1. No category

Department of Languages and Applied Linguistics
Presents Kimberly Adilia Helmer Writing Program, UCSC Learning Spanish is a Waste of Time: Understanding Heritage Learner Resistance in a Southwest Charter High School Through the lens of “resistance,” the current critical ethnography examines some causes of “strikelike” behavior observed in a Spanish heritage language class in a US southwest charter high school.
Fundamental to student resistance was the lack of meaningful activity and authentic materials that
connected curriculum to students’ linguistic strengths, target-culture knowledge, and the communities
from which they came. The native Spanish-speaking teacher taught the course as if the Mexicanorigin students were foreign language learners without certain native-like language proficiencies and
insider cultural knowledge gained from actual experience. In turn, the instructor did not fully access
his own linguistic and cultural repertoire, but instead relied on published foreign language materials
that failed to engage students and constructed them as linguistic and cultural outsiders. A pueblobased pedagogical framework is proposed to make curriculum more culturally relevant, authentic,
and engaging.
Wednesday, May 20 210 Humanities Bldg 1 5:00PM Light refreshments will be served