My professors at the Graduate Center tell me that my work as a scholar and a new professor — I work as an adjunct at two colleges in the CUNY system — is a process of socialization, one which involves me becoming a professor as I learn, experience, and grow by doing. I love this idea.…
Relying on “experts” and the problem of expertise
I teach a class about emergent bilinguals and bilingual education in the United States. This week, we’re talking about what constitutes a “successful” program, a highly polemical topic stemming from Civil Rights Era-challenges to the status quo, though the debate about the official language of America and what language to school our children in has origins…
Immersion and the bilingual “every-child-USA” narrative
Students who are first-language speakers of a language other than English are, in America, categorized as English Language Learners, or ELLs, and our country’s history of working with these learners has been complicated and politically fraught. Oftentimes, references to federal decisions such the landmark Supreme Court case Lau v. Nichols in 1974 or state-level legislation such as…
