Autobiography of Language

Growing up I remember my dad would always get mad when my siblings and I would speak

English at home. My dad knows fluent English, he just likes to pretend that he does not understand what

we are saying. His excuse to not allow English be spoken at home has always been that we might be

hiding some big secret and that he needs to know what we are talking about at all times. Till this day my

dad still gets upset when English is spoken at home. Growing up I did not fully understand why he would

do this but now I know that he did it for our own benefit. I can see how my father’s strategy connected

with Yossos Community Cultural Wealth as Resistant Capital. Yosso describes resistant capital as

“parents of color are consciously instructing their children to engage in behaviors and maintain attitudes

that challenge the status quo” (Yosso 2005). I now feel thankful that my father instilled in me the idea of

respecting our native language in our household. Furthermore, I see how my dad helped me not forget

about my cultures language as I grew up in an all English school district.

What also helped was having my grandma live a block away and always being over her house.

My grandma cannot speak English therefore it was crucial for my cousins, siblings, and myself to speak

Spanish in order to communicate with her. When I watched the film Speaking in Tongues I really

connected when Kelly’s sister said that she felt sad that she is not able to communicate with her

grandmother as Kelly is, because Kelly continued to practice their families’ native language (Schneider

2010). My father always said that we must never forget where we come from and that we need to learn

Spanish to communicate with family here and in Mexico.

My dad has always been into literature, you will always find him reading a newspaper, he is the

type of person that cuts articles out and tapes them to his desk. He is intrigued with business articles

and would always come home with new books and articles for us to read. As a child, every weekend my
dad would have my siblings and I read and summarize any article in the newspaper. We were not

allowed to go outside and play unless we had completed this.

In the article, Funds of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitive Approach to Connect Homes

and Classrooms, research found that “children in the households are not passive bystanders, as they

seem in the classrooms, but active participants in a broad range of activities…their participation is

central to the households functioning” (Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez 1992). This concept really

connected with me because my mother has always been a stay at home mom. She was the one in

charge of all house duties, which included making doctors’ appointments, making sure all the bills were

paid on time, and she was very involved in our education. However, my mom is not able to speak

English. Which made my older sister and I responsible for translating any important paperwork from

English to Spanish. I remember being ten years old, going to the doctors with my mother and filling out

the paper work for her. In addition, my sister and I would also translate school paperwork and even

sometimes signing it for her, since my mother did not know how to write in cursive and she would

sometimes be embarrassed having to print her name where it asked for a signature.

There is one moment in my elementary days that really inspired me to become a teacher. That

moment really made me realize why I wanted to be a teacher and what type of teacher I wanted to be. I

did not want to be just any teacher but a teacher that I would never have a student feel so humiliated as

I did that one day that I have not and will never forget.

Moll, L.C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a

qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory Into Practice, 31(2), 132 – 141.

Schneider, K. Jarmel, M. (Director). (2010). Speaking in Tongues [Video file]. PatchWorks

Productions. Retrieved March 21, 2019, from Kanopy.