Critical bilingual leadership: liderazgo for emergent bilingual Latin@ students

The growing “Latinization” of the Unites States (U.S.) is changing the demographics of students served in schools (Irizarry, 2011). Amidst these changes of the cultural, racial, and linguistic identities of students in U.S. schools standardized approaches to school policies, structures, and practices across the country tend to privilege the experiences and opportunities of monolingual White students while marginalizing the experiences of emergent bilingual students and students of color. This case study dissertation explores Critical Bilingual Leadership (i.e. Liderazgo) as a framework to examine how the leadership of a principal and broader school community in a PK-8 public school in the Midwest foster culturally and linguistically responsive bilingual schooling for EBLS. In this school, liderazgo was operationalized across the following themes: dual language programming as the foundation for equity-oriented schooling; the experiential knowledge of the school community was viewed as a strength; relationships were fostered through cariño y confianza, and instructional bilingual leadership was shared and distributed in unique ways. Students, families, and staff members viewed dual language programming as the lens in which they challenged traditional structures of subtractive schooling (Valenzuela, 1999). Additionally, this school community valued and incorporated the linguistic and cultural identities of families and communities as strengths through hiring practices, family engagement initiatives, and through innovative opportunities to be part of the leadership structures. Additionally, relationships were fostered across the entire community through cariño y confianza, which led to open, honest, and caring relationships across all members of the community. In particular, the relationships were strengthened through the formal and informal opportunities to lead the school forward in a variety of ways, most notably through instructional bilingual leadership opportunities. While this school community was excelling in their approach to provide culturally and linguistically responsive education for EBLS, they were simultaneously working against themselves in attempting to adhere to the monolingual and standardized accountability measures of the local, state, and federal policy context. Even though the school is succeeding in a variety of measures, they are still being held accountable to the rigid measures of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), Race to the Top, and other district policies that do not reflect the linguistic and cultural strengths and needs of their community. Here, I argue that while liderazgo can foster the culturally and linguistically responsive school communities that our students and families deserve, critical bilingual leaders, schools, and the systems of educational policy at the district, state, and federal level must also seek new ways to hold schools accountable by redefining the measures for school success with EBLS