The Burden of ‘ Nativeness ’ : Four Plurilingual Student-Teachers ’ Stories

Oral history interviews conducted with four student-teachers in Bilingual Education or TESOL studies are analyzed. Despite being deconstructed in sociolinguistics and related fields, the ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ dichotomy emerges not only as salient in participants’ self-perceptions of linguistic competence, but also in feelings of unpreparedness for full participation in the teaching profession. Alternative categories are explored, including ‘legitimate’, ‘resourceful’ or ‘bi/plurilingual’ speaker, which may act in juxtaposition to that of ‘native’, or offer emancipatory ways forward. In line with critical pedagogy, for such alternative categories to empower, reimagining how linguistic competence is constructed in the teaching profession through the appropriation of tools to critically deconstruct ‘nativeness’ – must engage the entire educational community.


Introduction
This article examines the narratives that were co-constructed by interviewee and interviewer during four (linguistic) autobiographical interviews or oral histories.The interviews took place at City College, a senior college that is part of the CUNY system and located in Harlem.The interviewees are all student-teachers in Bilingual Education or Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) training programs at the college.Furthermore, they all share diasporic trajectories, live transnational lives and speak languages in addition to English.This research took place as part of the Futures Initiative 1 project based at the CUNY Graduate Centre and thus seeks equity and innovation in higher education.The implications of the student-teachers' subjectivities for teacher education at City College and for the education of language minoritized bilingual students more generally are explored.We ask guiding questions such as: How do the participants' bi/plurilingual repertoires, their self-perceptions of linguistic competence and their academic training tie in with their feelings of preparedness and their career goals?What educational needs do the students identify in relation to language and how are or may they be better catered for by the teacher training programs they follow?The research stems from the researchers' conviction that the linguistic and cultural diversity of a city such as New York -in which only 51 per cent of the population speaks English at home (United States Census Bureau, 2011) -is capital wasted if not invested in the construction of inclusive educational experiences allowing for diverse ways of being, knowing and doing.
The analyses suggest that despite having been problematized in sociolinguistics and related fields (see below), the 'native speaker' and 'non-native speaker' dichotomy emerges as salient for participants' self-perceptions of linguistic competence and also for their feelings of unpreparedness for full participation in the teaching profession.The still pervasive narratives of Cioè-Peña, Moore & Rojo Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature. 9.2 (May-June 2016) ISSN 2013-6196 34 standard language and of the ideal monolingual speaker are very real for the student-teachers we interviewed.The article also explores alternative categories, such as 'legitimate', 'resourceful' or 'bi/plurilingual' speaker, which, following the logic constructed in the student-teachers' narratives, may act in negative juxtaposition to that of 'native', or offer emancipatory ways forward.In line with critical pedagogical approaches, we conclude that for such alternative categories to empower, reimagining how linguistic competence is constructed in the teaching profession -for example, through the appropriation of tools to critically deconstruct 'nativeness'needs to engage the entire educational community, not just 'bilingual' or 'resourceful' speakers themselves.

On 'nativeness', 'non-nativeness' and alternatives for teachers and students
Despite often being taken for granted in applied linguistics and in everyday social discourse, critical and socio-interactionist scholarship has deconstructed notions such as 'native' and 'nonnative' speaker.The latter is usually synonymous with 'learner', "a static, unchanging identity, and there is no possibility of moving from the identity of learner to that of native speaker" (Amim, 2001, p. 95).The linguistic competence that Chomsky imagined when proposing the category of 'ideal native speaker' continues to reify monolingualism and monoculturalism, and the competences of monolingual speakers (Ricento, 2013).The monolingual and monocultural construction of society may further be traced back to projects of colonization and to the sociopolitical construction of modern nation states, as has been well documented (e.g.Makoni & Pennycook, 2007); 'non-nativeness' positions one outside of the nation (Amim, 2001, p. 93).
Following Martín Rojo's (in press) discussion on Foucault's notion of power, the ideological construction of the monolingual 'native' speaker as a model to be followed has become so deeply normalized that it has become embodied in our ways of doing, knowing and being.Furthermore, for Martín Rojo (in press), this model of speakerhood is one of the most powerful disciplinary mechanisms individuals face, the effects of which can be attested to in the way they tame their linguistic 'conduct', and in how they perceive and value their communicative competences and skills.
