It's been a long time since I wrote my last blog post, and I think one is overdue. As I reflect on this semester as a part-time teacher and full-time PhD student, I realized that I need to be better about sharing the research I am engaging in and how it connects to practice. That is one of the major reasons I decided to leave my full-time heritage Spanish teaching position and I don’t want to lose sight of that. This semester I have been engaging in research on Critical Language Awareness (CLA) and I will share my experience with CLA and how I have been engaging with this research. 

My colleague Megan Marshall (also a PhD student at UIC) and I had the pleasure of presenting at La Cosecha in Albuquerque this year and our topic was Language Ideologies in the Classroom. Here’s a brief summary of our presentation: 

As a field we have transitioned from deficit-based approaches to teaching heritage Spanish (e.g. así no se dice, eso no es español) to asset-based approaches where the home language variety is perceived as valuable and often times used as leverage to acquire a standard variety of Spanish (e.g. otra manera más formal de decir “haiga” es “haya”). This transition is great, but I agree with scholars like Glenn Martinez, Jennifer Leeman and Claudia Holguin (and others that I can’t remember at the moment-I blame my kids for this) that we need to include CLA in our heritage Spanish curriculum. Some of the goals of CLA are to: (1)Empower students to see themselves not as deficient users of academic Spanish but as proficient language users with a broad (and growing!) linguistic repertoire and (2) CLA encourages the use of sociolinguistic tools to critically analyze the social values ascribed to different language varieties to empower students to make and defend their own linguistic choices. CLA promotes conversations with students for example about  the fact that languages are standardized for social and not linguistic reasons and that “standard” forms represent the language norms of socially powerful speakers and groups.

So how do I have these conversations with my students? In the next few weeks, I will share a few short activities that Megan and I created and/or found, that can help you include CLA in your heritage Spanish classroom. For this week, I will share how to talk about “haiga” and “haya” with our heritage Spanish students..

What most of us are doing now:   “Haiga” es una forma más informal de decir “haya”. Cuando escribas, usa “haya” y en tu casa o en tu habla diaria puedes usar “haiga”. 

What CLA proposes: Si estudiantes, “haiga” and “haya” have socially ascribed values that deem one more valuable than the other, but linguistically, they both have the same value. I encourage you to use the variation that you feel more comfortable using in your speech, but know that there will be people out there that will judge your use of “haiga”.That is why I am going to share some history behind the use of “haiga” and “haya” and then you will have the agency to make your own linguistic choices and also DEFEND them: 

Brief history behind the use of “haya” and “haiga”: 
During the Renaissance & Golden Age (16th & 17th centuries) “haiga” and “haya” were used in free variation→ the desire to have a national language in Spain pushed for the codifying of the Spanish language= print→ this created a pressure to avoid language variation and therefore only one, either “haya” or “haiga” could survive. In this case the people in power chose “haya”. 
Some additional history of how this variation began: 

1. Increment /g/ was added to the first-person singular present indicative and all present subjunctive forms   cayo/caya →caigo/caiga
   
2. This was overgeneralized and extended to other verbs with stem final /j/ haya→ haiga 
   
3. In the 17th century haiga becomes “non-standard” but is still highly used 

Y colorín colorado este cuento aún no se ha acabado pero tengo que ir a ser mami ahora. I hope this gives you some insight on what CLA is and I hope I can share more of my academic journey con todas/os ustedes!

                                                                                       References

Claudia Holguín Mendoza (2018) Critical Language Awareness (CLA) for Spanish Heritage Language Programs: Implementing a Complete Curriculum, International Multilingual Research Journal, 12:2, 65-79. 
Penny, Ralph. Variation and Change in Spanish, Cambridge University Press, 2000. 
Leeman, J. (2018). Critical language awareness in SHL: Challenging the linguistic subordination of US Latinxs. In K. Potowski (Ed.) Handbook of Spanish as a Minority/Heritage Language, (pp. 345-358). New York: Routledge.
Martínez, G. (2003). Classroom based dialect awareness in heritage language instruction: A critical applied linguistic approach. Heritage Language Journal, 7(1) 1-14. 

As I wrapped up my semester as a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), I couldn't help but to reflect on my school year and how this program is changing my teaching philosophy. As heritage Spanish teachers we aspire to have our students read in Spanish. Sometimes, we have to follow a mandated curriculum, other times, we have the freedom to chose which books our students can read. For the latter group of teachers, I would highly encourage you to start exploring and including Chicano literature in your curriculum. Give students options on what they can read and provide them with the opportunity to learn more about their own history and to read about issues that directly affect them and/or their community.  Personally, I didn't have the opportunity to learn my history in elementary or high school. I took some Latin American courses in undergrad, but our reading selection there was mostly focusing on Latin America and not the lives of Latinos in the U.S. 
Now, as a PhD student, I have intrinsic motivation to learn more about my history and become familiar with Chicano Literature. For the past 6 weeks, I have been reading Chicano literature and my goal is to read many more books this summer. Why?
1. I need to know more about my own history, 2. I want to use this knowledge to encourage other Latinos my age and/or my students to learn about their own history, and 3. I love to read :)
If you want to follow me on this journey, you can follow my blog and/or my Instragram hashtag #unbookalaweek. Here, I will share a brief summary of the book, important topics discussed and how they can be implemented in your heritage Spanish classroom. 

