“I wasn’t trained for ELD”: The experiences of bilingual content-area teachers

This study explores the experiences of two Spanish-English bilingual content-area teachers of newcomer youth at a comprehensive high school in South Los Angeles. Both teachers criticized school demands to develop language while teaching content for several reasons. This qualitative study examines their critiques and their use of Spanish in their English-medium classroom as a transformational resistance strategy. One-on-one interviews reveal the challenges content-area teachers face when teaching newcomer youth as well as the benefits of leveraging their home languages. This study calls for greater attention to develop and support in-service teachers’ understanding and use of translanguaging practices.