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Retos and Oportunidades for a Linguistically Sustaining Bilingual (and Non-Bilingual) Teacher Education
I began to realize that I had absorbed the strengths of two cultures and lifestyles. Was that good or bad? Pocho
Good, que no. I have an innovative way of expressing myself that relates to both sides of the border. Pocho
-Los Alacranes Mojados, Pocho
Rios de tinta have been and will be written about translanguaging since it poses a paradigmatic challenge to business as usual in language education. Allow me to start with an anecdote in the context of a bilingual advocacy event in San Diego, California. As part of a group of seasoned and committed bilingual educators, I attended a presentation that problematized the cultural relevance of instruction for U..S-based populations modeled after the educational structures and pedagogies in nations where Spanish is the hegemonic language (i.e., Spain, Central America). In this event, we had been inspired by Ramon "Chunky" Sanchez and his Alacranes Mojados, his activism, and his song "Pocho," which brought echoes of Anzaldua's "lenguas de fuego," "deslenguadas," and "ni de aqui ni de alia." Over lunch, a dear colleague leaned to me and said: "Clearly, we cannot be educating our Spanish ELs as if we were in Mexico, because we are here, and we cannot be teaching as if we were elsewhere." As this veteran educator honored the Chicano experience's heritage, I felt the need to add: "Well, this is related to what some of us are trying to convey when it comes to language use and sustaining the language practices of our communities here." Suddenly, this colleague reacted: "Ah no, but when we are teaching language, I want them to be speaking the language of the Real Academia or of the UNAM." A translanguaging controversy had just been served as the main course in this almuerzo.
The translanguaging debate transcends the outward-facing concerns to defend bilingual education against English nativism, which have pervaded the bilingual education literature in the last thirty years. Translanguaging demands that bilingual language educators engage in an inward-facing analysis into often deeply-seeded views of their world: What is bilingualism? What is bilingual education? Who is it for? Apropos translanguaging, Ofelia Garcia (2019) stated:
The question then is: Como is bilingualism best developed...