As I was sipping my delicious peach cream martini from the rooftop of a prominent bar in Manhattan I glanced around and noticed that most people, lucky enough to enjoy this experience, were, or appeared to be, white. It’s truly a small percentage considering the hundreds of people that walk the streets of New York City, not to mention the amount of diversity amongst pedestrians! There are obvious factors to take into account, such as the possibility that the faces making an appearance on the rooftop are mostly those of tourists, although I think I can still pose the same question. This thought exactly is one of the reasons why I am pursuing a PhD in bilingual education. Analyzing how certain individuals make it, to say a rooftop to enjoy a view and cocktail, seems to have always permeated my mind to the point of frustration, making me wish I could see beyond the “benefits” of race and social class (i.e., gender, immigrant generational status, ethnicity). In other words, sometimes I wish I knew less, questioned and analyzed less. Frankly put, sometimes I wish I could change the way I interpret life; sometimes ignorance is bliss.

The theoretical concept of intersectionality has forced me to reconsider the aspect of my identity I have honed in on for most of life: ethnic/racial identity. The readings and critical class discussions have made me realize how much the other aspects of my identity have influenced how I participated in the construction of my overall identity.

This paper will address how my ethnic/racial identity has been shaped by the intersection of my other identities: gender, class, & immigrant generational status. My multiple identities were partly shaped within the context of the school setting. In other words, the social location from where I will deconstruct my overall identity comes from one context that has resonated with me the most: the academic school setting.

The concept of intersectionality describes identities in relation to each other where each one constitutes the other. An individuals’ social location within this intersectionality helps shape the experiences we have within certain contexts (Moya, 2002). For instance, if we think of my ethnic/racial identity in relation to my immigrant generational status, gender, and class in the context of a school setting where the majority of the students share a similar background one could argue that my positionality carries nearly equal footing with others. In a completely different context, where my social location (as previously described) is completely different from my peers one could argue that my positionality has also changed. According to Holland, Skinner, Lachiotte, and Cain (1998), “Positional identities have to do with the day-to-day and on-the-ground relations of power, deference, and entitlement, social affiliation, and distance—with the social-interactional, social-relational structures of the lived world.” (p. 127). This analysis will explore how aspects of my identity were negotiated and mediated using cultural artifacts or tools to (re)position where I stood on the hierarchy of social relations (Garcia, 2012; Holland et.al, 2008).

In the eighth grade my family moved from a predominately Mexican and working class city (Santa Ana, C.A.) to a predominately White and middle to upper class city (Mission Viejo, C.A.). By moving to a very different city aspects of my identity and how they related to one another also seemed to change. Additionally, there were several pivotal changes that occurred almost simultaneously. My father passed away changing the way our home was organized. In retrospect, this is when my mother gained her sense of agency as the matriarch of our now entirely female home. My identity as a female, though I did not realize at the time, was now being shaped by my mother’s transformation from a devoted wife to an independent woman who really wanted to see her three daughters take on more feminist roles in society outside the home.

Due to my father’s passing (cerebral aneurysm) our economic status changed because he left behind several life insurance plans. My mother saw this as an opportunity to try and provide us with a better education and safer neighborhood to live in. The ways my change in class intersected with other aspects of my identity was influenced by the new context (as mentioned earlier) I found myself in a predominately white, middle to upper class neighborhood.

The aspects of my identity that seemed to have changed the least as a result of the move included my ethnic/racial identity and my immigrant generational status. Interestingly, it was those two aspects that seemed to have also changed the way the school setting positioned me. In Santa Ana I was positioned as the smart student by teachers and by my peers and in Mission Viejo I was placed on a remedial track. Slowly and painfully I began to see myself as just that: remedial. When I graduated from high school in 1994 I had an academic GPA of 2.49 and I ranked 226 in my class of 367. Most, if not all, of the courses I had taken were not college prep. They were courses for students who, as one teacher described, “designed for those who will go straight to work” after graduating.

This remedial status followed me through community college and my first semester at UT. I started community college with high hopes of exiting the remedial reading, writing, and math courses I was placed in (again!), which I did within a few years. Once transferring to UT I failed my first semester and was put on academic probation due to my 1.5 G.P.A. During my second semester I was removed from academic probation and I wish I could say the rest is history, but it wasn’t. I still felt like that remedial student and in many ways it has prevented me from exploring other aspirations.
Fortunately or not, it took pursuing a doctorate to understand what happened to me and how I really am not the person the track I was put on labeled me as. This past academic year (which is also my fifth year in a doctoral program) I have repeated parts of the following mantra to change this perceived remedial student identity of which I have carried the weight of since junior high (1989):

My Identity Mantra
I am not a remedial student.
I’ve got this.
I can write and articulate just as well as privileged peers.
I am not that other(ed) person.
I have agency.
I can create spaces of agency.
I know when I am living in a figured world that oppresses me.
I know how to mediate and negotiate oppressive spaces into agentive ones.
I can identify and counter discursive practices that position me as weak, dumb, quiet or submissive.
I have tools that will help me construct the identity I need to achieve my academic goals.
I am not that person.
I am who I say I am.

Holland and Lave (2001) described how individuals or groups enact their sense of agency by acknowledging their histories. By learning about and coming to the realization of how the school system can track immigrant and minority students I have come to terms with the fact that our public school system is not perfect. One of the ways I have been able to create spaces of agency within oppressive setting like the classroom (in public schools and higher education) is through the use of cultural artifacts. Holland et.al (2008) described these artifacts as occurring in the moment whether they are “verbal, gestural, [or] material productions—emerging from the situation” they are taken up by individuals and used as tools to navigate and reposition oneself in order to open spaces of agency. Reflecting on my academic trajectory and how my ethnic/racial identity has, and will continue to change, I have to admit that I cannot pinpoint exactly how I was able to reach my current social location as a privileged, middle to upper class Latina pursuing a doctorate. Perhaps I am in many ways like the woman who climbed up the house (Holland et.al, 2008) and was able to perform a great deal of how I navigated the academic institution that positioned me as remedial for many, many years.

