Educadoras de la Comunidad Negociando Conocimiento: A Latinx Critical and Testimonio Approach BY JOANNA V. MARAVILLA B.A. University of Illinois at Chicago, 2007 M.Ed., University of Illinois at Chicago, 2012 THESIS Submitted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum and Instruction in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Chicago, 2020 Chicago, Illinois Defense Committee: P. Zitlali Morales, Chair and Advisor Aria Razfar, Curriculum and Instruction Gregory V. Larnell, Curriculum and Instruction Verónica N. Vélez, Western Washington University Ann M. Aviles, University of Delaware Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH ii DEDICACIÓN Para mi abuelita María Lucina Chairez (1942 -2010) y mi abuela Martina Lemus Maravilla – Ustedes son las mujeres mas valientes que conozco y el ejemplo de una mujer luchadora, trabajadora, independiente que vieron una vida de dolor, sufrimiento y que siempre sacrificaron todo por sus hijos. Las quiero mucho y esto se las dedico a ustedes porque, sin su amor, sin su ejemplo, lecturas y testimonios este esfuerzo no hubiera sido. To my daughter Eliana Veronique Cano, I love you to the moon and back – with all my heart. Thank you for your wisdom, your unconditional love, and support. You are my inspiration and daily motivation. Thank you for always being my number one supporter and always believing in me. You have taught me so much about myself, about being a mom ~ Te Amo Para la comunidad, mi comunidad – thank you for grounding me, humbling me, and for your daily reminder that it is you that holds the knowledge, the assets, and the cultural wealth that must not go unrecognized, and that I must continue to center in my daily work. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is with gratitude that I have many people to thank for the fact that I have made it this far in my academic career and for the fact that this research lives. First, thank you to the students and Latina educadoras from La Villita who opened up their classrooms and their lives for two years of research. For allowing me to witness how your passion and desire to lift Latinx students up, shows in your daily work. To my mentora, committee chair y jefa Dr. P. Zitlali Morales, it is you that has held me up throughout this process. For years, you have believed in me and have always encouraged me to reach for my highest potential, all while legitimizing my scholarship and academic work. It is you that has apprenticed me to be the activista scholar that I seek to become. You have guided me in this process in a way that I could never repay you for. You have taught me how to be a researcher, a teacher, and above all you have always reminded me to stay grounded and continue to stay true to mi comunidad, mi gente, mi raza. Thank you for hands-on support and always staying up late with me to get things done. I finally finished because of you. ¡Muchísimas Gracias! Thank you to my dissertation committee Dr. Verónica N. Vélez, Dr. Ann M. Aviles, Dr. Aria Razfar and Dr. Gregory V. Larnell. Thank you for your commitment to serving in this role and for your support in getting me through this process. Dr. Vélez, muchísimas gracias for approaching me during CRSEA and for your beautiful words of encouragement, siempre. Dr. Aviles, thank you for your endless dedication to la causa in Chicago and for allowing me to learn from your critical scholarship. Dr. Razfar, thank you for inviting me to be part of ELMSA back in 2013 and for putting me this researcher pathway. It is through my experiences in ELMSA that I quickly learned the many roles we play in the academic space and you were there Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH iv to guide me through the process. Dr. Larnell, it was you that steered my interest in matemáticas and assured me that indeed I do have a place in the mathematic world. Thank you all. Thank you, Project ELMSA (English Learning through Math, Science and Action Research) for giving me a space in the research world since the day I began the doctoral program in 2013, and for all of your teachings throughout the years. Especially, Dr. Aria Razfar, Dr. Zayoni Torres, Dr. Joseph C. Rumenapp, Dr. Ambareen Nazir, and Dr. Beverly Troiano. To the Anhelo Project – Thank you for being my home away from home, for showing me the essence of the undocumented movement. For your daily reminder that nothing is possible without working collectively and toward the same vision. We had a vision together, we worked together, and we made it happen. It is because of you all and what I have learned from you throughout the years and our mission, that I am driven to continue with my academic and community work. Thank you, Karla & Erik Perez, Alicia Rodriguez, Maria Ramos-Cuaya, Carlos Samaniego, Lupe Chavez, Joselin Cisneros, Lisa Chavez, Gabriela Reno, Hector Silva, Mónica Mercado, and the countless individuals that have volunteered throughout the years for the sustainability of the Anhelo Project and our goal of providing funds to undocumented youth on their pursuit to college. To the LARES Program – Thank you for breaking institutional boundaries and for inviting me to join the summer bridge program in 2002. For seeing something in me, when the office of admissions at UIC saw nothing. You have opened up the collegiate pathway to so many of us, and for that I will always hold you in my heart. Thank you, Dr. Leonard Ramirez, Luis Duarte, Areli Castañeda, Onitze Zenarutzabeitia Pikatza y Hugo Teruel, for your academic guidance. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH v Thank you Summer Research Opportunity Program (SROP), in particular Jose Perales and the 2005 & 2006 cohorts for your initial teachings around research and affirmations that students of color are indeed scholars – “SROP it Like it’s Hot”. To Dr. Frances R. Aparicio – Thank you for seeing something in me when I first stepped foot at UIC at the age of 18 years old. I had no clue or direction in what it meant to succeed in college. But you cultivated that fire, that longing, that desire in me that I needed to persevere. You validated my experiences, mi identidad, mi comunidad, and taught me that indeed I am valid. When I became pregnant with Eliana, you reassured me that I had the right to be in the academic space, just like anyone else. You taught me to find my voice, to stand up for what I believe in, and to fight for justice. Through your teachings, your words, your research, mentorship and wisdom, you set the foundation for my future work not only in the academy, but most importantly en la comunidad. Thank you for your endless support, siempre. Thank you, Dr. David Stovall, for being instrumental in my decision to pursue this academic path and for your consistent guidance. For introducing me to the theoretical and methodological approaches in my work – CRT, LatCrit y Testimonio. Thank you for always exemplifying what it means to be an activist scholar from Chicago. Rogelio Cano, words cannot express how grateful I am that our daughter has you in her life. Since the day she was born and I decided to stay in college, you have found every which way to be supportive. Thank you for taking care of her and showing her what it means to have a father demonstrate unconditional love. You have cared for her during so many days and nights that I was in the field collecting data, taking evening classes, working full-time, and teaching at the university. Without your support, finishing might not have been an option. Thank you. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH vi Thank you to mi familia: my mom and siblings – Luz M. Fuentes, Christine Chiu, Jonathan Chiu, Adrian S. Maravilla, Quetzali Maravilla – thank you for always being my unconditional supporters, for reminding me that anything is possible and for your constant reaffirmations. I love you all and am so happy for the strong bond we have cultivated throughout the years. Dad, Saul O. Maravilla, thank you for your support these last few years and for working toward demonstrating your love for me. Tio S. Rafael Maravilla, thank you for believing in me and for your constant kindness. Uncle Daniel Chairez and tía Rosa Chairez, thank you for treating me like your little sister and for always reminding me that Pilsen will always be home. Para la familia Carranza – todas mis tías, tíos, primas, primos en Chicago, Nebraska, Colorado, California y Zacatecas, Mx – Gracias por siempre demostrarme que me quieren y por dar me ese amor incondicional que me dio mi abuelita Lucina. Los quiero mucho por sus enseñanzas de migrar y de establecer un hogar en este país. To my beautiful friends, Rosa M. Rios-Garcia, Alfredo Estrada, Alicia Rodríguez, Dr. Myrna García, Theresa Christenson-Caballero, Hector Gonzalez, Yamali Rodriguez-Gruger, Dr. Lydia Saravia, Dr. Rudy Aguilar, Jesús Iñiguez, María Ramos-Cuaya, Ramona Alcalá, Anyine Galvan-Rodriguez, Rubén Feliciano, Grisel Ramos and Nanett Konig Toro. You have always demonstrated your love for me, even before I took this journey. Thank you for your continued motivation, advice, and support during this process y por siempre showing me true friendship. To Dr. Miguel A. Saucedo, your selfless acts en la comunidad are an inspiration to my continued and future work. Finally, Mil gracias Xingona Writing Group for our fierce weekly writing sessions! Without you, I could have not stayed disciplined in my writing. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH vii TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICACIÓN ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS LIST OF FIGURES LIST OF TABLES ABSTRACT ii iii x xi xii CHAPTER ONE: STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM Situating My Linguistic Identity Tejiendo la Trenza Intellectual & Personal History La historia de mi familia migrando al Norte Testimonio La Prieta Mi Primer Maestra Negociando Mi Identidad de Matemáticas I hate Math Introduction to the Study of Mathematic, Racialized, Linguistic Identity What Does Latinx Emergent Bilingual (LEB) Mean in This Work Bilingual Education Language as Racialized Statement of the Problem ¿Por Qué Matemáticas? Conclusion 1 1 2 3 3 5 6 4 8 9 10 10 11 12 14 14 17 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW & THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Introduction Teaching Students of Color: Various Approaches Over the Years Teaching Students of Color in Mathematics Education Teaching Matemáticas to Latinx Emergent Bilingual (LEB) Students The Importance of Teacher Identity When Teaching Students of Color Theoretical Framework: Latinx Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) y Testimonio Latinx Critical Race Theory LatCrit in Matemáticas Testimonio Aligning Testimonio and a LatCrit Framework The Intercentricity of Race and Racism The Challenge to Dominant Ideology The Commitment to Social Justice The Centrality of Experiential Knowledge The Transdisciplinary Perspective for LatCrit 19 19 20 23 26 29 32 33 36 37 38 38 39 40 40 41 Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH viii Conclusion 41 CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH DESIGN Research Design Overview PROJECT: Professional Development for Teachers of EBs My work in PROJECT Educadora Participatory Action Research (PAR) Location Activismo en La Villita Paisano Mendez Participants Vanessa Eva Daisy Participant Observation Data Collection and Data Sources Data Analysis Testimonios Conclusion 42 42 42 44 46 47 50 51 51 52 53 53 54 54 55 57 57 59 CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS Overview The Importance of Testimonio as a Lens for Examining the Educadoras’ Practice PROJECT (Participatory Action Research Project) Units and Research Questions The Importance of Incorporating LEB Students’ Funds of Knowledge Conexiones to the Findings Los Tres Temas Primer Tema: The Importance of Building Comunidad in the Classroom Community Cultural Wealth Drawing on comunidad in the classroom Segundo Tema: The Impact of Identidad in the Classroom for Both Latina Educadoras and Latinx Emergent Bilingual (LEB) Students Latina Educadora Identidad Drawing on Latinx Emergent Bilingual Students’ Funds of Knowledge Tercer Tema: Language as Wealth Multilingual Language Practices as a Resource for Latinx Emergent Bilingual Students’ Understanding of Matemáticas Promoting Multilingualism in the Classroom Conclusion 60 60 61 62 68 69 70 75 75 80 CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION, IMPLICATIONS, AND CONCLUSION Overview Negociando Conocimiento 102 102 108 117 117 122 126 128 128 128 Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH ix Discussion LatCrit & Testimonio Tejiendo la Trenza La Practica Implications Teacher Education Matemáticas Education Teoría y Metodología Conclusion La Nueva Mestiza in Me 129 129 131 134 138 139 140 141 142 143 REFERENCES 145 APPENDICES Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D 157 157 159 160 162 CURRICULUM VITAE 163 Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH LIST OF FIGURES Figure Numbers Page 1. PROJECT....................................................................................................... 43 2. Chicago Neighborhood Maps........................................................................ 47 3. Los tres temas and the six codes.................................................................... 71 4. The interlacing of comunidad, identidad, and language as wealth................ 75 5. Vanessa’s activity triangle............................................................................. 81 6. Eva’s activity triangle.................................................................................... 92 7. Daisy’s activity triangle................................................................................. 99 8. Tejiendo la trenza........................................................................................... 131 x Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH LIST OF TABLES Table Number Page 1. Current South Lawndale Demographics................................................... 48 2. La Tres Latina educadoras en La Villita.................................................. 52 3. PROJECT cohort unit questions............................................................... 63 4. Vanessa PROJECT unit questions............................................................ 64 5. Eva PROJECT unit questions................................................................... 66 6. Daisy PROJECT unit questions................................................................ 67 7. Coding Categories…………………………………………………………….. 70 8. Vanessa transcript 1.................................................................................. 82 9. Vanessa transcript 2................................................................................. 84 10. Vanessa transcript 3.................................................................................. 85 11. Vanessa transcript 4.................................................................................. 86 12. Vanessa transcript 5.................................................................................. 87 13. Vanessa transcript 6................................................................................... 88 14. Vanessa transcript 7……………………………………………………………. 90 15. Eva transcript 1.......................................................................................... 93 16. Eva transcript 2.......................................................................................... 95 17. Eva transcript 3.......................................................................................... 97 18. Daisy transcript 1....................................................................................... 100 19. Vanessa transcript 8................................................................................... 109 20. Eva transcript 4.......................................................................................... 111 21. Eva transcript 5........................................................................................... 113 22. Daisy transcript 2........................................................................................ 115 23. Daisy transcript 3........................................................................................ 116 24. Vanessa transcript 8.................................................................................... 122 25. Eva transcript 6............................................................................................ 124 26. Eva transcript 7............................................................................................ 124 27. Daisy transcript 4......................................................................................... 126 xi Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH xii ABSTRACT Understanding students’ changing demographics within the public educational system in the US is important for educational stakeholders. In particular, teachers of Latinx1 emergent bilingual2 (LEB) students should be able to relate to their educational needs and their identityshaping experiences. It is crucial for teachers and stakeholders to examine their identities and understand how their own experiences shape their practice. I look closely at how three Latina educadoras, who participated in a year-long participatory action research project, implicitly negotiated and reflected on their own identities: racial, linguistic, and mathematical, to inform their teaching practice. By turning my attention to Latina educadoras that identify as formerly emergent bilingual and participated in an English as a Second Language (ESL) or bilingual education program within an urban public school during their own elementary and/or high school education, I seek to unpack how they draw upon their experiences to inform their professional and pedagogical practice inside the classroom. I engaged in a qualitative case study that draws from a larger professional development research project (PROJECT) aimed at incorporating students’ funds of knowledge in order to assist in the development of curriculum that promotes greater equitable outcomes for emergent bilingual students, who in large part identify as Latinx. With data consisting of individual and focus group interviews, I use Latino critical race theory (LatCrit) and testimonio as my 1 I use Latinx in replacement of Latina/o and Latin@ because it is a term that moves beyond gender binaries and is inclusive of the intersecting identities of Latin American descendants within the U.S. (Koons, 2016). 2 I use the term emergent bilingual instead of English language learner or English learner because it is “through school and through acquiring English, these students become bilingual, able to continue to function in their home language, as well as English - their new language and that of school” (García & Kleifgen, 2010, p. 2). Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH xiii theoretical and methodological approach (Bernal, Burciaga & Carmona, 2012) to explore how race, identity, and power mediate a pedagogically relevant and inclusive mathematical curriculum for LEB students. Through the telling of their testimonio (narratives) about being LEB and their own matemáticas learning experiences, Latina educadoras position their understanding, struggle with, and development of their notions of what it means to teach LEB students within the space of matemáticas. I explored the following research questions: 1) How do Latina educadoras use their LEB and matemáticas identity-shaping experiences to inform the way they teach matemáticas to their LEB students? 2) How do Latina educadoras’ identityshaping experiences lead to instruction that promotes students to see themselves as matemáticas learners and doers of matemáticas (Martin, 2012) over time? Through the analysis of both their testimonios and practica, I argue that all three Latina educadoras demonstrated moving beyond the idea of teaching as politically neutral to understand their teaching as a political practice (Gutierrez, 2013). Three emergent themes resulted: the centrality of community cultural wealth, identidad, and language as wealth in the teaching of the Latina educadoras. Through their self-reconstructed identidades, these educadoras better understood how to connect their curriculum to LEB students’ everyday practices outside of the classroom, as well as more fully assess their students’ comprehension of matemáticas. Implications include the need for more research on Latinx teachers who identify as teaching in communities where they are from, research on how the act of testimonio can impact teachers’ pedagogy, and research on the incorporation of students’ community funds of knowledge into the curriculum in order to support the construction of powerful mathematical identities in LEB students. Keywords: Race, Language, Latinx Critical Race Theory (LatCrit), Latinx emergent bilingual, Latinx, Latina educadora, identidad, comunidad, testimonio, matemáticas. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 1 CHAPTER ONE: STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM “Con imágenes domo mi miedo, cruzo los abismos que tengo por dentro. Con palabras me hago piedra, pájaro, puente de serpientes arrastrando a ras del suelo todo lo que soy, todo lo que algún día seré.” ~ Gloria Anzaldúa (1987, p. 93) Situating My Linguistic Identity It is through the influence of Gloria Anzaldúa (1987) that I believe it is critical to situate my work and the languages I have chosen to write this dissertation, in order to give voice to both my mother tongue of español e inglés. I do so in order to highlight my own linguistic practices that have impacted my multiple identidades – a child of migrants, a first-generation college student, a community activista, and now an emerging scholar within the field of education. I write in both Spanish and English as a way to evidence my whole linguistic repertoire and validate my stance around the ways in which language must be used and preserved as nonhierarchical (García, 2018). This approach of accounting for our testimonios about everyday experiences and capturing those experiences through our multiple idiomas challenges societal indifferences that have isolated and marginalized Latinas and our Latinx comunidades (Montoya,1994). By giving space to my multiple idiomas, I acknowledge the historical and continued struggles of people of color within the U.S., including my own familia and that of my antepasados. I acknowledge that in order to further legitimize mi comunidad within the academy, this research and its participants – the Latina educadoras and their Latinx emergent bilingual students – I must allow for a space in which our lenguas, dialectos e idiomas are used to further decolonize and break away from ideologies that have been historically used to silence us. According to Macedo and Bartolomé (2019), Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 2 It is against this sociopolitical and ideological context that teachers of immigrant, English learners (ELs), and other linguistic minoritized students, particularly Latinas/os, must acknowledge and challenge nativist ideologies in order to provide effective instruction and student/community advocacy to protect their students from the symbolic and material violence they often experience on a daily basis in their schools and communities. (p. 46) Recognizing the urgency to write fluidly in both inglés y español maintains the understanding that in doing so, my work demonstrates political clarity (Macedo & Bartolomé, 2019). This is defined as “the ongoing process…by which individuals come to understand the possible linkages between macro-level political, economic, and social variables and subordinated groups' academic performance in the micro-level classroom” (Bartolomé, 2004, p. 98). This ongoing struggle and the interconnections to our multiple identitdades are embedded within my daily work. Tejiendo la Trenza As part of this political clarity, I use el concepto de tejiendo la trenza as a tool of resistencia and a methodological approach, in which I am able to display how my work intersects with an array of disciplines. This allows me to embark on a path that is intentional about making direct connections to race, gender, class, language, and education. This approach shapes my “critical practice that is committed to exploring the in-between spaces, too often ignored and erased by disciplinary practices” (Flores, 2000, p. 696). The metaphor of tejiendo la trenza has become a critical perspective and a process by which there is constant braiding (Montoya, 1994). It brings together multiple theoretical models, languages, and experiences to create a space for oppositional consciousness (Flores, 2000). Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 3 This oppositional consciousness draws from Chicana/Latina feminist scholarship to “express values, collective identities, shared knowledge, and common vocabulary” (Quiñones, 2016, p. 340). El concepto de tejiendo la trenza for me and in my work is a way in which I am able to arrive at an understanding around how Latina educadoras can be effective in the classroom in a way in which they enact, overlap, merge, collide, and sustain their personal, professional, and community identidades (Delgado Bernal, 2008). Through the telling of their testimonios, each educadora reveals how her racial, linguistic, and matemáticas identidades coincides with her teaching practices. In order to explore how tejienda la trenza takes place with the Latina educadoras in this study, I begin with sharing part of my own testimonio and how I came to this work through an account of my familia’s historia de migrar and arrival to Chicago, mi relación con mi querida abuelita, and that of my own educational journey with matemáticas. I arrive at the understanding that my community activismo cannot be separated from who I am as a scholar, a mom, a daughter, and the many identidades that I carry within me. Intellectual & Personal History La historia de mi familia migrando al Norte My maternal abuelit@s who were born in the state of Zacatecas, México migrated to the U.S. around 1974, after having their first two children in Juárez, Chihuahua. For them, this was the borderland in which they left behind their family, friends, heirlooms, and small businesses in search of a better future for their children. Their decision to migrate and leave behind all of their belongings is similar to so many stories of migration, longing, and desire for economic stability. Upon leaving behind all of their possessions and risking their small children's lives, they arrived Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 4 in Omaha, Nebraska where they had their third child, my aunt Rosa. After a few years of working en las matanzas, they decided to settle in Chicago. It was a weekend trip to visit my abuelitas brother, mi tio Carlos, who lead them on a road that would change their lives forever. This road took them from Omaha to Chicago, introducing them to a city full of Mexican cultura that they had not found in the small farming city of Omaha. Their weekend getaway led them to settle in the beautiful neighborhood of Pilsen. This was the only place, as my abuelita would later describe, in which they found la cultura Mexicana that they desired for their children to grow up in. My abuelita always told me, cuando llegamos a la dieciocho, estaba tan alegre de ver tantas cosas de México allí afuera de La Casa Del Pueblo, las tortillerías frescas, y la gente hablaba español. Upon settling in Pilsen, both of my abuelit@s found work anywhere they could. My abuelo began working at a local factory with my tio Carlos and my abuelita found work at one of the Affy Tapple factories over on 21 st and Oakley St. A few years later, both my abuelo and abuelita would begin working in a factory outside of Chicago in the suburb of Elk Grove Village, a 35-minute commute. She spent over 35 years of her life at this factory, Cooper Lighting. This was while their three children matriculated into the local CPS neighborhood schools: Whittier, Cooper, and eventually Benito Juarez high school. They established their nueva casa in an apartment building on the corner of 21st and Wood Street in Pilsen where the doors were always kept open for any family member to stop in, eat, and enjoy the company of our familia. My abuelit@s’ home became the pit stop for so many family members and conocidos del rancho that migrated through as they found a place to settle. One year after my birth in 1985, my abuelo abandoned the home that he had helped establish with my abuelita, Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 5 leaving behind his three children. My abuelita became a single mother to her now 18-year-old daughter, 13-year-old son, 10-year-old daughter and 1-year-old nieta, la prieta. Testimonio It was through my weekly interactions with my abuelita and listening to her story that I began to learn early on the power of sharing our testimonio: growing up in México, migrating, her abusive relationship with my abuelo, working in a factory for over 35 years, and many other experiences that she encountered. Through her testimonio, my abuelita was able to unpack and understand her positionality as a Mexicana, a single mother, and a laborer. When we would sit on her kitchen table chatting over una comida that I would help her prepare, she would use the telling of her story as a way to define her liberation from the many struggles she had encountered throughout her life (Blackmer Reyes & Curry Rodriguez, 2012). My abuelita used her testimonio as a way to expose the violence she endured disrupting her silencing, while building a sense of solidarity with me, her nieta and the one she called la prieta (Anzaldua, 1990). Our weekly discussions allowed for my abuelita and me to embrace testimonio as an emerging power that made her an agent of knowledge and me her active listener. It allowed her to teach me about the importance of knowing oppression, [and] the “importance that knowledge plays in empowering oppressed people” (Collins, 1991, p. 221). Testimonio permitted my abuelita to unpack her counter-narratives, while engaging personal and collective aspects of her identidad to translate her choices, her silencing, and ultimately expose her multiple identidades (Beverley, 2005; Latina Feminist Group, 2001; Lopez & Davalos, 2009) in a way that she had never been able to do. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 6 As an active listener to her testimonio, I learned how to become a participatory reader who acted on behalf of mi abuelita as I put effort to arrive at “justice and redemption” for her (Blackmer Reyes & Curry Rodriguez, 2012), myself as her nieta, our familia, y nuestra comunidad. It was through her testimonio that I began to understand the importance of her stories and their intention of affirmation and empowerment (Blackmer Reyes & Curry Rodriguez, 2012) for her and years later for myself as a young Latina mother, activista and firstgeneration college graduate. Through her testimonio, mi abuelita gave me the tools I needed to engage with my own identidad, mi comunidad. and understand the significance of sharing my testimonio. La Prieta I was the first-born grandchild to my abuelit@s and la nieta that mi abuelita called la prieta. Before my birth, my mother's pregnancy at the age of 16 years old was the disgrace of la familia. My abuelo physically attacked my mother on the day he found out that she was pregnant and silenced himself from my mother until the day I was born – July 1, 1984. Thereafter, I became the joy of la familia; everyone took care of me. Further, my tia Rosa and uncle Dan treated me as a baby sister – until this day. For my abuelita, calling me la prieta was her way of expressing her cariño toward me. She chuckled at how dark my skin would turn in the summer due to the sun and how much I looked like her. In her eyes, no one else en mi familia looked the way she did, with her dark caramel skin, dark hair, and green-colored eyes. She would say to me, “Prietita, ándale vamos a la tienda,” o “Prietita, ándale vamos a la iglesia” Since then, we established such a loving and cariñoso bond that even my mother could not understand our connection. Every moment that we spent together was a moment in which I learned from her Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 7 and understood all the pain she had endured. Mi abuelita was my first maestra who taught me la historia, el lenguaje, literatura, and most importantly matemáticas. With her fifth-grade education, she taught me all the skills she acquired during her upbringing living in la ciudad de Fresnillo, Zacatecas y allá en el rancho de México. Mi Primer Maestra As I grew older, I tried so hard to never miss a weekend spending time with her and listening to her stories, advice, and guidance. Because of her, learning mi familias historia, tradiciones, y valores became part of my own identidad. Mi abuelita gave me a sense of identidad and belonging; she gave me purpose and helped me understand my future callings in life even before I knew. She taught me how to speak, read, and write en su lengua materna. For her, proficiency in the English language was critical if I wanted to get ahead in life. Although she never considered herself proficient in English, she always expressed to me the importance of knowing two languages, the importance of being able to communicate to los güeros y los mayordomos, which I would encounter in my career path. She wanted me to be able to succeed in a country that would never be hers, but I could call it my own. From a very young age, I lived for spending my weekends con mi abuelita. I would count down the weekdays eagerly waiting for Friday night to arrive so that I could sleep over. When I would disobey the rules, as a punishment, my mother would not allow me to stay over at abuelita’s house. This would crush me entirely, and on those days, I would lock myself in my room. As part of my time with mi abuelita, we would spend Friday nights watching novelas y las noticias con Jorge Ramos, then we would wake up el sábado bien temprano, prender el radio, limpiar la casa, e ir a pagar los billes. Paying the bills consisted of going to the bank to deposit Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 8 her check and then to la Casa del Cambio. Before we would head out, she would ask me to hacerle las cuentas. First, I would calculate all the bills, and then I would subtract the total amount from her paycheck. Upon arriving at the bank, she would tell la cajera, la señora Ester who lived down the block from her, to cash her check and only give her as much as she needed to pay her bills. The rest of the money was deposited into her savings account. Next, she would pull me to the side and ask me to count the cash that la señora Ester gave her to make sure everything was correct. Then, we would walk over to la Casa del Cambio to pay her bills, which included paying all the utilities. On many occasions, she would invite me to El Viejito if she had change remaining after paying the bills. El Viejito was the local corner grocery store on 21 st and Leavitt Street that was actually called La Ultima Lucha. However, mi abuelita called it El Viejito because of the old man that owned it. I was able to have any candy or chips that I wanted. Once a month, we would walk over to Don Pedro’s house to pay the rent. This was only until Don Pedro sold mi abuelita the building she lived in, where she had established her hogar and had raised her familia as una madre soltera. Negociando Mi Identidad de Matemáticas During the week, when I was not with mi abuelita, I had to stay with my mom and my stepfather to help my young siblings get ready for school. Whittier Elementary School was where I went to school during the time that we still lived in Pilsen and up until the end of 5 th grade. One day, I recall waking up in the morning with stomach pain and full of emotions because I had no desire to go to school. I went to school because I had to and because I had nowhere else to go when my mom was at work. My experiences kept me away from potentially making the most of my education inside of the classroom. In particular, my relationship with my parents, including my stepfather, pushed me to disengage from the daily classroom content and Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 9 routine. These relationships caused me emotional instability in part because my biological father was not in my life; I witnessed the physical and mentally abusive relationship my mother had with my stepfather and the physical abuse he perpetuated with my little brother for years. If only my maestras had taken some time to ask me what was wrong, I might have been able to explain. I Hate Math During my first years of learning, I understood that I had to be a good student by listening to directions, following instructions, and engaging with my learning. I recall having a breakdown in my first-grade classroom, in which I professed to my teacher, Ms. Finkel, that I hated math! I refused to engage in the lesson because it was difficult for me to comprehend the “simple” word problems Ms. Finkel had us working on. In third grade, I recall being terrified of my teacher Ms. Ryle and having the most difficult time memorizing my multiplication tables. I would sit in our apartment living room after school and go over my multiplication tables with my mother. She would become frustrated every time I would mess up. “Get out of my face and go figure it out!” she would yell. I hated math, and my disliking for it only grew deeper and deeper as the years continued. From a young age, I was a poor test-taker and continuously failed to excel academically because matemáticas was so complex for me. In high school, after moving around and transferring to three different schools, I refused to take matemáticas seriously. I scored very low on the ACT exam and was strongly advised by my white counselor not to apply to college because I could never be successful with such poor test-taking abilities. I defied this counselor, applied to college, and took my chances. It was through the Latin American Recruitment and Educational Services (LARES) Program summer bridge that I was granted the opportunity of proving my academic knowledge beyond matemáticas. When I arrived to college, I was placed Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 10 into remedial matemáticas, for which I would receive no credit. Continuing with my "bad matemáticas skills," I failed Math 070 three times before I decided that I had to seek an alternative route to obtaining my credit in matemáticas in order to graduate. I took Philosophy 101: Introduction to Logic three times before I could pass it. For graduate school, I scored very poorly in the matemáticas portion of the GRE, and because of this, I had to prove my ability to succeed. Introduction to the Study of Mathematic, Racialized, Linguistic Identity As I continue to grow intellectually and deeply understand my positionality in my work, it is this identidad de matemáticas that must continue to unfold. During the second year of my doctoral program, my professor advised that I should consider writing my dissertation around the topic of matemáticas. There was no way I would even consider it. I hate math! How could I, a student labeled bad at matemáticas, talk about matemáticas? What could I possibly contribute to current academic scholarship? Yet as time passed, it was my own experience with matemáticas that led me to realize that if I had such difficulty with matemáticas, how many other Latinx students have had similar experiences? What about students such as myself that are children of migrants or migrants themselves, who speak multiple languages, and are growing up in the same or similar urban context? How can their educadores use their experiential knowledge to aid Latinx emergent bilingual (LEB) students in connecting with matemáticas? What Does Latinx Emergent Bilingual (LEB) Mean in This Work “Educational approaches for bilingual or multilingual Latinx students that focus on strategies often fail to contextualize the students’ experiences” (España & Herrera, 2020, p. 5). Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 11 The terms commonly used when we discuss our students and their families are associated with labels that fail to recognize their whole linguistic repertoire (Garica & Kleifgen, 2018). For example, English Learner (EL), English Language Learner (ELL) or English as a Second Language (ESL) exemplify this practice of focusing on what students are still thought to be lacking (English proficiency), rather than identifying the linguistic assets that students currently have and are continuing to develop. Additionally, I specify that the emergent bilingual students I focus on in my work and who are majority Spanish-speaking are also racialized in this society as “Hispanic” or “Latino”. However, I choose to use the newer term Latinx, that even compared to Latina/o or Latin@ more deliberately emphasizes the move beyond gender binaries and is inclusive of the intersecting identities of Latin American descendants within the U.S. (Koons, 2016). In this dissertation and in my research, I use the term Latinx emergent bilingual (LEB) to describe those students who are racialized as Latinx in the context of the U.S., speak Spanish in the home or community context, and are learning English as an additional language, typically referred to in U.S. public education as ELs, ESLs, or ELLs (Fu, Hadjioannou & Zhou, 2019). Bilingual Education Since the fight for bilingual education began within the United States, it has been driven by “the work of local activists and through sustained community struggles” (Barbian, Cornell Gonzales, and Mejia, 2017, p. xvi). Nativists have succeeded in mandating English-only instruction, which for generations has continued to perpetuate limited access to educational opportunities for emergent bilingual students. For example, the 2001 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation described emergent bilingual students as students whose limited proficiency in reading, writing, speaking, and understanding the English language was enough to deny them Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 12 the ability to succeed and meet educational state standards and assessments, referring to emergent bilingual students as incapable learners. Rather, teachers need to celebrate students' language knowledge. Barbian, Cornell Gonzales, and Mejia (2017) explain that, too often in our classes, conversations – labels – focus on the learning of English rather than the recognition or development of students’ home languages. If we focus our conversations exclusively on English acquisition, we lose sight of the importance of simultaneous home language development and miss out on rich opportunities to bring students’ home language into the daily curriculum. (p. xiii) Working with LEB students means holding higher expectations of their learning outcomes, along with recognizing their multilingualism as a strength and not as suppressing their academic success (Garcia & Kleifgen, 2010). Moreover, education can be more inclusive and successful for students if the knowledge of their home communities and home language is given parity with the formal curriculum used within the classroom. Language as Racialized Students of color are socialized within the school context in ways that influence how they foster their cultural understanding of where they fit within the broader society. This type of socialization becomes relevant to how students of color experience schooling and how their identitdad is shaped. Schools are places where messages are produced, reproduced, and institutionalized for students about their capabilities to succeed. In turn, something happens in schools that forms and changes students’ racial identities (Lewis, 2003). Students of color are shaped by social and cultural expectations; they listen and accede to what others are saying, learn Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 13 the rules, and internalize the norms (Ingham, 1994). For students of color, such as those that identify as Latinx emergent bilinguals (LEB), these reified institutionalized norms perpetuate inequities that are dismissive of identities shaped outside of the classroom. This also extends to the bilingualism and multiculturalism of their identities, as they are consistently under assault, which has resulted in racist, colonial, linguistic and cultural practices peddled in schools, contributing to alienation and marginalization (Macedo, 2000). Understanding how race plays out in the classroom extends further when discussing issues around racial and linguistic inequities. Language and race are historically and institutionally constructed categories whose purpose is to formulate distinctions between Europeaness and otherness. Individuals habitually tend to the ways these established racial and linguistic hierarchies continue to reproduce racism and linguistic discrimination towards minoritized communities. Currently, the linguistic practices of LEB students continue to be judged based on white hegemonic standards positioning them as deficient (Rosa, 2019). The ‘linguistic and cultural violence’ that these students continuously face often contributes to their educational alienation, alongside feelings of cultural inferiority in schools (Garcia & Kleifgen, 2010; Macedo, 2000; Zentella, 2002). Overwhelmingly, school agents do not tell students that their linguistic practices and ways of thinking are or are perceived as viable ways in which they can succeed. Instead, the linguistic discrimination LEB students and their communities continuously face set them up to produce two standard languages but are represented as not using either appropriately. Rosa (2019) theorizes the ideology of “languagelessness” that frame US Latinx linguistic practices as deficient regardless of their proficiencies. He adds that this creates an inverted conceptualization of bilingualism within Latinx communities denoting their bilingualism as a deficiency, rather than an asset. This creates Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 14 biases of thought that have far-reaching implications for Latinx emergent bilingual student success in the classroom, even in matemáticas. Statement of the Problem ¿Por Qué Matemáticas? Matemáticas, as we know it, is filled with cultural values, assumptions, and ways of thinking deriving from Eurocentric ideologies. It is associated with Eurocentric cultural proficiencies that suggest the level of human intelligence one might have (Bourdieu, 1986; Leonard, Brooks, Barnes-Johnson, & Berry, 2010; Martin, 2010). This creates a school environment in which proficiency en matemáticas is associated with intelligence and if a student is good in math, then they are considered smart. If a student does not identify as proficient in matemáticas, then they are considered to be limited or deficit. Continuous assessment of emergent bilingual students’ ability in matemáticas through the standardized and dominant cultural lens continues to produce a perception that students need to be “taught” matemáticas. This theory does not recognize that conceptos de matemáticas can be found outside of the school setting and are used in students' daily lives (Nasir, Hand, & Taylor, 2008). It is important to consider how identidades de matemáticas might be cultivated in spaces within schools, outside of schools, and in the spaces in-between, and how these experiences might contribute to the development of a student’s identidad de matemáticas, as well as how matemáticas is developed and knowledge is disseminated (Walker, 2012). It is because of this that I propose a discussion around cultural practices that include how race, racism, and linguistic ideologies impact matemáticas development for LEB students (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003; Nasir & Saxe, 2003). Specifically, discussion should focus on the impact that teachers have regarding how matemáticas is learned, practiced outside of school, and most significantly, how they leverage Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 15 their students’ outside knowledge to develop in-school practices that support matemáticas engagement as well creating intentional out-of-school spaces that do the same for their Latinx emergent bilingual students. It is essential for teachers and other school agents to understand the educational needs of Latinx emergent bilingual students and how language proficiency can impact their content understanding, even in matemáticas education. Matemáticas continues to be exclusive for students that excel academically and differentiate students of color. For example, in 2017, “8th grade white students scored 32 points higher than Black students, 25 points higher than American Indian/Alaska Native students, 24 points higher than Hispanic students, 18 points higher than Pacific Islander students, and 6 points higher than students of two or more races” (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2019, p. 3). As the number of Latinx emergent bilingual students continues to grow across the country3, teachers need to have a better understanding of their socialization and identity-shaping experiences. To be adequately prepared to instruct students who are learning in more than one language, understanding their identity-shaping experiences is critical. Latinx emergent bilingual students do not have the privilege to situate their language practice first. Rather, they must begin by disconnecting from their native and home language to express their ideas, while at the same time having to develop contextualized academic language to succeed within the classroom setting (Garcia, Flores & Chu, 2011). Educators should be willing to take into consideration that the way this student group builds on language(s) is significant in all content areas, including matemáticas. 3 The U.S census has reported that approximately 80% of all emergent bilingual students in the U.S. are Latinx. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 16 In matemáticas, there has been much concern around the poor performance of students who are less proficient in the official language of schools, English (Pitvorec, Willey, & Khisty, 2011). However, an examination of how students develop racially and linguistically and the impact this has around matemáticas agency is also key. How Latinx emergent bilingual students navigate their matemáticas identitdades remains incomplete. In particular, this is especially apparent when articulating the roles of racial and linguistic identities within their learning (Zavala, 2014). Rather than looking at race and language as equally important and mutually informative, most work remains separate. It is evident that there is still work to be produced around how educators implement pedagogical practices within the matemáticas classroom, while simultaneously influencing Latinx emergent bilingual students to gain mastery and agency with their content development. As such, it is critical for school agents to deeply understand the systemic ways in which their pedagogical practices further marginalize or support Latinx emergent bilingual students and the extent to which school policies and classroom practices impact their identity-shaping experiences. According to Stanton-Salazar (2001), teachers do far more than teach and organize class schedules, they are often key participants in the social networks of low-status children and adolescents and play a determining role in either reproducing or interfering with the reproduction of class, racial, and gendered inequity (p. 161). Therefore, in recognizing how the systemic structures of education not only impact Latinx emergent students’ identity-shaping experiences, educators also need to realize that sociohistorical and political constructs influence their students’ content development. For example, in matemáticas, it is essential to give primary attention to the ways that students of color develop as Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 17 matemáticas learners, but also take into account their matemáticas socialization and identityshaping experiences (Martin, 2012). Improving students’ performance in matemáticas involves teachers’ attention to issues of equity from a more humanistic perspective. This kind of matemáticas teaching would allow students to do matemáticas in their home language, use processes reflective of their culture, and develop and answer questions important to the needs of their comunidades (Gutierrez, 2012). This would also allow for a deeper understanding of how students' racial identity could assist in a pedagogically relevant and inclusive matemáticas curriculum for Latinx emergent bilingual students. That is, teachers of Latinx emergent bilingual students need to have awareness around how their classroom practices influence the construction of academic and matemáticas identidades and that these identidades are co-constructed with students' racial identities (Martin, 2000, 2006a, 2006b). Conclusion I began this chapter by discussing mi familia’s history of migration settling in Chicago and how testimonio has played a significant role in my own upbringing. My first maestra of matemáticas was my abuelita, and yet I never made that connection growing up because in my schoolteacher’s eyes, I was a poor student academically. I moved on to discuss how the historical and current sociopolitical climate within bilingual and matemáticas education merits attention from teachers and other educational stakeholders to incorporate best practices for Latinx emergent bilingual students that are inclusive of their whole linguistic repertoire. The lack of inclusion around racial and linguistic issues suggests that it is significant, more than ever, to continue to challenge how scholars theorize best pedagogical practices for the urban matemáticas classroom. In particular, educators must explicitly harness the multiple identities that students Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 18 carry with them daily and place attention on the ways that they make connections to their students, including their racial and linguistic identities. In essence, teachers need to create knowledge "with" (not "of") students/communities to be effective within the classroom (Gutiérrez, 2012). Finally, it is crucial to understand how teachers must be reflective of their own experiential knowledge, have deep knowledge of the matemáticas content, and deep knowledge of their pedagogical practices to be effective in their classroom space for Latinx emergent bilingual students’ agency. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 19 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW & THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK “If we have been gagged and disempowered by theories, we can also be loosened and empowered by theories.” ~ Gloria Anzaldúa (1990, xxvi) Introduction Fair pedagogical practices continue to be stagnant when we consider Latinx emergent bilingual students and their language needs. Although the matemáticas research community has made strides toward considering how race, racism, culture, and identity impact students’ matemáticas development, there is little scholarship around the ways in which language is racialized and the impact it has on LEB students’ mathematical agency and content development. It is essential to offer a perspective around pedagogical teaching practices that are inclusive of identity and the relation it has to language ideology. The following chapter is organized in two parts. The first seeks to unpack constructs within the research community around the various approaches to teaching students of color that have gained precedence within educational discourse. This first section raises questions about the limitations of current pedagogical teaching practices linked to racial and linguistic ideologies, and highlights the ways in which scholarship necessitates capturing the experiences of Latina educadoras while also sharing how their identity impacts their teaching practice. The second part of this chapter discusses why Latino critical race theory (LatCrit) and testimonio is significant to this work and is the primary theoretical framework and method that I use to describe how Latina educadora identity unfolds as well as its connection to teachers’ daily practice. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 20 Teaching Students of Color: Various Approaches Over the Years For decades, scholars in the field of education have argued that racially diverse students are capable learners (Howard, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 1994) and there must be a reassessment to the ways that educational policies incorporate teaching practices for students of color. During the 1960s, the literature focused on theories in which students of color were viewed as having essential deficiencies that could be overcome with interventions (Hess & Shipman, 1965; Valentine, 1968). In the 1970s, there was a shift in focus to a cultural difference model (Gándara, 1995), which suggested that students of color had different experiences that did not align with the culture of the school, rather than being "deprived" of significant cultural experiences (Buenning & Tollefson, 1987; Carter & Segura, 1979). On the other hand, Vygotsky (1962, 1978) argued that all humans make use of cultural and symbolic tools to both interpret and regulate the world we live in, along with our relationships with each other. Our relationship with the world is a mediated one and is established through the use of these cultural and symbolic tools (Walsh, 2006). Vygotsky introduced Sociocultural Theory (SCT), which argued that human mental functioning is a mediated process that is organized by cultural artifacts, activities, and concepts (Ratner, 2002). Language use, organization, and structures serve as the primary means of this mediated process (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006). González, Moll, and Amanti (2009) argue that as we move in and out of our encounters with culture, we adopt processual approaches to culture by considering multiple perspectives that could reorient educators to contemplate the everyday lived experiences of their students (p. 41). From this perspective, it is fundamental to consider an approach that would focus on the activities of everyday life as a reference for educators when engaging in pedagogical practices within the classroom. These daily activities are part of the historically accumulated funds of Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 21 knowledge that households acquire (González, Moll & Amanti, 2009). This pedagogical practice could further aid school agents in adopting critically appropriate practices and become influential as students moved on to gain mathematical agency. That is, a Funds of Knowledge (FoK) approach is needed for educators to recognize that students do not come into schools as 'blank slates' to be filled with information. Rather, students engage in problem-solving activities in their homes, often to help their families in times of economic hardship (Moll, 1992; Razfar & Rumenapp, 2014). Funds of Knowledge (FoK) are the historically gathered and culturally produced bodies of knowledge that are necessary for households and individuals to function on a daily basis. Specifically, FoK are how "households interact within circles of kinship and friendship, children are 'participant-observers' of the exchange of goods, services, and symbolic capital, which are part of each household's functioning" (Moll & González, 1994, p. 443). Additionally, there are commonalities with other types of capital, including human, social, cultural, and linguistic (RiosAguilar, Kiyama, Gravitt & Moll, 2011). Social capital is the value and exchange of relationships, while cultural capital is the value and exchange of skills within a group (Moll & González, 1994). With this, it can be understood that all knowledge has value and it is through exchanging this knowledge that social status is increased. When FoK is successfully incorporated into classrooms, this interrupts the traditional exchange-value process, shifting what type of knowledge has value (Zipin, 2009). By linking the school curriculum to students' lives, teachers can challenge deficit models of students and their families (Olmedo, 1997). It requires teachers to recognize and use family and community resources for pedagogical purposes (RiosAguilar, Kiyama, Gravitt, & Moll, 2011). Teachers draw on the community, household knowledge, and skills to develop curricular units that are both linguistically and culturally Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 22 relevant. Culturally responsive pedagogy grew out of the cultural difference model and SCT in attempts to address the cultural and linguistic inequalities within the larger social structures and the institutional social inequities (Villegas, 1988). It focused on teaching approaches and strategies that recognized culturally different ways of using language and learning in the classroom. The identification of this pedagogy suggests that educators needed to extend their attention to the experiences and cultural characteristics that students of color hold, as a method for teaching them more effectively. When academic knowledge and skills are positioned within the lived practices of students of color, they become more personally significant, have higher interest appeal, and are learned more easily and thoroughly (Gay, 2000, 2002). Ladson-Billings (1995) redirected culturally relevant pedagogy by taking on a means of meeting the academic and social needs of culturally diverse students in a way that is effective and not only addresses student achievement, but also helps students to accept and affirm their cultural identity while challenging inequities that schools (and other institutions) perpetuate. Challenging inequities within schools means that teacher practice and thought must be re-conceptualized in a manner that recognizes and respects the intricacies of cultural and racial differences. Teachers must construct pedagogical practices in ways that are culturally relevant, racially affirming, and socially meaningful for their students (Howard, 2003). In constructing pedagogical practices, educators support students’ academic success, cultural competence, and the ability to critique the existing social order (Ladson-Billings, 1995). In culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP), Paris (2012) argues that pedagogies must be more than "relevant or responsive" to youth of color, their cultural experiences, and practices. CSP requires institutional agents to support students of color by assuring that they continuously Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 23 sustain their communities' linguistic and cultural competencies, while at the same time ensuring their access to the dominant culture (Paris, 2012). CSP seeks to foster and sustain linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism through education to challenge and change how previous iterations of asset pedagogies do not (Paris & Alim, 2014). Teaching Students of Color in Mathematics Education Teaching students of color entails recognizing that matemáticas is part of every culture and has played a role in recording and documenting people's histories (Leonard, 2008). Culturally relevant teaching in matemáticas education creates a space for becoming critical mathematical thinkers and building on students’ informal mathematical knowledge and cultural and experiential knowledge. It puts emphasis on students’ cultural experiences (Gutstein, Lipman, Hernandez & De los Reyes, 1997). This kind of instruction implicates thinking critically about the world and building on students’ out-of-school experiences. It calls for the use of nontraditional means of inquiry in the classroom such as role-playing, rap, skits, and poetry (Leonard, 2008). For LEB students, using culturally relevant pedagogy in the mathematics classroom means not only accessing their cultural and experiential knowledge, but also supporting the use of their native language, along with their home and community experiences. The matemáticas education research community has thus incorporated more sociocultural and sociopolitical perspectives into its ways of understanding and examining teaching and learning (Gutiérrez, 2013). In particular, it has begun to recognize the role that matemáticas takes on as a gatekeeper and gateway of various opportunities within society. For example, “inequitable access to quality mathematics learning experiences has been a longstanding, immensely pressing, occasionally infamous, yet gradually growing concern in mathematics education research” (Larnell, 2016, p.234). Scholars have called attention to the importance of Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 24 teacher reflection on the uses of matemáticas and how the multiple identities that students are developing can influence their learning of matemáticas by developing content conducive to their out-of-school knowledge. Martin (2012) argues that giving attention to the way’s children develop as mathematical learners or taking into account their socialization into the subject area is vital. Teacher educators have argued that framing conversations around race and identity can be used as a tool for teachers to develop rich possibilities for learning equity-based and high-quality teaching for all students. Further, prioritizing identity can encourage teachers to develop mathematical content directly connected to students' lived experiences outside of the classroom (Aguirre, Mayfield-Ingram, & Martin, 2013). For example, Ishimaru, Barajas-López, and Bang (2015) argue that, Many (but not all) immigrant families from Mexico and Central America come from rural communities with long-standing agricultural practices rooted in complex indigenous understandings of relationships in the natural world. Families’ participation in these community practices - often mediated through cultural artifacts and tools - suggests promising insight for expanding disciplinary conceptions of mathematics beyond narrow, school-based mathematical procedures. (p. 7-8) For educators to better capture how students of color and their parents experience matemáticas, Martin (2006) proposes mathematics socialization, which is the "experiences that individuals and groups have within a variety of contexts such as school, family, peer groups, and the workplace and that facilitate, legitimize, or inhibit meaningful participation in mathematics" (p. 206). For LEB students, those experiences can include the experience of migration from another country, due to political warfare, economic need, or other circumstances. Some scholars in the field of matemáticas education critique culturally responsive, Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 25 relevant, and sustaining pedagogies, along with the funds of knowledge approach (Ishimaru & Barajas-López, 2015; Martin, 2007). They suggest that these pedagogies, although significant in seeking an equitable education for students of color, do not directly address the day-to-day needs of students in and outside of the mathematics classroom. For example, Ishimaru and BarajasLópez (2015) argue that though well-intended, such efforts to adapt the curriculum to become more culturally relevant emphasize basic representation of the culture, such that these efforts essentialize groups and reduce individuals to a set of traits, based on membership in a broad category. They do not directly acknowledge what type of educator is needed to develop and implement these kinds of pedagogical practices daily. Additionally, scholars argue that these approaches fail to include racial inequities in matemáticas learning. They imply that the reason race remains under-theorized in mathematics education is that most studies of achievement and persistence focus on children and adolescents who cannot articulate concerns of race and mathematics. Much research does not investigate far enough beneath the "surface talk" to expose the innate meanings and beliefs that are reflective of students' continuous experiences of differential treatment and denied opportunities within the mathematics classroom (Martin, 2006). In particular, for LEB students, more scholarship has missed positioning the significant intersections of race and language when seeking to build mathematical agency. For example, if engaging in culturally relevant pedagogy is scripted without any deep commitment to student agency, or just reduced to a series of lessons that need to be completed for the sake of diversifying the content (Martin 2007), then promoting agency in mathematics is still not tackled. While these advances are all appropriately critical goals in a humanizing pedagogy, Gutierrez (2012) warns that "without sensitive and expert teacher educators, these strategies run the risk of 1) promoting a kind of 'static' and/or ‘essentialized’ notion of what it Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 26 means to ‘know’ something and 2) fail to connect this ‘knowing’ with specific action in the classroom” (p. 32). In essence, what is missing is for teachers to have an authentic understanding of students' multiple identities within the mathematics classroom. For example, Martin (2007) stresses that "judging the quality and effectiveness of those who teach mathematics to African American children should not weigh only on the side of their being able to construct pedagogical practices that have relevance and meaning to students' social and cultural realities" (p. 23). Teachers must also exhibit a deep knowledge of mathematics content. This also becomes prevalent when thinking about LEB students and developing their math agency. These theoretical models have unsuccessfully put direct emphasis on the racialized inequalities and socially constructed nature of race in mathematics. While “race is characterized in the sociological and critical theory literatures as socially and politically constructed with structural expressions, most studies of differential outcomes in mathematics education begin and end their analyses of race with static racial categories and group labels used for the sole purpose of disaggregating data” (Martin, 2009, p. 295). In turn, there must be further exploration around how race in matemáticas goes beyond data disaggregation and is embedded in the day-to-day inclass practices that directly impact LEB students. Teaching Matemáticas to Latinx Emergent Bilingual (LEB) Students Understanding bilingual learners of matemáticas and developing principled instruction is a pressing practical issue, particularly for Latinx students (Mosckovich, 2007). Matemáticas education, as is often described, is a universal language that requires the ability to master a welldefined body of knowledge, often through repetitive practice and the ability to process abstract Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 27 information. Because of the emphasis on the universality of mathematics, little attention is paid to students’ cultural or linguistic backgrounds (Gutierrez, 2002). The literature on effective schooling for LEB students, however, suggests that language and culture play vital roles in learning, and therefore, have significant consequences for effective teaching (Aguirre & Del Rosario Zavala, 2012; Gutierrez, 2002; Gutstein, Lipman, Hernandez & De los Reyes, 1997; Khisty 1995, 2002; Moskovich & Civil, 2007). For example, providing opportunities for students to communicate their understanding as they learn English without penalizing them for using words imprecisely is an important step toward creating learning opportunities. As this shift from viewing language solely as competence with words (e.g., acquiring vocabulary) to one that accounts for the differing, situated meanings of language as spoken in practice has serious implications for practitioners and their ability to recognize LEB students and their multilingual capabilities. To increase linguistic diversity within classrooms de matemáticas, teachers must push LEB students to engage in multiple forms of communication, such as reasoning, arguing, explaining, and justifying, in their native language first (Zavala, 2014). Thus, understanding the relationship between matemáticas and language development is critical to designing mathematics instruction for LEB students (Mosckovich, 2002, 2007). When educators design instruction, it is crucial to consider how language is conceptualized for bilingual learners and their mathematical communication. In doing so, mathematics arguably should be seen as a cultural process (Civil, 2016). Civil (2016) examines the funds of mathematical knowledge present in the home-, occupational-, and community-based practices of Latinx, borderland families. Her scholarship builds on the field of ethnomathematics that identifies the non-Eurocentric mathematical modes of cultural knowing and understanding as one particular practice within cultural groups such as Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 28 “national-tribe societies, labor groups, children of certain age brackets and professional classes” (d’Ambrosio, 1985, p. 45). By foregrounding the knowledge, experiences, and histories of families and communities in doing mathematics, Civil has explored the ways that everyday mathematics knowledge is acquired, practiced, and learned in the family- and occupationsituated contexts such as in cultural practices including vocational trades (e.g., construction and baking). In these authentic learning environments, Civil challenges deficit notions of LEB students by bringing to light the mathematical competencies embedded in cultural-historical practices. Along with linking LEB students' whole language repertoire (Garcia & Kleifgen, 2018) and cultural-historical practices within mathematical education, it is critical then to also bridge how students' identity-shaping experiences impact their mathematical development. For example, when teachers hold deficit views of LEB students and are not prepared to recognize the nuances of language in matemáticas instruction and student discourse, limitations on learning opportunities are impacted. Miles, Marshall, McGee, Buenrostro, and Adams (2019) argue that, “From a cultural standpoint, teachers need the time and the resources to build relationships with families and communities as a springboard for uncovering the rich and varied forms of mathematical engagement that current classroom norms and practices do not support. Latinx scholars in mathematics education situate much of their work in the micro-processes of classroom interaction, and we stand to learn and create new models for bolstering students’ participation and mathematical identities as a result” (p. 111). Likewise, it is paramount for educators within the mathematics space to build relationships and community, as well as connection with LEB students outside of the classroom. Furthermore, it is necessary for teachers to obtain a deep understanding of their own lived experiences. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 29 The Importance of Teacher Identity When Teaching Students of Color From a sociocultural perspective, teachers’ lived experiences play a role in contributing to the formation of their teaching identities, along with how they develop over time (Freedman & Appleman, 2008). Building on teacher identity and agency is significant because it involves understanding past interactions and current conditions that shape their work environment. While much of teachers’ experiences are deeply rooted within the institutionalization of power, it is imperative to explore how the negotiation of subjectivity and emotion provides the opportunity for self-formation and resistance (Zembylas, 2003). Teachers participate in varying communities and discourses over time; their identity is vibrant, multivocal, and even occasionally contradictory. The self, therefore, “is a collection of interconnected identities constituted in practices such that any given practice positions an individual through and in race, class ethnicity, sexuality, gender, religion, language, and so forth” (Gutierrez, 2013, p. 46). Teaching is part of a complex dynamic that shapes and is shaped by the structural and cultural features of society and school cultures (Lasky, 2005). A teacher’s identity is socially constructed and collectively shaped rather than given (Sfard & Prusak, 2005). Their beliefs are not just shaped by their own prior educational experiences, but also by the socio-historical discourses that have shaped their prior experiences and those that shape their current experiences (Cobb, Gresalfi & Hodge, 2009). Therefore, examining their identities is necessary to construct a deeper understanding of how teacher identity influences teacher practice. For example, teacher reflection and how teachers teach LEB students, interpret, and respond to what they notice about their participation in the mathematics classroom, is largely connected to teachers' positionality toward equitable mathematics pedagogy (Wagner, 2014). For teachers to implement equity-based teaching for students of color, they must reflect Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 30 on and examine the development of their own identities as educators and understand how their experiences shape their practice within mathematics (Aguirre, Mayfield-Ingram, & Martin, 2013; Clark, DePiper, Frank, Nishio, Campbell, Smith, & Choi, 2014; Gresalfi & Cobb, 2011). All educators of mathematics are "identity workers." Whether they see themselves as such or not, it is necessary to develop this competence because they contribute to the construction of students' identities. They reproduce what mathematics is and how people might relate to it (or not). That is, students unfold their own mathematical identity as they learn how to develop a mathematical identity from their teachers. Students become confident in their ability to become doers of mathematics if their teachers allow them to do so. Therefore, scholars must draw on teachers’ multiple identities as a process of information transmission relevant to student achievement; and teachers must also increase their awareness of their students’ mathematical dispositions (Clark et al., 2014). To establish equitable opportunities for learning mathematics, children and youth need an environment in which they can develop their identities as learners and doers of mathematics by participating in practices that support agency (Wager, 2014). For LEB students, this environment includes attention to how their multilingualism is an asset, instead of a challenge to overcome (Tellez, Moschkovich & Civil, 2011). To empower linguistically diverse students for achievement in any subject matter, especially mathematics, teachers need to develop their own identities and use their cultural awareness and reflection to raise consciousness, knowledge, skills, and values that will result in equitable classroom practices (Leonard, 2008). Exploring teachers’ identities and the connection to their daily teaching practices is essential for the advocacy of LEB students within the education space. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 31 For Latina educadoras, empowering their Latinx emergent bilingual students’ means reflecting back on their own experiences in a way that provides deeper meaning to them. In essence, many Latinx teachers go into the education field and teach within their own communities as a way to confront the many inequities that they faced within their own schooling. Therefore, it is essential to capture those experiences to further make sense of current teaching practices. In order to deeply capture such experiences and how they are connected to equitybased teaching, I use a Latinx critical race theory framework that suggests that the social construction of race is central to how people of color are constrained in society. Furthermore, a LatCrit framework allows for the capturing of testimonio. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 32 Theoretical Framework: Latinx Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) y Testimonio Though scholars acknowledge the extent to which the identities of teachers de matemáticas are influential to their teaching practices, few studies in matemáticas education have explored the intersections between Latina educadoras’ racialized and linguistic identities and how they are instrumental to how LEB students develop mathematical agency (Gutierrez, 2002; Zavala, 2014). Gutierrez (2002) contends that there is still much work to be done to have a clearer research agenda around issues of equity. She proposes a working definition of equity and a focal point for research that identifies how mathematics has moved beyond this sociocultural view to espouse sociopolitical concepts and theories, and highlights identity and power at play. Gutierrez (2002) argues, a place that holds the most promise for addressing equity is a research agenda that emphasizes enabling the practice of teachers and that draws more heavily on designbased and action research, thereby redefining what the practice of mathematics means along the way. (p. 145) A research agenda inclusive of equity as Gutierrez (2002) proposes is one that further explores the intersectionalities of race, language, and identity to understand how Latina educadoras’ practices are influential in LEB students’ empowerment and mathematical agency. The field of matemáticas necessitates further scholarship in this direction to critically examine how lived experiences play a key role within the mathematical classroom. Therefore, I argue that the use of a Latino critical race theory (LatCrit) framework and testimonio is essential in theorizing and examining the varied aspects of Latina educadora teaching and learning of mathematics for LEB students. The use of LatCrit theory as a framework can help scholars and school agents better Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 33 understand the racial inequities embedded in Latina educadora identity-shaping experiences and explore how it drives their teaching praxis. LatCrit has set the foundation in which educational scholars can further assess the conditions and learning outcomes for LEB students. This theory provides a deeper understanding of how race, identity, and power can assist in a pedagogically relevant and inclusive mathematical curriculum for all students of color. Latinx Critical Race Theory Latinx critical race theory (LatCrit) derived from critical race theory (CRT) to challenge racial inequity embedded within various realms of society (Davila & Aviles, 2010) and dually serves as a framework to understand and challenge dominant ideologies in schools. To address the historical and current realities of race, racism, and White privilege within education, CRT originated in schools of law in the late 1980s, in which scholars sought and argued for a space in which the lived experiences and histories of people of color were foregrounded (Yosso, 2006). CRT evolved as a response to the delayed progress of traditional civil rights litigation to produce meaningful racial reform and is a product of community and activist manifesting liberal reform (Crenshaw, 2011). That is, CRT is a movement situated collectively through activists and scholars whose intent is to transform the ways in which power, race, and racism are studied. Furthermore, CRT questions the foundation in which the liberal order is situated within society and originated through a long tradition of resistencia to the unequal distribution of power and resources along political, economic, racial, and gendered lines (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). Due to the historic value given to whiteness, CRT is an important intellectual and social tool for the deconstruction of oppressive structures and discourses, and the construction of equitable and socially just relations of power (Ladson-Billings, 1998). Scholars argue that it advances the role of race and racism in education and is a framework that is used to theorize, examine, and Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 34 challenge the ways that race and racism implicitly and explicitly impact social structures, practices, and discourses (Solórzano & Yosso, 2005). Therefore, a critical educational reform among all schools across the nation and in particular those in urban settings is necessitated. Stovall (2004) argues, CRT confronts the rationale of “when I see a child, I don’t see race.” Although not a popular stance, the previous quote should be dissected. Critical race theory understands the previous ideology as part of a design to “maintain a White supremacist master script” (Ladson-Billings, 1998, p. 18). Where some may view the children quote as naïve, CRT argues it to be reflective of an accepted hegemonic norm, detrimental to the education of students of color. (p. 9) The official school curriculum mandated by state and local officials is one that has continuously maintained a White supremacist master script (Ladson-Billings, 2009). Within a classroom, this manifests as a “dysfunctional curriculum coupled with a lack of instructional innovation adds up to poor performance on traditional assessment measures. These assessment measures… may tell us that students do not know what is on the test but fail to tell us what students actually know and are able to do” (p. 29-30). Furthermore, practices such as the aforementioned necessitate the importance of offering a critical race perspective in which curriculum becomes more inclusive of all students of color within education. Similar to CRT, LatCrit contributes to scholarship that offers theoretical, epistemological, and methodological methods (Fernandez, 2002). For example, the use of counter-narratives or testimonio4 is a methodological tool practitioner can use for analysis. It calls attention to critical approaches in articulating how race is situated within the Latinx community and is inclusive of 4 Testimonio is the LatCrit term used for counter-narratives and/or counter stories. