Tejer - The Biliteracy Threads: Home Language, Identity, Early Literacy, and the Construction of Dual Language Students as Early Writers

Transitional Bilingual Education has been the custom of many classrooms across South Texas. The problem is that children, as young as four years old, begin their trajectory on the Early-Exit path to learning English which comes at a cost: loss of the home language, self-worth, validation, and burdened school success. This qualitative case study found the following: ways that teachers mediated a classroom of emergent bilingual students lead to the construction of Kindergarten writers, the classroom strategies the teachers utilized, their attitudes, and behaviors that organized a two-way dual language classroom. Data was collected through three open-ended interviews, observations were conducted twice a week, for 45 minutes, over the course of nine weeks, and student writing samples were submitted as artifacts as proof of the teacher's work. The exploratory nature of this study relied solely on the expertise brought forth from the two Kindergarten two-way dual language teachers. The author proposes the Tejiendo framework as a way for to teachers to validate the student's linguistic and cultural identity and therefore increase the potential for the love of learning.