I work with Caribbean cultural arts, community organizing, and linguistically and culturally responsive early childhood education. I am co-author of Soy Bilingüe: Language, Culture, and Young Children and a founding member of Grupo Bayano, with drumming, song, dance, and batey. I participated in the development of the Soy Bilingüe Adult Dual Language Model for teacher education, which centers Knah Klut Colleen E. Almojuela’s Indigenous teaching, Antonia Darder’s decolonizing praxis, and Geneva Gay’s culturally responsive teaching. I co-led the Teaching Umoja Participatory Action Research 20-Year Commitment, examining processes of ethnic identity, bicultural, cross-cultural, and tri-literacy development of Children of Color. Our current efforts are on restoring and supporting Taino, Kromanti, Garifuna, and Jamaican Creole languages.
Education
Ph.D., Curriculum and Instruction, University of Washington, 1996; M.A., Human Development, Pacific Oaks College, 1991; B.A., Bilingual Bicultural Studies, University of Washington, 1983.
Teaching Style
I team teach courses using a linguistically and culturally responsive approach. In our classroom, we teach and learn in both Spanish and English and we celebrate the many languages and cultures of our learning community. We also support students in strengthening and reviving their Indigenous languages such as Mixteco, Taíno, Purépecha, Garifuna, Kromanti, and Nahuat. We center artistic and cultural expression, study important issues impacting students and their communities, and practice decolonizing and participatory inquiry. We ground our learning in the notion of the Beloved Community and in Tacoma’s motto: “Enter to learn; depart to serve.”