COE Connections Episode 20: Sera J. Hernández

Sera J. Hernández: 

I'm very concerned with the educational debt using the work of previous scholars to think about this bilingual teacher gap, or a bilingual teacher shortage, and this has been manufactured because we haven't invested in communities that have a home language other than English. We have, by design, created a shortage of bilingual teachers.

(Music plays)

Rachel Haine-Schlagel: 

Welcome to COE Connections, the SDSU College of Education Research and Scholarship podcast series. I'm your host, Rachel Haines-Schlegel. I'm the Associate Dean for Research for the College of Education, and a Professor of Child and Family Development at San Diego State University, a proud Hispanic-serving institution on the land of the Kumeyaay.

Today, I'm joined by Dr. Sera Hernández, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Dual Language and English Learner Education at SDSU. Sera prepares bilingual teachers and teaches courses on language policy, multilingual education, biliteracy, and critical theories in educational research. She earned her PhD in education from the University of California, Berkeley, and has worked in public K-12 schools and universities for over 25 years. 

With an interdisciplinary academic background, Sera's research bridges the fields of educational linguistics and the anthropology of education to examine the sociocultural, linguistic, and political contexts surrounding family and community engagement in schools, educational language policies, bilingual teacher preparation and bilingualism and biliteracy practices, particularly in border regions around the world.

In her scholarship, Sera asks critical questions such as, how can schools better serve diverse students and families? How can we shift educational engagement policies and practices to be more family and community centered? How can we avoid status quo power dynamics between schools and linguistically and culturally diverse homes and communities? Which children get to be bilingual in U.S. schools? And how can we increase the pathways for bilingual teachers?

More importantly, Sera is a proud parent of two children who have attended San Diego public dual language schools. Welcome, Sera, and thank you so much for coming here and taking the time to talk with me today.

Sera J. Hernández:

Thank you for having me, Rachel.

Rachel Haine-Schlagel:

So, well, let's get started. My first question is, why do you study what you do?

Sera J. Hernández:

There are many reasons why I study what I do, and the first, most important reason is that when I was an elementary school teacher in the larger Los Angeles area, I witnessed firsthand some of the inequities that low-income children of color and families faced, especially from immigrant backgrounds. And so one of those inequities that really stood out to me was the ways in which students and families were losing home languages at a rapid pace. So I'd just turned 22 years old, first year teaching, very naive, very, you know, just curious about how to be a so-called good teacher, right? 

And I went in with a bilingual credential, mind you, into a school that was an English-only school, because this was the year after Proposition 227 passed, which dismantled the vast majority of bilingual education programs at the time across the state. So I'm in a school, we're serving 75% students from immigrant backgrounds, first and second generation, mostly from Mexico and Central America. And students were being told, not only just to speak English, but their families were being told by some of my well-intentioned colleagues not to speak their home language at home. They would say things like, oh, you need to make sure that you read and, and listen to television and the radio in English, so that your kids can learn English.

What I didn't realize at the time was that these ideologies around language learning were playing a big role in how teachers, you know, they believed they were helping students from immigrant backgrounds by pushing English on them. And what we know in the research, and of course, then I went to get a PhD later on this very topic, we know that individuals will learn additional languages when their home language, or their first language, if you will, is strong, right? So the stronger you are in your home language, the easier it is to transfer your knowledge about language, the content you know, to new languages. So we're actually providing a disservice to students and families when we tell them, speak in the language that you may not even know, right? So when we don't tell families to speak in the language that they know best.

We're basically also helping them cut down communication between between generations, because if you think that you are harming your children by speaking Spanish, or speaking Tagalog, or speaking Arabic at home, then you are ultimately not going to pass on culture and your ways of being in the world. And I know it's gotten better, but we're still grappling with these very issues now. 

The personal connection to this and why I do the work I do is that we lost French and Spanish in my family. And so I've since reclaimed Spanish. I'm still a Spanish learner. I do have a bilingual credential in Spanish and English from the state of California, but I see it as a lifelong journey to keep reclaiming my Spanish, and ultimately the French as well.