Quick update: I have 3 courses left before I can take my qualifying exams. Those 3 courses are only offerred in the spring semester, so right now I am working on courses related to sociolinguistics.

I plan on continuing to keep this blog active as I enjoy writing creatively about subjects related to living a bilingual life, although the time between posts will be undetermined as I seem to always be reading, writing, or being a mom to my nena.

Nos vemos pronto world wide web!

Cross-language Transfer

Translanguaging Pedagogy

Border-Crossing Pedagogy

Instructional Applied Linguistics

Hybrid Literacies

Multilingual Pedagogy

Multilitericies

Critical Additive/Bicultural Pedagogy

Flexible Bilingualism

Multilingual Pedagogic & Curriculum Research

Unfortunately, unless researchers from competing fields come together to develop these strategies we will continue to keep language minorities marginalized. In other words, the field of Second Language Acquisition, Bilingual Education, and (Socio)linguistics need to merge and get passed their paradigmatic tensions so that we can begin to create a pedagogy that benefits various models of bilingual education (e.g., dual language, transitional, ESL) where many of heritage language learners are placed to either learn another language or develop their native one.

When speaking, researching, studying language-in-use it is impossible to leave out the political, economic, and social factors that influence language because language is a social construct. Yes, from a Chomskyan point of view all languages are inherently equal when it comes to structure and how they are acquired, BUT what is different is how the perception of each language is constructed as a result of political, economical, even religious factors SO how do we study or speak about language-in-use without considering our subjective views as they are influenced by our social, economical, and political ties. Is it in how we frame our research question and/or in how we analyze the data?

In my opinion, there are so many things to consider, but the problem the parent who has learning another language as top priority also has the added challenge of being limited by the number of schools to choose from in any city they may live in. It is, unfortunately, a situation very common in the US.

I am writing this post to get an idea about the specific interests parents have when looking into foreign language schools in their community. I’d like to offer my unique perspective, not only as a parent who shares the same interest in finding the perfect foreign language school, but as a doctoral student who knows about some of the most optimal methodologies to teach/learn another language.

Please share some of your specific interests/concerns when looking into foreign language schools.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,900 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 32 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

What I am starting to realize is that other people are noticing, more and more, that we are not speaking the dominant language–English. Speaking in Spanish to my baby girl is bringing out the best in strangers. Let me give you a glimpse…

The other day we were grocery shopping at a pretty popular market. It’s the kind of market that serves gourmet, chef-prepared foods—such a delight. We were actually walking passed the chef-prepared food aisle–I like to admire the food and dream about buying it guilt-free. At any rate, this man noticed that I was speaking to Sabrina in Spanish—I think I was saying something like, “No, Sabrina. No toques eso. No es juguete mi amor.” She was reaching for an odd shaped box with some sort of specialty bread in it. This was happening while I was also admiring the food when an older man turns to me, holding chef-prepared green salsa enchiladas in his hand, he looks at me with a sincere smile, and says, “This looks like something you may like.” WOW. I was shocked. I wasn’t offended because he was so sweet about it, in a way. Now, I may be totally off here, in that he may have uttered the same sentence had I been speaking in English. The thing is—me speaking in Spanish and strangers making comments about it, either directly or indirectly, is starting to become a pattern. Some of the readers may even blame it on the fact that I live in Texas, a predominately conservative state. Here’s the thing. I have experienced instances like these when I lived in a “liberal” state, too. I grew up in Orange County, CA and experienced similar stereotyped comments growing up all the time–at least it seemed like it was all the time. Can you believe that I was I was once asked (when I lived in a predominately white city in SoCal) where it was that I tanned!

So, the second scenario where me speaking Spanish has brought out the best in someone happened about a month ago. This one left me feeling shocked, yet a little hurt as well. I was in another grocery store. This one is just a traditional market. My abuelita was with me and I was speaking in Spanish with her, my daughter, and subsequently with the lady behind me in line. I can’t remember what my abuelita and I were talking about, probably about the food we had just bought. She wanted to make arroz mexicana. I had purchased some wine and the cashier starts motioning to me as if she were driving and saying “drivers license, drivers license.” I realized quickly that she didn’t know I could speak English as well which is totally fine. It’s her second comment that really upset me and I probably should have called her out on it right away. She, then, said to me (as I was taking out my drivers license and continuing to talk with my abuelita), “English, please. English!” I was, again, shocked. Interestingly, right at that same moment the lady behind (who knew English and Spanish) said, “Que linda es su bebita. Cuantos meses tiene?” In fact, now that I think about it I think she asked me that to, in her own way, tell the cashier that we can speak whatever it is we want. We weren’t even speaking to the cashier! The cashier, once again, said, “English, please. ENGLISH.” I proceeded to swipe my credit card on the machine, looked her in the eye and said (because she still thought I only knew Spanish), “Actually I can speak in either one, English or Spanish. I can speak both.”

What are some experiences you have had speaking a minority language in a majority-language context?

As I mentioned earlier, there are various avenues one can take to becoming bilinugual. The difference, though, is to what extent will my daughter be able to speak Spanish in various contexts. This is where I like to think that though she is a crib bilingual, she will also become (which I did not have the opportunity to do) a school bilingual. She will have experienced both Spanish and English  day in, and day out. She will be considered a simultaneous bilingual. That being said, no matter which route you happen to be one, I think individuals that speak more than one language (despite the level of “proficiency”) also develop two language systems…that my friends a whole other realm of language acquisition!