The 'native' speaker was already equated with 'mother tongue' speaker in the early definition of the concept (Bloomfield, 1933, p. 43), being they who provide the best model for foreigners, who only rarely may speak as well as 'natives'.However, it is beyond the scope of this article to provide a full review of the scholarship.Pennycook (2012) offers a critical overview of available categories that is especially pertinent to the research presented in this article.He firstly raises the point that those categorized as 'non-native' speakers are not often content with their 'non-nativeness' (e.g. to be heard with an accent) and aim to 'pass as natives' through 'native-like proficiency'; thus scholarly attempts to legitimize 'non-nativeness' through notions such as lingua franca are perhaps inadequate from the perspective of language users.
Pennycook also offers a thoughtful critique on research advocating for the desirability of 'non-native' over 'native' language teachers (see Moussu & Llurda, 2008, for a comprehensive review), as institutional and student expectations often push teachers into "being something that one is not, fooling others into believing that one actually is a native speaker" (Pennycook, 2012, p. 76).Furthermore, the resources necessary to do being a 'native' speaker are not equally distributed in our societies.As Heller (2013, p. 189) points out, "minimally, there are some people who get to define what counts for membership to this category, and others who have to play by those rules".As our analysis shows, membership to the 'native' speaker category, and the appropriate deployment of forms recognizable as belonging to the standardized, valued, national 'language', are not inherently tied together, while other social and racial components shape speakers' adscriptions to it.Pennycook raises a point also made by Leung, Harris and Rampton (1997) and Amim (2001), among others, that many ethnic minority teachers are immediately categorized as 'non-native' speakers of the majority language because of how they look, as 'nativeness', as a social construct, is arguably racialized and hereditary.
Furthermore, Pennycook (2012) argues, 'native-likeness' is not a realistic or desirable goal for every speaker.Being able to 'perform like a local' is another possibility, but it continues to be relative to others and contingent on their perspective; rarely does one actually 'pass as a local' despite having traces of locality in their idiolect, and access to local forms presupposes certain privilege.Following Lippi-Green (1997), in the US context, even if one can eliminate accent and sound 'local', racism, sexism, classism, etc. may continue to disempower and exclude some speakers from passing as 'native'.Following this discussion, Pennycook (2012, p. 99) concludes that new understandings of the issues at stake could be offered by the category of 'resourceful' speaker, which involves "both having available language resources and being good at shifting between styles, discourses and genres".
In this regard, Pennycook coincides with socio-interactionist scholarship on the competence of bi/plurilingual speakers (e.g.Moore & Nussbaum, in press).According to Lüdi and Py (2009), a useful step to understanding the complexity of competence would be to replace the notion all together.They suggest instead referring to the resources available to individuals in coordination with others and the social world for the achievement of different ends.This approach "presupposes the existence of a free and active subject who has amassed a repertoire of resources and who activates this repertoire according to his/her need, knowledge or whims, modifying or combining them where necessary" (Lüdi & Py 2009, p. 159).The notion of 'resourceful speaker' is also in line with García and her colleague's work on translanguaging (e.g.García, 2009;García & Li Wei, 2014;Otheguy, García & Reid, 2015).
In Amim's (2001) study with minority female immigrant English teachers in Canada, such resourcefulness went beyond their languaging, to include their mobilization of critical and empowering pedagogies in striving to decolonize classrooms in which they were constantly judged by their students as illegitimate models of nativeness.This connects with Pavlenko's (2003) research in which she traces in student-teachers' narratives their reimagination of educational communities as ones in which teachers can be 'resourcefully bi/plurilingual', as opposed to 'native' or 'non-native'.Pavlenko (2003, p. 252) frames her work within critical pedagogy, and ultimately concludes that although approaches such as the one engaged in with her own students are potentially empowering, "inequitable hierarchies are an issue that should be addressed not only within the marginalized group, but also within the profession as a whole".