When my dad was in school in the LA area, he grew up bilingually. But he was even hit by some of his teachers if he spoke in Spanish. And there wasn't really this pride in being bilingual while he was growing up. Similarly, on my mom's side, my French-Canadian grandmother was bilingual. She was told to not speak French in the home, or the kids would never learn English. And we know this is not true. There's decades and decades of research. It has made its way out to the public, but there's still a lot of erroneous assumptions around language learning. 

And so when I was an elementary school teacher in LA, I recognized that even though I had a bilingual credential, or even though I was in an English-only program model, I had the tools and the best educational practices to support bilingual learners in this context, which means that I understood how to use the home language as a resource, whether I spoke the language or not, because most of my students spoke Spanish at home. But some of them spoke other languages. But I understood how languages transfer. I understood how to help them build on what they know about the subsystems of language to make connections to the new language, which was English, in this particular setting. And so the… having the bilingual credential made me a more effective teacher, even though I wasn't able to teach in a dual language school at the time.

Years later, I moved to the Bay Area for my PhD program, and I taught in a couple local districts, and one of them had a heritage maintenance model, which is also a bilingual education program model, and similar to dual language education, which is the strongest model out there if you really want students and children to be bilingual and biliterate. It also was an asset-based bilingual education program that helped students maintain their home language, and so I did get to teach bilingually for a short period in the Bay Area.

This is critical because, it also frames why I study the work that I do, these experiences, right, both personal and professional. So, when I was teaching in the late 90s and early 2000s, one of the things, in addition to Proposition 227 passing, was folks in the field, in the educational field, didn't have a clear understanding of what was meant by bilingual education.

And so the attacks on bilingual education in the late 90s, you know, it intersected with xenophobia and racism and classism, right? And so, who gets to be bilingual in this country is a big question I'll always ask, right? Because we have lots of programs out there that are considered enrichment for privileged children, like my own, right, who get access to ... oftentimes get more access to being bilingual than our immigrant children to maintain home languages. So I was… I was interested in learning more about what do we mean by bilingual ed.

Not all bilingual education program models are the same. They all don't have the goal of biliteracy or bilingualism and biliteracy, so the ability to read, write, speak in two or more languages. And in some dual language schools in the region here, for example, students are learning three languages. Literacy in two of them, and at least oracy in an additional one. So I share that because we've learned a lot since Prop 227 passed. We have learned that bilingual education programs, the umbrella is large, but under there the goals of the programs and the ways in which they approach the pedagogy and the program structures is key.

I share that because in the late 90s, the vast majority of the programs were transitional bilingual education program models, and the goal then was to use the home language to teach literacy and then transition students to English only. So it was using the home language as a resource, which is critical. But the goal wasn't for them to stay bilingual and biliterate. The goal was to get them to English. And so… when that was happening, there's a lot of ideological debates around bilingual ed, right? And so researchers were trying to find out, like, well, what is the empirical evidence? What do we know about programs that work? And how do we disentangle that from these larger political narratives in the nation, right? Which is, like I mentioned earlier, tied to race and class and immigration issues.

My research curiosity really stemmed from heritage language loss, and how could we help families maintain their home languages while learning English in public schools here in the United States. That's still at the heart of it, but it looks different now. How I enter the conversations looks a little different, because yes, it's… but it's more than just about maintenance. I want to see children and families from immigrant backgrounds thrive in the U.S.

Rachel Haine-Schlagel:

Well, there's so much I want to respond to around that. I don't know where to begin. I think one of the things I'll say that just stuck out for me, Sera, about everything you just said… there's so many things, but I think the idea of who gets to be bilingual in our country is such an important question that we all should be asking, and this idea of higher income, English speaking, people receiving that instruction as enrichment versus Lower resource families who are typically, people of color. The resources are allocated to getting them to not be bilingual. Lots of really important issues for all of us to be thinking about. 