I grew up in el corazón of Little Village in Chicago and attended all public schools throughout my educational journey. I remember being in a "bilingual classroom" where I was encouraged to read and write in English and to forget about my Spanish. I remember learning about how Christopher Columbus "discovered" America and events like World War and World War II. Honestly, I always thought history was BORING. I never felt a connection to the material being covered in class. I always asked myself : how does this affect me or my culture ?
Today as I reflect on these memories, I am almost sure my experience is that of many students of color. In our schools, we never really learn about our cultura or about other cultures and their stuggle trying to assimilate or simply survive in the United States. In my experience, it wasn't until college that I started learning about mi cultura. But why wait until college for our students to learn about their roots? Why not include it in our language curriculum ? We already teach about culture, so why not draw historical parallels ?
As I was researching about the Bracero Program to help a friend out, I started asking my husband ( Puerto Rican background) about his grandparents and their experience migrating to the US in the 50s. This curiosity sparked because this was around the same time that the Bracero Program took place. He shared that many of his family members flew from Puerto Rico to the US via airplane on beach chairs with ropes being their only sestbealts. They left their island because they were promised a better life in Los Estados Unidos. He also shared how a lot of individuals in this Great Migration to New York City turned to drugs as a way of coping with the change of lifestyle. As he was sharing this, I began to understand that oppression was affecting many different races and cultural groups at the same time.
If we try to draw additional historical parallels, we can also include what was going on with the African American community at this time which was the Civil Rights Movement. When we think about the bigger picture and analyze the parallels, we can see how all of these cultural groups were oppressed around the same time. The Braceros were getting horrible treatment, low pay ( if they got payed) and suffered racism. Puerto Rican's were promised a better life and instead faced racism, inequality and because of failure to have an identity a future generation of stars were dimmed. African Americans were also suffering racism, exclusion and even denied a proper education. All of these groups were trying (and are still trying) to live the famous American Dream. The point I am trying to make is that as language educators, we need to ask ourselves how the content we are teaching is relevant to our students. We need to draw parallels of what was going on with other cultures during the same time period. We need to make these connections in order for our students to be engaged and understand that oppression in this country isn't new and it has affected all of us. If you really want your students to be engaged, you need to draw a connection and explain for the Bracero program was occurring when African Americans were still fighting for their Civil Rights.
Below are some resources that you can utilize in your classroom as a reference point if you are interested in drawing connections in your classroom. Some of them are in English but I think they would lead to a great discussion in Spanish. I am aware that other struggles occurred during the same time period in other cultures not mentioned in this post. I tried to focus on the cultures of students in my classroom andenvironment that I grew up in. So try to remember next time you teach about the Bracero Program to also include the struggles of other minorities during the same time period. In my case I would focus on The Great Migration to New York City and the Civil Rights Movement. Remember that students learn more when the content includes them and affects them 😀

Please feel free to comment and/or email me with other topics and/or resources to add to this post.

The Bracero Program
​Cobran su sueldo 60 años después news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/mundo_usa/newsid_7675000/7675078.stm
La desconocida historia de los braceros mexicanos que murieron por esperar un empleo en Estados Unidos www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-37528106
A song about the reality of being a Bracero by Phil Ochs www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrmNDZNmxIk
A racist video promoting the Bracero Program: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRddG9zcMLg
An archive with resources about the Bracero Program: braceroarchive.org/
Los braceros, la pesadilla del sueño americano :culturacolectiva.com/los-braceros-la-pesadilla-del-sueno-americano/The Great Migration from Puerto Rico to NY
LA EMIGRACIÓN PUERTORRIQUEÑA A LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS
www.proyectosalonhogar.com/Enciclopedia_Ilustrada/Emigraci%C3%B3n_puertorrique%C3%B1a.htm
Pictures of the journey from Puerto Rico to NY freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~prraices/photo_memories.htm
Trailer de la película "La guagua aérea" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=72B-_VGctWM

La vida en Nueva York en los 50 y 60 https://www.ifla.org/past-wlic/2011/107-casillas-es.pdf

The Civil Rights Movement
The Negro Travelers Green Book http://www.teachingushistory.org/ttrove/documents/GreenBook.pdf
Articulo sobre la lucha por los derechos civiles http://www.unitedexplanations.org/2016/01/13/pasado-y-presente-cincuenta-anos-del-movimiento-por-los-derechos-civiles-de-los-afroamericanos-en-estados-unidos/

Discusión del discurso por MLK :Tengo un sueño https://www.google.com/amp/www.vix.com/es/btg/inspiracion/67491/tengo-un-sueno-el-poderoso-discurso-de-martin-luther-king-de-1963-que-seguimos-recordando-hasta-hoy%3Famp

Video : La lucha por los derechos civiles de la comunidad afroamericana https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pf68OIeZgig


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