“Siento que siempre tengo que regresar al inglés”: Embracing a translanguaging stance in a Hispanic-serving institution

Abstract

This chapter centers on our reflections and pedagogical moves as two bilingual educators at a Hispanic-Serving Institution on the borderland region of South Texas, a predominantly bilingual and bicultural community. Specifically, the chapter documents how we embrace a translanguaging pedagogical stance. Translanguaging practices are identity markers and represent the complex ways bilinguals use their linguistic repertoire to communicate across contexts and to negotiate social identities (García & Li Wei, 2014; Martinez-Roldán, 2015). Drawing on García, Johnson, and Seltzer’s (2017) conceptualization of a translanguaging “corriente,” we describe our translanguaging stance and moves as we, respectively, design and teach two undergraduate courses: an upper-level undergraduate Foundations of Bilingual Education course and an undergraduate Rhetoric and Composition I course. We identify tensions, as well as commonalities and differences in our experience enacting translanguaging pedagogies and assignments in two different disciplinary areas. We also present two students’ reflections and assignments to illustrate the outcomes of our translanguaging pedagogies.