This article presents the results of an analysis of student perceptions about speakers of Spanish in the United States before and after participation in a university course on U.S. Spanish that incorporates a hands-on research component. Three arguments are made here: That these perceptions influence their day-to-day relationship with bilingual communities and inform the way in which they will approach their professional practice; that modeling and guiding reflection helps students to become engaged in a critical analysis of their own language experience; and that research experience provides students with an opportunity to link the theory of the sociolinguistics of U.S. Spanish with the experience of local speakers. Results suggest that this experience changed several general and normative beliefs that students held about U.S. speakers of Spanish, but that these changes did not necessarily transform the way in which they perceived themselves in relation to those speakers.