CALCULO DEL SUPERAVIT

I grew up in Laredo, Texas, a border city of about 250,000 people. Due to the signing of NAFTA (1994) and the resurgence of the oil & gas industry, Laredo has seen exponential growth in the last 30 years. As a fifth generation Laredoan, my family has deep-seated roots in the city. Three of my four grandparents were born, raised, and educated in Laredo. My maternal grandparents told me stories of their families who lived and worked in the ranches surrounding the city as far back as the 1800s. As such, I feel very connected to the land. I still get thrilled as I barrel down I-35 and see the vegetation change from oak to mesquite or driving around town and see smoke and smell the aroma of carne asada that fills the air.

This is me (see Figure 4.1) I am about nine or ten years old in the photo. We are at my aunt’s ranch house, which at the time was still under construction. The frame can be seen in the background; the house was still under construction. I chose to include this photo as part of the study because it shows that even at such a young age, I wanted to be a teacher.

Figure 4.1. David at the Garcia’s Ranch playing school.

I left Laredo to study elementary education at Texas State University in San Marcos. Leaving Laredo gave me a greater perspective on the intricacies of society and how Latinxs8 _{are perceived by others. Everything I knew about where I grew up to me} seemed, well, normal. Speaking and hearing two languages. Eating Mexican food daily. Celebrating U.S. holidays with Mexican traditions. Being able to cross the border to shop at the mercado. The fact that those who controlled commerce, politics, and education were—and are to this day—Mexican American appeared to be quite ordinary.

While studying in San Marcos, I began to notice patterns that I did not exist Laredo. Firstly, all my professors were white. I did not see it as different through. Actually, it seemed quite normal. Then I began to notice that all the workers in restaurants who worked

in the back or people who were maintaining the campus were People of Color—Latinx or otherwise. I would be remiss if I said that I noticed these intricacies immediately. Rather, it took some time to begin to observe that not only were people of color relegated to different roles in society but that I myself was a person of color and was also perceived a certain way. The first time was in my second year at Texas State when I asked my classmate if I had an accent. And she told me I did. That was news to me. The second and most pivotal was when I was about to graduate and was in search of a job. At the yearly job fair held at Straham Coliseum, as I walked around with my resumes in hand, district after district kept asking me if I was bilingual. When I responded that indeed I was, their response to me was go get a bilingual education certificate then they would hire me. Not having been educated in a bilingual program, I had no idea what bilingual education entailed. I realized in that moment that I was seen as someone who could only work in a bilingual space and not as a generalist teacher. Had I said I was not bilingual, would it have made a difference? Would they have offered me a generalist position? I do not know. In that moment though, I decided to apply to the graduate program in bilingual education.

My graduate school in bilingual education altered my trajectory as an educator once again. My bilingual education professors made me contend with an essential aspect of my identity: what did it mean to be bilingual? Being taught about the potential for dual language education made me question why programs like these were not being offered in Laredo. The critical literature we read on language had me yearning to want to reconcile my own perceived Spanish language deficiencies and reconnect with my Mexican heritage. In other words, I had begun to reflect on my upbringing and felt like I had been robbed of

being fully immersed in bilingualism. This process revealed to me how Laredoans view themselves in relation to the Mexican other9_.

These notions of shame come to you at a young age and are everywhere. We are constantly barraged with statements like “Why don’t they learn English?” despite the fact that we know Spanish. Or, during their annual trips north, “here they [the Mexicans] come again. ¿Porqué no se quedan en su país?” Or, simply calling someone who just made a mistake or misspoke “Mexican.” Also, my cousins have taken to making fun of their children’s accent in Spanish all the while not actually wanting to teach their children to speak Spanish. It is as if the gringo accented Spanish is a marker of how Mexican they are not.

I chose to conduct the life stories with the teachers in Laredo. Their stories, like the city they inhabit, are unique. When I moved back to Laredo to teach after college, I noticed that most of the teachers and administrators (like 95%) were graduates of the local university. Yet, like me before my master’s program, where I had to contend with internalized deficit notions, many of the teachers would make comments like “these students need to practice English.” Or, “The parents do not do enough at home to teach them English.” These deficit ideologies were ubiquitous. However, they themselves live a bilingual and bicultural existence. They are involved in the community. They graduated from the same schools and attend the same churches. Yet it took me 22 years and a drive north on I -35 to fully understand my own identity. I also noticed that teachers were using translanguaging pedagogies in the classroom and spoke to parents in Spanish. I also noticed that the parents had immense faith in the teachers that they would do right by their children. I came to graduate school with those questions in mind. How do we reconcile the

contradictions we teach in the classroom while maintaining our cultural and linguistic identities as Mexican Americans?

To that end, I must also acknowledge the fact that I play the role of an insider/outside. Cervantes-Soon (2014) concedes that internal conflicts arise when conducting research with one’s community stating that we must ultimately recognize that we have been transformed by our experiences in academic settings and come to terms with “collision of multiple layers of power, privilege, and simultaneous subalternity in the U.S.” (p. 102). I concede that leaving Laredo altered my thinking in various ways and that privilege is ascribed to me as a doctoral student at UT Austin. Furthermore, I admit that as a male researcher, analyzing the lived experiences of Latinas is also problematic considering the history of Chicana feminism in the United States. As former colleagues and friends, the maestras agreed to participate. I do, though, take comfort in the fact that I have been able to maintain relationships with my participants. As such, while my conceptualizations of education and society have been influenced by my training, I feel as though my role is to listen and understand so that together we can come to an agreement of their understandings of language, literacy, and culture.