ABSTRACT
This hypothetical case study is based in a Spanish/English dual-language bilingual program located in a primarily Black and Latinx Midwestern elementary school context. In this chapter, Jewell, a 9-year-old Black girl, recounts the memories and radical dreams of instances in which her bilingual education teachers positioned her language and literacy practices as useful tools in the classroom. Using the memories, dreams, and experiences of Jewell, this case study details the possibilities of various pedagogical practices and strategies that her teachers used to center the literacies and voices of Black language speakers as resources in the classroom. Reminiscing with her teachers, Jewell shows specific snapshots at various grade levels when she experienced ‘Black liberation’ in the bilingual classroom. At the end of this chapter, Jewell and her fifth-grade teacher collaboratively share a sample thematic unit that features Black joy and Black language in a range of multimodal examples and practices through oral storytelling, writing, art, and other literacy activities that encourage Black freedom dreaming beyond the supposed linguistic boundaries of bilingual contexts.
