Counter-storytelling through service-learning: Future teachers of immigrant students in Texas and California re-tell the “Self” and the “Other”

Year 2010, Volume: 6 Issue: 2, 6 - 26, 01.08.2010

Denise Blum

Abstract

This article examines the use of Critical Race Pedagogy in two service-learning initiatives that prepare pre-service teachers for working with an increasing immigrant student population in California and Texas. It is not uncommon for teachers to participate in the “Othering” dominant discourse that tends to see those who are of a lower socioeconomic class, immigrant status, or non-English speaking as deficient (Valencia 1999). As professors, we identified the need to use counter-storytelling, a method of Critical Race Pedagogy (Solorzano & Yosso, 2005) to facilitate transformative practices that help pre-service teachers revise their prejudiced assumptions about their future immigrant and ELL students. A transdisciplinary curriculum, coupled with a service-learning context, played a prominent role in implementing counter-storytelling. In this article we present data from the pre-service teachers’ service-learning, in-class group discussions, assignments and evaluations related to their fieldwork, and our fieldnotes during participant-observation

Keywords

Critical Race Pedagogy, Teacher Education, Service-learning