TLESSS Filling the Ethnic Studies Gap in Bilingual Teacher Education in the Midwest

Cultivating cultural competence among teachers in dual language bilingual education who work with culturally and linguistically diverse students is especially crucial as their training usually emphasizes language-focused/language-content integration teaching strategies. Training programs rarely center teacher preparation to affirm students’ identities, develop students’ sense of belonging in their communities, and enhance their socio-historical knowledge in times of U.S. racism and xenophobia. This article examines the participation of one Latina bilingual teacher in a series of capacitaciones in ethnic studies as part of the Translingual Latinx Ethnic Studies Summer School project, a culturally and linguistically responsive summer program for Latinx children, specifically her sense-making of the gaps in her teacher training, her personal and professional (re)discoveries, and her new pedagogical understandings.