Apoyándonos: Building Community with Multilingual Teachers through a Community Autoethnographic Approach

Location

DeSantis Room 1049

Format Type

Plenary

Format Type

Paper

Start Date

17-1-2020 2:15 PM

End Date

17-1-2020 2:35 PM

Abstract

Apoyándonos (reflexively supporting each other) project is a long-term community autoethnographic (Bochner & Ellis, 2016) research project that brings together multilingual teachers, in their first six years of teaching, that graduated from the Bilingual Teacher Pathway Program at Portland State University. The researchers/teacher educators reflect on their own teaching and learning while documenting the experiences of their former students, now multilingual teachers in Oregon.

Over the past year, we have been collecting data from focus groups. Thus far, 26 multilingual teachers representing six languages have contributed to the conversations, bringing community and cultural wealth (Yosso, 2006) to the teaching profession. We gather in different locations around the Portland area to reconnect, hug, cry, share stories, and support each other. This is what “apoyándonos” means, to lean in and hold each other up.

As teacher educators, it weighs on us that we are educating multicultural / multilingual teachers during “The Trump Effect;” a time when anti-immigrant and racist hate crimes and bullying have increased in schools across the nation (Rogers, 2017). Additionally, these teachers often work in racially segregated schools with high turnover rates, large class sizes, and low SES. Hence, we seek to create a space for our former students to come together and to support them as social justice advocates. We also seek to contribute to the broader educational field by sharing their stories to impact equity policy and practices. One of the preliminary findings of this project is that they are finding solace and strength in community.

Keywords

Bilingual, Multilingual, Teacher Education, Community Autoethnography, Focus Groups, Equity and Social Justice

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Jan 17th, 2:15 PM Jan 17th, 2:35 PM

Apoyándonos: Building Community with Multilingual Teachers through a Community Autoethnographic Approach

DeSantis Room 1049

Apoyándonos (reflexively supporting each other) project is a long-term community autoethnographic (Bochner & Ellis, 2016) research project that brings together multilingual teachers, in their first six years of teaching, that graduated from the Bilingual Teacher Pathway Program at Portland State University. The researchers/teacher educators reflect on their own teaching and learning while documenting the experiences of their former students, now multilingual teachers in Oregon.

Over the past year, we have been collecting data from focus groups. Thus far, 26 multilingual teachers representing six languages have contributed to the conversations, bringing community and cultural wealth (Yosso, 2006) to the teaching profession. We gather in different locations around the Portland area to reconnect, hug, cry, share stories, and support each other. This is what “apoyándonos” means, to lean in and hold each other up.

As teacher educators, it weighs on us that we are educating multicultural / multilingual teachers during “The Trump Effect;” a time when anti-immigrant and racist hate crimes and bullying have increased in schools across the nation (Rogers, 2017). Additionally, these teachers often work in racially segregated schools with high turnover rates, large class sizes, and low SES. Hence, we seek to create a space for our former students to come together and to support them as social justice advocates. We also seek to contribute to the broader educational field by sharing their stories to impact equity policy and practices. One of the preliminary findings of this project is that they are finding solace and strength in community.