Failing to engage with the majority in explorations of how ideologies of nationalism, colonialism and racism might be embedded in the way notions of 'nativeness' are locally deployed is not only insufficient in dealing with inequalities, but can also reproduce them (Pennycook, 2001).Pennycook (2012) argues that critical teacher development should both help to reject the 'native' vs. 'non-native' teacher dichotomy, at the same time as moves should be made to re-appropriate terminology such as 'non-native' or 'bilingual' in non-discriminatory ways.We shall come back to the pedagogical consequences of our research in the conclusions.In the following section, the research and the participants who are the focus of this article are presented in more depth.The qualifications to be a bilingual education or TESOL teacher in New York State are similar in that both require either a bachelors or graduate level qualification in education in addition to passing several State certification exams (in both content and areas of specialization).

Introducing the research context
The degree also requires a number of courses specific to teaching speakers of English as a Second Language, and teaching bilingually (for those in Bilingual Education).

Conducting the oral history interviews
This research was mainly based on oral history interviews (Santamarina & Marinas, 1995;Taylor Shockley, 2013) prompting extended responses in which participants produced (linguistic) autobiographical narratives (Pavlenko, 2008).We understand oral histories as a social practice, and not a mere instrument for collecting information.Thus, our data are representations of experiences, facts, attitudes, ideologies, etc., co-constructed between interviewer and interviewees, in which meaning is negotiated (Talmy, 2010).In this case, we were interested in the participants' accounts of how they learned and used their different languages and in their trajectories as students and teachers in relation to language.We also carried out observations in order to gain familiarity with the campus to support the interpretation of the interview data.
For this study we interviewed four current students in the TESOL or Bilingual Education program with varying levels of experience working in schools.The interviewees were referred by a local professor at the institution, who chose them because they spoke languages other than English and were considered reliable.They were recruited by email.Six students were originally contacted, with four agreeing to participate.All participants were interviewed by one of two members of the research team using a set of guiding questions (see appendix); however the interviews usually flowed smoothly and categories such as 'native' or 'non-native' speaker emerged in all cases before being used by the researchers.Three interviews were conducted faceto-face and one was conducted by telephone.They were audio recorded and later transcribed by a commercial company (rev.com)using a basic annotation system, anonymized and revised by the researchers.All participants signed informed consent.
The researchers then analyzed the interviews and constructed themes and categories (e.g.Talmy, 2010) in relation to linguistic and professional trajectories.The language ideologies emerging from the narratives -or the "representations, whether explicit or implicit, which construe the intersection of language and human beings in a social world" (Woolard, 1998, p.3)were the primary focus of our analysis.Such ideologies are co-constructed by interviewer and interviewee, given that respondents' answers are oriented to, shaped by, and designed for the questions that occasion them.We were thus sensitive in conducting the interviews and the analyses to the ideological underpinnings of the questions and to the influence of our own positionalities on what we asked, the responses we received and the way we interpreted them.
Both of the interviewers were of a similar age to the interviewees and were attending PhD courses taught by the same professor as the interviewees at the CUNY Graduate Center.They were also both bi/plurilingual (Emilee uses English, Spanish, and Catalan in her daily life and Maria uses English and Spanish) and raised in English-dominant countries (Emilee in a monolingual English-speaking environment in Australia and Maria in a bilingual Spanish-English environment the USA).
After the initial individual analyses, salient excerpts were cross-checked for accurate interpretation and selected for inclusion in this article.Our analyses was also shared and contrasted with colleagues in an informal data session.Our interpretations were triangulated and articulated using themes from current literature.

Introducing the interviewees
All of the interviewees had experienced migration to some extent; two had immigrated to the United States as adults, one as a child, and the fourth was born in the US but spent significant time in the country of origin of her parents during her schooling.All four grew up in households in which a language other than English was spoken and were participating in bilingual or TESOL certification programs.The following is a brief introduction to our interviewees, using pseudonyms: Sara.Sara was born in NYC of Dominican parents.She grew up and went to school mainly in NYC, although she also attended one year of elementary school and university in the Dominican Republic.At the time of the interview, she was taking a pre-service training program to be a bilingual teacher.In the interview she constructs herself as a balanced bilingual in both English and Spanish, and thus an ideal bilingual teacher model.She lives and works in Washington Heights and claims to use English only at school and Spanish in the rest of her life.
