ABSTRACT
This chapter narrates stories of two Latina bilingual women, Erika and Raquel, who are Americans of Mexican descent. It describes the feelings of alienation and marginalization they felt as novice bilingual education teachers during the first three years of teaching. The school districts where they had served as their student teachers were eager to hire Erika and Raquel as soon as they obtained teaching licenses upon graduation from Public Northwest University (PNU). Immediately after student teaching, both women were offered teaching positions as bilingual education teachers at predominantly Mexican and Mexican American schools. Erika and Raquel's discussion of their relationships with white colleagues and administrators seem to support existing studies that documented how alienated teachers of color are at the workplace. It seems that Erika and Raquel were entangled with the systemic and institutionalized racism of their schools, and that the unexamined white racial frame omnipresent throughout their schools systemically marginalized them.