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 35 bilingualism, class, sexuality, gender, and immigrant reform. LatCrit recognizes how oppression operates and how the Latinx community has been marginalized in various institutional contexts. LatCrit offers an explanation beyond the limitations of the black/white paradigm and intentionally incorporates a more contextualized analysis of the cultural, political, and economic dimensions of white supremacy (Delgado Bernal, 2002; Iglesias, 1997; Pérez Huber, 2010; Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001; Stefancic, 1997). In the field of education, adopting a LatCrit framework allows for theorizing and examining how educational institutions maneuver and offer equitable outcomes for Latinx students and their families. It critiques conventional paradigms, both in format and content, and allows for scholars to use students’ and their parents’ life histories as valid narratives or testimonio. That is, LatCrit explicitly uses narrative knowledge and counter-stories to challenge the existing social construction of race to address the marginalization of students of color in schools (Parker & Castro, 2013). Testimonio can be used as a way to disrupt deficit narratives that are often disseminated about Latinx students, their families, and communities. They can serve as a way to nurture critical consciousness and draw on Latinx students' experiential knowledge to develop a curriculum that highlights the strengths of their communities (Solórzano & Yosso, 2001). LatCrit draws on many forms of progressive scholarship to understand and improve the educational experiences of Latinx students (Parker, Deyhle, & Villenas, 1999). LatCrit in education makes sense when we consider that “the classroom – where knowledge is constructed, organized, produced, and distributed – is a central site for the construction of social and racial power” (Fernandez, 2002, p. 5). In examining the education of LEB students, a LatCrit lens is essential as it allows for further analysis around language, race, and identity. It calls attention to Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 36 issues of immigration, language rights, bilingual schooling, internal colonialism, and sanctuary for Latin American refugees. LatCrit opposes the English-only movement and fosters important social justice goals, such as multilingualism, cross-cultural appreciation, and academic success for LEB students who are typically underserved in schools (Delgado, 2001; Scanlan & Palmer, 2009). LatCrit in Matemáticas Within matemáticas education, using a LatCrit framework can be influential in understanding the ways in which LEB students’ identity development evolves as they develop mathematically (Steele, 2009). LatCrit may be useful for understanding the experiences of LEB students as they relate to and process their testimonio in matemáticas, along with making sense of how they define their own agency in matemáticas (Zavala, 2012). By giving attention to the experiences that LEB students have within matemáticas education, a LatCrit approach frames research embedded in a racial context (Jett, 2009). For example, Steele (2009) suggests that stereotype threat that women of color experience in math-performance settings derives from a negative stereotype about their ability in matemáticas that is disseminated throughout society. The use of a LatCrit framework in matemáticas can aid in documenting the testimonio of LEB students and crystalizing how their families, community, and home have influenced their experiences with understanding matemáticas and content development. For example, Gutierrez, Willey and Khisty (2011) suggest that, “stories that illuminate the conditions of schooling and perhaps challenge accepted assumptions about schooling practices, particularly those related to mathematics and Latinas/os” (p. 27) are important to a larger discussion around an equitable matemáticas education. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 37 Testimonio Testimonio is rooted in a collective history of resistencia (Pérez Huber, 2012) and documenting a testimonio is a way to further understand the experiences of the Latinx community through their spoken accounts of oppression, the struggle for rights, and a recovery of knowledge production, along with the construction of a discourse of solidarity (Blackmer Reyes & Curry Rodriguez, 2012). It incorporates “political, social, historical, and cultural histories that accompany one’s life experiences as a means to bring about change through consciousness-raising. In bridging individuals with collective histories of oppression, a story of marginalization is re-centered to elicit social change” (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga & Flores Carmona, 2012, p. 364). Testimonio is a result of the geopolitical and liberation resistance movements during the 1970’s and emerged from Latin American human rights struggles. Thereafter, academic scholars have welcomed it as an “emerging power” that gives precedence to the significance of oppression and how knowledge empowers the oppressed (Collins, 1991). A testimonio is used as a tool in qualitative research to acknowledge and advocate for social justice within institutional spaces (Pérez Huber, 2012) and “differs from oral history or autobiography in that it involves the participant in a critical reflection of their personal experience within particular sociopolitical realities” (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga & Flores Carmona, 2012). For example, within education, a Latinx student’s testimonio can be analyzed from a LatCrit and theoretical lens that allows for the naming of the oppressions encountered in schools and in the classroom; it also fosters better understanding of how Latinx students respond to and heal from oppressive experiences. This allows for testimonio to be used as a methodology and not just a method. “Testimonio as methodology departs from the Eurocentricity of traditional educational research and is guided by an anti-racist and anti-hierarchical agenda” (Pérez Huber, Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 38 2012, p. 379). Similarly, I use testimonio as a way to understand how Latina educadoras reflect on their own educational narratives to influence how they teach the content of matemáticas to LEB students and enable them to become “doers” of matemáticas. Aligning Testimonio and a LatCrit Framework An intersection between what constitutes a LatCrit and testimonio approach is relevant when we consider Latina educadora practice and LEB student content development. LatCrit can be used as a method and methodological tool to understand how Latina educadoras and LEB students navigate racial, linguistic, gendered, and other social identities concerning learning matemáticas. Zavala (2014) argues that it is "important for the mathematics education research community to continue to document the mathematical agency of Latinx students as scholars seek to understand the connections between how these students make sense of their own experiences and how they feel empowered to act to learn mathematics" (p. 62). Moreover, I believe that it is important in my own work to consider a LatCrit framework and testimonio (Solórzano & Yosso, 2006) to support my claims around a research agenda that incorporates the multiple identities of Latina educadoras and how they are directly connected to LEB student agency within the matemáticas classroom. The Intercentricity of Race and Racism The intercentricity of race and racism is defined as being a central factor in the experience of people of color. Because race and racism are prevailing and perpetual within U.S. society, discourse within a LatCrit framework examines how race and racism are socially constructed and looks at how the system of racism functions to oppress People of Color while privileging Whites (Yosso, 2006). In matemáticas education, centralizing and examining how Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 39 Latina educadoras and their LEB students experience race and racism along with understanding how these acts of racism intersect with other forms of subordination - such as language, gender, class, culture, migration - are essential for promoting agency in matemáticas. This empowers both teacher and students, alike, to develop matemáticas identities and socializes them as they learn to use mathematics for their own purposes (Martin, 2000). Moreover, when a teacher is cognizant of how race and racism frame their daily practice, they can change classroom dynamics to foster academic success, cultural competence, and the ability to critique the existing social order (Ladson-Billings, 1994). The Challenge to Dominant Ideology LatCrit challenges conventional claims that “educational institutions make toward objectivity, meritocracy, colorblindness, race neutrality and equal opportunity” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 26). In education, this praxis questions the various approaches to schooling that are considered standardized and neutral “while implicitly privileging White, U.S.-born, monolingual, English-speaking students” (Yosso, 2006, p. 7). In matemáticas education, LatCrit challenges traditional ways of learning matemáticas and instead prompts the development of linguistically and culturally relevant ways for Latina educadoras to rethink how Latinx emergent bilingual students can take ownership of their understanding of matemática and how they can redefine and challenge what it means to be a successful learner of matemáticas on their own terms (Zavala, 2014). Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 40 The Commitment to Social Justice A LatCrit framework is committed to a social justice agenda within society and education. “Acknowledging schools as political places and teaching as a political act, CRT views education as a tool to eliminate all forms of subordination and empower oppressed groups – to transform society” (Yosso, 2006, p. 7). This offers a transformational response to oppression, gender, and racial inequities, and recognizes how resistance plays a pivotal role in the liberatory process (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). In matemáticas, a commitment to social justice leads to inspiring LEB students to show agency in both how they may succeed within the constraints of schooling, and how they resist schooling practices (Fernandez, 2002; Pérez Huber, 2010; Yosso, Villalpando, Bernal & Solórzano, 2001 in Zavala, 2014). The Centrality of Experiential Knowledge LatCrit develops an understanding that the experiential knowledge of Latinx students is legitimate and critical to understanding, analyzing, and teaching about racial subordination (Delgado-Bernal, 2002). Students’ knowledge is viewed as a strength and draws explicitly on the lived experiences of students of color by accessing data, which includes testimonios and other traditions that students value (Yosso, 2006). In the matemáticas classroom, the experiences that Latina educadoras and LEB students carry with them are critical to understanding how learning matemáticas is attained. The testimonios that can be shared about who they are as learners of matemáticas has origins in various contexts, which are situated in broader discourses of achievement and access and contain notions of deeply-seeded attitudes (Zavala, 2014). Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 41 The Transdisciplinary Perspective for LatCrit A LatCrit approach “analyzes racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia from a historical and interdisciplinary perspective” (Yosso, 2006, p. 8). This allows for the developing of methods that are inclusive of various disciplines, in order to understand and improve the educational experiences of Latinx emergent bilingual students (Delgado-Bernal, 2002; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). In matemáticas education, the intersectionality of race and other issues, such as language, comunidad, migration, living wages, and oral histories from “their own experiences of life in a hierarchically arranged world” (Yosso, 2006, p. 8) and that are often ignored, are considered in order to better understand and develop knowledge around conceptos de matemáticas, which are connected to everyday lived realities and that are experienced outside of the classroom space. Conclusion While many educators of matemáticas are comfortable with including social and cultural aspects in their work, most are not as willing to acknowledge that teaching and learning mathematics are not politically neutral activities (Gutierrez, 2013). Therefore, giving value to Latina educadoras’ identity-shaping experiences and understanding how their multiple identities can inform their practice highlights community wealth and challenges commonly held beliefs about a racial hierarchy or a neutral society (Gutierrez, 2013). A LatCrit and testimonio method and methodology in the examination of matemáticas education can provide a significant take on the experiences that Latina educadoras carry into the classroom and how they expose their LEB students to agency in matemáticas. In the following chapter, I explain the research design of this study in which the racialized, linguistic, and mathematical identidades of three Latina educadoras were centered. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 42 CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH DESIGN “The work of mestiza consciousness is to break down the subject-object duality that keeps her a prisoner and to show in the flesh and through the images in her work how duality is transcended.” ~ Gloria Anzaldúa (1987, p. 102) Research Design Overview Teachers themselves have been socialized into or out of matemáticas during their elementary and high school experiences. This impacts their matemáticas teacher identities and shapes their views on how they envision the learning experiences and outcomes of their Latinx emergent bilingual students (Aguirre, Mayfield-Ingram, & Martin, 2013). For many Latina educadoras, their socialization experiences have impacted how they interact with their students daily. Through testimonio of Latinx emergent bilingual and matemáticas learners, Latina educadoras can reflect on their experiences and identify how these have influenced their teaching practice. I explored two questions: 1) How do Latina educadoras use their LEB and matemáticas identity-shaping experiences to inform the way they teach matemáticas to their Latinx emergent bilingual students? 2) How can Latina educadoras identity-shaping experiences lead to instruction that promotes Latinx emergent bilingual students to see themselves as mathematics learners and doers of mathematics (Martin, 2012) over time? PROJECT: Professional Development for Teachers of EBs During the summer of 2013, I began my journey with what I call the PROJECT program (for purposes of privacy to my research participants) as a graduate research assistant. PROJECT was a 5-year research project designed to provide long-term professional development to K-12 Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 43 teachers working with EBs in predominantly low-income areas (Razfar & Morales, 2011). PROJECT included over seventy-two teachers who developed and applied mathematical or science instruction that was linguistically and culturally relevant, in alignment with educational standards (Figure 1). Teachers, who participated in PROJECT, made a two-year commitment to matriculate into a Midwestern university and obtain their Masters of Education (M.Ed) and English as a Second Language (ESL) and/or bilingual education endorsement certification while participating in developing a year-long action research project. Figure 1: PROJECT Action Research Literacy, Mathematic & Science LEB Sociocultural Theory Standards Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 44 Sociocultural and culturally relevant tools of language and learning were used to inspire teachers to become teacher-researchers and curriculum designers (Razfar, 2011). Furthermore, over the course of one academic school year, teachers designed and executed three curricular units as part of a participatory action research project incorporating students’ funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992) and reflecting on their instruction through the analysis of discourse practices within their classroom space. My Work in PROJECT Over the course of three academic years (Summer 2013-Fall 2016), I participated as a graduate research and teacher assistant. I had the opportunity to work with seventeen teachers that were enrolled in PROJECT. All identified as Chicago Public School teachers (16 K-8 and 1 high school transitional trilingual science teacher). Cohorts were assigned and designed by grade, content area or school, and located in the Southside of the city. The program’s principal investigator assigned these particular cohorts and schools to me because of my familiarity with the communities where they are located, and the fact that I grew up, live in, went to school in, and currently/during the time of the study had a child that attended a CPS school in a nearby neighborhood. As I engaged with each cohort and grew to know each teacher through our weekly meetings, focus group interviews, classroom observations, and one-on-one meetings, I began to understand the impact each teacher had on my development as a researcher. They nurtured my understanding of what my role was as a graduate research assistant and allowed me to collect the data that PROJECT sought. The personal relationships I came to establish during my time in PROJECT allowed me to listen to each teacher, document her testimonio, and engage in a way Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 45 that redefined the way that teachers saw me as the facilitator of the research project. Going into schools each week required me to leave my university role at the door and take on a role that made each teacher feel comfortable with me and speak to me about their daily role as educators and, at times, about their life outside of school. As we established our working relationships, teachers understood that I was there to listen, learn, and support them as they developed their ideas and their action research projects, including their project units, field notes, and final theses. There were times that teachers asked that I not turn on my recorder during our weekly group meetings. I was content with obliging these requests because we grew to have an understanding through the relationship that we had established; further, this instilled trust in the relationship and they knew they could confide in me. As such, I honored the confidentiality they sought from me during the process. Over time, there was one particular cohort that truly inspired me. Upon working with them for two academic years (2014-2016) and getting to know them as mujeres from la comunidad, I decided that my doctoral work would focus on capturing their testimonios y practica as Latina educadoras. I first met these three Latina mujeres in the fall of 2014, when they enrolled and participated in a graduate course where I served as a teacher assistant. The course was entitled, Curriculum and Instruction: Action Research and English Language Learners. During that semester, teachers also initiated participatory action research projects and began their journey with PROJECT. During our early interactions and meetings, I felt intimidated by all three educadoras. Specifically, it was how passionate they were as they spoke about their work, their students, their comunidad, and their expertise as Latina educadoras. The close bond they already had with each other before their participation in PROJECT was also somewhat intimidating. This led to my decision to further identify and understand the various Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 46 factors that impact their day-to-day teaching practices. The two schools they worked in are Paisano Elementary School (Paisano) and Mendez Middle School (Mendez). I use pseudonyms to identify that these schools are located within a Latinx community that is predominantly of Mexican descent in a neighborhood on the southwest side of Chicago. Educadora Participatory Action Research (PAR) As part of PROJECT, each Latina educadora engaged in Participatory Action Research (PAR). PAR is a framework that promotes an interactive link between researchers and participants in which expertise is shared interchangeably. It requires la comunidad to be involved and to collectively make methodological decisions, in order to create meaningful goals in addressing the needs of la comunidad being studied. PAR is an inclusive process with participants that connect the multiple points of view placed in socio-political, historical, and cultural contexts (Mertens 2003). A PAR framework takes seriously the needs of la comunidad in order to understand, study, and position the project to be responsive to those needs during the research process. During their time in PROJECT, the three Latina educadoras were primary participants of the research study, where they explored and understood the process through which they designed and implemented activities with their Latinx emergent bilingual students. Specifically, they collaboratively worked to develop the skills necessary to aid their LEB students build academic language proficiency in relation to content areas such as matemáticas. The three Latina educadoras drew on their LEB students' "funds of knowledge" while integrating matemáticas, science, and literacy practices throughout one academic school year. They designed and implemented three thematic units based on their LEB students’ interests and positioning their Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH knowledge of their own comunidad toward the learning of matemáticas and science, as well as district and state content standards. This served as a tool for each Latina educadora to be reflective of her own teaching practice. Location Figure 2: Chicago Neighborhood Map 47 Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 48 My study takes place in a predominantly first- and second-generation Mexican community in the neighborhood of South Lawndale, known as Little Village or La Villita. The community is relevant and important to discuss in this context because I strongly believe that it is critical to understand the community cultural wealth that Latina educadoras and their LEB students carry with them daily into the classroom space (Yosso, 2005); further, it is important because this is where both Paisano and Mendez are located. La Villita was originally settled by many Bohemian and other Eastern European immigrant groups during the beginning of the 20th century; by the early 1980s, Latinx represented 47% of the population, with Mexicanos as the dominant ethnic group that settled and identify as working-class laborers. According to a report published in June 20205 by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), demographic data suggests the following: Table 1: Current South Lawndale Demographics Total Demographics Population 74,943 Latinx 62,345 Median Age 30.0 Educational Attainment: 5 Less than High School Graduate 21,074 High School Graduate or Equivalency 12,403 The Community Data Snapshots are a series of county, municipal, and Chicago Community Area data profiles that primarily feature data from the 2014-2018 American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates. As noted in each profile, the data comes from multiple sources in addition to the ACS, which include U.S. Census Bureau, Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES), Illinois Department of Revenue (IDR), and the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP). Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH Some College, No Degree 5,191 Associate’s Degree 1,878 Bachelor’s Degree 2,776 Graduate or Professional Degree 731 49 Language Spoken: English Only 15,994 Language other than English 53,426 Language spoken at home - Spanish 53,082 Median Household Income $33,612 Significant to the demographics reported by CMAP, La Villita is also home to the largest singlesite county jail in the nation. It is less than a mile distance from both Paisano and Mendez and currently houses over 5,000 male (92.7%) and female (7.0%) inmates (https://www.cookcountysheriff.org/data/jail-population-february-13-2020/). Of these, 73.7% are Black and 15.7% are reported to be Latinx. Furthermore, Little Village has been a contested space for politics since its development. Because of the strategies used to consolidate power by past leaders in Chicago it is often considered to be part of the Democratic machine. 6 6 The Democratic machine of Chicago is known for its corrupt politics. The machine's power is based on the ability of the boss or group to get out the vote for their candidates on election day. Democratic machine that dominated Chicago politics for nearly half a century formed under the leadership of Anton Cermak, a Bohemian immigrant of working-class origins (http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/774.html). Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 50 Activismo en La Villita In light of its politics, for decades community members have made efforts to protect la comunidad and the people's rights. For example, A Black and Latinx student-led school reform movement started in 1968. Students from the formally known Carter Henry Harrison Technical High School located in Little Village, planned massive walkouts to fight for an end to discrimination in Chicago Public Schools, along with other demands like more teachers of color, bilingual classes, and ethnic studies classes. On October 13, 1968, 35,000 CPS students walked out. Activism at the school continued through the early 1970s. During a March 1972 protest, Mexican American students demanding better conditions from the school board went on strike. Community leader Rudy Lozano is remembered for his political efforts in Little Village. He was well-known locally as an activist and organizer with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and with tortilla factory workers during the 1970s. He came close to an electoral victory that would have made him the first Mexican-American alderman in the Chicago City Council, and he was key in organizing the Latino vote behind Harold Washington’s successful campaign for mayor - the first black mayor to be elected in Chicago in April 1983. On June 8th, 1983, Rudy Lozano was murdered in his home, and although the details of the murder remain unclear, until this day many residents believe that there was a political motive behind his assassination. In 2001, 14 parents and grandparents staged a 19-day hunger strike to urge politicians to fulfill promises to build a high school because of the community’s large student population and overcrowding of schools. This resulted in the building of a new high school that opened its doors in Fall of 2005. The Little Village Lawndale High School Campus, consists of four small schools. Moreover, as the result of 20 years of community fighting and organizing to clean a contaminated site – the creation of green space on the east side of the neighborhood also Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 51 surfaced. This also resulted in the closing of the Crawford Coal Plant in 2012 after a long battle with the community over pollution caused by the plant and nearing factories. Most recently, protests have continued over the purchase of the plant by Hilco Global – a corporation that has refused to meet the demands of the Little Village community around taking environmental considerations, among other things. La Villita is home to many community-based organizations, clinics, churches and community projects that are committed to the thriving and sustainability of la comunidad. In turn, these past and current community struggles are relevant to the everyday lives of both LEB students and their Latina educadoras. It is through these daily sociopolitical contexts that allow for the building and positioning of my work around lived experiences (Irizarry & Brown, 2013). Paisano Paisano Academy offers pre-K-8th grade. The total enrollment for the 2014-2015 academic school year was 903 students, with 99% classified as low-income. During that academic school year, 99% of the student population identified as Latinx (more specifically of Mexican descent) and 1% White and African American. 51% of students were classified as EBs and eligible for the Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) program. Mendez Mendez Middle School provides 6th-8th grade. For the academic school year of 20142015, a total of 323 students enrolled in the school; 97.8% identified as Latinx, 0.9% black, and 0.9% White. The majority of the students were from Spanish-speaking households and consisted of 15% EBs, along with 99.4% classified as low income. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 52 Participants I focused my study on these particular schools and Latina educadoras because 1) these educadoras went to school and grew up within the same public school system and community where they teach; 2) The community that the schools are located in is a predominantly lowincome and Latinx area; and 3) The significant make-up of LEB students enrolled in both schools (51% and 15%7). Focusing on these specific schools and Latina educadoras permitted me to explore the macro and micro factors involved in the overall developmental process that these Latina educadoras went through in understanding, engaging with, struggling with, developing, co-constructing, and applying their own reflective identities when teaching and facilitating their participatory action research projects during their participation in PROJECT. I had the opportunity to work with one Latina educadora from Paisano and two Latina educadoras from Mendez who participated in the project and with whom I worked independently for two consecutive academic years, 2014-2016. Focusing on all three Latina educadoras who worked together as a cohort throughout the project was critical in developing my understanding of the issues presented. Below I provide a table with detailed information about the teachers. Table 2: Las Tres Latina educadoras en La Villita Name School Gender Ethnicity Languages Spoken Content Area/Grade Years of Teaching Classroom Racial makeup Vanessa Mendez Female English & Spanish 8th grade AP Language Arts Over 5 years 100% MexicanAmerican Eva Mendez Female Latina/ Mexican American Latina/ Mexican American English & Spanish 7th-grade Humanities Over 15 years 98% MexicanAmerican 1% Salvadorian 1% biracial 100% Daisy Paisano Female Latina/ Mexicana English & Spanish 5th/6th grade Math teacher 2 years 97% Mexican American 30% 7 % of LEBs in classroom 13% Although 15% might seem low compared to 51% at the other participating school, it is quite high for a middle school since often LEB students have transitioned out of bilingual programs by then and are no longer officially classified as emergent bilinguals. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 53 All three educadoras identified as Latina/Mexicana and Mexican American, and identified as bilingual, speaking both English and Spanish. During the time of data collection, they ranged in teaching experience from 2 to 15 years. All three Latina educadoras taught in predominantly Latinx schools, and their classroom make-up was overwhelmingly Latinx students, specifically of Mexican descent. The percentage of LEBs in these classrooms ranged from 13% to 100%. Vanessa Vanessa is a native of La Villita and a product of the public-school system where she teaches and her comunidad where she went to elementary school. Her years as an elementary school student were spent in the bilingual classroom where she learned how to speak academic English. She is a child of Mexican parents; both of her parents migrated from the northern part of Mexico. Before Vanessa became an eighth grade AP language arts teacher, she served as an administrative assistant for over five years at the same school. She is very involved at her school and has led the local school council and many eighth-grade activities, including trips to Washington DC and New York City. She is also a mother of two children that attend public school in the same city. Although Vanessa is not a teacher of matemáticas, but of 8th grade AP Language Arts, through PROJECT, she incorporated mathematics into her lessons and overall yearly curriculum for her action research project. Eva Eva was born and raised in the same city as her students; her parents migrated from the northern part of México. She has two children that attend Catholic school and has been teaching within the public school for over fifteen years. She identifies as Mexicana before American and Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 54 attended both private and public schools. Her early years she spent in the bilingual classroom. She has taught in both private and public schools within La Villita and across the city. Similar to Vanessa, Eva is a 7th grade humanities teacher and not a teacher of matemáticas. However, through PROJECT, she incorporated mathematics into her lessons and overall yearlong action research project. Daisy Daisy arrived in the United States with her family from Mexico at the very young age of eight years old. Upon arrival, she and her family settled in the community of La Villita. She attended elementary and high school also in La Villita where she was placed within the ESL classroom throughout her academic experience. She proudly began her teaching career at the same middle school she attended, Paisano. Daisy identified as DACAmented (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), and during her time in PROJECT, she was in the process of petitioning for residency in the U.S. Participant Observation As part of PROJECT, I engaged in participant observation. Participant observation allowed me to understand the classroom space through the viewpoint of both the insider and outsider, because I focused on everyday situations through open-ended inquiry; through this process, I was able to build relationships with my Latina educadoras and their LEB students (Jorgensen, 1989). Participant observation pushed me to develop techniques of research defined in terms of seven basic features: (a) It allowed for me to further develop my understanding and interest in how humans interact through the viewpoint of an insider; (b) I developed an Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 55 understanding for Latina educadoras and their Latinx emergent bilingual students everyday life situations and settings for the basis of my inquiry and method; (c) it allowed for my theorizing to focus on my deeper understanding of how humans interact and exist in the classroom space; (d) this type of open-ended inquiry required me to constantly redefine my research goals; (e) specifically, it allowed for an in-depth, qualitative, case study design; (f) I was able to build working relationships with each Latina educadora; and (g) I used direct observation, along with other methods (Jorgensen, 1989). The objective of this methodological research tool in my work has allowed me to “immerse in the day-to-day lives of people and observes and interviews the group participants. Examining the meaning of the behavior, the language, and the interaction among members of the culture-shaping group” (Creswell, 2013, p. 90). In this case, I explored how Latina educadoras elicited their own experiences and beliefs on a day-to-day basis while teaching and learning from LEB students. Data Collection and Data Sources In order to achieve my research goals and develop my overall study, I engaged in qualitative work during my time with PROJECT and collected my own set of data for my research purposes. Qualitative research seeks to convey the ever-changing nature of qualitative inquiry from social construction to interpretivism and on to social justice in the world (Creswell, 2013). It drives qualitative researchers to study issues in their natural setting. Qualitative work attempts to make sense of how humans bring meaning to certain phenomena (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011) and effectively displays the complex interplay of particular circumstances and the regularities of the human condition (Weiss, 1994). This approach allowed for me as the investigator to explore a real-life, contemporary bounded system over time through detailed, indepth data collection involving multiple sources of information (Creswell, 2013). Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 56 In particular, this method offered the space to critically analyze, observe, understand, and participate in the interactions within the classroom setting, as well as to investigate the process through which Latina educadoras go through in understanding, struggling with, and developing their notions of what it means to teach LEB students within the mathematics space. These approaches allowed me to unpack Latina educadoras’ reflections and understand how their testimonios manifested in their daily practice. That is, “testimonio is process (methodology), product (inclusive of text, video, performance, or audio), and a way of teaching and learning (pedagogy)” (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga & Flores Carmona, 2012, p. 364). This process allowed for the opportunity to be reflexive on my positionality as a researcher (Creswell, 2013). Reflexivity "requires the researcher to be critically conscious through personal accounting of how the researcher's self –location (i.e., gender, race, class sexuality, ethnicity, nationality), position, and interests influence all stages of the research process" (Pillow, 2003, p. 178). Engaging in self-reflexive praxis allowed me to critique and interrupt traditional research paradigms (Green, 2014). The data consists of three individual and four focus group interviews that were conducted after each unit was completed and one that took place a year later as part of a cohort concluding discussion. Additionally, classroom video recordings, teacher curricular material, and any accessible student work were also included in the dataset because this was part of PROJECT and the data collecting process. An in-depth interview is an exceptionally important method of data collection as it seeks to gain insights into the world that individuals carry with them, along with giving a better understanding of the lived experiences of individuals (Weiss, 1994). I was interested in getting at the subjective understanding that Latina educadoras bring to a given situation or set of circumstances in their classrooms. A semi-structured, in-depth interview Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 57 protocol was used in both individual and focus group interviews; this consisted of a specific interview outline that gave me access to some control on how the interview (i.e., specific questions) was constructed and how I wished the participant to respond, but still open to asking new and additional questions throughout the interview (Creswell, 2013). Focus group interviews allowed for the observation of the interactions among a group around a given topic or issue (Creswell, 2013). The facilitation of focus group interviews among teachers allowed for socially constructed meaning around topics related to schooling, teaching, learning, language, literacy, mathematics, and more specifically, issues around their experiences within given structural constraints. Secondary data consisted of classroom video recordings of classroom interactions, curricular materials (collected periodically from students), and researcher and facilitator field notes. The collection of extensive field notes allowed for taking on a "thick description" approach (Geertz, 1973). Both participants and researcher were able to document in-depth interactions that took place within the classroom space (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011). Moreover, participants in PROJECT took part in the interpretation and analysis throughout the research process, allowing them to have access to transcriptions of their individual and group interviews. Data Analysis Testimonio I engaged in a study that used testimonio as part of the methodology and process for data analysis. Oral narratives of personal experiences can be understood as testimonios. I explored testimonio for analysis because it is explicitly tied to collecting stories of personal experiences in the form of field note conversations and the retelling of stories (Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2002). Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 58 Oral narratives help the researcher to understand the projected and subjective truth of the narrator (Razfar & Rumenapp, 2013), their experiences, their identities, and how they see themselves (Creswell, 2013), Like narratives, testimonio can give insight into the process and practice of the teacher beliefs. This gives significant attention to the more 'unresolved' issues and tensions that teachers of LEB students struggle with daily (Razfar, 2012). Testimonio emerges as an ongoing dialogue with other speakers and within the relationship between the narrator(s) and the audience. The emergence of such narratives in any interaction is always purposeful, partial, and an index for how narrators choose to represent their own 'selves' to actual and potential hearers (Razfar, 2012). Testimonio is a way of teaching and learning pedagogy (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga & Flores Carmona, 2012) and critical in unfolding the otherwise untold counter-narratives of teachers of color. Testimonio is distinctive from oral narratives in that they are part of a LatCrit lens. They are significant to my study because I explore Latina educadoras’ construction and narration of their own identity – both inside and outside of the classroom. It allowed for the opportunity to collect extensive information about Latina educadoras as individuals, their teaching approaches, and how they understood and saw the world around them. To have a clearer understanding of the context in which their teaching practices evolved, I used testimonios, as it allowed me as the researcher to obtain information from Latina teachers that perhaps they did not consciously know about themselves (Bell, 2002). This methodological approach also allowed for the educadoras to discuss how they used curriculum development to engage their LEB students to use their experiential knowledge from outside the classroom during mathematics instruction. With the collection of Latina educadoras’ testimonios, I could “recover ‘papelitos guardados’ – previous experiences otherwise silenced or untold, which in turn can be unfolded into a narrative Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 59 that conveys personal, political, and social realities” (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga & Flores Carmona, 2012, p. 364). Conclusion It is important to look at how teachers engage in praxis by reflecting on their own mathematical, linguistic, and racial identities and then how they incorporate these aspects into their daily teaching practice. In the following chapter, I present a series of findings that answer the research questions I outlined. Within these findings, I highlight the impact teachers' identities have on developing the learning agency of their Latinx emergent bilingual students in matemáticas. I present both teacher testimonios and classroom observations that represent the ways in which each teachers incorporated students’ funds of knowledge. I discuss tres temas: comunidad, identidad, and language as wealth to demonstrate how the racial, linguistic and mathematical identities of these Latina educadoras transformed their pedagogy. Each tema addresses two guiding questions that were selected from coding via NVivo. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 60 CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS “For only through the body, through the pulling of flesh, can the human soul be transformed. And for images, words, stories to have this transformative power, they must arise from the human body – flesh and bone – and from the Earth’s body – stone, sky, liquid, soil.” (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 97) Overview The following chapter presents findings from my examination of data collected from Vanessa, Eva, and Daisy, three Latina educadoras that over two academic years willingly engaged in a participatory action research project called PROJECT. The findings draw from the testimonios shared by these three Latina educadoras during weekly meetings and focus group interviews, individual interviews and one-on-one meetings, that took place before and after the completion of each unit, as well as how their stated beliefs and understandings compared with their daily teaching practice. During the meetings and interviews, they openly discussed and reflected on their own experiences as former Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students and as Latinx emergent bilinguals. They used our weekly check-ins as a communal space to unfold their papelitos guardados, the process by which we contemplate thoughts and feelings, often in isolation and through different times. We keep them in our memory, write them down, and store them for safe places waiting for the appropriate moment when we can return them for review and analysis, or speak out and share them with others. Sharing can begin a process of empowerment… (The Latina Feminist Group, 2001, p. 2) By reflecting on their own educational and linguistic experiences, Latina educadoras translated these understandings into how they taught their Latinx emergent bilingual students within an urban context. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 61 The Importance of Testimonio as a Lens for Examining the Educadoras’ Practice Testimonio can provide a lens into Latina educadoras’ identidades and experiences as teachers and learners. Testimonio is an important tool for Latina educadoras because when they reflect on their own past and present experiences, they can use those experiences to inform their teaching. These reflections can be used to better understand what their Latinx emergent bilingual students face within the context of their schools and within the public-school system. For example, Vanessa provided a testimonio about her experiences as a former CPS student and its relevance to her current identidad as a Latina educadora within CPS. Being born and raised in Chicago...it means a lot to me to be in CPS. Being a product of CPS is a big thing. Not just being born and raised in Chicago but being a product and going… you know to the neighborhood school. You know being a product of it and seeing what disadvantages or what I went through that I felt was not right you know what I mean? Like the way some teachers…. Were just doing just for a job, just for a paycheck… I feel like being a teacher is not just for the paycheck. It’s for the passion, it’s for the love, it’s for the students. That's what it means to me. I get up every morning and I absolutely love my job… (Vanessa, Focus Group Interview 04.08.16) Vanessa’s account of her own schooling experiences in CPS and of having grown up in the same neighborhood as her Latinx emergent students evidences the relationship between her past experiences as a Latinx student in the same neighborhood and her current reflection of her passion for teaching. Vanessa’s testimonio recounts her time as a student that encountered teachers that did not demonstrate practices that supported her academic growth. Because she is aware of what it means to have a non-supportive teacher, she is aware of the type of teacher she has to be in order for her Latinx emergent bilingual students to succeed. It is through these Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 62 Latina educadoras’ self (re)constructed identities that they can better support and assess their Latinx emergent bilingual students’ and understanding of how the everyday curriculum must connect to everyday practices in and outside of the classroom. Her testimonio allowed Vanessa to have a deeper, experiential understanding of how her Latinx emergent bilingual students learn and negotiate their identidad to understand the current curricular content, even in matemáticas. PROJECT (Participatory Action Research Project) Units and Research Questions Based on their own classroom observations, along with assessment of school curriculum as a cohort each Latina educadora collectively decided that their participatory action research projects would put focus around healthy well-being in school, their Latinx emergent bilingual student's comunidad and its relationship to national health concerns within Latinx communities across the country. As a cohort, they developed three similar curricular units (nine lesson plans) that were cohesive with Common Core Standards, WIDA and mandated standards by CPS. This was based off of All three Latina educadoras agreed that their overall unit goals involved their Latinx emergent bilingual students taking ownership and becoming experts to critically challenge the structures of traditional schooling. Each Latina educadora sought to implement culturally relevant matemáticas and science curriculum across all three units, to provide their Latinx emergent bilingual students with ethical and meaningful instruction. Within these units they also created Culturally Historic Activity Triangles (CHAT) (Engeström,1999) that were used as mediational tools to help with the vision and development of their overall outcomes. The goal was for their Latinx emergent bilingual students to develop deep understandings of matemáticas and science through using it to study their lived realties and come to their own analyses of contradictions in society and their lives- to prepare them to change disparities as they Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 63 saw fit (Gutstein, 2016). As a result, the Latina educadoras engaged students in matemáticas and scientific discourse centered around culturally relevant pedagogy along with integrated student’s funds of knowledge, which included their comunidad, identidad and multilingualism. Three main questions were put forth for their overall PROJECT goals as a cohort: Table 3: PROJECT Cohort Unit Questions Latina Educadora Cohort Unit Questions o Unit 1: How does food and nutrition affect the overall well-being of our community? o Unit 2: How can students identify, apply and explain why it is important to obtain a nutritious diet in their everyday lives? o Unit 3: How can Americans benefit from obtaining a nutritious diet in their everyday lives? As a result, and reasoning behind putting focus on such a topic and questions (listed above), each Latina educadora further came up with their own guiding themes and questions to address health disparities within their own classrooms, as they made direct connections to their content areas. Vanessa. As an International Baccalaureate (IB) English language Arts teacher, Vanessa developed her participatory action research project aligning them to the Common Core Standards and followed IB requirements. Considering that her school had not completely followed the healthy school's initiative required by CPS, she sought to look at what were the common health issues among her Latinx emergent bilingual students, their families, within their comunidad and how the school system played a role on such disparities. Below are her three-unit questions: Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 64 Table 4: Vanessa PROJECT unit questions Vanessa Unit 1: How does food and nutrition affect the well-being of my personal health? Unit 2: How can Americans benefit from obtaining a nutritious diet in their everyday lives? Unit 3: How can we make changes in our community to help lower obesity rates nationwide? From the above unit questions, Vanessa developed nine lessons, three lessons per unit. In her final thesis she explained each unit: In the first unit, we looked closely at what we ate and analyzed articles on Genetically Modified Foods, what exactly were my students putting into their bodies, and also did a science project on Hot Cheetos. In the second unit, my students understood the difference between overweight and obese. We analyzed articles on minorities health disparities by gender and age groups. It was followed up with a lesson on analyzing the data of how many fast food restaurants are within our communities and debating why there are so many in low-income neighborhoods such as Little Village. In the third unit, we used all information we have learned and changes in lifestyle to take action within ourselves, as a school and within the community. In all three units, we incorporated Math and Science content, by using articles, graphic organizers, measuring tools, surveys and videos. Reflections and NWEA scores were used as assessment tools to monitor progress throughout the units. (Vanessa, Final Thesis, August 2016) Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 65 The above gives insight as to how Vanessa’s units addressed health disparities among her students, their families, and within their comunidad. Eva. Eva created her units based on the Common Core State Standards, WIDA standards, students' funds of knowledge, surveys, pre-assessments, articles, and technology that she incorporated during class time for her students to do research. In doing so, she developed a food journal that allowed her students to record/document what they ate during the holiday season during the month of November and December of 2014. From this activity, she learned that students ate unhealthy foods based on the national health food pyramid. They were also unfamiliar with the number of servings per meal they should eat daily. This led Eva to create what she called “a healthy driven curriculum” with objectives that aligned with the Common Core and WIDA standards. In doing so, she sought to teach students that the amount of unhealthy food they ate regularly could cause them future health complications and possibly lead to obesity. Upon review of her final thesis for PROJECT, she explained her thought process around her units: Each unit consisted of a question that I like to refer to the students as ‘Why is it important for me (the student) to learn this?’ Then, I followed it with the specific “Big Idea Question” that guided students to learn about making healthy choices. These questions were created by the students and/or myself the teacher, based on the information students needed to learn. Each unit had its own “Big Idea Question.” (Eva, Final Thesis, October 2016) Below are her three-unit questions that guided her participatory action research project. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 66 Table 5: Eva PROJECT Unit questions Eva Unit 1: How will students analyze food the food pyramid and learn to eat the proper portions of food in their diet? Unit 2: How does food and nutrition affect the well-being of my personal health? Unit 3: How does food and nutrition affect the overall well-being of our community? Based on the questions above she created units that were relevant to her Latinx emergent bilingual students' lifestyles, culture, and comunidad. Daisy. As a middle school educadora de matemáticas, Daisy was explicit about creating units that aligned with common core standards in matemáticas. In addition to matemáticas, she decided to follow a CPS initiative that focused on promoting “healthy” schools and healthy habits. A report produced by CPS called Healthy Chicago (2013) clearly showed that many children were obese, especially in Latinx and Black communities. From this report, she developed a survey for her students to take home and assess concerns that their parents or other family members had around health disparities. As a result, she came up with three unit questions that corresponded with what students found: Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 67 Table 6: Daisy PROJECT unit questions Daisy Unit 1: Students’ Choices – How can mathematical inferences push students to make health choices about their drinks and consumptions in everyday life? Unit 2: Our Community - How can students’ funds of knowledge assist in their interpretation of numerical data? Unit 3: From our community to the nation - How can we use graphs and tables to help students make sense of their community data and assist in hypothesizing changes in their community to help lower obesity rates nationwide? These particular questions guided her unit lessons and overall PROJECT outcomes. In her final thesis, Daisy reflected on her units and how they guided her lesson planning: The units were implemented in November-December, March, and June. Each unit lasted about three to four weeks. The units were implemented in different days since the students’ schedule rotated. It was typically during a 60-90 minute lesson. All the units were aligned to common core standards, but were also targeting students’ funds of knowledge. Overall, the three units that were part of the research project were implemented with a nutrition aspect embedded in the activities that the students were doing in the classroom. The units focused on using mathematical knowledge to promote a better healthy lifestyle among the students, their families, and their community. (Daisy, Final Thesis, April 2016) From the above reflection Daisy evidenced how her participatory action research project was planned out and directly connected to matemáticas, along with health disparities within her Latinx emergent bilingual students comunidad. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 68 The Importance of Incorporating LEB Students’ Funds of Knowledge For further analysis around their overall final research projects for PROJECT in the collective portion of their final thesis, each Latina educadora agreed upon writing the following to identify the importance of their work in the classroom: As educators, we have taken notice that the traditional American curriculum does not cultivate an environment where the students can become greater critical thinkers. According to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), “The Common Core focuses on developing the critical-thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills students will need to be successful” (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2016). We asked ourselves, is this enough? Does this actually happen in classrooms throughout the nation? In noticing a gap in the access students have to the standard CCSS curriculum and the lack of resources available to our students, especially our EL students. One major gap noticed was in the health curriculum, or lack thereof, throughout our schools. Therefore, we set out to create an engaging curriculum to inform and educate students to grow into individual thinkers and to apply what they have learned to a broader perspective. Through the use of students’ funds of knowledge we hoped to gain a better understanding of how we can teach a wide range of learners. K. Gutiérrez (2008) suggests it best, “students begin to reconceive who they are and what they might be able to accomplish academically and beyond” (p. 148). Activities, through multiple means of mediation, should also allow students to use multiple means of assistance for achieving academic goals. Classrooms need to be reconstructed to create “communities of inquiry” (Wells, G., 2000, p. 12) and ensure that student's question and challenge the society in which they live. (Final Thesis – April 2016) Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 69 From this portion of their thesis, it became evident that each Latina educadora was critically aware of the inequities commonly found in the “traditional American curriculum”, that is put forth by the CCSS and the ways in which is does not directly impact their LEB students to become critical thinkers and engage in ways that tap into their funds of knowledge or see themselves as “doers” of matemáticas. Through their communal participation in PROJECT, they intentionally sought out to move beyond the standards and develop curricular units that would intentionally push their LEB students to grow academically and take knowledge acquired beyond the classroom. Conexiones to the Findings Through the course of two academic years, I worked collectively with each Latina educadora to develop their participatory action research projects during their time in PROJECT. During the first academic year, they developed and implemented their participatory action research projects and the second year focused on completing their courses at the university, analyzing data, theorizing, and submitting their final thesis based on their work in PROJECT. I helped guide their overall unit questions, along with providing weekly feedback as they created their units and lesson plans. In addition, I observed their practices through visiting their classrooms a total of nine times throughout the 2014-15 school year, studied their recorded lessons, participated in cohort discussions, and held individual discussions with each Latina educadora. They allowed me to video-record their teaching of PROJECT units, along with keep extensive field notes during classroom visits and cohort group meetings. During the second year, I continued to collect data during cohort group meetings, along with field notes. I also collected lesson plans and student work samples, along with continuing to facilitate debriefing discussions after each cohort meeting and giving them feedback on their theses. Throughout our time Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 70 together and as the two years progressed, each Latina educadora felt empowered to testimoniar about their participatory action research projects and other issues that they found significant at the time. For the purposes of my analysis, I present findings from data collected (mentioned above), directly connected to my research questions, presented in previous chapters. Los Tres Temas Through the analysis of data, which included incorporating 20+ coding categories that were adopted from a coding report run through NVivo for PROJECT, I proceeded to choose those 12 coding categories that I believed were most relevant to my research questions. Upon coding 4 focus group interviews, (3 that were conducted after every unit and 1 that was part of PROJECT’s concluding discussion), I omitted the categories that collapsed with other categories, thus ending up with 10 coding categories: Table 7: Coding Categories Coding Categories Coding Definitions Drawing on Latinx emergent bilingual students’ funds of knowledge How do Latina educadoras use Latinx emergent bilingual students’ funds of knowledge in their lessons? How are Latina educadoras reflective of their own schooling experiences? Latina educadoras speak about promoting Latinx emergent students’ language repertoires. Importance of students speaking in their native language Using Spanish/Spanglish in math class How do Latina educadoras speak to their Latinx emergent bilingual students? Latina educadoras allow students to use their home language to bring out their funds of knowledge in the classroom Latina educadora identidad Multilingual Language Practices as a Resource for Latinx Emergent Promoting multilingualism in the classroom Students’ Spanish language use Teachers’ discourse affects students’ discourse Using language to draw out funds of knowledge Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH Mathematical language discourse Community cultural wealth Drawing on comunidad in the classroom Latina educadoras discuss the language of math as limiting to EB students How do Latina educadoras speak about the importance of comunidad and its impact on their teaching practice? How do Latina educadoras use community cultural wealth in their daily math lessons? In order to answer my research questions, I identified 6 codes that directly correlate with tres temas which are reflected below: comunidad, identidad, and language as wealth. Figure 3: Los tres temas and the six codes The Importance of Building Comunidad in the Classroom Community Cultural Wealth: How do Latina educadoras speak about the importance of comunidad and its impact on their teaching practice? Drawing on comunidad in the classroom: How do Latina educadoras use community cultural wealth in their daily math lessons? The Impact of Identidad in the Classroom for Both Latina Educadoras and Latinx Emergent Bilingual (LEB) Students Latina Educadora Identidad: How are Latina educadoras reflective of their own experiences? Drawing on Latinx Emergent Bilingual Students’ Funds of Knowledge: How do Latina educadoras use Latinx emergent bilingual students’ funds of knowledge in their lessons? Language as Wealth Multilingual Language Practices as a Resource for Latinx Emergent Bilingual Students' Understanding of Matemáticas: Latina educadoras speak about promoting Latinx emergent students’ language repertoires. Promoting Multilingualism in the Classroom: Importance of students speaking in their native language. 71 Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 72 Comunidad: Yosso (2005) suggests that looking through a CRT and LatCrit lens means “critiquing deficit theorizing and data that may be limited by its omission of the voices of People of Color. Such deficit-informed research often ‘sees’ deprivation in Communities of Color” (p. 75). In turn research must pull away from this deficit view and position la comunidad as a place that we can learn from its, array of cultural knowledge, skills, abilities and contacts possessed by socially marginalized groups that often go unrecognized and unacknowledged” (Yosso, 2005, p. 77). I draw on Yosso’s work to describe how la comunidad de La Villita is significant and has valuable resources for Latina educadoras and their Latinx emergent bilingual students that must be incorporated within everyday schooling in order to build student and teacher agency alike, within the classroom. In particular, I use community cultural wealth to identify various forms of capital fostered through cultural wealth and which include aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial and resistant capital. These forms of capital draw on the knowledges of both Latina educadoras and Latinx emergent students that they carry daily (Yosso, 2005). The importance of comunidad in the classroom – Comunidad within the classroom space is essential for both Latinx emergent bilingual students and Latina educadoras because it allows for their extended knowledge to be at the core of their learning. That knowledge is developed with the home, maintained by family values, their culture, native and home language, and through daily interactions with family and community members. Specifically, it is those forms of knowledge, skills, and abilities from la comunidad that must be valued by both Latina educadoras and their Latinx emergent bilingual students and brought into the classroom daily. Identidad: Identities can be defined as the way that individuals come to conceptualize themselves and others and how they act as a result of those understandings (Cornell and Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 73 Hartmann, 1998). Esteban-Guitart and Moll (2014) argue that “people draw on experiences across multiple time scales as they make sense of experiences in the present. Specifically, ongoing events and funds of identity are interpreted with reference to multiple timescales which include previous lived experiences (i.e., life and learning experiences); past and present accounts of family members (funds of knowledge); historical accounts and also current political-social circumstances” (p. 72). I use these definitions to give attention to Latina educadoras and their Latinx emergent bilingual identidades because they are important in relation to how they draw on students’ identidades and how those identities shape and are shaped by their life experiences, both inside and outside of school. The impact of identidad in the classroom for both Latina educadoras and their Latinx emergent bilingual students – Considerable value is brought into the classroom space when both Latinx emergent bilingual students and Latina educadoras allow for their identidades to be the center of their learning outcomes. That is when both student and teacher alike can see themselves within the curriculum and make direct connections to their own lived reality, a transformation of one’s own identity continues to evolve. When specific skill sets and knowledge that have been historically and culturally developed outside of the classroom are integrated into classroom activities, a richer and more meaningful experience is at the core of knowledge development (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 2001). Furthermore, I draw on the above work to define the ways in which both Latina educadoras and their Latinx emergent bilingual students identidades surface when lessons are integrated with outside knowledge and skills that are accumulated within La Villita. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 74 Language as Wealth: Yosso (2005), Garcia and Kleifgen (2018), and España and Herrera (2020) define language practices as linguistic resources that must be nurtured in and outside of school. This includes having the ability to speak in multiple languages, as it is inclusive of intellectual and social skills attained through communication experiences. Moreover, I draw on their work to describe how Latina educadoras fostered linguistic equity in the classroom and identified opportunities in which their LEB students saw their linguistic skills as assets and the ways in which these assets added value to everyday discourse in the classroom. Language as Wealth in the classroom – When Latina educadoras and Latinx emergent bilingual students find intentional ways to sustain their multilingualism and linguistic skills as part of their daily discourse for content development, considerable value is brought, and all language repertories are fostered. Language is then seen as a body of wealth that both teacher and students maintain and value (Garcia & Kleifgen, 2018). Upon engagement of los tres temas and the development of working definitions for each of them, I found that all three Latina educadoras’ racial, linguistic, identidad matemática shaped their teaching pedagogy, as well as their perceptions of their Latinx emergent bilingual students’ learning potential. In particular, I argue that los tres temas must be figuratively interconnected and work together as an analytical tool in order to further gain a critical understanding of how these Latina educadoras shaped their practice, along with how Latinx emergent bilingual students cultivated agency. Thus, comunidad leads to identidad, which leads to language as wealth as shown below: Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 75 Figure 4: The Interlacing of comunidad, identidad & language as wealth Comunidad Identidad Language as Wealth Primer Tema: The Importance of Building Comunidad in the Classroom Community Cultural Wealth Testimonio - How do Latina educadoras speak about the importance of comunidad and its impact on their teaching practice? During our focus group interviews and weekly meetings, there was a consistency with all three Latina educadoras around the importance of la comunidad impacting their daily teaching. Upon review of transcriptions, it became further evident that they all held a strong connection to their Latinx emergent bilingual students’ comunidad, especially because they all grew up in the same or similar neighborhood context as their students. As I listened to their testimonios, they all acknowledged their deep connection to their community and how it is deeply rooted around how they saw themselves as educadoras. This included how they chose to teach and interact with their students daily. For example, Vanessa described her connection this way: Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 76 Born and raised in Little Village, I believe that I have a better understanding of where my students come from culturally and linguistically. Within that time, I have been able to continue building ties with families and the community. (Final Thesis – July 2016) Little Village, or La Villita as it is known, is a working-class neighborhood, with a population of Latinx, mostly of Mexican descent, immigrant-origin residents located on the southwest side of Chicago. The following testimonios were captured during our final focus group interview on April 8, 2016, which took place at Mendez Middle School in one of the educadoras’ classrooms after school. We gathered together that afternoon to discuss final steps for completing their participatory action research projects for PROJECT, such as how they would go about finalizing their units and begin working on their thesis. During this final meeting, I did not arrive with a specific set of questions or set of data that I was seeking to retrieve from each educadora, but rather, I allowed for our conversation to evolve organically. I wanted to hear from each teacher and create space for each educadora to feel comfortable with their colleagues and myself to engage in a moment in which they could testimoniar with no guidelines or boundaries attached. During this time, we began a deep discussion around their own schooling in CPS, growing up in Chicago within the Latinx comunidad, and how they felt connected to their Latinx emergent bilingual students. For me, this became the moment in which I was no longer the PROJECT research assistant, but instead an active listener, in which I stood silent as each educadora, unveiled their contra narrativas and shared knowledge of how their everyday lives is the basis of how they have constructed their identidad as Latina educadoras and their teaching practices. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 77 Vanessa. Vanessa was vocal about her teaching practices and how they are significantly and wholeheartedly rooted in her reflections of her comunidad. Growing up in the same comunidad as her Latinx emergent bilingual students, Vanessa’s testimonio unfolded: it's so rewarding to see my kids from here from Little Village, and I share with them the storyline… I grew up in the neighborhood, my parents still live in the neighborhood… I feel fortunate to be able to teach in the neighborhood that I came from and demonstrate to the kids, guess what? Bautista did it! You can do it and grow… Through my experience sharing with you, working for you and all that. It’s very rewarding. I'm very passionate. I love my kids, and they see it, you know? Showing them that, teaching is not just a paycheck. (Vanessa, Focus Group Interview 04.08.16) Vanessa used her testimonio to acknowledge her passion for teaching and at the same time she expressed her feelings around not just “doing it for the paycheck”. For her it was much more than getting paid, her teaching was about the students, about connecting with them in ways that perhaps other teachers would never be able to do and only did it to get paid, as Vanessa mentioned in a previous testimonio. Vanessa expressed herself in front of her colegas, I could see through her facial expressions and hear through her voice how much she cherished her students and desired for them to successful academically, despite the negative connotations associated with living and growing up in la Villita, from spectators and outsiders. That is, as I described in the previous chapter, this community has the largest prison in the city of Chicago, and is thus seen by the general public as a dangerous place to live in. Often making news reports as a high-crime area, and densely populated by many immigrants from Mexico and descendants of immigrants. Through her teaching and the relationships that she actively built with her Latinx Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 78 emergent bilingual students, Vanessa wished to assure that they were confident but also valued the place in which they come from, the place they called home – La Villita. Eva. Although she did not grow up in La Villita, Eva did grow up in the same city as her Latinx emergent bilingual students and within a similar comunidad, that is less than five miles south of Mendez in the Bridge Park community, a southside neighborhood also identified as a Latinx comunidad in Chicago. Eva expressed how her racial identity, and that of her peers, impacted their schooling, along with recognizing the value of their comunidad: I went to a school where, you know, there was chinitos, polaquitos, umm, American and umm, and I remember, you know, that my education- I'm sorry, in the public school system wasn't, umm to where, to the level that we… I expect students to be at now. So I didn't get the greatest public education. So that when I became a teacher, I would know that I want to, umm address issues, community, background, parents... Where you come from, you know? What my parents taught me, that I know I can connect. And they having their home, and then just apply it. Cuz I knew that’s when- You know, I wasn't appreciative of what kind of education I got, because I feel like, you know, the system in general. It was, I didn't get the education I felt like I kinda deserved. (Eva, Focus Group Interview 04.08.16) Eva’s testimonio suggests that because there was a lack of relevance to her comunidad within her education, as a Latina educadora, it is her responsibility to assure that her current Latinx emergent bilingual students see their comunidad as a resource to their learning outcomes. She wants to create and maintain a space within her classroom and lesson’s in which la comunidad is centered. Because she experienced firsthand systemic exclusion at a young age and throughout Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 79 her educational experience and is aware of what the outcomes become when students are not granted an equitable education, she knows what’s a stake. Daisy. Similar to Vanessa, upon migrating from México, Daisy grew up in la comunidad that she teaches in since the age of 9 years old. She proudly reflects on being able to connect to her Latinx emergent bilingual students in a way that acknowledges their communal assets. But in addition, she also understands that schools in la comunidad are not adequately funded and therefore she has to provide I also grew up in the neighborhood, so I feel… I think I can connect to them and I feel like you (Vanessa) said we need to be the best teachers that we can be so they can have the same opportunities as everybody else… you know… maybe we don’t get much funding as other schools… maybe we don’t have that many resources… but it’s our job to provide the best curriculum. (Daisy, Focus Group Interview 04.08.16) For Daisy, growing up in la Villita and having attended school in the same neighborhood as her students, she understood that there was a lack of resources, not provided by the district to schools such as Mendez and Paisano, because of where they are located and the students they serve. Despite this disproportionality, Daisy recognized that it was still her job as a Latina educadora and native of la comunidad to develop and facilitate a curriculum that was meaningful and relevant, to give her LEB students the tools they needed to have the same opportunities as other students across the city. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 80 Drawing on comunidad in the classroom La Practica - How do Latina educadoras use community cultural wealth in their teaching of matemáticas? During their participatory action research project, as a cohort, all three Latina educadoras collectively decided to focus their units and lessons around an issue that continues to impact the physical and mental health of communities of color throughout the U.S. and in particular within the Latinx comunidad. They agreed that a focus on health disparities within the Latinx community was a communal topic that would bring rich and informative knowledge to their LEB students and was relevant to the development of matemáticas, even in Vanessa's ELA class and Eva’s Social Studies class. Each teacher developed lessons that were related to national and local health rates for communities of color. As their end goal for their units, they sought to inform their LEB students about how to take preventative measures for long-term illnesses, such as high cholesterol and diabetes, as these diseases impacted both Latinx youth and the elders within la comunidad. I witnessed how each Latina educadora actively engaged and incorporated community cultural wealth within their lessons. Through the following transcriptions, I bring to light their daily practices and how each Latina educadora made direct connections to la comunidad, along with acknowledging the skills and familial assets that their students bring into the classroom. Vanessa: Centering comunidad in physical, mental and nutritional health For Vanessa’s final unit, she decided that it was important to address the physical, mental, and nutritional health of her students in order to get to her unit three question: How can we make changes in our community to help lower obesity rates nationwide? On June 10, 2015, I Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 81 observed Vanessa’s third period of ELA 8th grade class. Her unit focus was obesity within Latinx communities across the U.S., and the impact obesity has on LEB students personally, on their school community, and within their comunidad in Little Village. To give full context around her goals and unit outcomes, I present below her unit activity triangle, in which she outlines her lesson objectives, outcomes, guiding questions, tools and artifacts, and how she intended to develop her overall curricular goals for her final PROJECT unit: Figure 5: Vanessa’s Activity Triangle Providing Vanessa’s activity triangle allows for visualization of how she was thinking about making direct connections to la comunidad in which her LEB students live, Little Village. For example, her guiding question directly led to making direct changes to la comunidad, and in her Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 82 ‘outcomes' section she listed: “Students will identify ways that the community can help decrease nationwide obesity rates.” On this day, I witnessed how Vanessa encouraged her LEB students to make connections to their comunidad. She intentionally prompted students to reflect on their comunidad and identify how they saw their community being impacted by health disparities. In particular, she pushed for students to 1) understand health disparities within their communities, and 2) identify healthy alternatives to live a better quality of life, along with integrating conceptos de matemáticas. For her students to gain a visual and conceptual understanding of how health disparities impact them and their comunidad, Vanessa used matemáticas to help students understand the importance of physical activity. First, she had students read and discuss the CPS policy around physical activity and what is mandated by the state of Illinois as required weekly physical activity in groups and as a class. Then she had students measure and calculate their target heart rate (THR). The transcriptions below demonstrate how Vanessa used matemáticas in her ELA class to make direct connections to her overall lesson outcomes around comunidad. Table 8: Vanessa Transcript 1 June 10, 2015 CPS Physical Activity 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Vanessa: CPS requires us to have 120 minutes per week of physical activity right. Hold on. For a week. If we have 120 minutes per week of physical activity, how many minutes is that in a month? Student: 480 Vanessa: 480. I want you to figure out how many weeks are in a school year. Who knows? Students: 52, 48. 38. 36. Vanessa: 36. Figure that out within your groups, and it here. Do you feel that? figure this out, that you're getting all of those minutes? How many you guys are saying 'Heck no. We don't get that in school'? (Majority of students raise their hands) Vanessa: Wow. That's holding on, we're not gonna get into specific teachers now. Shh. Obviously, are we gonna add that into our graphic organizer about change within the school? Students: Yes Vanessa: Yes. Ms. Jackie. Jackie: 17,340 minutes Vanessa: Seventeen thousand Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 15 16 17 18 19 20 22 23 24 25 26 27 27 29 83 Jackie: 340 minutes Student: But that's for 36 months. Vanessa: No Student: Yeah because 480 minutes a month would be Vanessa: Yes, yes, yes Student: Would be 120 times 36 Vanessa: So it should be, it should be then 36 right. And then figure that out now and then figure. Now I want you to talk in your group what changes need to be made in the school regarding physical activity? What should have more of? What should be happening? What when you are in school, what changes should you make when it comes to physical activity? Go. Ms. Jackie Jackie: It's 4,320 minutes. Vanessa: Let everyone figure it out. Go ahead. Alright, think about what changes need to be happening in school. Don't just say we need to add more gym. Get more into, get more into specifics within the school and yourself. By reviewing the CPS policy around physical activity, Vanessa wanted students to figure out how many minutes of physical activity are supposed to be incorporated during one school week. From there, she asked students to mathematically calculate the number of weeks in the school year by how many minutes of physical activity they should be having. Students then incorporated multiplication strategies to figure out their final numbers that were directly connected to their real life. In addition to the lesson intentionally drawing out conceptos de matemáticas, she also promoted students’ analytical thinking – having them read the policy themselves and compare and contrast it with their reality. Thus, Vanessa set up her lesson to be inclusive of her students' developing agency. Her LEB students were encouraged to take ownership of the content that was presented to them. By prompting specific questions such as What changes should you make? And what changes should the school make? (lines 22-24), Vanessa allowed for rich and meaningful discussion around how students can take control of their own health outcomes and that of their comunidad. The incorporation of math into this specific lesson allowed for Vanessa's LEB students to make sense of how the physical activity in their school, or lack thereof, obstructed their overall health. They were able to use matemáticas to calculate weekly physical activity. As Vanessa Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 84 moved on with getting students to make further connections to their comunidad through this lesson, she also had them assess their target heart rate. By including concepts such as subtraction, division, and multiplication, students learned how to find and manually calculate their target heart rate. Table 9: Vanessa transcript 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 June 10, 2015 Target Heart Rate – Part 1 Vanessa: I am going to start off now this lesson. We finished doing um personal, school, and now we're gonna do community. Before I start the community, we start discussing community, I want you to figure out your massive (?) heart rate. I want you to realize what your heart rate is. And what needs to be happening with our heart rate or where do you think it should be when you are doing very um vigorous activity. Ok. What do you think vigorous is? Can someone help him out? What does it mean? Student: Intense Vanessa: Intense. Thank you. I want you to right now add this to your graphic organizer, and I want you to figure out what it is. M stands for mass. Right. Mass heart rate is four times 220 minus your, what do you think A stands for? Students: Age Vanessa: Age. Divided by five. That is the equation. You are going to figure out right now. The mass is four. This is the equation I found out right now. So you're gonna do 220 minus whatever your age is. 14, 15, 16, whatever you are. There shouldn't be a sixteen-year-old in here. Divided by five, and then this. Figure it out. Go. Write it down, and figure out your own heart rate. I wanna know what it is. Who figured out already? Vanessa: Ok can I have one of my, can I have someone come up and show them how to figure it out? Show everybody. Jackie, are you raising your hand? Jackie: Yeah Vanessa: Come here, Miss Jackie. Use yours as an example for those of you that cannot figure it out, Jackie will show you. You can figure out your heart rate. Alright everybody look at Miss Jackie. Jackie: So it's 220 minus, most of us are at least 14. This is 206. So then you multiply 206 by 4, 824. So then divide 824 by five, and this is 16. So 16 times five is 80, and that's two. You bring down the four. There's four. 20. Then you bring down a 0. You put a decimal. And this is an eight right here. And it's forty. And then yeah. Vanessa: How many of you guys are like Jackie? 164.8? Who got 165? Thank you, Miss Jackie. Anyone got less? Christian what did you get? Christian: I got 164. Vanessa had her student, Jackie, go up to the board and demonstrate for her classmates how she came to calculate her target heart rate using conceptos de matemáticas (lines 18–26). By encouraging Jackie to walk up to the board and demonstrate her knowledge of matemáticas, Jackie came to see herself as a “doer” of math. This also prompted her classmates to engage with their own development of matemáticas and agency. As shown below, Vanessa continued with Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 85 her lesson around identifying students’ target heart rate. In doing so, she made connections to the ways in which students should identify their pulse and measure how many calories they burn during gym class. Table 10: Vanessa transcript 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 June 10, 2015 Target Heart Rate – Part 2 Vanessa: So we're all following that. Now say you're in Mr. Lucan's gym class, and you are playing you know a very intense game, you're rate heart should be, what do you guys think? Let's make an inference. Should it go higher or lower? Is it gonna go higher or lower? Students: Higher Vanessa: Higher right which is good. It should be doubled. Your heart rate. That's how you know you are actually burning some calories. That's how you know if you are doing, having a um vigorous physical activity is if your heart rate is doubled. Ok. I don't know how we would figure that out though as you're working out. You put your what? Henry: You put your finger on your pulse, and then you count it for 30 seconds or a minute. And then you like Vanessa: You put your finger on your pulse, and you can feel it there. And then you can figure it out. I just wanted to share that with you guys. So after you're doing a physical activity, I want all of you, excuse me for future, once you're doing physical activity, you know your heart rate is going up, and you're actually having an intense workout or whatever it is, feel your pulse and that's how you know. Ok. Henry (line 9) stood before his classmates and showed them how to find their pulse. This validated his prior knowledge and encouraged others to also take ownership over their health. Through the mathematical assessment of students’ target heart rate and the number of minutes they obtained of physical activity per day in school, Vanessa prompted her LEB students to begin thinking critically about their health and how they can begin making changes in the school and their comunidad. Moreover, in this lesson Vanessa moved forward to connect student's physical health to the overall mental health that they and their familias experience within la comunidad. In the below transcription, she asked students to think critically about their mental health and how they Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 86 wished to make changes in their comunidad around this critical topic, that is not commonly discussed. Table 11: Vanessa transcript 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 June 10, 2015 Target Heart Rate – Part 3 Vanessa: Now let's fill out the community part. I remember when we had other lessons, and we talked about all of the stores and all of the fast-food places that we have. We talked about wow, our community is filled with all of this fast-food restaurant, these little chucherías, and all of these other things. Now mental-, here we're gonna start filling out in the community what needs to be changed? Mentally, what needs to be changed within the community you feel? What do you think needs to happen? Discuss that with your group. Quickly. Go. Mentally, what needs to change? Vanessa pushed her students to validate the various ways in which by mental health in their comunidad is directly impacted due to poor health practices and inequitable access to health services (lines 1-6). She invited her students to take on this moment as a way to testimoniar and discuss not only how they see the physical and mental health in their neighborhood impacted, but also how they wish to help make direct changes within their comunidad to address disparities and get community members more informed. The transcription below illustrates how Vanessa created a safe space for her students and how testimonios evolved during that class period. In particular, students began testimoniando around their own experiences living en la comunidad and how they were impacted by their daily surroundings outside of school. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 87 Table 12: Vanessa transcript 5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 June 10, 2015 Understanding Mental Health in the Neighborhood – Part 1 Vanessa: Ok let's bring it back. Community mental health. I heard different things here. I'm gonna start with Miguel Perez, what he was saying. Sorry Miguel for putting you on the spot, but um what did you say mentally what needs to change within the community? Miguel: That you should be able to communicate with the people that you live with or that surround or that live in your neighborhood because um when you're, when you communicate more with people, that means you have your person. You're not like um, you're not isolated from everybody, so. And you have more opportunities to meet other people, and that gives you a chance to be someone special. Like great. Vanessa: Someone yeah. So he's saying you get out there and get to know your neighbors. Go out and there needs to be more communication. That doesn't happen. How many of you guys live in a block, and you just don't know some of the people? Be honest. (Students raise hands) Vanessa: Wow. In this neighborhood. I'm shocked. I am shocked by that because I, as I grew up, we knew everybody on the block. Everybody. Ok, I love how we all get into the conversation now. We get out there. That needs to be the change. Get out there and meet your neighbors. Get to know them, who you are. That we watch for each other, watch over each other, but just be careful when you do that. Now shh quiet down guys so we can keep going. What's another change that needs to happen mentally within a community? Mental health. Fabian(?) Fabian: We need to be open-minded. Vanessa: Open-minded. Give me more details. Elaborate more. Fabian: Like Vanessa: Why open-minded? Why? Fabian: Open-minded like our culture cause like when we're eating just like eating what our parents used to eat and our grandparents used to eat. And we never really give other foods the opportunity like we're... Vanessa: Oh. I like that. I agree with that. In the community, we're just stuck in our old ways, and that needs to change. We need within our community we should be able to bring, you know Mexican, we need to stop thinking that right. We should be able to let other others come in right ok or other things. What else needs to change mentally? Miss Naharain Naharain: We said um of like the safety of our community. Vanessa: The safety within our community. Ok, keep saying more. Naharain: As we said like for us where we come from like they'll tell us to play outside as much as you want, but they're still giving us this time limit because then here comes the gangbangers cause at the certain time, they're outside or they're doing something. Or we'll go to the park, but we can't go there anymore cause then they'll be there, and they'll take over. And it's like that's like we'll be there for five minutes, but once they start coming in, you're done. And then you just go back home. That's it. Vanessa: Ok so within the community, safety is a major thing that needs to change. Mentally, you don't feel safe right. Ok. Anything else that we can add for that? Ok, let's move on now. Physical health. What needs to change within the community for physical health? Please quickly. One minute. Go. Talk. Vanessa’s students organically took on the opportunity to engage with the telling of their contra narrativas, in which they felt at liberty to openly discuss their concerns around the safety of their comunidad, along with seek ways to build solidarity with one another. For example, Miguel (lines 4-7) discussed how it was significant to get to know each other's neighbors, as this could lead to lowering mental health issues. In particular, he saw it as, “you're not isolated from everybody, so. And you have more opportunities to meet other people, and that gives you a Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 88 chance to be someone special. Like great”. Naharain, on the other hand, felt that it was critical to testimoniar around her experience with the “gangbangers” in the neighborhood (lines 30-34). For her, she expressed not being able to get much physical activity because of the possible dangers that impacted her and her classmates daily. Vanessa validated their experiences by repeating and acknowledging their concerns. This in turn, lead more students to actively engage in the discussion around how they felt mental health impacted physical health. Students mapped out for Vanessa the lack of spaces in which they could engage in physical activity and that they considered spaces that were safe. Table 13: Vanessa transcript 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 June 10, 2015 Understanding Mental Health in the Neighborhood – Part 2 Vanessa: to group (3): So technically you only have two parks to play sports. You have other little parks but it's more like what, swings? What else needs to change within the community? Vanessa: Ok what else you feel like within physical? (inaudible) That goes more for like the safety mentally. We need to have more police. We know that. Vanessa: Alright let's bring it back quickly. Community-wise, what needs to be changed guys? Community-wise what changes need to be made? Mr. Henry. Henry: We have to add more open clubs where you could actually do physical activity like group activities. Vanessa: You mean like Boys and Girls Clubs? Henry: Yeah I guess so Vanessa: You think so. Ok more open clubs yeah. How many of you guys have ever been to the Boys and Girls Club? (Most students don't raise their hands) Vanessa: So do you feel that Mr. Romero, we should have another cause I think the only club that there is in Little Village is all the way on like the Bridgeway and (inaudible) no? Student: There's one on 25th and Whipple by (inaudible) Vanessa: Oh you're right. That's the other Boys and Girls. So we're limited to only two. What else? There's only two Miss Jackie Moreno for guess, think about the population of teenagers in in Little Village. Is that enough to accommodate all of them? All of you? No absolutely not. So therefore what else needs to change within the community for physical activity? What else do we feel? Did someone say I hear parks? What do you mean parks? Student: More parks Vanessa: How many parks do we really have with? Students: Two. Vanessa: Two big ones where you can play right. One is on the other side. Again we have the issue of gangs right. And then we only have this one here. So we need more parks. I know there's like little ones within your neighborhoods, but that's more like what, swings and hang-out right? That's it. So we need more parks. What else? What else are we gonna say that needs to change within our community? Yes. Oh Arty. Arty: More fitness centers Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 89 Vanessa: More fitness centers. Now what I'm gonna say about fitness centers is this. You might think oh fitness centers is just about lifting weights and getting on the machine, on the treadmill. No, sometimes they offer classes. They have the bike-riding classes. Sometimes they have the Zumba for those of you that wanna dance Zumba. You know. Um they have different kinds of them, classes. So that's a good thing about fitness centers. Sometimes, for example, sometimes some of us might not feel comfortable being at the park running around and doing exercise. You wanna be in a small setting where you feel more comfortable. Right. That happens. What else needs to change within the community? Yes Miss Naharain. Naharain: Something that me and my team came up with is also like the like we can't be using the space that we have just for restaurants or bars or stuff like that. And we have big areas here, but they're literally leaving them for a new store, not for somewhere we can be and actually enjoy ourselves. Vanessa: So you're saying like the unused space right needs to be used for more active stuff right. Is that what you're saying? Naharain: Yes Vanessa: Very good. So they're building all these other like stores and all these other things. Why can't they use it for something that we all can use right? That will benefit us. Anybody else? Ok. The very last one. Nutrition. What needs to change within our community regarding nutrition? Go. Students such as Arty (line 28) vocalized the lack of accessible spaces, such as the Boys and Girls Club and fitness centers. Other students came up with ideas about how to convert unused space such as store fronts. For example, in lines 36-38, Naharain and her group discussed, “like we can't be using the space that we have just for restaurants or bars or stuff like that. And we have big areas here, but they're literally leaving them for a new store, not for somewhere we can be and actually enjoy ourselves”. Vanessa validated their thoughts and concluded with elaborating additional ways in which to build within la comunidad. The discussion around mental and physical health led Vanessa’s students to make direct connections to how they saw nutrition impacting their comunidad. In particular, they began to identify certain foods that they found not healthy, along with the fact that there should be supermarkets that provide healthier food in order to encourage healthy eating and nutrition. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 90 Table 14: Vanessa Transcript 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 June 10, 2015 Understanding Mental Health in the Neighborhood – Part 3 Vanessa: Ok let's bring it back. Within our community, our Little Village community, what needs to change regarding nutrition? What do we say? I'm gonna call on Kyle. I wanna cause you were participating with Brian. What are you saying? Kyle: (inaudible) junk food. Vanessa: So the vendors right. Little vendors are on the street. They sell cotton candy. They sell what else? Students: Churros Vanessa: Churros and all that. So we need to limit vendors. Ok. What else needs to change within our community? I wanna hear new people over here. Luis what did your group say? [00:22:39.23] Vanessa: Luis what did your group say? Luis: We said to add super-, healthy supermarkets? Vanessa: Healthier supermarkets. For example like what? Students: Mariano's Vanessa: So we need a Mariano's. Um Henry why did you say we, no, there be no Mariano's? Why do you say that? Henry: Too expensive. Sometimes (inaudible) Vanessa: Sometimes what? Henry: The amount of money we get paid is not enough Vanessa: I'm gonna be honest with you. Whole Foods is a little expensive. That's, I'm gonna give that to you. Mariano's, it's not expensive as you would think it is. Not too expensive. I think like Chiquita has more expensive stuff, and I think they take advantage of the consumers that live in the neighborhood because that's all we have, and you pay more. I'm gonna be honest with you. Whenever I um, I've seen it when I've gone to La Chiquita with my mom or anything, and I'm just like Mariano's is probably less or just the same as it, and it's they offer their organic section. And a lot of the stuff like their orange juice is fresh squeezed orange juice. They give it to you, and it might be a little bit more expensive you know, but yeah. I feel like Chiquita or what's the other supermarket on Kedzie. That one's so expensive. (inaudible) Calientes? That is so expensive, and I'm just these poor people that are working these minimum wage jobs because that's all you see. So I want you to think about it in a different way Henry. Ok. Alright more. How many of you guys say a healthier supermarket? (Students raise hands) Vanessa: Ok. Who else is gonna say something? Miss Naharain you are on a role, but let me go with Fabian. Fabian: Corner stores. Vanessa: What about the corner stores? Fabian: There should be less corner stores cause there's like three. The first one's on Homan, on Trumball, and then I think it's Drake. And then (inaudible) is this way. (Inaudible) (Students start chatting) Vanessa: Ok shh. Fabian you have the microphone. Ok Henry. You're saying less corner stores because on your block, you literally count within your block radius, five corner stores. Wow. Five corner stores, and how many, do all the corner stores sell junk food? Students: Yes Vanessa: Do they sell like hot Cheetos with cheese? Students: Yes Vanessa: Ok and all of that stuff. Ok. But then I was raising the question was to my girls over here was we gotta still understand, that's the way people make a living. Do we need to kind of like inform them, educate them of like 'Hello, do you not see the people walking in this neighborhood' like we need to be healthier? Obese, less diseases, less stuff like that. Maybe that's what we need to do. So then we could live a healthier um lifestyle. I agree there should be a limit of how many corner stores should be within a block radius. How about that? Right. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 91 From the above transcription, we can see how Vanessa and her LEB students dually use their lived experiences to make sense of how their comunidad is impacted by health disparities, that is mental, physical, and nutritional health, along with the financial means community members need to have in order to make healthy choices. For example, Henry (line 16) pushed back on local grocery stores like Mariano’s, moving on to say, “Too expensive. Sometimes... The amount of money we get paid is not enough”. Suggesting that in order to be health or to make health choices there needs to be more affordable options provided to families within his community, such as grocery stores that are not expensive. Vanessa and her students engaged in a deep discussion that prompted them to give value to the community, while at the same time worked together to identify ways they can improve their comunidad to address the overall health disparities that exist. This is an example of how Vanessa centered comunidad within her daily practice and the development of the lesson. In doing so, both Vanessa and her students took ownership of their comunidad. This led Vanessa’s 8th grade class to develop a petition in which they identified how the school administration could make direct changes inside the school that mirror better health choices for all students at Mendez (See Appendix A). Eva: Building Comunidad Around Nutrition For Eva, community cultural wealth not only denoted those accumulated resources that students have that are present within the classroom, but also meant developing lessons that allowed her LEB students to take valuable information back into their comunidades, outside of the school. She found that even in her 7th grade social studies class, she could implement conceptos de matemáticas y ciencias. For her third PROJECT unit, she created lessons that would enable her LEB students to understand and engage with what was happening in their Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 92 comunidades around health disparities. In particular, she wanted students to understand the impact that certain foods, specifically junk foods, had on students’ overall health in the long term. Below is Eva’s unit three activity triangle, in which she visualized how she planned for these specific outcomes. Figure 6: Eva’s activity triangle From her activity triangle, we can see how she designed her unit around comunidad. For example, in her “outcomes” she identified that: Students will make healthier choices and live a healthier lifestyle at school and within their community. She structured her unit so that her LEB students would become aware of how the foods they consumed in their community could affect them in the long term. Gathering such information would allow Eva’s students to become experts, and as such, take their accumulated knowledge back into their comunidad. As part of Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 93 becoming experts, Eva wanted her students to scientifically and mathematically understand how calories are measured and assess if food labels provide accuracy for consumers. Below is an example of how her teaching and unit evolved. On June 18, 2015, Eva had her 7th grade social studies LEB students experiment with the “Cheeto”. Students measured the calories of different flavored Cheetos, which included Flaming Hot Cheeto, Cheeto Puff, and Cheese Cheeto. Students chose to experiment with this type of junk food because at the time of the study, they were a very popular snack and relatedly, very accessible at any local corner stores within la comunidad. As part of the experiment, students had to weigh and record the weight of a Cheeto onto a chart that they copied from the board. Then they had to burn the Cheeto to see how much oil was extracted, and then record their results. Students were put into groups and provided a student facilitator that helped Eva with setup, using a lighter to begin the burning process, clean-up, and to walk around helping students if they needed additional materials, such as Cheetos, water, a beaker, or any other science materials from Mr. Zavala (pseudonym), the school's science teacher. Table 15: Eva transcript 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 June 18, 2015 Cheeto Experiment – Part 1 Eva: You guys are doing fabulous, but I'm a little nervous now… Where is the fire thing? Ok, Are you ready? So now are you ready? Students: YES Eva: I’m gonna let the facilitator light the Cheeto… Student: Waste of food... Eva: Time. Question? Rosa? It's not safe… We have a problem before we move on? Student: Sabes como prenderlo… Mr.? Student: Callate Student: Porque? Student: Cuz I said so… Eva: Perfect. Alright. Ok now… alright… now I'm going to demonstrate once the Cheeto is completely burnt out you need to umm measure the water, rather quickly. Ok. So. I mean the temperature of the water rather quickly… ok, so you are gonna put it right away after the Cheeto has completely burnt out. Then put it in five-second tops… take it out rather quickly and try not to burn yourself cuz the can is very hot. Please Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 94 put on your goggles… please put on your goggles… goggles… please make sure your hair is completely pulled back… Your gonna turn it on from both ends. Please don’t burn yourself…. Students: (laugh) Eva: Turn on and then turn on the other side and then try to get the middle, too… Ok never mind. Student: She burned a Cheetoooo….(giggling) Eva: You ready? Students: It's on fire. This girl is on fire. Wow it looks like a black crispy Cheeto Eva: Once it's completely burnt out don't forget to record it. Eva: When it's completely burnt out...That's all the oil burning down… look at that. Student: It looks like a candle Eva: That’s the transfat or whatever that is… Student: I’ve been eating these and like we never knew it Student: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 Student: Oh god… it went up… fifty Student: Fifty Celsius Student: Rest in peace… they gonna die on us… Eva: Good job… alright ugh… that was long… Once it’s burnt out quickly put the thermometer in for about five seconds… wow Students: Today folks is a success… it's like chalk, like burnt black chalk. It's like a fire, a burnt black fire… Eva: Record it. Record it… record it right away. Wow, it went up to fifty? That was intense for me… Students: How come. Eva: Cuz I've never done this before… Student: It's like a campfire sort of thing... like when you are burning a marshmallow... Student: Were you measuring Celsius or Fahrenheit? Student: Celsius Eva: Ok, is everything done? What did you guys get? Alright. Did you record that? Ok now. Whew.. we’re safe. Students: Yes… no one died, no one got burnt… No one got on fire... Eva: I did…. I burnt myself… ok, table one - that was exciting…. Student: It was… From the above transcription, Eva and her LEB students became active experts around the effects of processed foods. They used conceptos de matemáticas to measure and understand calories and how trans fats dissolve. Students first had to measure the unit of temperature on the Celsius scale that was provided to each student group (lines 25-40). Each group should have started at 23 degrees Celsius. In the transcript below, we see how Eva proceeded with describing the initial findings that each student group had. She asked students to engage in a discussion around what temperature their experiment arrived at upon the Cheeto completely burning. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 95 Table 16: Eva transcript 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 June 18, 2015 Cheeto Experiment – Part 2 Eva: Ok we, everyone started at 23 degrees Celsius… we had three different types of Cheetos and maybe each one had different types of umm saturated oils or oils within or calories within that made each one burn different. Remember, we had the regular hot Cheeto which was table one. yes? At what temperature did it stop burning it down… Jose? Jose: 35 Eva: 35. ok so at 35 degrees Celsius… make sure you put your units of measure boys and girls because in science or math your units of measure are always very important to put them on there. Ok. So that's 35 degrees Celsius. What was the temperature change? Students: Twelve Eva: Twelve. So the difference is? Twelve degrees Celsius. Ok. So for experiment one, the regular hot Cheetos you could have this kind of information… yes? Ok? Ok, Cheeto puffs - table two? ok. how many? Students at table two: Fifty Eva: Fifty. Ok… the extra extra extra puff… - table three? You're not gonna come up here? How for cheese puff too… interesting. Put 100 mils on there for me… Ok now here comes how the people figure out... how nutritionists and health experts figure out how much calories are in some types of most of the processed foods and possible natural foods… ok. So here is… what is this going to look like? How am I going to be plugging in these numbers to get my calories? What number am I going to be putting in here? Student: Twelve Eva: For the first one… very good. Twelve. What am I going to be multiplying it by? Students: One hundred Eva: Everybody do we agree? One hundred Students: One hundred Eva: One hundred. Figure it out… Student: 120 Eva: 120? You can use a calculator Student: 1200 Eva: How much? Student: 1200 Eva: Alright, what is it? Student: 1200 Eva: 1200 ok. Now.. we used calories… this is kinda measurements like in keto calories. You have to divide it and technically… one. One unit of measure is 1,000 umm calories. Little calories. But this is the same thing as it equaling calories… So technically there are 12 calories in one of the Cheetos. 12 calories ok. In one Cheeto. Figure out how much these have. Do the rest of them. Ok. Eva: 27 calories in one. What's the other one? Students: 14 Eva: 14 calories and this one? Students: 27 Eva: 27 calories... ok. In one Cheeto you guys… I wish I had my projector so I could show you. Now in your groups… there is a nutrition label on the other side of the table. In that nutrition label if you’re gonna tell me that one Cheeto has 14 calories. Does this bag tell you… what does it tell you it has? How many calories does it tell you this bag has? Student: 160 Eva: 160 do we agree? Does this 160? Student: No Eva: Does this have 160? Student: No Eva: How many say no? How many say yes? Student: It doesn’t have 160 calories for this whole bag… Student: they are lying… Illuminati Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 96 Eva’s LEB students arrived at additional conceptos de matemáticas to make sense of what had just happened. They discussed and calculated the temperature change, from before they burnt the Cheeto to where the temperature arrived after the Cheeto was completely burnt. Then they further calculated by multiplying to get to how many calories one Cheeto contained. Eva (lines 13-17) validated their expertise by saying, “Ok now here comes how the people figure out... how nutritionists and health experts figure out how much calories are in some types of most of the processed foods and possible natural foods… ok. So here is.” By making this statement, she encouraged students to see themselves as current “doers” and future professionals that use the same metrics to examine health disparities. In the present, students could take this information back into la comunidad and potentially inform others. In turn, students also became aware of the fact that large corporations, such as Frito-Lay, which is part of the Pepsi-Cola brand, are in essence lying to consumers about calorie intake. For one student (line 50) in particular, he referenced this as, “they are lying… Illuminati”. He referenced Illuminati because of his awareness of how corporations, that are part of the elite, continue to promote and sell these types of products to working-class comunidades, such as La Villita. Eva moved on with her lesson in order to have students review the packaging and labeling of the Cheeto bags. In this moment, students were encouraged to make their own assessments of what they had just learned through conceptos de matemáticas. They discussed how many servings and calories the packaging reported and made comparisons to the results they had acquired from their experiment. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 97 Table 17: Eva transcript 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 June 18, 2015 Cheeto Experiment – Part 3 Eva: What did you say, Fernando? Fernando: per serving Eva: per serving… How many servings in here? Student: 21 Eva: No, read it. Student: oh Eva: How many servings are there? 3.5 per servings… How many chips can I have per serving? Student: 3.5 Eva: How many do I take out… 21 and how many calories does it have.. 160… So If I take 160 times what? Students: 21 Eva: But times 3.5 how many calories are we eating? Do the math… Do the math… let's round it up… to what? 3.5 or 4? Students: 4 Eva: Does anyone have a calculator? Figure it out… let’s go… figure it out Students: Wha? 160 times 4… Students: It’s 640 Eva: 640 calories in this bag of Cheetos. You still want to eat one? Students: Ya Eva: This cheese puff. This one actually says servings per container. How many calories does this one serving have? Calories? 100? Student: 150 Eva: 150. Now this says that it has 27 calories and if I take these out (seven) and then the two that we burned was 9. 9 times 27 calories? Is that equal 150? Do the math. Student: 9 times. Eva: I think they are lying… I think there are more calories in these cheese puffs. If one of them that we just experimented… Students arrived at further understanding the inaccuracies and inconsistencies advertised. Eva (line 17) responded by asking students, “640 calories in this bag of Cheetos. You still want to eat one”? In doing so got students to think about their choices around eating chips and at the same pushed them to think about the amount of calories they were putting in their bodies regularly, without knowing previously taking that into consideration. From this lesson and day of experimenting, I was able to capture the ways in which Eva centered la comunidad in her unit and lessons. In particular, she was explicit and intentional in her teaching practice about assuring that her LEB students became informed and used their Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 98 knowledge and expertise to make informed decisions around their future consumption of Cheetos. In her final thesis and upon reflecting on this final unit she wrote: …this led me to ask them to create presentations to educate others on the subject matter. Students became experts in explaining the content material of healthy nutrition. The outcomes were achieved by having the students take some ownership in presenting and explaining their knowledge and new knowledge they discovered to their peers. They reflected on the restaurants that were in the neighborhood, along with became concerned about their health and the health of others. (Eva, Final Thesis, July 2016) The above captured how Eva envisioned that her unit had direct connections to la comunidad, and in turn, how she expected her LEB students to take this understanding into their comunidad and inform others. The final outcome was for students to develop presentations around their findings and take ownership around what they had discovered. Daisy: Centering Comunidad in the Space of Matemáticas As a middle school educadora de matemáticas, Daisy developed her PROJECT units to directly address conceptos de matemáticas that involved her students' comunidad, which was her own as well. For Daisy, the significance was that she wanted her LEB students to see themselves as “doers” of matemáticas while acknowledging that conceptos de matemáticas can be and should be interconnected to la comunidad. Below is Daisy's unit three activity triangle, in which she demonstrates how she initially planned to deliver her lessons and put focus on la comunidad. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 99 Figure 7: Daisy’s activity triangle From her activity triangle, we can see how Daisy prioritized matemáticas y la comunidad, as she outlined in her “objects and outcomes”. In her “objects” section, she identified that students would - Organize data to represent accurate information using line graphs and in the “outcomes” portion she described that – students will identify way’s that the community can help decrease nationwide obesity rates. Daisy wanted her LEB students to use their community knowledge to interpret and make sense of numerical data around health disparities. Daisy implemented one of her unit three lessons on April 2, 2015, a day in which I was invited to observe her class. Through this particular observation, I witnessed how Daisy Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 100 organically incorporated conceptos de comunidad y matemáticas. Daisy’s lesson began by introducing students to the concept of numerical data through viewing statistical data of the obesity rates across neighborhoods in Chicago. She began her lesson by explaining to students how she first researched statistical data around their comunidad, and how the initial work she had them do of interviewing individuals in their school or neighborhood was also part of the research process and part of data that they would be further analyzing. In doing so, Daisy automatically enforced the notion that indeed her LEB students are “doers” of matemáticas and hold the adequate knowledge to carry on with such a lesson. Table 18: Daisy transcript 1 April 2, 2015 Matemáticas in the Neighborhood 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Daisy: So I researched the statistics about our community. For example, the information that we collected, that is statistics about our community. We interviewed people that either come to this school or live in this neighborhood, stuff like that. And this report that I was able to find, shows you all the different neighborhoods in Chicago and the amount of students that are considered to be obese or overweight. Well first of all let’s go over our definition. I need a reader for this one. Make sure you can see, I know it looks a little bit small. Let me make it a little bit bigger. Okay, lets see. Sebastian go ahead. Sebastian: Childhood overweight and obesity. Review. What is obesity and how is it measured. Obesity is defined … Daisy: Okay, so that is our main definition child overweight and obesity, right? This, what I am going to show you is Chicago, and Chicago is divided among different areas. So here we are considered Little Village, we are consider South Lawndale. Then we have North Lawndale and other places. If you were to describe the community that lives in Little Village, how would you define us? What would you say? Angelo? Angelo: We are Mexican. Daisy: So the majority of us are Mexican. Anything else that we want to say about that? Delia? Daisy: You noticed that a lot of kids are overweight. Okay. Erik? Delia: We have a lot of traditions Daisy: What about the traditions? Daisy: Based on what, can you tell me more about that? Daisy: You want me to let you think about it and come back to you? Delia: [nods] Daisy: Angelo? Angelo: We eat a lot of food. Daisy: What kind of food do we eat in this community? Angelo: Tacos Daisy: Tell me about that. Manuel? Manuel: Gorditas Daisy: Alexis? Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 101 Alexis: Street food. Daisy: what is it? Alexis: Street food Daisy: Street food. A lot of street food. And what do you mean by that? S: Tamales Daisy: Hold on. Let Alexis finish. Alexis: [unable to hear student] Daisy: A lot of people are standing selling what, what do they sell? [tamales, chucherias, elotes, raspados] Daisy: What can you tell me about all that kind of food that they sell? How healthy are those? S: [unable to hear] Daisy: David? David: It is unhealthy because it includes a lot of calories Daisy: So all this stuff that we are exposed to have a lot of calories. Right? What else can you tell me about the food that we are usually exposed in this community? (3 sec) What about the restaurants we go to? Delia? Delia: Le hechan mucho aceite Daisy: Mucho aceite. They use a lot of oil, right? Traditionally, Mexican food, like you said. Gorditas, tamales.. S: [students shout out different foods] In this transcript, we see how students not only engaged with understanding statistical data and analyzing data they had collected, but in addition made direct connections to la comunidad and how it was impacted by high obesity rates. For example, Daisy (lines 9-12) asked, “If you were to describe the community that lives in Little Village, how would you define us? What would you say? Angelo?” Angelo (line 14) responds, “We are Mexican,” suggesting that La Villita has a large population of individuals that have migrated from México. Daisy (line 24) then moves on to ask the whole class, “What kind of food do we eat in this community?” Students responded by referencing different typical Mexican foods and snacks that are commonly found en La Villita. Upon doing so, students (lines 44-45) openly acknowledged that many of these foods are made with a lot of corn oil. Furthermore, through this lesson, Daisy pointed to the disparities across communities and guided students in making sense of how their comunidad of Little Village was impacted by such realities, evidenced through the data. Through her teaching that day, Daisy explicitly encouraged her LEB students to consider identifying and using their funds of knowledge to define how such Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 102 data impacted them, their families, and their comunidad. Centering comunidad allowed students to make direct connections to their culture, familial traditions, and identidad as Mexicana/o/xs. Segundo Tema: The Impact of Identidad in the Classroom for Both Latina Educadoras and Latinx Emergent Bilingual (LEB) Students Latina Educadora Identidad Testimonio – How are Latina educadoras reflective of their own schooling experiences? I witnessed each educadora embrace the telling of their stories during our weekly conversations, focus group interviews, and individual conversations as the 2014-2015 academic year progressed. However, it was our final meeting and informal focus group interview on April 8, 2016 (see Appendix D), in which each Latina educadora seemed more comfortable with vocalizing how their identidades connected with that of their students. In particular, this day we met after school and was initially a meeting with for us to discuss their thesis and check-in on their progress. In turn, it led to engaging in a focus group interview that they all agreed to take part in, and for which I did not have a specific set of questions. Rather, it started with me asking them about how they felt teaching in their schools and how it was connected their identidad. As this group meeting, each educadora described their own educational experiences growing up in Chicago and being products of the Chicago Public School system, along with how their linguistic, racial, and mathematical identidades were incorporated into their daily teaching of LEB students. Vanessa. Having grown up in Little Village in Chicago like her own students, and going to the nearby elementary school, the same as her LEB students, Vanessa expressed how she saw her identidad reflected in her students. She grew up going to school in the same neighborhood and Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 103 had experienced growing up in a working-class family. She wanted to assure that her students understood her positionality having grown up in the neighborhood and the many obstacles she went through to get to where she was currently: she was a teacher from the community, teaching in the community. So it’s also where I feel that growing up in Little Village, umm I didn't go to the best schools. So the level of education… I didn’t get a high level and I'll say that… Like I was at Burts, we used to do, and now it’s Castillos. My teachers were not great. I think I only had one good math teacher and that was it. The rest of them, it was like ugh! There was a lot of behavior issues… So because of that, I am, my thing is I have to give my students a high level of education, just like other kids in like suburban areas or in good ugh, in great neighborhoods. You know, in rich neighborhoods. And like I feel that because I’ve seen it, and I feel like I’ve seen it… And I don’t want to say that I have been robbed... I don't want to use the word robbed. There is another word I want to use, I just can't pinpoint it. That because of that, I see it in my students where no- you're not gonna be where I was growing up. This is what you gonna, I’ma, and I'm gonna help you become a better individual in society and become not just another statistic from Little Village... Oh, this kid is gonna end up where he is gonna end up or whatever… and provide you with the opportunities to be able to grow and become successful. Does that make sense for my identity? Yeah… through my students... Yeah? I think so. (Vanessa, Focus Group Interview 04.08.2016) Being a teacher from la comunidad meant that Vanessa was aware of, for example, the gang culture in the neighborhood, where local businesses were situated, familiar with families from through the local church and community support services, etc. She was aware of what it meant to Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 104 not have an equitable education due to lack of funding allocated to schools in her community. She understood that her students' parents worked low-paying jobs and that many might even be living in poverty. Because of this, she felt intimately connected to her students and understood the importance of using their knowledge to connect them to the content. And it's very rewarding when we see them understanding the concept. And I'm all about making connections to real-life scenarios. You get me in my lesson? Well, how does this apply to… whatever whatever… You’re not just learning about, you know, making an inference using macro equations… What the heck is that good for me? Just because of a book? NO. Because you need to know how to do this in life. You're gonna go out to the real world, you need to know how to be able to infer what situation am I in…. Sorry... (Vanessa, Focus Group Interview 04.08.16) Through her testimonio, Vanessa expressed her educational identidad and the negative experiences she encountered with her teachers not supporting her, or not affording her an adequate education because of where she grew up. Identifying as a Mexicana/Latina, and where her school was located, have pushed her to envision greater educational outcomes for her own students. That is, through her experiences, she seeks to dismantle the negative ways in which LEB students have been racialized. For example, oftentimes Mexican and Latinx immigrants that live in Little Village are perceived to have criminal tendencies, as well as not being capable of succeeding academically or going to college because they are non-native speakers of English. Through Vanessa’s own identity-shaping experiences, she has consciously chosen to challenge dominant ideologies about what it means to be successful within the educational space for students such as herself. Moreover, she continued by reflecting further: Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 105 And I am one of the girls from the neighborhood who got pregnant at the age of 18 years, had my son at 19 years, went through that struggle… And kinda like I share my story with you, it was never easy but I made it there... Never see my father... My father was always working, working, working…. I love my dad... always working…. Never- you know, but why? Because he wanted to provide, you know what I mean? For us, and that's what I'm doing, I'm providing for you guys. Maybe not financially, but you know… Through my experience sharing with you… (Vanessa, Focus Group Interview 04.08.16) For Vanessa, sharing her testimonio with her colleagues about becoming pregnant at a young age, not seeing her father often due to his endless work, along with other struggles growing up, played a significant role to her commitment to social justice. She acknowledged how schools are politicized spaces and the fact that her teaching is a political act in which she can use as a tool in her teaching practice to dismantle forms of subordination while empowering her LEB students to be successful knowing all the barriers they faced, since she had faced them herself. Eva. Referencing her identidad de matemáticas was meaningful for Eva. Through her testimonio, Eva discussed how it was the support and influence of a matemáticas teacher that lead her to become an educadora and teach in a community similar to her own. I had a math teacher, and I think she was the most effective math teacher in my 8 th grade, where I says, I want to be, you know, I like that. Because of her, I started liking math. So based off of, I guess my own experiences in my background and even you know... touching base on my culture, and you know what my parents' expectations were for me, you know, as I was going through college and figuring out what I wanted to do. Umm, coming into first a science major and then you know forget that I need to be teaching and Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 106 where I wanted to go and be with these kids and touch everything, very culturally making strong connections with them, you know, so that I could, I would feel that I would give them all the opportunities, so they could feel successful. And fortunately for me, I was thinking in my Latino community. (Eva, Focus Group Interview 04.08.16) Eva discussed the impact her teacher de matemáticas had on her moving on to college and originally seeking a degree in the sciences, but eventually choosing her profession as an educadora. Similar to the support her eighth grade teacher de matemáticas gave her, she seeks to also give her LEB students opportunities in which they can access their highest academic potential, along with other aspects of their identidad, within her classroom space. Through her testimonio, Eva legitimizes her own schooling experience and her identidad as a learner of matemáticas and science. Daisy. Similar to Vanessa having grown up in Little Village, Daisy is racially and critically aware of her LEB students’ identity-shaping experiences growing up in this neighborhood. In particular, she began her testimonio reflecting on how students such as herself, that identify as Latinx and that grow up in her neighborhood, are automatically perceived as being incapable of going to college and succeeding. Well for me, it would be specifically teaching in Little Village. I always feel that we are always seen, or at least my experience, that we are not going to be able to get through college because from the neighborhood that we come from. So we always saying that we're not going to be successful as somebody that is from the suburbs. Um, so when I'm thinking about me being a teacher, it means a lot. Not only for me, even though my family, they are like so proud of me because they see as me making a difference from, in Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 107 the place where I come from. I came back to where I was at one point in my life, and I felt that, or I feel… I still feel that I know that's a huge thing for us, you know? And then us deciding to be here when we know how difficult it is. Because it is difficult for a lot of children. Like I see a lot of them going through a lot of the same problems that I went through. And I think I can provide advice, cuz I've been there. So I... since I've been there, I can tell him exactly how I overcame those kind of things, or what I went through. And I think I can connect so much more to them in that level... Ah... and sometimes I think I've been making a difference in what decisions they take for that reason. So for me, being a teacher in CPS, or in specifically in Little Village, is what word would I use to describe that… Don't know... Being proud. (Daisy, Focus Group Interview 04.08.16) Having had similar experiences to those of her students, Daisy can connect to them in a way that not many teachers can. In light of this, not only does she express great pride, but so does her family around all that she has accomplished academically. Choosing to become a teacher and teach in her comunidad gives her migrant parents great pride. Furthermore, Daisy used her linguistic identitdad as a way to reflect on her own experiences and connect to her LEB students. Mine is I guess a little bit different. From the perspective umm... one of the things that I focused a lot on was bilingualism and allowing the students to choose whatever language they feel comfortable with. Cuz I remember when I was growing up and I came here from Mexico. I was in fifth grade, and all I would hear was the teacher say, Talk English! You need to get accustomed to that. This is the, you know, you're in the US, you need to speak English. So like, that growing up as a child, I feel like my language was just pushed to the side because everybody wants you to acknowledge English as the, I don't Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 108 know. The top language here, and they forget about Spanish. (Daisy, Focus Group Interview 04.08.16) In her testimonio, Daisy expressed how her linguistic identitdad impacted her understanding of language ideology and language hierarchy within the educational space. During her own schooling experience, she was linguistically racialized by her teachers. They forbid her from using her native language in the classroom and required her to only speak English, the dominant language. This impacted her identidad as an educadora because she understands firsthand that multilingual language practices are an essential asset to her LEB students’ educational learning and development of matemáticas. She also understands that the use of one's multilingualism in the classroom created an environment for both teacher and students equally to build and learn from each other. Through her testimonio, we see how Daisy’s own identidad around being bilingual has led her to deliver her teaching practice in ways that encourage her students to engage in conceptos de matemáticas y la comunidad in any language to which they have access. Drawing on Latinx Emergent Bilingual Students’ Funds of Knowledge La Practica – How do Latina educadoras use Latinx emergent bilingual students’ funds of knowledge in their lessons? Engaging in their daily praxis, each Latina educadora was a work in progress as they traversed through their participatory action research projects. During one of our focus group interviews, Daisy expressed how she understood, and in turn incorporated, her Latinx emergent bilingual students’ funds of knowledge into her lessons, Well, when we're tapping into the funds of knowledge with something that they're familiar with, they know about all these things. And that's when I, I guess in your class Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 109 anyway you noticed that you know, they go from speaking English to Spanish cause that's what they're used to. All these words that they know. Um, so that's what I'm thinking of, like how is promoting multiple languages, in a sense, because we're bringing things that they are bringing from home, or I guess from their community. (Daisy, Focus Group Interview 05.12.15) Daisy recounted how she understands incorporating students' funds of knowledge into her lessons. For Daisy, we see a consistency in which hybrid language practices are present in her lessons and how she is intentional about her LEB students' usage of their multilingualism within the classroom. The following data provides a recounting of in-class observations, in which each Latina educadora brought forth their students’ funds of knowledge and centered it in their lessons. Vanessa: Funds of Knowledge and Nutrition As part of Vanessa’s second unit for PROJECT, she focused on drawing on her students’ funds of knowledge around food and nutrition within communities of color. The following is an example of how students engaged and responded during their group discussions, and how they tapped into their funds of knowledge to make sense of how such a topic impacts their familia y comunidad. Table 19: Vanessa transcript 8 March 31, 2015 Genetically Modified Food in the Neighborhood 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Vanessa: Ok I'm gonna bring you guys together as a whole group. There's great conversations happening. Now raise your hand. Someone tell me why is it that minorities end up buying low-quality, what is lowquality food? Can someone tell me? What is low-quality food? Jackie. Jackie: Well what we said is that low-quality food that we buy is very processed, and processed foods contain, it says it has lower fat but it adds more salt or sugar. And and here we have a Mariano's but on Ashland. You go to the North side, there's a Mariano's in the corner. We have a corner store that sells canned food, bags of chips, and processed foods basically. Vanessa: Processed foods. It goes back to remember when we did the whole GM article. We talked about genetically modified foods, and what they put in there and all of this and the canned food. Ok anyone else Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 110 wanna add? What is low-quality food? I like how you brought up the point of Mariano's, if you guys don't know, Mariano's is a very, there's one on Ashland and what? Joanna: Archer Vanessa: Archer? It's like the best supermarket store there is. And in the North side, they're everywhere. Everywhere, everywhere. Cause they have a lot of organic food. A lot of healthy food there. They even have like a smoothie bar where they, I don't know if they have it at that Mariano's, but by my house, but you know kale and spinach and fruit. And it tastes like it's good, and it's good for you you know. But it goes back to that. Look at our neighborhood. We have the (Spanish word) everywhere right. And do they, it's all processed food right. You go to Aldi's, excuse me. I know sometimes that's what minorities, what we can afford right is go to Aldi's. But if you look at the canned foods, all that sodium that's in there. All the sugars we're consuming cause that's what we can what? Students: Afford Vanessa: Afford. Now who else wants to add into that? Yes Christian. [00:09:48.00] Christian: Well we also mentioned about the low-quality foods of the McDonald's and Burger King. In our neighborhood, we have a McDonald's and a Burger King no more than a block away from each other. We have so many fast food markets, and yet we only have one or two fresh markets around, which no one goes to cause we can't afford. Jiselle: Well we can afford it, but we're saying is that we have more fast food restaurants than we actually have stores, and he mentioned the (Spanish word). La Chiquita also has a bakery inside it so you know what I mean. There's that, if you walk, there's like eight taco restaurants, but there's only like three supermarkets here. Through the use of students' funds of knowledge around food distribution in their comunidad, Vanessa made meaningful lesson plans for her students that sought to engage their out-of-school experiences to make connections to accessibility to healthy food items in Little Village. In doing so, students were able to map out their knowledge of how their neighborhood lacked healthy food options and instead had a plethora of fast-food restaurants. For example, Jackie (lines 4-5) began the discussion by referencing how her group defined “low-quality” food. In this moment, Jackie and her group validated their funds of knowledge around processed foods that they identified as low-quality because they contain lots of sugar and salt. Additionally, Jackie referenced la comunidad and identified that most corner stores only sell foods that are canned and processed. This led other students to reference the fact that other communities in the city have more healthy food options than their own community. Through this lesson, Vanessa enabled her students to recognize and make sense of the disparities in their comunidad around nutrition and healthy food options. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 111 Eva: Funds of Knowledge and Personal Health As part of Eva’s second unit, students analyzed the food pyramid to learn about the amount of food recommended to be eaten by the USDA food guidelines. In one of the lessons, the students recorded what they ate over the course of one day using a food journal. On another day, the students discussed as a class what they ate and wrote responses on dry erase boards to later discuss their choices. From there, they used a food pyramid template to observe what categories the food they ate fell in. Then Eva asked students to write down any questions they had about the food pyramid. During a class observation on April 14, 2015, students engaged in a discussion around their home eating habits, during which they were encouraged to access their funds of knowledge by recounting their eating habits at home. Table 20: Eva transcript 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 April 14, 2015 Food Pyramid – Part 1 Eva: What would you have for your lunch based on the food that you at home? A hamburger ok. Student: Sandwich. Eva: A sandwich. ok Students: Tamales. Eva: Tamales. Student: Torta. Ms. Ortiz Student: Enchiladas… Ms. Ortiz una torta. jamón Eva: Enchiladas, yes. Student: Quesadillas. Eva: Quesadillas. Students: Sopes. Student: Ms. Ortiz, Una torta. Jamon Student: Gorditas Student: Garnachas Eva: This is honestly what you would have for lunch? Student: Garnachas Students: Ya Eva: Ya? Student: Some of it’s like home related Eva: This is good, I’m not sayin it’s bad. Ahh. So these would be your food your lunch that you would have obviously at home… and I’m like, but ok. So what would you have for your dinner meal? Student: Basically the same thing. Eva: Wait, wait, wait… would have any vegetables or dessert here? Students: Ya (laugh) Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 112 Student: Ayi se le pone Hawaiiana Eva: Dinner meal? Ok for dinner meal, what would you drink? Students: laugh Student: Soda diet. Milk...Eva: De veras, I really need you to take focus… As your dinner, when you had your dinner and when you go home tonight what would you put up there as a dinner… as a dinner. You would honestly have milk? Students: Ya. Yes. And cereal. Eva: Wait. Wait. Wait. What? You would honestly have cereal for dinner? Students: YES! Student: For breakfast I have cookies. Eva: I could only hear one of you at a time… ok.. Jesus? Jesus: To be honest I don’t have like a breakfast, lunch or dinner. I just eat whenever I am hungry. Students: Ya (laugh) Eva: (laughs) ok. Ugh, so that's interesting to know cuz we are gonna have to take out those little habits. We are going to go into my question. What foods do I normally eat? This is what I am just asking you. I am not saying anything. I’m just thinking this is seriously what you guys normally eat. So how much of the food that we are talking about are we eating? Cuz Now we are breaking it down as far as you’re drinking milk, your drinking soda - how much of it, for breakfast you’re having pancakes and bacon. How much of it are you gonna be having? And right now you are telling me that you eat - Pizzas, hamburgers, sandwiches, tamales, enchiladas for food during your lunchtime which is accurate, I do believe you and then for dinner… my dinners are really bad too. Milk with cereal. Obviously, a cereal meal. Ok. What else would you have? Student: Cookies and milk Eva: Some of you would have dinners - cookies and milk? Seriously? Students: Ya As a recounting of their own home eating habits, I found that students initiated the class discussion by yelling out the different kinds of foods they ate at home for lunch (lines 2-16) – tamales, tortas de jamón, enchiladas, sopes, quesadillas, garnachas, gorditas – all of which are typical Mexican foods and that are commonly accessible en la comunidad. Once students were asked by Eva what their dinner looked like, the responses slightly changed, in that many agreed that their dinners consisted of cookies and milk or cereal. For example, Jesus (line 36) admitted, “To be honest I don’t have like a breakfast, lunch, or dinner. I just eat whenever I am hungry.” Many students agreed with Jesus and further engaged in tapping into their funds of knowledge to testimoniar around the different ways in which they eat meal and what that looked like for them and their families. The transcription below continues to highlight how students made sense of the food pyramid and their own eating habits. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 113 Table 21: Eva Transcript 5 April 14, 2015 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Food Pyramid – Part 2 Student: Ms. Ortiz Eva: Ok, ok, ok. This is your meal? What else? Student: Sopa Maruchan? Students: Ohh, yes (all) Student: What is that? Student: A yogurt Student: I’m Mexican, I’m from Michoacán Eva: Umm. Nobody has a dinner meal as far as what you have told me what you eat for dinner? Student: Ms., um Ms… Well usually my mom makes, umm Eva: Time out, wait time out… Student: Well usually my mom makes for dinner is uhhh sopa de fideo Eva: Sopita de fideo. Ok guys... Angelo? Angelo: In my house there’s really no difference. It’s basically if you’re. If it’s breakfast you eat what there is. Like you could literally eat a hamburger in the morning. Student: Right Angelo: But mostly is cereal Eva: Wow... how many of you do that? Ok guys I’m glad, happy that you are sharing this out. Cuz we are gonna have to what? Third question. Should I change my eating habits in order to improve my health? You know maybe the way we are eating is going to be affecting us the way that we are going to be in the future. Our health. Maybe it’s not affecting us right now and I’m not complaining that you shouldn’t be eating this food. You know. I am surprised. You know. That you are telling me for dinner… I’m guilty of it, I do eat cereal for dinner. Students: (laugh) Eva: However, I cheat a little bit more. When I go home and I have a meal, I have tortillas, I have carne, I have sometimes rice and beans. And then later on before 7 o’clock or even after 7 o’clock I’m like hungry again y sale el cereal you know? Y I have to have cookies and milk. And you know what, for me those are really bad habits, ok? Ummm do you guys… know I want you guys to think umm… are these healthy choices you are making to stay healthy or maybe these eating habits will have an effect in your life later on as you get older or could they have an effect on you right now? Ok. here is my question to you… I want you to come up with some questions as far as what you are eating. First of all, when I asked you about you were eating you were all over the food pyramid… you were all over the map. So we have to think of what’s a breakfast meal look like? What’s a lunch meal look like? What does a dinner look like? Ok. And many times we have plates that are divided up into portions. It was through this day of discussion that Eva learned about her students’ funds of knowledge around their eating habits and the different ways in which they consumed their daily meals. In particular, students discussed how their eating habits were structured at home and identified that not all families follow the typical USDA guidelines that are recommended for an ideal meal. For example, Angelo (lines 13-14) explained, “In my house, there’s really no difference. It’s basically if you’re- If it’s breakfast, you eat what there is. Like, you could literally eat a Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 114 hamburger in the morning.” Through his response and that of other students in Eva's class, she decided to also express her eating habits outside of school (lines 21-22), “You know, I am surprised. You know, that you are telling me for dinner… I’m guilty of it. I do eat cereal for dinner”. Through this disclosure, we see how Eva was able to share her own identity-shaping experiences around her own home eating habits, in which she admitted that she does not follow what the USDA considerers an ideal meal. This lesson allowed her students to develop their understanding of the food pyramid, along with validate their own eating experiences, in a way that a different teacher may have not encouraged to do so. As they might have not disclosed what they were really eating because there may have been shame associated. But with Eva, they were able to talk about their reality. Daisy: Funds of Knowledge and Matemáticas Daisy created meaningful lessons for her Latinx emergent bilingual students that incorporated their experiences in and outside of the classroom. In doing so, she influenced her students to become more engaged by incorporating their native language. Daisy used her past identity-shaping experiences as an LEB student in matemáticas to incorporate certain practices that leveraged, honored and drew from their funds of knowledge, into her current teaching by attempting to understand the experiences of students she identified with culturally and linguistically. On December 17, 2014, she implemented a unit one lesson, in which she had students review and discuss the logs they had completed throughout one consecutive week around the kinds of drinks they consumed daily. The intent of this lesson was for students to learn about how much sugar they and their family members consumed within a week's time. During an in-class observation, I learned further about how she engaged with her students’ funds Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 115 of knowledge around their sugar intake, community assets, and their linguistic repertoires. First, I point out how Daisy gave her student, Alexis, the opportunity to engage his funds of knowledge. Table 22: Daisy transcript 2 December 17, 2014 Funds of knowledge en mmatemáticas - Part 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Daisy: Did you put raspados in your log? Raspados is a drink. Alexis: Yeah, but he hasn’t made me some. It’s cold outside. Horita no más vende tamales y champurrado. Daisy: Where does your abuelito (grandpa) work? Alexis: Eh? Daisy: Where does he work? Alexis: Where he works? He makes his own business. Daisy: I know but where? Does he sell in the neighborhood? Alexis: Ahorita está vendiendo tamales y se pone en la lavandería, ya sabes dónde está la estrella? Sí pero allí luego a la lavandería. Ese era el puesto de mi tío, mi otro tío el vende en el verano. Porque mi tío y mi abuelito, son hermanos y tienen negocios. Ya tienen cinco carros. Y también, venden churros, elotes, mangos. Daisy: That's good. You know a lot about business. Alexis: Yes y también mi tío siempre me dice que esto y el otro que you need to make your own business. Si no me creen bien a mi casa, I mean a la casa de mi tío. Daisy: That's really interesting In this part of the lesson, Daisy pushed Alexis to speak more about his abuelito and his work en la comunidad. By prompting with the question (line 5), Where does he work? Daisy encouraged Alexis to discuss his familia’s life circumstances, signaling that he could bring his own life experiences to the classroom, which directly connected to his understanding of matemáticas. In particular, Alexis (lines 8-11) used his funds of knowledge to legitimize how his abuelito and tio are business owners, and that in fact, they encouraged him to also become a business owner one day. Through this moment captured in Daisy’s classroom, we witness how she influenced her students to use their linguistic funds of knowledge to support the ways in which they made sense of conceptos de matemáticas. The following transcription illustrates this practice. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 116 Table 23: Daisy transcript 3 December 17, 2014 Funds of knowledge en mmatemáticas - Part 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Daisy: Okay, let’s do that one first. You have 8 grams. Well the water doesn’t have any sugar. Alexis: Lo hago chiquito o grandote? (Should I make it little or really big?) Daisy: Well it is up to you. You are going to put the total over here. You also had 21 grams. Yes Delia? Delia: What about the coffee? I put 16 spoons of sugar. Daisy: You put 16 spoons of sugar? Or 6 spoons? Delia: 6 spoons, it’s 24 grams of sugar Daisy: Ahí, it is 24 grams Alexis: I put eight and then what? Daisy: And then you had the juice, which was half, so it is going to be 21 grams. Alexis: 21 grams Daisy: And then, that’s all you had on Monday. Then we go to Tuesday Delia: So you add all the numbers? Daisy: yeah Delia: All from Monday through Sunday? Daisy: [Nods] Alexis: Do we need to show work? Daisy: Yeah. So what would you do to get the total for that one? Alexis: Los sumo. (I add them.) Daisy: Ahí (There.) Alexis: Ocho y veinte uno, me da veinte nueve. (Eight and twenty-one, gives me twenty-nine.) Daisy: Ahí, pon veinte nueve. (There, put twenty-nine.) Okay, here you have the calories, right? So, I know for the coffee, so you put it here. And for the juice you are going to put 80. And then you got to give me the total number of calories. Alexis: Those are the calories. Daisy: Ahí. That’s why. So how many calories is it in total? Alexis: Ocho y el diez (Eight and the ten.) Daisy: Ahí. And then you go to Tuesday and do the same thing. You add every single drink, tell me how much sugar it has, and then you got to tell me how many calories. Got it? Alexis: Got it Daisy: Okay In the above transcription, students were working in groups, and Daisy was working one-on-one with students behind her desk, where she was physically showing them how much sugar they consumed per week. That is, as part of this lesson, she brought in a pound of sugar and had students use measuring cups to scoop out and calculate the total amount of sugar they consumed weekly, which was recorded in their logs. In working with Alexis and Delia, it was evident that both students and teacher alike were comfortable with using hybrid language practices to understand conceptos de matemáticas. Daisy (lines 17-25) began by asking, “Yeah. So what would you do to get the total for that one?” Alexis responded by explaining what the next step is, Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 117 “Los sumo”. Daisy confirmed in Spanish with a simple, “Ahí.” Alexis continued in Spanish by explaining the next mathematical step, “Ocho y veinte uno, me da veinte nueve”. Daisy then validated his mathematical thinking and explanation by confirming his correct answer and continuing to respond in Spanish. This example allows for further analysis around how Daisy enacts her daily teaching practice in ways that allow students to use their funds of knowledge. In particular, how her LEB students understood the math content and were able to express that understanding, as they worked through los conceptos de matemáticas in Spanish. Through this, Daisy was able to engage their understanding as a fluent speaker of Spanish as well. Tercer Tema: Language as Wealth Multilingual Language Practices as a Resource for Latinx Emergent Bilingual Students’ Understanding of Matemáticas Testimonio – Latina educadoras speak about promoting Latinx emergent students’ language repertoires. As part of the mission of PROJECT, understanding and undoing linguistic hierarchy within the urban school space took precedence daily. As the year-long participatory action research project took place and the Latina educadoras took courses at the university, they increasingly became more confident with voicing their concerns around language ideology within the school space – amongst administration and colleagues. For Daisy, her testimonio made connections to language, and her approach to defending her LEB students' right to speak in their native language. Give the students those opportunities to code-switch if they needed to. Like today we had this conversation, and one of my principals came to our table, and it was like pretty much all the bilingual teachers. And she was like, well I had this question, question for you. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 118 Umm... when you are doing collaborative conversations, do you allow the students to code-switch? Or what do you think about that? So one of the teachers was like, well I don't think they should be code switching and she just like made a face. And I looked at her... And I was like, well let me just disagree with you. Cuz you know how we can disagree with someone about how, or agree with somebody in a polite way, you know? So I was like, I was like personally, I don't think I should be for switching as a teacher, which I don't. But I think the students should have a chance to because some of them in matching a person that is just learning English right? You are telling me right now that either they should speak Spanish or English right? You want them to focus only one... Well what happens if they are trying to speak in English? You are not going to let them because they are not fluent? So she just looked at me and I was like, and the other way around too. There are some words that I can’t think about in English, but I know them in Spanish. So I’m gonna limit my thinking because you’re telling me that I can’t codeswitch? So she didn’t say anything…. I'm just saying my perspective’s a little bit different, but I think they should be allowed to because we don't know where they coming from, and whatever way they can access whatever is in the mind, they should be able to… (Daisy, Focus Group Interview 04.08.16) Because Daisy was outspoken about hybrid language practices and her own identidad, she vocalized her concerns. She also unapologetically spoke up against her administration and colleagues, who viewed English as the dominant language and strongly believed that EB students should only speak English in the classroom. Vanessa and Eva had similar views about language and how they saw language as wealth and a resource for student understanding of content. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 119 Vanessa. Although Vanessa was not considered to be a bilingual teacher at the time of the study, her testimonio spoke about the importance of code-switching and how she openly used her knowledge across multiple languages as a way to connect with her LEB students. She believed that code-switching was a way to get her students to feel comfortable in her classroom, along with a way for them to connect to content. I think the way they… some teachers see it is that, they see it as like yeah. Because of the whole bilingual program and stuff like that. But also, they see as people that don't understand the language like, they are gonna get off topic and talk about something else. I think as a teacher you should be able to understand by their body language, and even if you don't understand the language, are they talking about content math or whatever it is? And not, you know, talking about something else… So my thing is, I personally, I embrace it because I am, I code-switch all the time in my class. And the kids, I don't know if it's a proper thing to do but that's the way I get my lessons across, that's the way I get my teaching across. You know, I get their attention and they're kinda like, she’s just like us… and she puts her point across, and that’s the way the kids see it. Is like that. (Vanessa, Focus Group 04.08.16) Regardless of how code-switching might have been perceived by her colleagues and administration, Vanessa embraced connecting with her LEB students using her multiple languages. Because Vanessa identified as being a former emergent bilingual herself and went through similar educational experiences, such as participation in a bilingual program, she deeply understood how educational policy and practices perpetuated linguistic oppression on EB students, by prioritizing English. Thus, it was through her code-switching that she felt she could get her students to connect to daily content, even in subjects like matemáticas. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 120 Eva. Similar to Vanessa and Daisy, Eva arrived at an understanding that students must be able to use their multiple languages to connect to content and at the same time develop their biliteracy skills. ...language is power, and then I said English, Spanish, however you want to communicate it to me. And if I have to talk about it in Spanish I will. But that's how you know it has to where… And I like what Daisy said. I think that I should speak English in a proper way in order for them to grasp what they are saying, but it's also good that we understand both of their languages. And then I also like to do like, hey… maybe I'll transition one of my little paragraphs in Spanish because they're not paying attention… And they are ‘ok, she is speaking Spanish, I gotta pay attention.’ (Eva, Focus Group Interview 04.08.16) Understanding that all languages have power, Eva encouraged her students to engage with any language they felt the most comfortable with using during class time, even if it meant all of their language repertoires. This kind of pedagogy is not just about bringing in specific strategies into the teaching practice, but also a “philosophy of language and education” (Garcia & Kleifgen, 2018, p. 80). Eva encouraged her LEB students to speak in any way they could best access their understanding of the content she presented. Daisy. Being a bilingual teacher of matemáticas and having identified as an emergent bilingual student, Daisy was critically aware of how language development was not neutral in the matemáticas space. Contrary to what she had been previously told by her colleagues and administration, she strongly felt that language development must take center in all content areas. If educators focus solely on English acquisition, they “lose sight of the importance of Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 121 simultaneous home language development and miss out on rich opportunities to bring students home language into the daily curriculum” (Barbain, Cornell Gonzales & Mejía, 2017, p. xiii). It was just difficult because math has a lot of terminology and being able to understand what that means without me being able to translate from English to Spanish, it was like one thing to another to another. Like I had to do two steps. It is not a universal language where it’s just symbols and that’s it. So that was hard because I don’t think that teachers that I had made an effort to try to target those students that were coming from a different background or were not fluent in the language that we’re speaking right. So, the way I see it is that if us as the teachers do not acknowledge what’s going on with them and try to make an effort to accommodate or use different strategies to help them learn, then they’re just gonna give up. That’s the way I felt when I was um in elementary school, cause it’s double hard. (Daisy, Focus Group Interview 08.27.14) In this instance, Daisy reflected on her own experiences as a Latinx emergent bilingual and the difficulties she faced with not knowing the language of instruction. She argued that the language of mathematics is “not a universal language”, and it is more complicated when English is no your first language. From this experience, not knowing English prevented her from communicating effectively or fully comprehending the language of matemáticas. Daisy was critically aware of the dangers of losing her LEB students and not reaching her teaching outcomes if she did not allow for rich discussion or conversation in their native language of Spanish. She would be putting them at risk for giving up and this would mean that they fell behind in developing their skills in matemáticas. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 122 Promoting Multilingualism in the Classroom La Practica – Importance of students speaking in their native language. Vanessa: Code-switching in the Classroom Speaking between both her native language and English during class instruction prompted Vanessa to engage in rich and powerful discussions with her students. Through her identidad as a multilingual speaker, she understood that for students to be able to engage in whatever language they felt most comfortable was powerful. During a class visit on April 22, 2015, while students engaged in class and group discussion, instances in which Vanessa saw language as wealth arose. Table 24: Vanessa transcript 8 April 22, 2015 Code Switching 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Vanessa: Ok let's bring it back together just a second. I'm hearing some really rich conversations here. Can someone kind of like share how our culture, our cultura plays a role on overweight slash obesity? And then we'll talk about that will lead it into our community and stuff like that? Ok. Let me start off with Naharain. Naharain: Well my group was saying that during the holidays like, we have this concept of like, there's only a couple of people coming, but we're gonna make a bunch of tamales, and then you're gonna get full, and then you're gonna waste the food really. And then you're still stuffed, and then you take some and that's all you're gonna be eating for like the past month. Vanessa: Who can relate with Naharain? (Everyone raises their hand) Vanessa: Oh yes. Shh. Ok, ok. So it's like ok, you better keep eating. 'Oh. No tio, no tio. (Oh. No uncle, no uncle.) Please don't. Ya no quiero comer. (I don’t want to eat any more.) Here you go. And then for the next three, four days, you're eating that leftover. And it's and you're just like 'I feel bad throwing it away, but it's tamales.' And you gotta think about it. What do we put in tamales? What are they made of? Students: Masa Vanessa: Masa - corn. A lot of these tamales are made with lard, manteca. Who knows what manteca is? (inaudible). All oil dried up. Now, next ok. Jackie, excuse me guys. Let's bring it up. I'm glad you guys are excited to talk about this and make these connections. Jackie, what were you gonna say? Jackie: We were talking about how all your parents know how to cook. It's from where they came from, Mexico. My mom, she knows how to cook to the chiles, enchiladas, all that stuff because her mom taught her how to cook that. What else, she doesn't know what else to cook. So what she gonna be cooking some thick pasta, pasta? But like, what do you cook for your family? Vanessa: So it's kind of the, it repeats the cycle right? Like well, my mother was taught this from my grandmother, and my grandmother uses all this and all this other stuff. It was over here, they were having a conversation over here about, Crystal can you share quickly what you said? Crystal: No Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 123 Vanessa: You don't want to? Crystal: No Vanessa: Can I share it for you? Ok here we go. I'll share it for Crystal. So Crystal was kind of like well my grandma cooks, and she made tacos, and it was greasy, the meat. And I had to, you know, had to use a towel to absorb the oil. And she felt like, oh I gotta eat this. And if I don't eat this, my grandmother se va a sentir mal. She'll feel bad. I'll eat it. So I said how about making a suggestion? How about not using oil? You can use like there's, what are some other things that we can substitute oil? Henry: Vegetable oil In the example above, Vanessa (lines 1-3) quickly begins her lesson and seeks to get students’ undivided attention by simultaneously switching from speaking English to Spanish and vice versa. Through her talk, she emphasizes the word cultura, and in doing so, she sparks students’ attention. They used their home language to explain and give reference to the knowledge they continuously acquire from their familia: tradiciones y cultura. Because Vanessa’s linguistic experiences reflected that of her LEB students in various ways, she was intentional about finding ways to use language as a tool and resource for her students. In particular, it was through this cultural practice not to say no to more food, while at the same time, her and her students knew if they keep eating it, that was also not good for their overall health. Eva: Positioning Language Use As Advocacy Eva’s teaching practices continued to be a reflection of the ways in which she recounted her own experiences. In particular, when language became the center of discussion, there was no question about her positionality and advocacy around her LEB students using their native language in her classroom. The following examples show the ways in which students freely expressed their thought process in both English and Spanish in her classroom and how Eva welcomed it. First, during group work on April 14, 2015, I walked around observing students make meal plans based on their knowledge, and their native language took center stage. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH Table 25: Eva transcript 6 April 14, 2015 Group Discussion 1 2 3 4 Maria: Carrot, Tomato Irvan: A si si, guacamole, pepino Maria: No pepino is a fruit not a vegetable Irvan: A si que rico con sal, limón, y chile. As the class gathered for whole group discussion, further talk in Spanish was embraced, moments in which Eva reinforced her students’ and her own multilingualism. Table 26: Eva transcript 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Eva: What would you have for your lunch based on the food that you at home? A hamburger ok. Student: Sandwich. Eva: A sandwich. ok Students: Tamales. Eva: Tamales Student: Torta.. Ms. Ortega Student: Enchiladas… Ms. Ortega una torta. jamon Eva: Enchiladas, yes Student: Quesadillas Eva: Quesadillas Students: Sopes Student: Ms. Ortega, Una torta. Jamon Student: Gorditas Student: Garnachas Eva: This is honestly what you would have for lunch? Student: Garnachas Students: Ya Eva: Ya? Student: Some of it’s like home-related Eva: Wait, wait, wait… would have any vegetables or dessert here? Students: Ya (laugh) Student: Ayi se le pone Hawaiiana Eva: De veras, I really need you to take focus. Student: Sopa Maruchan? Students: Ohh, yes (all) Student: What is that? Student: A yogurt Student: I’m Mexican, soy de Michoacán Eva: Umm. Nobody has a dinner meal as far as what you have told me what you eat for dinner? Student: Ms., um Ms… Well usually my mom makes, umm Eva: Time out, wait time out… Student: Well usually my mom makes for dinner is uhhh sopa de fideo Eva: Sopita de fideo. Ok guys. Angelo? 124 Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 125 In the example above used previously in the second section (Segundo Tema), it is significant to note that Eva welcomed and encouraged students to engage in hybrid language practices as they conversed and made sense of the lesson presented to them on that day. In turn, the use of multiple languages prompted students to make sense of content and further develop their knowledge around a topic that impacted their daily lives. For example, Eva's reinforcement of student talk provided them the opportunity to take ownership around the way they interpreted class discussion. Students were excited to express the different types of foods they ate at home. For example, a student (lines 30-33) expressed, “Well usually my mom makes for dinner is uhhh sopa de fideo,” Eva responded “Sopita de fideo.” Upon responding to her student in Spanish and repeating what he said, the student understood that she agreed with him and that what he said is deeply connected to her overall lesson outcomes, because Eva confirmed that she also knew what “sopita de fideo” was. This acknowledgement encouraged other students to do the same, as they saw an opportunity in which the content was made relevant and meaningful to their experiences outside of the classroom. Daisy: Matemáticas Is Not A Universal Language Daisy’s teaching practices were directly impacted by her experiences of her own schooling and growing up as an LEB student. Here is an example of the way Daisy incorporated her socializing and language experiences in her teaching practice. Daisy’s account of her own elementary school experience with matemáticas, along with having to learn a second language simultaneously prompted her to consider using students’ home language in the classroom. This observation took place on June 2, 2015 during the implementation of one of her unit three lessons in her sixth grade matemáticas class. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 126 Table 27: Daisy transcript 4 June 02, 2015 Language as value en matemáticas 1 2 3 4 5 Daisy: Axis is going to be, for example, this one, is gonna be one line and this is gonna be another line. So you’re gonna have to create a key for that. So what goes in the y-axis? We’re missing one Mateo: Porcentajes (percentages) Daisy: Yes porcentajes (percentages). The percent goes on the y-axis. So remember, you need x-axis, y-axis, key, title, and the scale for the y-axis. Yes Max In the example above, Daisy repeated her student’s use of the Spanish word, porcentajes, and then continued her instruction in English. In this way, she engaged in multilingual language practices, which in turn, validated the language use of her LEB student while not interrupting her instruction of mathematical concepts. This example gives further evidence to the fact that Daisy was explicit about using her own experience with mathematics as an emergent bilingual herself to express why her teaching practice and the use of her LEB students’ multilingualism was critical. More specifically, this showed how she understood that math is not a universal language (as she mentioned in her testimonio - Latina educadoras speak about promoting Latinx emergent students’ language repertoires) and thus in order for her students to gain agency, she must allow them to interpret mathematical concepts in a way that was most beneficial for them. Even if it meant speaking Spanish. Conclusion This chapter discussed how the three Latina educadoras with whom I worked through PROJECT used this reflective practice of testimonio, about their own educational experiences, to connect with the identidades and experiences of their current students as racialized beings with linguistic and mathematical identities, in order to support their learning. I explored the three Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 127 themes of comunidad, identidad, and language as wealth in both their testimonios and their practica. Through the tres temas I explored, I explained how all three Latina educadoras sought to work with their LEB students in ways that allowed them to flourish as critical thinkers. While many educators of matemáticas are comfortable with including social and cultural aspects in their work, most are not so willing to acknowledge that teaching and learning matemáticas are not politically neutral activities (Gutierrez, 2013). All three Latina educadoras allowed me to capture their testimonios in order to understand how their own schooling and identity-shaping experiences shaped their teaching practices. During their involvement in PROJECT, each educadora was able to move beyond the idea of being politically neutral to understand teaching as a political practice (Gutierrez, 2013). Through their self-reconstructed identidades as Latinas and former Latinx emergent bilinguals, they assessed their LEB students’ comprehension of matemáticas and understood how to better connect school content to their everyday practices outside of the classroom. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 128 CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION, IMPLICATIONS, AND CONCLUSION “From this racial, ideological, cultural and biological cross-pollinization, an ‘alien’ consciousness is presently in the making – a new mestiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer.” ~ Gloria Anzaldúa (1987, p. 99) Overview In this chapter, I review the findings from the previous chapter, making connections to what is already known about teacher identity and the teaching of mathematics to racialized and linguistically minoritized youth. I also discuss how LatCrit and testimonio contribute as a theoretical lens in ways that sociocultural theory and other theoretical frames do not. I introduce el concepto de la trenza as a metaphor for this work. Implications are offered concerning teacher practice, teacher education, and the need for future studies to consider how both teacher and student identities are shaped by and shape teacher practice. Reflection on identities is a necessary component for cultivating a commitment to equity that inspires emergent bilingual students to gain mathematical agency. I conclude with considerations around what I have learned from my overall study and how I seek to continue this work in my future role as an academic scholar. Negociando Conocimiento Anzaldúa (1987) wrote, “I write the myths in me, the myths I am, the myths I want to become. The word, the image, and the feeling have a palpable energy, a kind of power” (p. 93). Through the telling of their testimonios about their identidad – linguistic, racial, and mathematical experiences, recounting how they resist current institutional policies and practices, we see how the three Latina educadoras within my case study influence and dismantle systemic, linguistic, racial and mathematical barriers for their Latinx emergent bilingual (LEB) students Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 129 within La Villita. Their testimonios elicit a kind of power that was enacted in their teaching pedagogy, revealing how they arrived at Anzaldúa’s (2009) concepto de conocimiento: Like mestiza consciousness, conocimiento represents a nonbinary, connectionist mode of thinking: conocimiento often unfolds within oppressive contexts and entails a deepening of perception. Conocimineto underscores and develops the imaginal, spiritual-activist, and radically inclusionary possibilities. (p. 320) As I examined the practica of all three Latina educadoras, I highlighted their connected or embodied way of “knowing”, as they sought to use their knowledge of their LEB students and comunidades to be effective educadoras (Gutiérrez, 2012). In so doing, the educadoras used their practice as a way of “de-constructing euro-anglo ways of knowing” (Anzaldúa, 2009, p. 205) by creating curricular units that reflected the needs of la comunidad, of their LEB students and their familias, to reinforce how lived experiences are connected to content development and a part of the political struggle. Discussion “Theory needs to connect with action, with activism. When theorizing, we need to ask of ourselves and others: What does this theory have to do with working-class people, women of color, single women with children? What is the ideological and political function of this particular theory? How is this theory being used as an ideological weapon?” ~ Gloria Anzaldúa (2009, p. 212) LatCrit & Testimonio A LatCrit framework provided the analytic tools in this research study to understand how the mathematical, linguistic, and racial identidades of three Latina educadoras are reflected in their teaching practices within two schools in Chicago (Delgado Bernal, 2002). Testimonios are a way of teaching and learning pedagogy which I used to explore Latina educadoras’ construction Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 130 and narration of their identidades. Testimonios allowed me to collect extensive information about these particular educadoras as individuals, their teaching approaches, and how they understood and saw the world around them. I witnessed how Latina educadoras unfolded their ‘papelitos guardados’ – experiences otherwise silenced or untold (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga & Flores Carmona, 2012). To critically understand but also positively transform the educational experiences of Latinx emergent bilingual students, through a LatCrit framework, similar to other scholars, I collected testimonios that use “counterstories to challenge the existing social construction of race” and address the marginalization of students of color in schools (Parker & Castro, 2013, p. 50). Testimonios, in part, function to disrupt the mainstream deficit narratives that are often promulgated about LEB students, their familias y comunidades. Testimonios also serves as a way to raise critical consciousness directly connected to action that led to a meaningful transformation of the lived experiences of LEB students in Little Village. I used testimonio not only as a framework but also as a methodology. “Testimonio as methodology departs from the Eurocentricity of traditional educational research and is guided by an anti-racist and anti-hierarchical agenda (Pérez Huber, 2012, p. 379). Through the recording of focus group interviews, weekly meetings, and individual conversations, I was able to capture educadoras’ process of testimoniando (Pérez Huber, 2012). Through this experience, I gained an understanding of the unrecognized leadership each Latina educadora displayed through their pedagogy, as well as their understandings of la comunidad, identidad, and how language is wealth. Their daily work countered deficit notions of what it means to be a Latina educadora in La Villita. Their testimonios provided contra narrativas that documented their lived realities, which have traditionally been excluded from the educational space. Their testimonios and Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 131 teaching practices also gave their LEB students a voice, that might have otherwise been silenced. These Latina educadoras used their testimonios as a way to carve a space within academia to acknowledge sources of knowledge that have been ignored and delegitimized (Perez Huber, 2009). Vanessa, Daisy, and Eva recounted what informed and influenced their decisions to become educadoras, along with demonstrating how they enacted their identidad and desire to improve the learning experiences of their Latinx emergent bilingual students with whom they identified culturally and linguistically. Tejiendo la Trenza Figure 8: Tejiendo la trenza The making of una trenza is an indigenous symbol of strength, wisdom, and a connection to our antepasados. When one is entrusted with the making of another’s trenza, it is considered an honor, and the task must be held with great respect, as one is connecting the body, mind, and spirit. La trenza holds in them our antepasados and should always be looked upon with great beauty, respect, and as a symbol of a regained identidad. From my own reflection around my theoretical and methodological approach to this study, it has become evident that to be a Latina educadora teaching Latinx emergent bilingual students within Little Village means tejiendo la Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 132 trenza. Through the interlacing of a LatCrit and a testimonio lens, my study mirrors la trenza (Delgado Bernal, 2008; Quiñones, 2016). La trenza is a metaphor to theorize the experiences of Latina scholars in academia. It is something whole and complete, and yet, it is something that can only exist if the separate parts are woven together. Like la trenza, when we can weave together our personal, professional, and communal identities, we are often stronger and more complete. At the same time, weaving together these and many other identities is fraught with complexity, tensions, and obstacles. (Delgado Bernal, 2008, p. 135). Metaphorically, this study brought together the analytical tools necessary to gain a “critical and nuanced understanding of how personal, professional, and community identities shape participant’ experiences and perspectives” (Quiñones, 2016, p. 338). El concepto de tejiendo la trenza allowed me to arrive at the understanding that through the telling of their testimonios, each educadora revealed their racial, linguistic, and mathematical identities. First, it is significant to understand how each identity impacted their teaching practice. Racial Identity. Identifying as Latina and more specifically Mexicanas, all three Latina educadoras used their racial identity in their daily practice, as they acknowledged it as an instrument to facilitate their students' learning outcomes in matematicas. Each teacher understood the extent to which the educational system, along with traditional curricular practices perpetuated various forms of racial subordination among their LEB students, and in turn, grappled with pursuing a teaching pedagogy that put value on their racial identity. For example, all three teachers found various ways to be inclusive of how students saw themselves as children of migrants, first-generation, working-class, and living in a predominantly Mexican comunidad. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 133 For each educadora, acknowledging their and their students’ racial identity was part of their pursuit in examining how race is socially constructed and how the system of racism of functions to oppress LEB students and privileges Whites. By encouraging students to understand their racial identity, each educadora challenged dominant ideology and sustained their commitment to social justice (Yosso, 2006). Linguistic Identity. For each educadoras, their linguistic identidad was an avenue to further connect with their LEB students and centered how they gave meaning and significance to both their and their students' linguistic repertories daily. They opposed the imposition of English-only schooling and “an American-style curriculum” (Vélez, 2000, p. 9) that is based on current educational standards. Their rationale around integrating students’ home language during class time is part of a larger struggle to create an alternative vision of the world outside of the framework of hegemonic Whiteness (Flores, 2016, p. 9). In doing so, their teaching practice is an example of how doing away with deficit frames around academic language development inspires language minoritized students to succeed. Mathematical Identity. Each Latina educadora used their own matemáticas experiences to help develop important skills and conceptual understandings to support LEB students coming to see themselves as legitimate and powerful doers of matemáticas (Aguirre, Mayfield-Ingram, & Martin, 2013, p. 14). They used their mathematical identity as a way to expose the fact that teaching mathematics is not a politically neutral act, but rather often a gatekeeper to various opportunities in society (Aguirre, Mayfield-Ingram, & Martin, 2013; Gutiérrez, 2012; Larnell, Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 134 2016). This allowed for rich and meaningful instruction that strongly connected other identities that students constructed and viewed as important in their lives. Because they cannot be separated in the experience of students and Latina educadoras, understanding how each identidad impacted their teaching practices is deeply rooted in understanding that each identity is part of their primary identity. That is, “I can’t say, this is the true me, or that that is the true me. They are all the true me’s” (Anzaldúa, 2009, p. 210). Moreover, linking all three identities together calls for an intersectional analysis (Crenshaw, 1989). Anzaldúa (2009) argued, “in this state of in-betweenness the mestiza can mediate, translate, negotiate, and navigate these different locations” (p. 209). As Latina educadoras, they used their multiple identidades to negotiate the everyday world around them and came to the understanding that these identities are a way of seeing and interpreting the world, a methodology of resistance. La Practica These theoretical approaches guided me during each in-class observation during the 2014-2015 academic school year. During this time, I was able to witness the ways each Latina educadora used their multiple identidades to influence their planning of curricular units and implementation of lessons de matemáticas. I witnessed how each educadora worked toward building collective matemáticas agency (Aguirre, Mayfield-Ingram, & Martin, 2013) for all of their LEB students and how they came to the understanding that their Latinx students contributed different elements to their collective agency. For example, in my previous chapter I discuss how students in Eva’s class worked collectively while experimenting with Cheetos and learning how to measure and calculate calories. In so doing, each Latina educadora found intentional ways to Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 135 center la comunidad, identidad, and home language of students, which led to a rich and authentic curriculum. Their participation in PROJECT guided them to develop reflective Latina educadora practices committed to equity. This included activities and classroom cultures that encouraged their LEB students to exercise their positive identidades de matemáticas. In addition, they enabled students to access their own testimonios to make sense of content. During our final group discussion, each Latina educadora reflected on their yearlong participatory action research projects and PROJECT as a whole. Their testimonios further ignited my understanding of their teaching and how the weaving of la trenza came together. Vanessa. For Vanessa, she came to an understanding that her participation in PROJECT made her a better educadora and reflected on how developing an authentic curriculum captured her Latinx emergent bilingual students. Through what we’ve been doing in the last years is more like… you become a better educator… but how? Understanding the students, giving the opportunities… because a lot of teachers teach strictly by the book and this is the only way. And I'm not just referring to math… I'm referring to even in science or reading and all the subjects. This is the way and this is the only way that this is what I'm teaching you. And I've seen it when…Common Core wants you to do this, this, and that… But you bring up a good point. This is their way... let them own it… this is who they are, and if that works for them, then we got to respect it as educators if that works for them… (Vanessa, Focus Group Interview – 04.08.16) In the above testimonio, Vanessa expressed her dissatisfaction with standards and how traditionally, teachers teach by the book. She arrived at the understanding that to be an effective Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 136 educadora, she must let her students own the content. This further allows for equitable practice and respect toward her LEB students. Eva. Although Eva did not identify as a teacher of matematicas, through her experience in PROJECT, she came to see herself along with her LEB students as “doers” of matemáticas, which lead to their collective agency. I think that action research mathematics and science and applying that to making an impact within the school and making an impact within the community and a strong impact within the classroom. I think all this curriculum, all this framework within this class, umm applying it into my units… You know, gave me a bigger opening of how to do a little bit of science… how to do a little bit of that math and incorporate it into a unit… I’m gonna be honest I feel like it was a little bit of a learning process this first time around doing it with this health unit. But umm… knowing how to apply it to the future. Umm, evolving it next year and next year… You know taking these ideas and these strategies and this research and umm, applying it more in my lesson to give a good end product of making an actual difference in that way… of that sort... hopefully, they'll take it, bringing it out to the community within them, like taking them to bring it out to a bigger picture, umm in the process... you know the big product. (Eva, Focus Group Interview – 04.08.16) Through her testimonio, Eva responded to the notion that she is capable of developing a curriculum that brings together various content areas - matemáticas, science, literacy and integrate them into her social studies classroom. She reflects on her that teaching being a continuous learning process, in which it is significant to take it out into the community and bring Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 137 the community into the classroom, making a bigger impact. Through her experience in PROJECT, she arrived at acknowledging that along with her identidad as a social studies teacher, she now also identifies as an educadora de matemáticas. Daisy. As her identidad as a teacher of matemáticas continued to flourish, Daisy arrived at the understanding that for her students to further develop their identidades de matemáticas, she must collectively bring students together. So that’s another thing that is challenging about the math identity formation and making sure we provide the tools for everybody in our classroom. So what I am doing is I’m showing them a lot of their peers’ work, and they look at it, and they like to tie it a lot better than when I explain it. So I think that's one of the things that I try to focus a lot, of providing the right tools for them to access math. Not like when I was growing up, because I think teachers sucked. It was terrible, and I just want to make sure they understand it. Through different things... (Daisy, Focus Group Interview – 04.08.16) From this account, Daisy advanced her LEB students’ matemáticas agency, as she became aware of their capacity to build each other and identify themselves as powerful matemáticas thinkers who can construct their own understandings of matemáticas. She acknowledges her own identity as a student and how her teachers did not provide with the resources she needed to succeed. Because of this, she strongly feels responsible for the future of her Latinx emergent bilingual students and whether they rise to their potential as mathematical thinkers. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 138 Implications I have provided examples of how Latina educadoras’ reflective practice informs and changes pedagogy in connection to Latinx emergent bilingual students. Latina educadoras engage in praxis, by reflecting on their own linguistic, racial and matemáticas and emergent bilingual identidades. Moreover, while many matemáticas educators are comfortable with including social and cultural aspects in their work, most are not so willing to acknowledge that teaching and learning matemáticas are not politically neutral activities (Gutierrez, 2013). Vanessa, Eva, and Daisy participated in a professional development program that supported their reflection on their matemáticas, linguistic, and racial identidades. In doing so, they arrived at the understanding that their profession is not politically neutral. In turn, this study contributes to the field of teacher education as an example of how teachers’ reflective practice can inform and change their pedagogy and connection with emergent bilingual students in the classroom. It is important to look at how Latina educadoras engage in praxis by reflecting on their matemáticas, linguistic, and racial identidades, and then incorporate these aspects into their current practice. In my findings, we see that when Vanessa, Eva, and Daisy incorporated students' funds of knowledge, including their LEB students' experiences in la comunidad and their home language, students understood the matemáticas content better, but they also made connections from the content to the world outside of their classroom. The purpose of my study was to learn from all three Latina educadoras and disseminate the implicit pedagogical knowledge they hold to better inform teacher educators, school districts with large and growing numbers of Latinx emergent bilingual students, and pre-service teachers interested in working within la comunidad that identifies as Latinx. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 139 Moreover, this study contends that despite structural and social marginalization, attention to Latina educadoras who identify culturally and linguistically as their Latinx emergent bilingual students offer the opportunity to forge ethnic and racial identidades. Rather than accepting an imposed deficit characterization, Latina educadoras pushed back against these ideas, narrating and incorporating their comunidades, linguistic, and racial identidades in their lessons for their LEB students to sustain their linguistic and cultural practices. Teacher Education This study provides insight into professional development for pre-service and in-service teachers. PROJECT supported each Latina educadora in developing transformative practices, demonstrating that curricular integration between content areas and their LEB students’ funds of knowledge, along with their linguistic and racial identity is an asset to their development as critical educadoras. With mediational tools provided by PROJECT, each Latina educadora arrived at the understanding that an integrative curriculum allowed for more equitable learning opportunities for their Latinx emergent bilingual students and their comunidad of La Villita. In turn, the value of taking on an integrative curricular approach was evident in both Latinx emergent bilingual students and Latina educadora learning outcomes. LEB students became experts in their own learning, and each educadora began working with students’ home and knowledge of their comunidad to develop authentic and meaningful curriculum. Through the process of PAR, each Latina educadora was pushed to see her curriculum design as integrative, providing an example of how educadoras can use participatory action research as a tool to reflect on their own teaching practices. In doing so, educadoras became more inclined to plan instruction that utilized the ways in which their Latinx emergent bilingual students understood Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 140 themselves within the curriculum and made meaning of the texts in their world outside of the classroom. Through this design and findings, this work can be used an example of how pre-service and in-service teachers can develop integrative curriculum. More importantly, it serves as an example to the ways in which teacher education programs must 1) develop and prepare educadores to create authentic curriculum that is conducive with students’ funds of knowledge, multilingualism, and especially comunidaded; 2) provide coursework that supports educadores to engage with PAR, along with reflection on their own racial, linguistic, and matemáticas identidades to enhance their critical teaching practices; and 3) develop more sustainable and funded teacher of color pipelines – that is, there must be a deep investment in teacher education programs across the country that are serious about the recruitment, preparation, and graduation of future teachers that are from Latinx comunidades, attended school en sus comunidades, and can deeply impact students of color, such as LEB students, in ways that move beyond nativist ideologies and recognize the need to humanize the teaching profession. Matemáticas Education Matemáticas is often viewed as ‘learned matemáticas’ (D’Ambrosio, 1985), ‘school matemáticas’ (Carraher, Carraher & Schliemann, 1985), or ‘world matemática’ (Gerdes, 1988). It is commonly believed that less support needs to be provided for LEB students to understand this ‘universal language.’ In moving beyond this rigid understanding of matemáticas into understanding the practices, expertise, values, and beliefs of what it means to be a doer of matemáticas, the field of matemáticas education must push teachers to expand their own conceptions of this field, in order to challenge the origins and Eurocentrism of matemáticas. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 141 Teachers’ beliefs and perceptions of what is instructionally possible with or necessary for LEB students is influenced by the experiences that students bring to the classroom, including experiences associated with being members of racially minoritized and low socioeconomic status communities (Bryan & Atwater, 2002). This study speaks to how Latina educadoras struggled with these connections, as they arrived at being able to view how their relationship-building with their LEB students and funds of knowledge was primary to how students saw themselves as doers of matemáticas. Through reflection and analysis, PROJECT provided a space for each educadora to struggle through a third space of tension with their own matemáticas identitdades. Thus, this study substantiates how matemáticas teacher educators must further push the boundaries of matemáticas teaching and explicitly how it is taught to LEB students. In order for LEB students to see themselves as doers of matemáticas, 1) matemáticas learning must be redirected in a way that places prominence around how students can develop critical matemáticas skills that they encounter in their daily lives, outside of the classroom space; 2) by intentionally incorporating students’ funds of knowledge, multiple languages, and communal assets, standardized mathematical skills can be developed over time; and 3) the teaching of matemáticas to LEB students is not a politically neutral act, and therefore instruction must be led in ways that decolonize understandings around matemáticas learning. Teoría y Metodología Through the use of a LatCrit and testimonio lens as both theoretical and methodological approaches, this study offers scholars in the field of education a way to explore and break away with theories that are used to manipulate and control our way of thinking (Anzaldúa, 2009). In particular, the use of both frameworks at once serves to not only critique the systemic and liberal Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 142 orders that perpetuate race, racism, and power (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012), but also works sideby-side to examine and demonstrate how race, language, and matemáticas impact the lived experiences of both Latina educadoras and Latinx emergent bilingual students. Anzaldúa (2009) argued: We are creating ways of educating ourselves and younger generations in this mestiza nation to change how students and teachers think and read by de-constructing EuroAnglo ways of knowing; to create texts that reflect the needs of the world community of women and people of color; and to show lived experience is connected to political struggles. (p. 205) My work continues to situate itself in a way that exposes the nature of eurocentrism, colonialism, white privilege, and white supremacy. It is imperative to expand on the ways in which these theoretical and methodological approaches are critical during these contested political times, in that they intentionally seek to disrupt and interrogate the status quo in protest against the maintained neoliberal order that continues to exist. Conclusion In education, there is a lack of research on Latina educadoras that aims to account for their testimonios and their knowledge that mirrors the experiences of their Latinx emergent bilingual students. Through the telling of their testimonios, I have sought to bring forth a theoretical and methodological approach that “incorporates political, social, historical, and cultural histories that accompany one’s life experiences as a means to bring about change through consciousness-raising” (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga & Flores Carmona, 2012, p. 364). Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 143 Tejiendo their collective histories of educational oppression, stories of marginalization, la comunidad, and their identidad as Latinx emergent bilingual sanctions and elicit social change. Testimonios that come from their comunidad and where their students live and attend schools’ further bridges la academia to la comunidad. Examining research around Latina educadora testimonios that speak to their own experiences growing up, and then teaching in a working-class Latinx comunidad illustrates how Latina educadoras hold the out-of-school knowledge that contributes to anti-racist and justice-centered education for Latinx emergent bilingual students. By uplifting the identidades and teaching practices of Latina educadora, I obtained a deeper experiential understanding of how their LEB students learned. La Nueva Mestiza in Me “Using mestiza as an umbrella term means acknowledging that certain aspects of identity don’t disappear, aren't assimilated, or repressed when they are not at the foreground. Identity is a changing cluster of components and a shaping-shifting activity. To refer to a person who is changing identity, I use the Nahuatl term nagual. The nagual is a shapeshifter, a person who changes from human form to animal form. We shift around to do the work we have to do, to create identities we need to live up to our potential.” ~ Gloria Anzaldúa (2009, p. 211) I refer back to Anzaldúa (2009) to examine my development as an activist scholar and how I seek to continue my scholarship and work as a professor teaching current and future educators. I seek to articulate in my daily practice the need for curriculum that represents us, pedagogical approaches that do not silence us, and scholarship that challenges existing power hierarchies (Anzaldúa, 2009). As a first-generation college student and child of immigrant parents, my academic career has allowed me to be reflective of my own educational experiences and in turn, use those experiences to influence my academic career: to build educator and student Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 144 advocacy around education, with particular attention to the interplay of race, class, language, and culture. In particular, I focus on assuring that my students become effective educators and develop knowledge around the various issues related to teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students. This includes historical, linguistic, and instructional perspectives on the educational needs of children and youth who speak languages that do not mirror the varieties of English demanded in schools. My scholarship is rooted in creating educational opportunities in which pre-service and in-service teachers become empowered to critique the present state of language learning theories and practices, along with developing a critical understanding of their positionalities as critical educators. They must have an understanding of how the structures of education not only impact students' identity-shaping experiences but also how socio-historical and political constructs influence their content development. 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Teacher beliefs and cultural models: A challenge for science teacher preparation programs. Science Education, 86(6), 821-839. Yosso, T. J., Parker, L., Solórzano, D. G., & Lynn, M. (2004). From Jim Crow to affirmative action and back again: A critical race discussion of racialized rationales and access to higher education. Review of Research in Education, 28, 1–25. Zavala, M. D. R. (2014). Latina/o Youth’s Perspectives on Race, Language, and Learning Mathematics. Journal of Urban Mathematics Education, 7(1), 55-87. Zembylas, M. (2003). Interrogating “Teacher Identity”: Emotion, Resistance, and Self‐Formation. Educational theory, 53(1), 107-127. Zentella, A. C. (2002). Latin@ languages and identities. In M. M. Suarez-Orozco and M. M. Páez (Eds.), Latinos: Remaking America (pp. 321–338). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 157 APPENDICES Appendix A – Vanessa's 8th grade students petition Dear Administration Team, We the I.B. class of 2015 have been taking a course called PROJECT, in this class our instructor, Vanessa Bautista (pseudonym), has taught us about GM “genetically modified” foods, obesity. Also problems with obesity not only in our country but in our state, city, and even in our own communities. From that, we have learned so much about our health, community, and even ourselves, because of this, some of us are going to change or already have changed our habits on eating and exercising. In this course we were also taught that before we can change anything, we need to change ourselves, but as a class we have seen change for the better in all of us. So now it’s time for us to fix the issues that we have notice around our school. We the I.B. class of 2015 have come up with some ideas that will help our school and its students with mental health, physical health, and the students’ nutrition, so that they can have a healthy life for themselves. We learned that obesity is not just a cause because of the body, but the mind as well, because when a person’s head is not in a well state of mind, it leads to depression to then them eating their feelings and eating so much they get obese. A way that we can help the students not stress so much is making them feel safer at school. For this to be done more security guards can be hired so that when one is off duty or busy with other problems, we have someone still watching over us. Another idea that was brought up was it to be mandatory for teachers to communicate with each before giving end of quarter projects. This helps students not feel overwhelmed to finish projects on time, and it helps them get more sleep than what they usually would. When the students are not scared or stress they come to school in a positive attitude and more energize, letting them be more open minded and alert. In CPS it is mandatory for each student to receive 120 minutes of physical education per week, but what we have seen is that not every student gets the 120 minutes they need. Many times, students do not participate when asked if they would like to play. We feel that it should be a requirement for the students to participate. Our class believes that activities may also be a part to why students do not get the physical health that they need. It would help many students if are teachers made exercising more enjoyable and competitive, it seems that when students are told just to run laps, they are not motivated to do it but when it is a game are mind thinks “play” not “work”. A problem that we also see is that students are not always given many varieties of sports and activities they can enjoy; PE should give students options on what they want to play, and not just give them one activity that they may not be able to show their abilities and enjoy themselves. Children and teens need physical health and if we are not given this, with all that we eat sooner or later we will gain weight and because were not able to burn off calories it stays in us and builds up fat. Are school should be giving all students 120 minutes of physical health either from gym, recess, or different classes. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 158 A very big issue that has come to our attention is the problem with students and their eating habits at school. It is seen that many students do not eat school lunches and because of this, students then later on eat even more at home, they also likely to eat more unhealthy food or junk food. Many students have a tendency of saying that they are not hungry when it comes to eating lunch, but when really there is nothing that they would like to eat. The I.B. class feels that there should be more varieties of food for the students to enjoy. A problem that we have also seen is that students are at time limited to fruits. When students do not eat their lunch, they rely on the fruit given to them for energy. There should be no limit on how many fruits or vegetables a student can have, especially when the fruits and vegetables are at times GM “genetically modified”. GM foods were created so that people can be fed more and faster, with this there should be no problem with students getting at least 2 fruits or vegetables when there is enough. Within this we find another very big problem, we at times are being given just frozen or genetically modified foods. We feel that the food given to us should be natural and fresh, another reason why students do not eat because the food being given to us is not appealing. Students should not go hungry, many of us, all of us get free lunch because our parents are not able to pay for our food, if we are not given food we will enjoy, we will bring our own lunch, but that is even more money spent that most people can pay for. The school should make sure that their students are getting the nutrients they need or themselves. You may be wondering, why are we telling you this, but as we said we want to see change within our school. We the I.B. class of 2015 want to see a difference, we want you to take inconsideration our ideas that we have for our school so that our students can be healthy. It is easy to say we are healthy school but in our eyes, it is hard to see it. We the I.B. class of 2015 would like the rest of Mendez (pseudonym) to make a difference and with our ideas and others we can be Mendez Middle School a non obese and healthy school. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 159 Appendix B – Focus Group Interview Questions 1. Language questions: i. How do you define language? ii. How do you define culture? 2. Tell me about your own experiences as a second language learner? Or if you are not a second language learner, how does that impact how you relate to ELL issues? Can you tell me about a time being an ELL impacted learning math or science? How have you used a child’s primary language in science or math to make learning more accessible? 3. Could you tell me a memorable math or science experience? (Could be positive or negative) When did you feel an affinity or aversion to math and/or science? (Look out for gender issues, ELL issues, etc.) 4. How would you define scientific language? How can you help students learn the language of science? 5. How would you define mathematical language? How can you help students learn the language of math? 6. What kinds of errors, linguistic or conceptual, have you experienced with your students? How do you deal with it? 7. What is ‘standard English’? How important is it to know ‘standard English’ to do science and math? 8. Do you think it is more or less difficult for dialect-speakers and/or second language learners to learn science and/or math? Explain why or why not. How do you feel about students speaking in non-standard English or another language during science and/or math class? How do you feel about students writing in non-standard English or another language in science class? 9. Questions about action research: i. What do you see as key issues or challenges in conducting action research? ii. How do you feel about working in a cohort? What are some of the challenges or strengths? 10. How does discourse analysis impact how you see yourself? Please provide stories and examples of your own practice. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 160 Appendix C – Focus Group Interview Questions (To the teachers) In preparation for the focus group follow up to unit, we are asking you to think about how the experience with unit 1 has changed: -your teaching -your view of student learning and views of students -planning -analytic process (tally sheets, transcripts, reports) You should be prepared to provide stories and examples of your own practice, particularly drawing on unit 3 experience. Unlike an interview, a focus group is meant to be more interactive and conversational. (For the interviewers) 11. Language questions: i. How is your thinking of language changing? ii. How do you see students using language in your classroom? iii. How have your activities promoted multiple language use? 12. Teaching questions: i. Tell me about the planning process for unit 3? ii. Tell me about how you learned about your students’ funds of knowledge? iii. How did you draw on students’ funds of knowledge while teaching unit 3? iv. Have your views on teaching math and science changed? 13. Analysis questions: 1. Talk about the analytic process for unit 3: i. What did you learn by using the tally sheets (excel spreadsheet)? ii. What did you learn doing the transcription? iii. How did you use the transcripts in your analysis? iv. What modifications to the analysis process would you make? v. How does discourse analysis impact how you see yourself? 14. Since you have done unit 3, what do you think about i. developing curriculum? ii. integrating science, math, and literacy? iii. working with English language learners? 15. Action research questions: i. What do you see as key issues or challenges in conducting action research? ii. What are some of the challenges of implementing the units? iii. Do you feel these units are bringing about change in the students? iv. Have you noticed any changes in students (are they excited about the project?) Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH v. Do you feel empowered by this type of teaching? vi. Are students taking ownership? vii. What have been some of the challenges of trying to bring about change? 161 Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 162 Appendix D – Final focus group discussion prompt questions • For the three of you, what does it mean to be Latina and teach in CPS? • How has PROJECT, or being part of PROJECT these last two years, influenced the way that you think about yourself within this school? What have you gained from it? Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 163 CURRICULUM VITAE EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND University of Illinois at Chicago Doctor of Philosophy, 2020 Program: Curriculum Studies Dissertation title: “Educadoras de la Comunidad Negociando Conocimiento: A Case Study Using a LatCrit and Testimonio Approach to Understand Language, Race & Matemáticas in Practice.” Committee: P. Zitlali Morales, Ph.D (Chair); Aria Razfar, Ph.D; Gregory V. Larnell, Ph.D; Verónica N. Vélez, Ph.D, Western Washington University; Ann M. Aviles, Ph.D, University of Delaware University of Illinois at Chicago Master of Education, May 2012 Program: Instructional Leadership in Educational Policy Studies University of Illinois at Chicago Bachelor of Arts Degree, May 2007 Major: Latin American and Latino Studies Minor: Spanish AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION English Learners (ELs), Bilingualism, Education policy, Urban education, Teacher preparation, Migration experience of students, Civic engagement, Qualitative research, Latinx Critical Race Theory & Testimonio as methodology, Narrative inquiry, Participatory action research, Youth participatory action research (YPAR), Community engagement TEACHING EXPERIENCE 08/2019 – Present Educational Leadership – English as a Second Language: Lewis University College of Education & Social Sciences Assistant Professor • Undergraduate Course ENLE 310 (Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020): Foundations of Teaching Bilingual & English Language Learners, an introduction to the historical, political, social, and cultural issues that affect the instruction of English language learners in American schools. The theoretical background regarding first and second language acquisition is examined, as well as the relationship between language acquisition and language learning. Various program models using first and/or new languages are presented. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 164 Local, state, and federal policies regarding entitlement and appropriate services for English language learners are studied and evaluated in consideration of current research in the field. • Undergraduate Course ENLE 326 (Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020): Introduction to Curriculum & Instruction for Teaching English Language Learners: This course prepares pre-service candidates to design content and language instruction for English language learners. Historical and current program models for providing service to ELLs and accompanying pedagogy are examined. Candidates will prepare instructional units based on these models, investigate and apply state and national standards, and design appropriate instructional and assessment strategies using best practice in the instruction of English language learners. • Graduate Course ENLE 526 (Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020): Introduction to Curriculum & Instruction for Teaching English Language Learners: This course prepares pre-service candidates at the graduate level to design content and language instruction for English language learners. Historical and current program models for providing service to ELLs and accompanying pedagogy are examined. Candidates will prepare instructional units based on these models, investigate and apply state and national standards, and design appropriate instructional and assessment strategies using best practice in the instruction of English language learners. 06/2016 – 01/2019 Department of Curriculum & Instruction: UIC, College of Education Instructor • Graduate Course CI 464 (Spring 2019, Summer 2018, Spring 2018, Summer 2017, Spring 2017): Bilingualism and Literacy in a Second Language, which examines issues of literacy instruction related to emergent bilingual students, covering theoretical foundations and methodological approaches of second language acquisition and the teaching of English as a second language. • Graduate Course CI 481 (Summer 2016): Foundation and Current Issues in Educating English Language Learners, a graduate level course that examines issues and policies that affect culturally and linguistically diverse students in American schools. • Undergraduate Course ED 100 (Fall 2016 & Fall 2017): Introduction to Urban Education, which examines issues, related to urban US, a with special focus to the policies and practices that impact public schools. 01/2018 – 02/2018 Department of Education, Elmhurst College Instructor • Undergraduate Course TEL 448: Action Research and Application of Bilingual Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 165 Methods I, in which teacher candidates will design an action research proposal, which they will implement in TEL 449. The proposal will address how they will study their own teaching of bilingual and ESL methodologies that support the development of listening, speaking, reading, and writing in social and academic contexts. 07/2013 – 05/2016 Department of Curriculum & Instruction: UIC, College of Education Teaching Assistant • Graduate Course CI 540 (Fall 2015 & Spring 2016): Linguistics for Teachers, introduces linguistic concepts as they apply to teaching in a variety of contexts (including but not limited to) monolingual and bilingual classrooms. In addition, this course is designed to provide teachers with a meta-linguistic awareness in order to facilitate learning and instruction. This course will help us understand, think, and talk about the complexities of language, learning, and human development. • Graduate Course CI 575 (Summer 2013, Fall 2013, Summer 2014, Fall 2014): Seminar in Research Issues with English Language Learners, addresses the growing need to integrate language, literacy, and culture with critical content areas such as mathematics and science. By using an action research mode of teacher inquiry, this course prepares teachers to critically engage these issues and develop a situated, collaborative, and transformative action plan that is anchored in sociocultural views of learning as well as discourse analysis. PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT HISTORY 09/2018 – 06/2019 Office of Language & Cultural Education, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) Refugee & Immigrant Student Advocate • • • Established, developed and implemented in collaboration with the Refugee & Immigrant Student Social Worker, the Language and Cultural Support Services (LCSS) team. LCSS facilitates and assists in enabling EL refugee & immigrant students to achieve their fullest potential, academically by providing additional support for students to develop healthy coping skills, increase self-esteem, improve interactive skills, and facilitate environmental changes that enable successful functioning within the school setting. Established, developed and implemented in collaboration with the Refugee & Immigrant Student Social Worker, strategic planning, collaborative partnerships, professional development, and the production of tools and resources for all EL refugee & immigrant students citywide. Established and maintains multiple university partnerships with Colleges of Education to identify, supervise and train over 35 qualified pre-service & in- service teachers to intern with the LCSS program. All academic support interns’ work with the Refugee & Immigrant Student Advocate and English Learner Program Teacher (ELPT) to facilitate Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 166 tutoring and mentoring for identified EL refugee & immigrant students within targeted schools. Established and maintains multiple university partnerships to identify, supervise and train qualified undergraduate, graduate and professional volunteers for the LCSS program. All academic support volunteer’s work with the Refugee & Immigrant Student Advocate and English Learner Program Teacher (ELPT) to facilitate tutoring and mentoring for identified EL refugee & immigrant students within targeted schools. Leading a post-secondary initiative with partnered universities and colleges across the state of Illinois to develop and assure all EL refugee and immigrant students receive postsecondary options that are best suited for their direct needs beyond CPS. Collaborate with university partners to facilitate after school programming for EL refugee and immigrant students within targeted schools. Review school records to identify EL refugee and immigrant students in need of social emotional and academic support. Work directly with EL refugee & immigrant students at targeted schools providing one on one tutoring and mentoring, as directed by ELPT and school counselors. Work directly with school counselors and students to establish educational programs. Develop resource networks and connections for EL refugee & immigrant students and families. Meet with community organizations and stakeholders regularly to develop and distribute literature around available services for refugee and immigrant students statewide. Work in collaboration with stakeholders to develop educational programming for EL refugee & immigrant students. Attend and participate in all weekly OLCE administrative & departmental meetings to establish strategic plan and priority goals. Assist with the development and implementation of the OLCE EL newcomer summer school program -2019. Facilitate citywide refugee and immigrant parent workshops around high school selective enrollment options and post-secondary preparation. Established, developed and implemented in collaboration with other CPS Offices, university partners and community organizations the 1st Annual Refugee & Immigrant Student Summit. The summit brought over 260 CPS EL refugee and undocumented students from across the city together to engage in a collective dialogue around selfadvocacy; awareness; career & college readiness. Along with expose students to a college campus tour and learn more about the college student experience. Develop and facilitate CPS teacher professional development workshops for Saturdays with OLCE, which introduces educators on how to create, develop and differentiate biliteracy strategies, using Common Core & WIDA standards. Examining students’ social, cultural and educational backgrounds in order to make appropriate instructional decisions that foster collective relationships across school, community and family for promoting a multicultural and multilingual school climate. Participants will receive Common Core, WIDA and culturally relevant resources. Develop and coordinate all data collection of services rendered by LCSS social work and academic support team and distribute to administration and network chiefs at targeted schools. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 167 01/2018 – 08/2018 Development of Immigrant Youth in Action - UIC, College of Education Graduate Research Assistant • • • • • • • • • • Recruit immigrant-origin students for project participation. Coordinate and schedule student participant interviews. Conduct student interviews. Develop and coordinate student online survey. Maintain database for research project. Transcribe & code student interviews. Analyze all project data. Distribute participant compensation. Maintain financial records for project. Work with undergraduate students in developing youth participatory action research. 08/2017 – 05/2018 Institute for Policy & Civic Engagement (IPCE), Urban Public Policy Fellows Program (UPPF) Graduate Assistant • • • • • Undergraduate mentor. Undergraduate supervisor. Met with students on weekly bases to develop individual yearlong research projects. Managed and supervised student’s internship sites. Maintained student log of weekly internship hours and completion of assignments. 08/2016 – 05/2017 Department of Curriculum & Instruction: Curriculum Studies Program, UIC, College of Education Graduate Assistant • • • • • Assisted with data collection for past & current enrolled doctoral students. Assisted with IBHE program review. Developed and executed doctoral student interest group. Coordinated alumni student panel discussions & other events. Developed and maintain blackboard site for program. 06/2013 – 08/2016 • • • English Learning Through Math Science & Action Research, Project ELMSA, UIC, College of Education Graduate Research Assistant Assisted with the recruitment of K-12 CPS teachers for Project ELMSA. Worked with a cohort of 17 CPS teachers enrolled in Project ELMSA in developing, implementing. and analyzing their year-long action research projects. Collected, transcribed and analyzed data. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH • • • 168 Supervised and mentored undergraduate work-study students. Visited CPS school sites and observed teacher instruction. Met with CPS teachers on weekly bases to mentor and assist with the development of curriculum. 05/2011 – 06/2013 The Latina and Latino Studies Program, Northwestern University Program Coordinator • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Coordinated lectures, conferences and special events. Arranged all departmental publicity, venue reservations and community outreach. Maintained financial records, annual and quarterly budget for department. Reconciled monthly budget with university accounts payable to assure validity of all transactions. Made travel arrangements and processed reimbursements for faculty, staff, outside guest, and students. Processed invoices, reimbursements and expense reports through Project Café and all university systems. Assisted with the development of grant proposals. Redesigned and restructured program website. Updated website periodically, including information about faculty, students, courses, and events utilizing Adobe Contribute. Produced periodic newsletters for program visibility. Hired and supervised student interns. Maintained student major and minor records database. Coordinated program courses, teaching schedules, course materials, and book orders for faculty. Facilitated and initiated undergraduate mentorship program. Advised Latino student organizations. Established and maintained relationships with outside vendors and community organizations. Responsible for interviewing and hiring program staff in consultation with program director. 08/2010 - 05/2011 • • • College of Nursing, University of Illinois at Chicago Admissions and Scholarship Coordinator Organized faculty committee meetings, prepared agendas, location, and coordinated logistics. Monitored scholarship account balances in BANNER and assured that funds were disbursed accordingly. Coordinated application and scholarship review process for both undergraduate and graduate Nursing students. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH • • • • • • • • • • • Prepared Graduate College fellowship applications (University Fellowship, Abraham Lincoln Fellowship, DFI Fellowship). Processed training grant and fellowship waiver requests. Prepared grant applications for student funding. Administered grant programs such as Health Resources and Services Administration’s Nurse Faculty Loan Program. Coordinated annual Phi Kappa Phi nomination process. Advised students in the Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing (BSN) program. Reviewed student course work, academic plan, remove holds, place holds on student account through BANNER, CORE and update individual Immunization Tracker. Advised and recruited prospective underrepresented students on UIC campus and Community Colleges in the Chicago land area. Supported College orientation and events for admitted BSN students. Instructed a five-week session on “Spanish for Health Care Professionals”, for Master students in the college. Acted as liaison between the UIC Honor’s College, nursing students and faculty mentor’s. 10/2007 - 08/2010 • • • • • • • • • • 169 LARES Program, University of Illinois at Chicago Recruitment and Admissions Counselor Recruited and advised prospective Latina/o students at community and corporate events, educational fairs and High School visits. Developed and participated in campus events such as orientations, open houses, campus tours, and other student related functions. Hired and supervised student interns. Established relationships and rapport with school administrators, staff members and students to provide academic support programming and outreach initiatives. Assisted prospective and current students with advising, class scheduling, financial aid, and career planning. Managed private and highly confidential information including admission applications, student records, petitions, federal and state tax forms, legal documents, residency credentials and other pertinent student information. Provided individual and group academic advising for students, parents and the Latina/o community. Served in an advisory role for student organizations on campus, such as Confederation of Latin American Students (CLAS). Facilitated workshops on ACT preparation, FAFSA logistics, and the college application process. Directed students to financial aid resources, support programs and college admissions outreach opportunities. Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 10/2005 - 5/2007 • • • • 170 Latin American and Latino Studies Program, University of Illinois at Chicago Office Assistant Provided administrative support for professors conducting research. Assisted the program director with research endeavors, schedule, and assigned office duties. Coordinated program internships, conferences and departmental guest lectures. Updated department website utilizing Dreamweaver and developed marketing materials. PUBLICATIONS Maravilla-Cano, J. (2020). Participatory Action Research in a Time of Digital Literacies. Illinois Reading Council Journal (IRCJ). Meza, R., Maravilla, J., Delgado, Y., & Morales, P. Z. (in progress). Disrupting deficit narratives of el barrio: Latinx teacher Testimonios from Chicagoland. In C. D. Gist & T. J. Bristol (Eds.), The handbook of research on teachers of color. American Educational Research Association. Morales, P. Z., & Maravilla, J. (2019). The problems and possibilities of interest convergence to advance multilingualism for all. Theory Into Practice, 58(2), 145153. doi:10.1080/00405841.2019.1569377 Razfar, A. & Maravilla-Cano, J. (2017). Migrants and Out of School Learning. Sage Encyclopedia of Out-of-School Learning. Morales, P. Z., Meza, R., & Maravilla-Cano, J. (2016). Latin@ students in a changing Chicago: Current disparities and opportunities within public schools. Association of Mexican American Educators Journal, 10(1), 107-129. AWARDS, Certificates & FELLOWSHIPS • • • • • • • • Online Teaching Certificate, Lewis University Fall 2019 Lewis University Faculty Travel Award, Fall 2019 Recipient of the 2019 Graduate Student awardee for the Chancellor's Committee on the Status of Latinos (CCSL), University of Illinois at Chicago Recipient of the 2018 Leadership Award, Illinois Latino Association for Higher Education (ILACHE) Curriculum & Instruction Department Travel Award, Spring 2018 Curriculum & Instruction Department Travel Award, Fall 2017 Curriculum & Instruction Department Travel Award, Spring 2017 Curriculum & Instruction Department Travel Award, Spring 2016 Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH • • 171 Curriculum & Instruction Department Travel Award, Fall 2015 Recipient of the 2012 Meteor Award, Weinberg College of Arts and Science, Northwestern University PRESENTATIONS Maravilla, J., Alcalá, R., Aguilar, J., & Morales, P. Z. (2020, May 21-22). Cultivating orgullo andcollectivity within Chicago classrooms: Latinx educators’ radical practices of care. [Paper] at the annual conference of the Critical Race Studies in Education Association, Newark, DE (Conference Canceled). Meza, R., & Maravilla, J., Morales, P. Z. & Delgado, Y. (2020, Apr 17 - 21). Pedagogical and Leadership Practices. Disrupting Deficit Narratives of Chicagoland Barrios: Uplifting Latinx Teacher Testimonios [Invited Roundtable] at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA http://tinyurl.com/qwcvnzw (Conference Canceled). Morales, P. Z., Meza, R., & Maravilla, J. (2019, December). Tu eres mi otro yo [You are my other me]: Latinx teachers leveraging cultural and linguistic capital in Chicago classrooms. Paper presented as part of the session, “Language, Race, and Literacy Learning: Leveraging Competencies, Ideologies, and Experiences for Teaching Education” at the annual meeting of the Literacy Research Association, Tampa, FL. Maravilla-Cano, J., Meza, R., & Morales, P. Z. (2018, May). Marcando presencia: Teacher testimonies from Chicagoland barrios. Paper presented at the annual conference of the Critical Race Studies in Education Association, Albuquerque, NM., Meza, R., Maravilla-Cano, J., & Morales, P. Z. (2018, April). Testimonios del barrio: Latinx Teacher counternarratives in Chicago. Paper presented as part of the session, “(Re)Imagining Latinx Teachers in Multiple Contexts: Cultural Resources, Testimonios, and Activism in Public Schools” at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York City, NY. Maravilla-Cano, J., & Morales, P. Z. (2017, November). Reconsidering teachers’ identities and ideological influences on pedagogical practice within the classroom. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Literacy Research Association, Tampa, FL. Morales, P. Z., Meza, R., & Maravilla-Cano, J. (2017, November). Chicago Latinx Teacher Testimonios: Understanding the Challenges and Promoting the Strengths of Latinx Students and Their Communities. Paper presented as part of the symposium, “Latinx Teachers in Multiple Contexts: Exploring their Cultural Resources, Testimonios, and Activism” at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC. Morales, P. Z., & Maravilla-Cano, J. (2017, May-June). The problems and possibilities of Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH 172 Interest convergence to advance multilingualism for all. Paper presented at the annual conference of the Critical Race Studies in Education Association, Indianapolis, IN. Morales, P. Z., Meza, R., & Maravilla-Cano, J. (2017, April). Latin@ public school teachers in a changing Chicago: Testimonios from the classroom. Paper presented as part of the symposium, “Latin@ Educational Landscapes in Chicago: Testimonios, Resistance, and Praxis” at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Antonio, TX. Morales, P. Z., Meza, R., & Maravilla-Cano, J. (2016, July). Latin@ students in a changing Chicago: Current disparities and opportunities within public schools. Paper presented in a symposium, “Racialization and Socialization of Latin@s in a Changing Chicago: The Role of Public Schools” at the annual conference of the Latina/o Studies Association, Pasadena, CA. Maravilla-Cano, J., & Morales, P. Z. (2016, March). Reconsidering teachers’ identities and Ideological influences on pedagogical practice within the classroom. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Association for Bilingual Education, Chicago, IL. Meza, R., Maravilla-Cano, J., & Morales, P. Z. (2015, May). Racialization and socialization of Latinas/os in a changing Chicago: The role of public schools. Paper presented at the annual conference of the Critical Race Studies in Education Association, Nashville, TN. EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 01/2018 – Present Network for Undocumented Scholarship Access (NUSA), Co-founder & Volunteer 09/2012 - Present The Anhelo Project, Board Chair 09/2009 – Present The Anhelo Project Dream Scholarship Fund, Founding Member & Volunteer 2019 Sharing the Dream Conference, Presenter 2019 The Illinois Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents (IALAS), Presenter 2018 Sharing the Dream Conference, Presenter 2018 The Peoples Education Forum, Organizing Committee Member 2018 People of Color Forum 2.0: Bridging the Gap, Organizing Committee Member 2017 Bowen High School College & Career Week, Invited Guest Speaker 2016 Diversity Dialogue & Student Research Forum, Poster Reviewer 2016 Illinois Dream Fund Scholarship, Reviewer 2016 UNO Charter School Scholarship, Reviewer 09/2009 – 08/2010 Latino Committee on University Affairs, Subcommittee Co-Chair 06/2009- 06/2010 Latino Health Science Enrichment Program, Associate Program Manager 09/2008 – 08/2018 Chancellor’s Committee on the Status of Latino’s (CCSL), Subcommittee Co-Chair Running head: A LATINX AND CRITICAL APPROACH • • • • 03/2008 – 03/2010 St. Pius V. Parish Council Committee, General Member 02/2007 – 04/2007 Mujeres Latinas En Acción, Youth Day Coordinator 09/2005 – 04/2007 “NOCHE De POETAS”, Volunteer & Coordinator 04/2003 – 04/2005 Pa’lante Conference, Volunteer & Coordinator PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIP • • • • • American Educational Research Association (AERA) Literacy Research Association (LRA) National Association of Bilingual Education (NABE) Latina/o Studies Association (LSA) Critical Race Studies in Education Association (CRSEA) LANGUAGE AND SKILLS • • Fluent in spoken and written Spanish Fluent in NVivo, SPSS, PowerPoint, Excel, Microsoft Word, Dream Weaver, Qualtrics, ASPEN 173