¿Porque No Los Dos?: (Re)imagining the Dual-Language Immersion Classroom Through Dialogic Teaching and Pláticas by Elisa Marisol Serrano

Language is sacred in that it connects us to our ancestors, keeping them alive in our hearts as we recount and pass on the consejitos, cuentos, y lecciones they once relayed to us. Language is also power. It has and continues to be weaponized as a means to colonize, oppress, silence, and assimilate countless peoples; however, it is also a powerful, disruptive site of resistance, liberation, action, healing, justice, and reclamation (Anzaldúa 2007; Baker-Bell 2020; hooks 1994; Lorde 1984). The language we use to name ourselves and our ideals are imperative because we are our language (Anzaldúa 2007); through language, we can either validate harmful, Eurocentric ideals, or resist them, taking up the space that has been denied to Communities of Color for so long (Anzaldúa 2007; Baker-Bell 2020; hooks 1994; Lorde 1984).

Bilingual or dual-language immersion classrooms should value and uplifts students’ full linguistic repertoires to resist the gentrification of dual-language immersion programs and dismantle deficit-minded language policies and practices. I am the daughter of Mexican immigrants; I came to know the world through the Spanish language—a language that was later silenced and policed in the American education system. Since then, my linguistic repertoire has transformed and expanded. Despite the policing my language endured, todavía hablo español. También hablo inglés, the language I was introduced to in school and have been conditioned to think of as “the academic language.” Y por ultimo, I speak Spanglish, “el lenguaje de la frontera” (Anzaldúa 2007, p. 77), a language emboldened by border culture born out of our in-betweenness and resistance. I carry these experiences with me in my work and as I engage in critical reflexivity, knowing that both Spanish and English have been used to colonize, terrorize, and assimilate countless peoples.

La Lucha No Termina

Schooling in the United States has historically been used to colonize, silence, oppress, and assimilate minoritized groups (Au et al. 2016San Miguel & Valencia 1998; Wallace Adams 1988). In adapting a deficit lens of minoritized groups, their families, communities, and cultures, schools have been reinforcing and reproducing Eurocentric societal and political ideologies in the classroom (Flores & Rosa 2015; Johnson 2019; Love 2019; Oakes 2005; Williams 2018).

The assumed lack of English language proficiency and the racialization of language have justified and legitimized harmful policies that have led to de facto and de jure segregation after Brown v. Board of Education and Hernandez v. Texas (Donato & Hanson 2012; Haney-Lopez 2005; Ladson-Billings 2004; MacGregor-Mendoza 2000). As these harmful policies and practices continue to adapt and readapt, so does the lucha for linguistic justice (Baker-Bell 2020) and self-determination and curricular resistance (Au et al. 2016). We, as a “developed” society have evolved into seeing the value of bilingual education, although it seems to hold the most value when it benefits the white, dominant, monolithic English speaker (Delpit & Dowdy 2002; Heiman & Yanes 2018; Freire & Feinauer 2022; Váldes 1997).

This piece extends the previous and current work that centers the experiences of the language-minoritized students that are usually silenced in bilingual or dual-language classrooms and who argue for critical consciousness as a fourth goal of dual language bilingual education programs (Delpit & Dowdy 2002; Flores & García 2017; Heiman & Yanes 2018; Freire & Feinauer 2022; Váldes 1997). This is in line with Baker-Bell’s (2020) study on Black linguistic consciousness as necessary for language-minority students to liberate themselves and engage in critical reflexivity of their internalized bias and prejudices regarding language practices.

Pláticas as Pedagogy: Construyendo translingual classrooms through Dialogic Teaching and Pláticas

Paulo Freire’s argument for dialogic teaching denounces the banking system of education, in which teachers are seen as the all-knowing subject who, through lectures, deposits knowledge into their students, who are seen as empty vessels (Freire 2018). Critical dialogic teaching invites the ways of knowing and lived experiences of minoritized and marginalized students whose knowledges tend to be discounted or silenced in traditional, Eurocentric schooling (Freire 2018; Nyachae 2019). Critical dialogic teaching, then, resists the self-fulfilling prophecy, aids in decolonizing the classroom, and fosters student creativity, agency, and critical consciousness (Baker-Bell 2020; López 2017; Love 2019;).

