Highest Aspirations

How can educators shift their practice from tearing down students for translanguaging or using “Spanglish” to building this up? How can tactics like co-teaching and professional learning opportunities be leveraged to support multilingual students and create more equitable classrooms? What can educators do to incorporate their students’ entire linguistic repertoire and validate their experiences in the classroom to build confidence? Spanglish has historically been discouraged in both English and Spanish classrooms across the US. However, by discrediting this blended language we are not allowing students to use their entire linguistic repertoire. Not only is Spanglish, which is the blending of word parts from both Spanish and English, a significant part of many heritage Spanish speaking students’ identities, it is a valuable form of translanguaging. To explore this topic in depth, we spoke with Alexandra Medrano, a teacher in Colorado who shares her journey from discouraging to celebrating Spanglish in her clas