Preparing bilingual teachers on the US/Mexico border: including the voices of emergent bilinguals

Language policies in the U.S., including matters relating to bilingual education, are tangled up with political tensions and ideology. All too often, the dialogue among educators and policymakers about what constitutes best practices for people learning English - for whom we will use the term emergent bilinguals (EBs) (Garcia, Kleifgen and Falchi 2008) - fails to include the voices of those they serve. The Rio Grande Valley (RGV) of South Texas provides a uniquely valuable laboratory in which to study bilingual education because of its location, demographic makeup, and migration patterns. In this study, a pedagogical intervention was made with a cohort of teacher candidates studying at a university in South Texas; the participants had themselves experienced bilingual education, as children, in RGV public schools. The implications of this study can be extended to teacher preparation for other minority communities receiving majority language instruction. The analysis based on transcripts of focus group discussions and asynchronous online discussions among 26 teacher candidates, of Mexican origin or descent, applies LatCrit theory and illustrates the development of a critical awareness of the hegemonic forces impacting the linguistic development of EB students such as themselves.