ABSTRACT

Despite the growing diversity of Latin@ indigenous immigrants in the US, the Latin@ population is o¯en considered to be homogeneous. Perplexingly, schools and educational programs aimed at educating Bilingual Learners (BLs) o¯en do not consider the language diversity and versatility of its students, as this vignette illustrates:

’e teacher called us because we were still speaking to our children in Spanish and in our [indigenous] language and they were not doing well [in school]. “She noted that all the Mexican kids were not doing well but our children seem to be doing worse because we speak to our kids in our [indigenous] language. She told me I had to stop! ’at we needed to stop teaching our kids that [our indigenous language] if we wanted them to pass. ’e teacher told me that if we did not stop, we were going to be the reason they failed. ’at she is really trying but we are not helping. She asked; why can’t you just speak to them in Spanish? I think the teacher is wrong and does not know that we can’t stop. It is our [‹rst] language, and we also use Spanish [daily], and now, also English…and in other words we learn from other indigenous people. Our kids will know all the languages! All of them we use!” “Sí todas las maneras de hablar las necesitan.”