PhD Student, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Research
Current projects
Project RESPECT
Serving as recruitment coordinator and research assistant for WIDA's most recent project funded by a National Professional Development Grant. The program, Project RESPECT seeks to increase capacity of rural K–8 teachers to provide effective and equitable literacy instruction for multilingual learners, with the goal of improving student engagement and language and literacy development in rural districts in Wisconsin.
Current interests
In designing my own curriculum as a high school teacher, I was confronted with the choice of what variety of Spanish to teach my students. According to the standards set by ACTFL, teachers should aim for a student to "participate fully and effectively in conversations on a variety of topics in formal and informal settings from both concrete and abstract perspectives" in a way that does not "distract the native interlocutor or interfere with communication" (ACTFL, 2012). This framing positions native, educated speakers as the standard speech model which ignores multilingual and translanguaging practices common among Spanish language users within the United States, as well as assumes that students do not enter the classroom already multilingual.
Understanding the long history of discrimination faced by multilingual speakers who use "non-standard" varieties of both English and Spanish in the United States, my research explores how the Spanish "world" language classroom is a site where ideologies of language standards are formed, negotiated, and challenged. In particular, I am interested in the ideologies behind the decisions to both use and teach different Spanish varieties, what aspects of different varieties are salient to the learners, and ultimately how these choices impact the formation (or not) of critical multilingual awareness.