Sabia.Sabia was born in Bangladesh and raised there until 4th grade of elementary school.Her initial schooling was in Bangla, although she remembers it being irregular in terms of attendance.She also started learning to read and write Arabic in Bangladesh for religious purposes.She had limited contact with English in Bangladesh.On arriving in NYC, she attended an English medium program for 4th and 5th grade, but was then put into a Spanish-English bilingual program, where she learnt both English and Spanish.She continues to use Bangla, English and Arabic in her daily life, and Spanish only rarely.She has lived in Tremont in the Bronx since coming to NYC, which she says has a large Bangladeshi community, and she has mostly worked in schools in the Bronx.She constructs herself as not having a good foundation in any language at the same time as she sees herself as very able to negotiate in contexts of linguistic and cultural diversity.

Analysis: Four plurilingual student-teachers' stories
This section is organized around the most salient themes emerging from the interviews, which align closely to those introduced in our review of the literature, constructed following our initial analyses.Only a selection of excerpts representative of these themes is presented, although mention is made to their recurrence across the data corpus.
The 'native' speaker as monolingual.As has been mentioned above, the 'native' and 'non-native' speaker dichotomy emerges as salient for self-perceptions of linguistic competence in all cases.Furthermore, the 'native speaker' category was clearly constructed in our data as a synonym of the category of 'monolingual' and an antonym of the category 'bilingual'.This following extract from the interview with Jingya is a case in point.
Fragment 1 1.Emilee: Or in the schools, how would you define the native speaker? 2. Jingya: Yeah, now that I, I, I define which is their parents they 3.
speak English and when this guy or this girl was, was born 4.
and she or he speaks English and, um, he or she couldn't 5.
speak other language other than English.I think that's the 6.
The extract begins with the interviewer bringing up the 'native' speaker.It should be noted that this is not a category introduced by the interviewer, but one that Jingya had herself introduced into the conversation previously.Following that, the interviewer prompted her to explain the category in the context of New York, in the context of Jingya's university studies and in the context of schools, thus leading to Fragment 1. Jingya makes it clear that nativeness in English is hereditary (i.e.your parents have to be English-speakers, lines 2-4), dependent on you having a background in a country where that language is dominant (line 12) and distinct from bi/plurilingualism (lines 4-17).
The ideal bilingual teacher as two monolinguals.Only one of our interviewees, Sara, considered herself a good model as a teacher.She saw herself as bilingual and a competent user of both English and Spanish.Unlike the other three interviewees, Sara was born and raised in New York.For the other three interviewees, bi/plurilingualism was constructed as problematic for being a good linguistic model as a teacher, and their self-positioning as non-natives in English was linked to feelings of unpreparedness for participation in the teaching profession.Hector, for example, had refused to sit for the language test that would allow him to be licensed as a bilingual teacher, despite being advised by his professors and school supervisors that he was indeed ready.The following fragment was prompted by a question from the interviewer about whether being bilingual was an advantage for Hector's becoming a teacher.His response clearly demonstrates his concern that bilingual teachers are not adequate models for children.
Hector: And second, is most of bilingual teachers who are English 2.
Hector: They don't know how to pronounce, they don't know how to 7.
spell, they don't know how to put accents.And most of the 8.
bilingual teachers that I see in ... they are Spanish, uh, 9.
are working with, uh, Spanish native speakers who are 27.
teaching both languages in the classroom ... 28.Emilee: Uh-huh.29.Hector: ... are getting a lot of disadvantage in English ... For Hector, it would be unusual for a single teacher to serve as a model bilingual teacher (i.e. native English speakers speak 'horrible' Spanish, lines 1-17, and native Spanish speakers speak 'poor' English, lines 18-29), whereas the model bilingual is two monolinguals in one -an idealization which arguably does not exist (Grosjean, 2010).Languages in contact are seen from the perspective of deficit -that is, as 'horrible' or 'poor' -and the same occurs with bilingual speakers who are represented as speakers who 'don't know' or are 'in disadvantage', instead of being seen as those best prepared for their professional and personal development.Under these premises, Hector may never feel fully capable of being a teacher, thus delaying his entrance into Cioè-Peña, Moore & Rojo Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature. 9.2 (May-June 2016) ISSN 2013-6196 43 the teaching profession.This delay due to a feeling of unpreparedness -which Hector elsewhere explains is disputed by his professors and teaching supervisors -also deprives potential students who may have similar linguistic trajectories from adequate bi/plurilingual role models.
