Encendiendo la Intuición/Igniting Intuition: A Bilingual Reading Specialist's Lived Experiences and Reclaiming of Literacies
This autoethnography explores the researcher’s lived experiences as a first-generation Latina, bilingual reading specialist who developed biliteracy in English/Spanish from childhood through adulthood and how this ignited her cultural intuition. Framed by a critical, Chicana feminist lens, she analyzed her personal and professional biliteracy practices and cultural intuition to understand how she supported young bilingual readers. Qualitative data were collected retroactively and in-the-moment (e.g., voice/written reflective memos, journals). The study research focused on how her cultural intuition guided: a) her role and practice as a bilingual reading specialist; b) her role and practice as a bilingual literacy practitioner of bilingual and dual language readers; and c) what lived experiences, core beliefs, and practices influenced her work as a bilingual and dual- language reading specialist, if they changed over time, and how have they impacted her current and future work. She found that her cultural intuition developed over time as she lived with her two languages/literacies in separate monolingual environments. As an adult professional, it sparked the researcher to reclaim and integrate her languages/literacies when she started experiencing distress at how her separate language/literacy worlds were replicated in her professional practices. Completion of postsecondary degrees and engagement with communities of Latinx literacy professionals gave her the confidence to believe in her cultural intuition and act on it--advocating to decolonize the monolingual language/literacy instruction still embedded in bilingual education systems.
cultural intuition, bilingual, biliteracy, reading specialist, LatCrit, autoethnography, Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education
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