Considering the original aims of schooling, primarily to colonize, control, assimilate, and track Indigenous peoples and other groups of color (Au et al. 2016; Oakes 2005; San Miguel & Valencia 1998; Wallace Adams 1988), critical dialogic teaching in bilingual or dual-language education classrooms is a space of resistance, liberation, transformation, and revitalization as is seen in the work of ethnic studies (Au et al. 2016; Okihiro 2016; Sleeter & Zavala 2020;), funds of knowledge (Gutiérrez & Rogoff 2003; Moll et al. 1992), and language education (Baker-Bell 2020; Flores & García 2017; Váldes 1997; Váldes 2001).   

Pláticas are in conversation with dialogic teaching, in that they afford a space in which lived experiences, ways of knowing, and reflexivity can be shared amongst participants. Pláticas are rooted in Chicana/Latina feminist epistemologies (Delgado Bernal 1998) and are known as informal, often vulnerable conversations in which knowledge and experiences as shared between and amongst people and that always result in critical consciousness raising (Fierros & Delgado Bernal 2016; Hamzeh & Carmona 2019). Pláticas, like testimonios, are a critical site of resistance that legitimizes Chicana/Latina feminista ways of knowing and lived experiences, all of which resist and denounce traditional Eurocentric ways of knowing and being (Anzaldúa 2007; Anzaldúa 2015; Moraga & Anzaldúa 2015; Delgado Bernal 1998; Fierros & Delgado Bernal 2016; Ortega 2016). Pláticas are healing, liberatory, and transformative in their own right and as such, are a big part of Chicana/Latina epistemologies, methodologies, and pedagogies. Hamzeh and Carmona (2019) enact pláticas as pedagogy in a critical university course at an HSI as a form of dialogic teaching, demonstrating their classroom as a transformative, liberatory, and consciousness-raising one for all students, not just those who identity as Chicana/Latina. In somewhat similar ways, pláticas and dialogic teaching circles have also been used in certain teacher development sessions to raise teachers’ critical consciousness so that they may be more culturally responsive and revitalizing in their classrooms (Lomelí 2021).

I argue that pláticas as pedagogy through a Freirean dialogic teaching lens will complicate the either/or binary in bilingual education, primarily that uplifting and valuing home languages will affect English proficiency and that English proficiency has to lead to a loss and a devaluing of home languages. Looking back at the history of Mexican-American schooling and their English only policies labeling Spanish speaking students as deficient and remedial conveys that one had to not use, let go of, or “lose” their native language in order to be proficient in English (Delpit 1988; Donato & Hanson 2012; Haney-Lopez, 2005; Váldes 2001; Valenzuela 1999). Enacting a pedagogy rooted in pláticas and dialogic teaching in bilingual or dual language immersion classrooms will further allow for that fourth goal of dual language bilingual education to come into fruition (Delpit & Dowdy 2002; Flores & García 2017; Heiman & Yanes 2018; Freire & Feinauer 2022; Váldes 1997).  What I am arguing for is nothing new; many classroom spaces already engage in dialogic teaching and pláticas (if there is confianza), but I am arguing that they are imperative in bilingual or dual language education classrooms, where language is always politicized, and where the end goal is eventual English proficiency—at the expense of language-minoritized students (Delpit & Dowdy 2002; Váldes 1997). Creating a safe, nurturing space in which all classroom participants can engage in critical pláticas, learn from each other, expand their linguistic repertoires, and grow in self-determination will allow for linguistic critical consciousness (Baker-Bell 2020; Flores & García 2017; Heiman & Yanes 2018; Freire & Feinauer 2022). Pláticas are a beautiful way to achieve student self-determination and empowerment through heterogeneity because they are revitalizing, liberatory, healing, and transformative. In a multilingual classroom, they have the potential to serve as a tool to dismantle and tear down the invisible barriers that centuries of colonialism and imperialism have created amongst different racial, ethnic, cultural, and even dominant groups by working towards solidarity (Fierros & Delgado Bernal 2016; Hamzeh & Carmona 2019). Pláticas as pedagogy will center the lived experiences of language-minoritized students and create a transformative learning environment that encourages and nurtures multilingualism.

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About the scholar

Elisa Serrano is a PhD student in the Curriculum & Instruction program at Penn State University. She holds a M.A. in Rhetoric & Composition from Texas State University and a B.A. in English from Texas A&M University. She is a research assistant and is currently involved in projects related to asset-based pedagogies and dialogic teaching. Elisa’s research interests, at a very general level, revolve around asset-based pedagogies, ethnic studies, and translanguaging pedagogical practices. More specifically, Elisa is interested in linguistic justice and restorative education for language-minority students, particularly for Latinx students, like herself.

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