working with Mexican-American/ Latinx students. Segundo, the urgency of an asset-oriented focus en la preparación de futur@s maestr@s bilingües, who come into teacher preparation programs having lived rich histories as bilinguals and whose own self-examination has the potential to transform the world. Tercero, la responsabilidad de ofrecerles la oportunidad de una exploración dialogística about the language ideological implications of our work in bilingual education. Aspiring bilingual teachers deserve to understand the relationships between language and power in our society, lo cual los posiciona como profesionales empoderad@s con la claridad necesaria para potencialmente transformar su entorno y convertirse en líderes educativos (Palmer, 2018). Finalmente, es imperativo recordar que las relaciones que tenemos entre estudiantes y profesores en programas de preparación de maestr@s bilingües por necesidad tienen que ser humanizadas. 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