Testimonios
En Comunidad is an absolute gift to teacher education! España and Herrera clearly have decades of commitment and experience in supporting bi/multilingual students, culturally relevant teaching and racial equity in K-12 schools, and it comes through in every page of this book. The book's resources are extraordinary and up-to-date, and the concrete lesson plan ideas have been inspiring to the pre-service teachers at UC Berkeley! This book is certain to help educators rethink their roles in teaching all bi/multilingual students, especially Latinx children.”
– Cati V. de los Ríos, Assistant Professor of Literacy, Reading and Bi/Multilingual Education, UC Berkeley
Incredible. Imperative. Devoured. To validate, celebrate and humanize our bilingual students and purposefully craft counter-narratives to the 'master' culture that often serves to diminish -- to thoughtfully approach literacy and humanities education with Latinx history at the heart -- THIS is what it's about. Reading it I thought how sad that my own education didn't embrace my ancestry or translangualism; how suddenly SEEN I felt as a daughter of immigrants. And how desperately I want this experience for all students. Deeply personal and essential, it's a text I'll revisit time and time again for coaching teachers and planning lessons. Highly recommend for all educators, particularly those who teach Latinx populations.
Nawal Q Casiano
Founder of NQC Literacy
Written in a highly vivid, personal, frequently poignant, engaging approach, this masterful text successfully bridges the systemic, harmful divide between the way that bilingual children communicate and the way that teachers teach. Premised on a borderlands perspective and pedagogy, the bilingual education teacher’s dual task of dismantling monolingual supremacy and restoring children’s full humanity under a system of oppression is truly within reach. Kudos to authors Carla España and Luz Yadira Herrera for this inspired text!
Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
Professor in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin
En Comunidad is a profoundly beautiful text--a one-stop shop for materials, frameworks, and lessons that honors the language and cultural practices of bi/ multilingual Latinx children for learning. It is holistic and versatile, making it an ideal book for teacher educators, practitioners, and anyone seeking to center their students in all aspects of the learning experience.
Anel Vanessa Rivera de Suriel
Teaching Assistant and Doctoral Student, Rutgers Graduate School of Education
We loved visiting the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Spanish Authorization for Bilingual Education Program at the start of 2021! Prof. Briana Ronan’s class showed us another use for Google Jamboard with these thoughtful thank you notes. Estamos muy agradecidas.
In Summer 2020, En Comunidad Collective led a workshop for the Summer Fellows participating in the San Joaquin Valley Writing Project's Invitational Summer Institute, building on the ideas presented in En Comunidad. During the session, they guided us in thinking through guiding principles to support our multilingual students in their literacy journeys. ECC then took us through creating our own identity maps and writing our stories, both to help us reflect on our own experiences and to think about how our experiences shape our interactions with our students. The ideas presented by ECC were grounded in research and had practical applications for use in our own classrooms.
Juliet Michelsen Wahleithner, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Literacy
Director, San Joaquin Valley Writing Project
En Comunidad is the most relevant PD book to my practice as a high school teacher of Spanish for Heritage Speakers. The focus on identity and culture, the paired lessons and the incredible resource lists make it easy to adapt and incorporate into my work with high school students. The authors do a beautiful job of modeling both the teaching techniques they use and the use of translanguaging, by teacher and student alike. This is a must-read for teachers of bilingual Latinx youth!
Jen Lopez
10th Grade Heritage Spanish &
AP Spanish Literature
Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, MN
If you work with Latinx students, you work with me. I am a first generation, Latinx mix and I still look for myself in books and other media today. When you read En Comunidad and live the learning, you are sending a message to me and every other student you teach that Latinx stories matter. España and Herrera welcome you with open arms and show you how to teach in a way that honors our culture, our language, our existence. This is liberating work.
Jen Vincent
Language Arts and Social Studies Teacher
Mundelein Elementary District #75, Illinois
Founder, Story Exploratory
“The changes that En Comunidad has brought into my views as a Latinx Educator who works with Emergent Bilinguals, are massive and continue to shift and change me. The journey of leading a book study for En Comunidad through ZOOM and Google Classroom, profoundly made me look into myself when it comes to my culture, my ethnicity, the life I have lived and live as a Person of Color in the Central Valley.”
— Jesus Gonzalez Renteria, English Teacher, English Intervention P.L.C. Lead S.J.V.W.P. Teacher Leader & Associate, Director for Work With Emergent Bilingual Students, Hanford West High School
