Within and beyond a grow-your-own-teacher program: Documenting the contextualized preparation and professional development experiences of critically conscious Latina teachers

Abstract

This study provides an account of seven Latina teachers' select educational, professional, and personal experiences over the past 10 years as they completed a growyour-own-teacher program, became licensed teachers, and established themselves in Latinx minority-majority public schools within their rural, mid-western community. More specifically, as a Latina researcher and participant observer, I sought to better understand the culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) Latina teachers' process-oriented engagement and conscientization over time. Far from being 'readymade' conscientized teachers, in this work I discuss the ways CLD Latina teachers' multiple and developing identities as bilingual learners, mothers, racialized minorities in schools, and educated professionals serve as both burdens and gifts in their engagement and processes of conscientization for teaching CLD students. Through the use of critical literatures, and life and professional story methodologies informed by Chicana feminist epistemologies, I sought to privilege Latina teachers' narratives as well as uncover the mechanisms and experiences that proved most impactful for their development and sustainment within white normative educational spaces. Findings illustrate an emergence of racialized, identitarian resources among Latinas and implicate a nuanced, culturally contextualized, pedagogical approach to pre-/ in-service CLD teacher professional development that engages participants in reflective storying, critical inquiry, and restorative community building.

Rethinking and redrawing teaching and learning: Latinx preservice teachers documenting their pedagogies of the home through comic strips

“…As both a theory of analysis as well as a guiding theory to the assignment of comic creation, pedagogies of the home provided a framework to better understand the forms of knowledge that often go unseen within K-12 classrooms as well as in teacher preparation programs. Many LPSTs continue to find themselves in teacher education programs that overlook their cultural and linguistic identities and fail to provide them with tools to challenge deficit, monolingual ideologies (Morales, 2018). As Venegas et al (2020) argue, preparation programs that are grounded on the linguistic, cultural, and community knowledge of preservice teachers will ultimately contribute to the recruitment, retainment, and graduation of future generations of teachers who have critical understandings of content and pedagogy as well as a deep appreciation for their own culture and that of their students.…”

“I feel like I have to be the whitest version of myself”: Experiences of early career Latina higher education administrators.

“…A group like this could provide the space for these women to share stories about their career challenges and successes, best practices in overcoming barriers, work-life balance/integration strategies, and career goals and aspirations. Creating opportunities for early career Latina administrators to connect with other Latinas and women of color on their campuses could facilitate a better understanding of their racial/ethnic and gender identities as a collective, discuss the tensions and perceptions of their professional roles in relation to their social identities, and empower each other to succeed (Morales, 2018; Pour-Khorshid, 2018). This is a simple intergenerational and interracial mentoring strategy that can be implemented in any institution, so Latina administrators can have the opportunity to acquire mentors and begin to develop a sense of belonging on campus.…”

What is to be done with curriculum and educational foundations' critical knowledges? Toward critical and decolonizing education sciences

“…Bound together in theorizing Latinx experiences in US, Anglophone, and transnational contexts, CFE and LatCrit develop counternarrativized content for public schools and universities that recounts complex forms of racialized oppression but also identifies cultural and linguistic resources for resistances. As CFE and LatCrit relate to our special issue, research by Morales (2018) and Caldas (2018) exemplify deployments of these frameworks as they empirically narrate and describe gendered and racialized critical pedagogies in the conscientization processes of Latinx preservice and in-service teachers.…”