Teaching her first class in Latino History at the University of Oregon in 2014, Julie asked her students how many could at least understand Spanish. Every hand shot up. This made her feel silly: why was she teaching with primary sources translated into English, when her students could read them in the original? She connected with Spanish as a Heritage Language (SHL) expert and brilliant sociolinguist Claudia Holguín Mendoza, and an interdisciplinary pedagogy was born: Teach in Spanglish.

Claudia, Julie, and their expanded network of collaborators make a proud interdisciplinary claim that has transformed their teaching: students who were raised in a bilingual environment (SHL), and/or who took Spanish for at least two years in high school or at least one year in college can, with proper support, engage in high-level analysis of Spanish and Spanglish primary sources and original texts. Further, they have seen that teaching in Spanglish is more than just intellectually rewarding for students and professors—it is a radical validation of Latino students’ identities.

With funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and OpenOregon Educational Resources, Claudia and Julie developed http://teachinspanglish.org, a gateway to free Latino history and cultural studies primary sources, lesson plans, worksheets, and even sample assessments alongside instructor-facing videos that delve more deeply into teaching a class with most discussion in English but many original texts in Spanish.

Their free online resources have everything you need to try this out in your own classroom. If you want to bring the Teach in Spanglish approach to a larger program in K-12 or higher education, Claudia and Julie are available for on-campus workshops, in-person or via Zoom.