Taking Space Through Language: Multilingual People of Color’s Perspective Informing Translingual Practices in a Monolingual Education System

Abstract

This paper hopes to add to the great and always growing work put forth by the many contributors to Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (Alim & Paris, 2017), critical translingual approach (Seltzer, 2019), and refusal (Simpson, 2016). From these ideas, I began to speculate about the ability of translingual teaching practices to be an act of refusal against the continued coloniality in the U.S. public education system and as a step toward enacting CSP in the classroom. In order to genuinely enact refusal and CSP in the classroom, one has to learn and understand the practices of the populations for whom these philosophies seek to improve schools. To better understand translanguaging and its practices outside of the White gaze, I interviewed multilingual people of color in the Seattle area. Their experiences revealed missing pieces they felt not only in their education but also in their identities. By centering the perspectives of multilingual people of color, this paper seeks to provide insights for educators who serve multilingual students and communities. It is through understanding the practices of multilingual people of color that educators can transform schools into democratic spaces that reflect the communities they serve.