Not just a 'native' speaker, but sounding like a 'local'.Something else that becomes clear in the interviews is that being considered a legitimate speaker is not just about nativeness, but about sounding like a local, an issue raised by Pennycook (2012).Thus, for Jingya, coming to New York meant training herself out of the British English she had learned at school in China, and into US English, in order to feel part of her new city.This is one of the first points she makes in the interview, and it is raised again by the interviewer in the following fragment.
Fragment 3: 1. Emilee: Uh huh, but it's interesting that you learn the English, 2. another British variety.3. Jingya: Yeah but now I, I'm trying to like change a little bit but 4.
not change your, your accent?
Thus in the interview, Jingya points to self-surveilling practices and to surveillance by others (Martín Rojo, in press) not only in terms of sounding 'native', but also in terms of sounding 'local'; which she explains elsewhere is important to her for speaking with students and their parents.Despite having arrived in the United States several years ago, she claims she is still trying to change her accent in order to sound more American (e.g.line 3).Encouraged by the interviewer's lack of alignment, Jingya reveals how surveillance takes place for her and the evaluative frame to which it is associated.The interviewer, who is not from the USA, firstly implicitly does not ratify Jingya's evaluative stance of having a "half like British accent" (line 4) and then overtly takes a stance (Du Bois, 2007) claiming "You sound very American to me" (line 7).In lines 10-11 she claims her accent is not only monitored by herself, but also by others; she asks/is asked: "wow, you still not change your, your accent?".As we shall see in the following section of this analysis, such linguistic surveillance is linked to a continual project of formal and informal language learning (Martín Rojo, in press).
The interview with Sara makes it clear that 'nativeness' in a given language does not always correlate with being 'local' and thus a 'legitimate' speaker.Not performing like a 'local' has very real consequences, even for 'natives'.Prior to the following fragment, Sara, the only one of our four interviews to consider themselves competent enough in her two languages to be a good linguistic model as a teacher, had been explaining how at school in New York her competence in both English and Spanish had favored both her academic and her social performance.However, when she went to the Dominican Republic to study in high school, her variety of Spanish became a problem for her.
Fragment 4 1.Maria: So then, how did, how did language play into that dynamic? 2. Sara: Well, what happens is if you're En, if your Spanish isn't 3.
perfect, if you fumble your words, um, it, you are exposing 4.
yourself as a Dominican York because nobody in their right 5.
mind in those days ... This is in '87.So in those days you 6.
wouldn't, you wouldn't tell people that you're a Dominican 7.
York.People would ask me.I would say, No, I'm not.I'm 8.
just not allowed to go out.That's why you've never seen 9. me.10.
And I was lucky because I had been there in 5th grade so I 11.
had friends from before.And they would lie for me and say 12.
that yes, I grew up in Dominican Republic and I had never 13.
been to New York.Fascinating, but the Spanish then has to 14.
be perfect because if you speak with an accent, if you, um, 15.
can't do any code switching, you can't do the Spanglish.16.
The Spanish really has to be on point or else they're going 17.
to notice that you're not from there.The colloquial 18.
language, especially, has to be perfect.And that's where I 19.
would trip up, because they would say things and I didn't 20.
feel what that meant because it wasn't, you know, it was 21.
kind of Spanish lingo.It was a lingo between the teenagers 22.
that I didn't understand.
For Sara locality was not achieved through proficiency of the standard language but rather through the use and understanding of colloquial Spanish (lines 17-18).However, this was not sufficient as she still required the legitimization granted to her by other 'locals' (lines 10 -13).
Sara's experiences completely counter Jingya's assertions that sounding like a 'local' results in Training oneself to meet the model.In the following excerpt we return to Hector's interview and notice the ways in which a teacher candidate's lack of confidence in their linguistic abilities can send them on a 'wild goose chase', and, in Hector's case, exclude him from the competition for social and linguistic resources, restricting his own opportunities of social mobility and success.
3. Hector: We had to, we had to teach-I told my boss, I am not gonna 4. be teaching next year.Why? Cause when I was doing my 5.
bachelor's degree, I had to wait almost one year to get into 6.
two English grammar courses that I wanted to take because I 7.
didn't know the language.I did that.And I'm very happy 8.
because I was able to improve a lot.9. Emilee: Okay.10.Hector: Then, I was trying to get into other English courses that I 11.
believe are very important for me, in order to be proficient 12.
in the language ...