Sera J. Hernández:

The phenomenon that you're speaking of, right, where more privileged folks get access to high-quality dual language programs, including my own children, is being called the gentrification of dual language education. And I just want to unpack that briefly so that our listeners know that in dual language education, there is a two-way model and a one-way model, and a two-way is where you bring learners together that have a different home language. So, for example, my children were considered the Spanish learners in a dual language setting, but they were alongside English learners who had Spanish as their home language.

My children, they heard me sing in Spanish and read to them in Spanish, but their father only speaks English, and they really only heard English, so they didn't have strong Spanish skills going into their kindergarten classrooms, so they were the Spanish learners. And I share that because I wanted my children to be in a two-way model, so that they could be with children who didn't have the privileges that they had, coming to, like, so class status, their mom's a professor, all of these ways in which they were going to have some privilege in these… in these spaces.

And there are one-way models, which are also very strong models, but the student population is similar in terms of… obviously, there's lots of diversity in student populations, even if they speak the same home language, but it would be something like English-speaking children learning two languages in school, or Spanish-speaking children learning two languages in school. We also know that it's complicated to try to say, like, Spanish dominant or English dominant, because many of our students grow up already exposed to two languages. 

One of our colleagues Kathy Escamilla in Colorado talks about bilingual being the first language, so that's also a little messy when we try to talk about language groups, but that two-way model has been shown to be very powerful because you're learning language and culture simultaneously. And when we learn another language, we learn another way of seeing the world, and so that's the benefit of any bilingual program, but when you get to do it with students that come from different backgrounds as you, it's even more impactful. I wanted my students to be in school, or I'm sorry, I wanted my children to be in schools. But I also wanted to really acknowledge our privilege. So I was very careful when I interacted with the schools. I was very careful in putting them on wait lists, because I didn't want to use my privilege to bump somebody from those programs. But those two-way models, you'd ideally have 50% of each language group together, and so they're not just learning the language from their teacher, but they're learning it from their peers. 

So I wanted to just say that, like. It's complicated or complex because gentrification of dual language phenomenon is really helpful in getting us to think about who gets access to be bilingual. And also, these programs are really been really effective when we can bring different communities together. So it's not to say we don't want that as a field, we just want to be clear that we have to acknowledge that race, class, immigration, ability, all of these things play a role in impacting the type and quality of education that immigrant learners get. And this is what these programs, or immigrant children that are designated English learners in our schools, these are the types of programs where they thrive, so we have to make sure they have access to these types of program models. 

Rachel Haine-Schlagel:

I want to ask you now to describe an example of the impact that your research has had on the community, and you can define community however you would like. 

Sera J. Hernández:

So, my research on racial linguistics in dual language education, which I was talking a bit about in my previous responses, has had an impact in the field in a few ways, and I'll speak to them. So, racial linguistics is the intersection of race and language, right? So it's, it's, understanding these social identities and the ways in which they, for example, they can perpetuate inequities in schools. And so how students are seen and heard in schools is part of the work I do, and so I'll give you an example of some research. 

My dissertation research actually addressed racial linguistics, and then in 2017, I have a piece in the Catissol Journal where I'm looking at how middle school families are sharing their experiences with… with having children that are labeled English learners. So these are immigrant parents sharing their experiences with their children having that label. Which, that label comes if, once they, fill out a home language survey that indicates that they speak a language other than English in the home, then they, they are, they take an exam, and then with that label, the goal is for them to receive supports in school, like in English language development courses, being in classrooms where they're learning content while they're learning the language simultaneously. 

But research has shown that, unfortunately, that label can also track students and can impede their ability to, you know, have college prep courses, for example, or access to post-secondary education options if they're not re-designated out of that label. And so I bring that up because the schools in my study were sharing how the ways in which this dual language program in a middle school was really an anti-racist program, because it was bringing language learners from, you know, immigrant Latine families together with mostly white middle-class families, and so it was anti-racist. 

