Written by Lillian Gorman

“I really love the heritage program; I love how it feels like a family and I like how a lot of the staff just makes it feel like you're talking to an uncle or something. I especially like what the program stands up for and the unity it brings among all.”

-Spanish heritage language student, Spanish 323 (Advanced SHL Class)

Creating comunidad in the Spanish as a Heritage Language (SHL) classroom is central to the University of Arizona’s Spanish as a Heritage Language Program mission. The student quoted above emphasizes the importance of feeling a sense of comfort, belonging, and family in our classrooms. Providing a space for Latinas/xs/os to unpack their relationship to Spanish and English is not only a crucial component of the Spanish as a Heritage Language Program, but also represents the “servingness” embedded in the university’s Hispanic Serving Institution designation. What better way to serve Latina/o/x students at a large R1 university in a state with a large Latina/x/o population than to provide a cultural and linguistic homeplace?

Spanish as a heritage language courses have existed at the university level for more than 50 years in the U.S. In the early development of these courses, instructors often sought to “correct” or “eradicate” the varieties of Spanish that Latina/x/o students brought with them into the university setting. These damaging ideologies did not value language variation, created an artificial distinction between formal/informal Spanish, and certainly did not serve Latina/x/o students. The SHL Program at the University of Arizona takes a pedagogical approach that directly opposes eradication approaches.  Our program is based on a framework of culturally sustaining pedagogies, critical language awareness, and critical sociocultural linguistic literacy. These frameworks allow us to engage the language experiences, ideologies, and language varieties that our Latina/x/o heritage language students bring with them.

All students with a cultural, community, and/or family connection to the Spanish language, and who were exposed to the language from a young age, have a place in the SHL comunidad. This includes a wide range of students, from those who grew up only hearing some Spanish from grandparents to those who interact regularly in Spanish with their parents. We create the SHL community through three key connections:  connections to our linguistic histories, connections to place (including Tucson and other U.S. Latina/o/x communities), and connections to other U.S. Latina/o/x Spanish heritage language learners. Current Spanish heritage language student Natalia Sloan explains, “I felt safe in there to learn and to connect with the language in a way that maybe other classes weren’t able to provide.”  Ph.D. candidate, SHL instructor, and former SHL student Gabrielle Yocupicio echoes this sentiment: “It's a space where…that anxiety that we’ve grown up with around speaking Spanish starts to diminish. I don’t think I had felt that in any other language class before.” The program serves nearly 500 Spanish heritage learners every semester of all skill levels through a sequence of six different course levels.

Our goal is for all students to have the tools and confidence to read, speak, or write Spanish in the context they wish. Yocupicio explains, “I think we have a mission of having our students develop or become more aware of their agency in using their language…however they choose, whenever they choose; we are not here to impose any sort of ideology or prescriptivism.”

The SHL Program’s Legacy: Linking Linguistic and Ethnic Identity

The University of Arizona’s Spanish as a Heritage Language Program is rooted in a legacy of educational activism. Long-time Tucson educator and bilingual education champion Adalberto Guerrero started the program at the university after he began teaching in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese in 1969. Since then, the program has grown into one of the most comprehensive SHL programs in the country with distinguished scholars such as Frances Aparicio, Glenn Martínez, and Sara Beaudrie directing the program over the past thirty years. Adalberto Guerrero was also a founder of the Mexican American Studies Program at the University of Arizona and served as a key example of the intimate ties between Spanish as a Heritage Language and Latinx/Chicanx studies. A deep understanding of critical ethnic studies is essential for any Spanish as a heritage language program. Gloria Anzaldúa reminds us that “Linguistic identity is twin skin to ethnic identity…I am my language.” These words guide our program. Previous research demonstrates that both ethnic studies programs and critical Spanish heritage language programs positively impact the academic and personal trajectories of Latina/x/o students.

Despite this legacy of activism, the SHL program at the University of Arizona exists within the only state that still maintains an English-only education law. We cannot ignore that Arizona’s history of linguistic oppression is intertwined in the lives of our students.  Sophomore Natalia Sloan reflects, “I come from a Mexican household, but my mom is the only generation in her family that does not speak Spanish just because of the culture that my grandma grew up in, in a small town in Arizona.” Due to the discrimination her grandma felt, “to protect [her children] she didn’t teach them the language.” Our program confronts these histories and seeks to rewrite Arizona’s history of language dispossession into one of transformation and reclamation.

We have an impressive teaching team of graduate students and full-time instructors who have not only participated in the required semester-long heritage language pedagogy graduate class, but who are also Latina/x/o heritage learners themselves.  Our program cultivates a remarkable pipeline of SHL alumni who then become instructors. This pipeline of critical Latina/x/o language leaders provides a powerful model for our local students and Latina/x/o heritage language learners throughout the country.

It is my hope that the SHL Program at the University of Arizona provides a model for intergenerational language recovery, maintenance and belonging. One student’s end of semester reflection deeply resonated with me: “[the class] got me closer to my nana.” As a Chicana Spanish heritage learner who became an SHL instructor/director, this is also my story – SHL approaches strengthened my connection to all four of my grandparents. Is there a greater impact an academic class can have on a student than to transform both the relationship to their languages and to the loved ones who are connected to these languages?

Our SHL classes link our Latino/x/a presents with our Latino/x/a pasts, promote speaker agency, Spanish language maintenance, and, above all, comunidad. •

Author bio:

Dr. Lillian Gorman is a proud Chicana from Alburquerque, New Mexico and the Director of the Spanish as a Heritage Language program at the University of Arizona.  She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and her research interests focus on issues of language and identity within U.S. Latina/x/o communities.  Lillian has 20 years of experience teaching in and leading Spanish heritage language programs in New Mexico, Chicago, and Arizona.