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ERIC Number: EJ1461138
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Mar
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0034-0561
EISSN: EISSN-1936-2714
Available Date: 2024-09-15
What Mamá Gallina Can Teach Literacy Educators about Healing Biliteracies
Kimberly Muñoz; Alexandra Babino
Reading Teacher, v78 n5 p289-299 2025
In this Action & Learning article, we describe the connections between the popular Spanish nursery song "Los pollitos dicen" (The Little Chicks Say) and Aesop's fable's "The Fox and Hen" with the literacy teaching of bilingual Latinx students. In this metaphor, the bilingual teachers represent the Mamá Gallina (Mother Hen) and their students represent the pollitos (little chicks) in their care. Then, we detail the teaching context from three elementary classrooms with bilingual Latinx students that spurred the metaphor for Mamá Gallina taking care of her pollitos in the classroom. These classrooms suggest how teachers could act as the "Fox" and perpetuate white English hegemony and the "Mother Hen" who mobilized their biliteracies to metaphorically feed and clothe their "baby chicks" with cariño (often translated as "care"). The rest of the article centers on how the metaphor of Mamá Gallina serves as a compelling vision for the healing practices of bilingual teachers themselves, before detailing principles for healing biliteracies in the classroom. These tools include: personal connections, cultural practices, linguistic relevance, and bilingual/biliterate pride. Ultimately, this metaphor illustrates how emancipatory pro-Latinx teaching must attend to dual purposes: responding to the harm to bilingual teachers and students' biliteracies while also nurturing their dynamic beauty.
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2191/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A