Protecting, Learning, and Connecting

A Portrait de Una Familia Bilingüe en Lenguaje Dual—Flor, Samuel, y Melanie

Abstract

Educational research often presents hegemonic structures, narratives, and labels as necessary precursors for discussing the lived experiences of multiply-minoritized families in schools. Indeed, it is essential to be attuned to the malleable, historical, and punishing social and material mechanisms of multiple matrices of oppression that inform families’ schooling and educational experiences. At the same time, this critical attunement can also be displayed through forms of expression that center the lived experiences of families as foundations for inquiring, studying, and reimagining dominant ways of knowing and being in the world. As part of these efforts, this article employs portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997) to describe how one family—Flor, Melanie, and Samuel—challenges and reimagines forms of being, relating, and learning connected to dual language bilingual education and family-U.S. school relations. Following Lawrence-Lightfoot’s (2005) comparison of portraiture’s aesthetic wholeness to that of a tapestry, this portrait weaves field notes, transcripts, and memos from 2019 to 2022 to describe focal moments and interactions with Flor, Samuel, and Melanie. In the portrait, Flor, Samuel, and Melanie critiqued adult-centered family participation structures in school events and bounded forms of communication and interaction placed upon children during the school day. At the same time, this family reconfigured the purpose and relational dynamics within and outside the dual language bilingual program. Overall, Flor, Samuel, and Melanie show how possible worlds are already here because they have been born out of necessity among groups of people to survive. Their portrait demands that researchers and educational leaders become attuned to the possibilities for better living, caring, and relating with one another that have not been historically supported or cultivated but that can now act as portals for reimagining the purpose and nature of education as part of COVID-19 pandemic recovery efforts.