By engaging in the same kind of self-surveillance that Jingya used, Hector made the decision that he was not ready to begin his teaching career (lines 3-4) -not until he took a few more English grammar courses (lines 5-8).The 'native' speaker model can only be met through linguistic training and given that the focus on grammar and standard language (lines 5-7) was prevalent throughout the interviews, both of these components would be the object of formal linguistic instruction (Martín Rojo, in preparation).All of the participants placed a great deal of value on knowing all of the grammatical rules of a language before being able to consider themselves proficient speakers (lines 10-12).This emphasis on grammar is related to a view of competence as purely grammatical, and objectively measurable (by tests, for example), independently of the prestige of the languages, uses and speakers involved.This refers to what Valdés (2001) calls the 'instructional dilemma', which centers teaching practices on grammar despite negative results.
Furthermore, these conceptions reinforce the position of language 'knower' (those who have the knowledge of grammar) over speaker (those who know how to use the language).The importance of 'knowing' languages over speaking them has been used in institutions in the USA to keep heritage students -who might not know grammar -out of courses that precisely would give them the opportunities to acquire new features and structures of their languages.
It is important to note that although all of the participants were able to identify features and characteristics of teachers who failed to meet the model, none of the participants named a single person whom they considered to be a good, native speaker (note that we didn't ask them to name either).Rather the models they had constructed were greatly dependent on ideas of perfection and standardization, rather than on lived experiences.
An alternative discourse: Being resourcefully bi/plurilingual.Among the students we have studied, only Sabia constructed different linguistic ideologies and values.Born in Bangladesh and schooled there and in New York, she has (at least) four languages in her repertoire: Bangla, Arabic, English and Spanish.The fact she was schooled in a Spanish-English dual program when she arrived, made her not only bi/plurilingual but also allowed her to experience languages as detached from territories and nationalities.
19. Sabia: Or just to be friends with someone.
In contrast with the other interviewees, she admits to mixing languages, which she considers a legitimate social practice, a pedagogical resource for teaching languages and other school subjects, and a relational strategy in and beyond the classroom.To some extent, she refuses to discipline herself and her students by adopting a monolingual pattern in separate languages, and further refutes the idea that her bi/plurilingualism might be related to incompetence in speaking just one or another language.Rather, she constructs her ability to draw on different resources in her repertoire in terms of competence, what she can do: "I could, if I need to speak in one language, then I am able to do that.Because I'm speaking to you right now and I didn't use any language, in my language.I could do that" (lines 9-12).Thus, as she carefully states, mixing languages is not the result of a deficit but part of the repertoire that makes her a 'resourceful' speaker.

Discussion
The four interviewees have brought attention to issues around linguistic nativeness as they impact students, teachers and teacher candidates.While as researchers and educators our own position is that discourses such as those produced by Sabia are the most promising, the research has demonstrated that beliefs around nativeness and some students' lack of confidence in their own linguistic abilities are deeply ingrained.In this section we would like to explore possible ways for City College to support these students in their current trajectories while shifting the discourse for future students.
In a time of high accountability -with teachers under enormous pressure from authorities for attaining performance indicators -it is often said that we must not overlook the emotional and psychological impacts that means of accountability (often high stakes testing) have on students.
The same could be said about teacher candidates, who are also at their core, students who must also face high stakes tests.The social-emotional impact of teacher certification exams must be taken into account when a student like Hector decides to postpone his entry into the field, at least partly because he questions his English proficiency even after being told by peers and educators alike that he is ready to transition into the classroom.The truth of the matter is that teaching has become an increasingly high stress profession, particularly for those who work with linguistically and ethnically diverse youths, who are also regularly evaluated on their mastery of the English language.Given that English language arts is one of the two most heavily assessed content areas, it is no wonder that teacher candidates are concerned with sounding native in order to be the ideal teacher model.
