Promoting academic achievement through the mother tongue and a critically compassionate intellectual praxis

Abstract

This paper reports on my attempt to create an “additive schooling” situation (Valenzuela in Subtractive Schooling: US Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999) for Spanish-dominant students (SDS) at Bronx Community College (BCC). This additive schooling situation was envisioned as space where SDS could thrive using their mother tongue as a resource within the framework of a learning community that promoted a “critically compassionate intellectual praxis” (Cammarota and Romero in Why Bilingual Education? A Summary of Research Findings. San Francisco, CA: Bloomsbury West, 2006). I discuss how I invited SDS students’ mother tongue into the learning process by linking ESL courses that I taught with Spanish composition courses for native speakers, which I took as a language learner. My participation in the Spanish courses allowed the creation of an ethnographic partnership wherein knowledge was co-constructed with my students within a critical academic discourse that welcomed their language and identities. I discuss the impact this pedagogical initiative had on SDS success rates at BCC and suggest ways it can be implemented in other teaching contexts.