But what I found in my research was actually the families, they weren't saying this explicitly, they were sharing the practices with me. And this was over a two-year period. They were sharing how their children were being tested, right? So they take something that used to be called the California English Language Development Test, now is the… it's the ELPAC, the English Learner Performance Assessment in California. But this is a high-stakes test that the Spanish learners in the program weren't having to take in Spanish, right? It was just for the English learners, and so there were these nuances in kind of the, you know, this ideology of, oh, we're all language learners in this space, was actually not playing out in the policies and practices of the school. And so, even though well-intentioned educational leaders were trying to make this program equitable, there were still language and educational policies that were impeding that. 

So I brought up that piece because it's been… it's on… it's on syllabi across well, in different states across the U.S, because folks have contacted me to say, we've read your piece, or this is really informing the ways in which we think about dual language education and equity. And then I take the work on racial linguistics later, and I'm in… I have a chapter in a handbook called Bilingualism for All, and it's looking at racial linguistics and dual language education. I… I share parent perspectives on how they're understanding their understanding of their children in dual language programs. That chapter and also that book, alongside a lot of great scholars looking at racial linguistics in dual language education, who are asking these critical questions, who gets to be bilingual, who has access to these programs. How do individuals get celebrated when they're bilingual? 

And I'll give you a personal example. My son, his hair is probably light brown by now, but he was a blondie most of his life. He's mixed race. His language was celebrated quite a bit, like, wow, you speak Spanish, that's amazing! And I wonder about those children I work with in Los Angeles, when their Spanish and their English abilities weren't celebrated in that way, right? It wasn't amazing to be bilingual, it was just an expectation. But now you have my privileged son, you know, getting all of this praise because he doesn't look the part of an immigrant child, right? 

So I share that because racial linguistics is an area that can really help us better understand some of these, these, complexities around who gets to be bilingual. And then lastly, I'll just share that I'm really proud of the work I've been able to do with PhD students in our college, and I do plan on having a piece coming out in the next year or so where I'm reflecting on their work and engaging with their epistemological and ontological entry points into their research.

And in a course I teach for our joint doctoral program on critical and decolonial theories in educational research, I sit with them as a thought partner to think about how they're entering into educational research to minimize the harm that comes out of educational research. And we're all susceptible to it, right? If we're not grappling with our own positionalities, if we're not asking hard questions around how are we entering these conversations? So I help them understand that their research questions signal their epistemology, and I give them examples of questions that if you're asking… and I'll use my own example, from my own research. If I go in asking how… or why aren't Latin A parents involved in schools?

I'm setting up a question, and I'm putting the gaze on some sort of deficit within the Latin community, right? But if we ask questions such as, in what ways do schools facilitate or undermine healthy family-school relationships? That's a completely different question. And I think that if we don't tackle this in doctoral programs, then we have social scientists that leave their, doctoral preparation programs continuing to ask deficit-based questions, continuing to locate problems within families and communities, and I reject that.

And I, I think this kind of work will help our field in really addressing some of the long-lasting inequities we've been witnessing across decades. I know in my short lifetime of being in academia, these types of disparities are persisting for minoritized communities. Language, race, ability, queer and transgender individuals, right? We're seeing this not shift, even though we know better, even though we have educational research to really support policy to make impactful change.

Rachel Haine-Schlagel:

My last question is, what would society look like if your work was done? If there was nothing else for you to work on? No reason to come to your office. 

Sera J. Hernández:

So, I think of schools as a microcosm of our society, and so what's happening in our larger society around equity. And inequity is mirrored in schools. And so, I think my work would be done when there are no groups of people that feel they have to defend their humanity.

Rachel Haine-Schlagel:

Oh, Sera, it was so wonderful to talk with you. I just really am impacted by your passion and your the perspectives that you're bringing, to how research questions are asked, to how we train new scholars, to how we train new bilingual educators. So, thank you for all that you do, and we're so excited that you're part of the college. So, thanks for being here with me.

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