The native speaker model and its effects on bi/plurilingual speakers is an issue that should be of concern to CUNY, particularly as it impacts the bi/plurilingual teacher candidates that are educated there.Although teacher education tends to concern itself with the history of education, policy and teaching and learning methods, perhaps they should also explicitly and critically take up the concept of teacher models.It is evident from the interviews that the students within the TESOL and Bilingual Education programs at City College would benefit greatly from presentations of alternative models of speakers.These models could be presented in a myriad of ways: by highlighting the linguistic diversity of the faculty, by pairing students with linguistically diverse classroom teachers for observations and student teaching, and lastly by providing a space in which linguistically diverse teacher candidates can discuss their concerns around the ideal teacher model and also present the benefits of having linguistically diverse teachers in the classroom.
From a critical pedagogy stance, it is imperative that teacher candidates like Sara, Jinya, Hector and Sabia, together with their monolingual peers, learn to question models of nativeness not only to benefit themselves but also in order to benefit their students and the teaching profession.Teachers with diverse linguistic backgrounds are needed in the classroom because they model possibility for students who are also part of a language minority and diversity for those who are not.Teachers with diverse linguistic backgrounds also have the capacity to nurture the profession by offering a counter-narrative to the discourse that implies that nativeness and locality are more valuable than being able to present and live one's truth.
Institutions should develop a culture that values, supports and maintains the linguistic diversity across its graduates.More specifically, for bilingual and multilingual education teacher education programs to be true to their missions of valuing, supporting and maintaining linguistic diversity, they must first start with their own students.

References
The university educates teachers in general education, special education, bilingual education and TESOL.The bilingual education and TESOL program offers preparation to teach emergent bilinguals in English, and in the bilingual education program teachers are also prepared to teach in Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Haitian Creole.According to the website "The Programs in Bilingual Education and TESOL in the School of Education prepare teachers for service in a culturally and linguistically diverse society, with the goal of developing and supporting proficiency and literacy in students' native languages and in additional (second) languages" (The City College of New York, n.d).
Cioè-Peña,Moore & Rojo   Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature.9.2 (May-June 2016)   ISSN 2013-6196 42 City College is one of the major teacher education institutions in New York City.It is a part of CUNY, located in a historically black and Latino neighborhood and educates teachers at both undergraduate and graduate level.Its total undergraduate enrollment in 2013 was 15,464 students.According to the Office of Institutional Research, the majority of the student body is composed of undergraduate students and is mostly (65%) non-white, with 31% of students identifying as Latino and 25% identifying as Asian.The students collectively report over 70 languages other than English.The most spoken of these languages are Spanish, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) and Bengali.Furthermore, 49% of students report speaking a language other than English at home (The City College of New York, 2013; Office of Institutional Research -The City College of New York, 2015).
Hector was born and raised in Colombia, and came to NYC in his early twenties after losing his parents.He has worked hard to make a life for himself and to support family in Colombia.He completed the same pre-service training program for bilingual teachers as Sara, but he has refused to take the English language test that would qualify him to teach, as he does not feel like his English is good enough yet.In order to improve his level, he was registered in a TESOL graduate program at the time of the interview.Despite lacking confidence that his English is good enough to be a teacher, he does construct himself as a competent educator and speaker of Spanish.Hector has lived in different parts of Brooklyn, including Prospect Park when he first arrived and Coney Island, where he was living at the time of the interview.He had also lived in Logroño in Spain as part of a university exchange program.Jingya.Jingya was born and raised in China and came to NYC in her early twenties, having lived briefly in Oregon with her grandparents on her arrival to the USA .She is originally from Guangdong province and her home language is Cantonese.At school, she was immersed in Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature.9.2 (May-June 2016) ISSN 2013-6196 40 Hector.Mandarin and she reads and writes simplified Chinese.She learned British English at school in China.At the time of the interview, she was taking a bilingual teaching qualification, having completed her general Education degree.She was doing her teaching placement in a school in Windsor Terrace in Brooklyn with a Chinese (Mandarin) bilingual program, teaching mainly in Chinese, and she envisions herself working in a similar environment in the future.She has lived in a Brooklyn neighborhood she describes as very Chinese since arriving to NYC.
This brings to light the idea that being a 'local', and/or attaining 'local' status, is much more complex and nuanced than the employment of 'proper' syntax and pronunciation.Ultimately, Sara's experiences indicate that without in some way acknowledging your foreignness -either to the place or to the colloquialism -local status is unattainable.Sara continues in the interview to explain that her ability to function in different varieties of Spanish is an advantage for her as a teacher, as she is able to relate to her students' parents with a repertoire that is familiar to them.