Teaching Emergent Bilingual Students with Dis/Abilities: Humanizing Pedagogies to Engage Learners and Eliminate Labels

Grounded in authentic teaching and learning experiences, this book shows elementary school educators how to create spaces that more respectfully and humanely address the needs of emergent bilinguals with disabilities. While the fields of bilingual education and disability studies have been traditionally kept separate, Martínez-Álvarez argues that many of the constructs researchers and educators employ in their respective fields can be combined to improve instruction. This book establishes a dialogue among important constructs such as issues of assimilation and ableism, and the expansion of identity, agency, and humanistic pedagogies. It then looks at how these constructs can be used to better understand children who have been assigned inflexible labels that do not cohesively represent their bilingual/bicultural identities and their varied ways of learning. The text explores the limitations of categorizing children into "boxes," particularly those of minoritized backgrounds, and focuses on actual practices that will engage and empower learners.

Book Features:

• Combines the fields of bilingual education and disability studies so that bilingual students with disabilities can be understood and taught from a strengths-based perspective.
• Includes activity invitations to help teachers create high-quality learning spaces.
• Provides sample work from diverse elementary school-aged children, as well as children's responses to the learning activity.
• Proposes curriculum to expand what identity and agency look like in schools embracing more humanistic pedagogies.

Patricia Martínez-Álvarez is an associate professor and director of the Bilingual/Bicultural Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University.