Spanish English Literacy: Critical Pedagogy, Positive Coping and Transformative Self-Identity

This chapter reports on a study that focuses on a special agent of change: the classroom teacher and their bilingual skills in preparation for the challenge of teaching in Spanish and English. The new generation of practicing bilingual educators and those presently preparing to teach, have lived in a context that, although restricted by language policies for schooling, have developed coping mechanisms and maintain skills in both languages, Spanish as a native language and English as the language of schooling. A goal for this study is to support a change for a more humanistic approach for the education of linguistic minority students. The bilingual programs that have existed in schools do not enhance bilingualism but rather the goal is to facilitate the acquisition of English thus creating subtractive bilinguals’ skills. A more just and enriching approach to schooling is to provide a meaningful education situated in a theory of cultural production and viewed as an integral part of the way in which people produce, transform, and reproduce meaning. This kind of education needs to be constructed to see bilingualism as a medium that constitutes and affirms the historical and existential moments of lived culture