Resistance Testimonios for Reclaiming Teaching Instruction and Assessment Practices: Holistic Narratives of Bilingual Latinx Youths’ Knowledge Through Long-Term Relationships

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study, informed by Chicana Feminist frameworks, explores bilingual Latinx students’ resistance testimonios pertaining to instruction and assessment. These testimonios transpired through pláticas [familiar gatherings] between adolescent youth and the author, also their former elementary school teacher. This study is contextualized within historical and current ways white supremacy impacts education for bilingual Latinx students. Reviews of the literature show how standardized testing does not always capture a full narrative of bilingual Latinx students’ knowledge. While educators cannot dismantle all the limited ways of assessing students at once, this article adds to the scholarship on how teachers can build long-term relationships to mend these sources of harms. The past relationship, between the students and the author, helped establish plática spaces, where they collectively reflected on the ways instructional and assessment practices hurt or dismissed their communities. In the pláticas, students enriched their sociopolitical consciousness by pushing and pulling each other to share their lives. Assembling their collective testimonios reveals alternatives to understanding what bilingual Latinx students know. Remembering with, listening to, and assembling students’ testimonios collectively over time offers how educators might build longer lasting and broader relationships, for a broader, more expansive holistic understanding of Latinx students’ experiences in school. Educators must collaborate together, as there is a critical opportunity for reclaiming instructiom and assessment practices.