En Comunidad Collective
En Comunidad Collective seeks to be in community with educators, education leaders, and children’s book publishers to reimagine the education of bilingual and multilingual children.
Leading workshops, keynotes, and professional learning communities in all educational spaces.
Our Founders
Our collaboration has its roots with our mothers, the storytellers in our family. Carla from Chile, Luz Yadira from Mexico. Our paths crossed while we were New York City public school teachers in the Graduate Center, City University of New York Urban Education doctoral program. Following the advice of our mentor, Dr. Ofelia García, we wrote En Comunidad: Lessons for Centering the Voices and Experiences of Bilingual Latinx Students, and since then we have been sharing and learning in community with educators and students across K-12 and teacher education programs.
Carla España, Ph.D.
Carla is a teacher, literacy consultant, researcher, author, and co-founder of the En Comunidad Collective. Her love of stories and teaching comes from her roots in Chile and has been nurtured by hundreds of teachers and students across schools in New York City and beyond.
She has a BS in communication studies from New York University, an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, an MA in childhood education with a bilingual extension from Hunter College (City University of New York), and a Ph.D. in urban education from the Graduate Center (City University of New York). Dr. España’s teaching journey began in Harlem, New York with bilingual sixth graders and continues with teaching language arts in a middle-grade summer program.
She is currently an Assistant Professor of Bilingual Education, Puerto Rican/Latinx, and Latin American Studies at Brooklyn College, City University of New York.
Her teaching, research, coaching and writing live at the intersection of critical literacies, children’s literature, and bilingual education. Dr. España is co-author of En Comunidad: Lessons for Centering the Voices and Experiences of Bilingual Latinx Students with Dr. Luz Yadira Herrera. Find her on Twitter @ProfesoraEspana.
Luz Yadira Herrera, Ph.D.
Luz Yadira is a teacher, researcher, author, and co-founder of the En Comunidad Collective. She has over fifteen years of experience in the education of emergent bilinguals in both mainstream and bilingual settings.
She has a BA in international development studies and Portuguese from UCLA, an MA in TESOL from Pace University, and a Ph.D. in urban education from the Graduate Center (City University of New York). She started her teaching career in New York City public schools, teaching emergent bilinguals in K-6 in Harlem. Also, she taught undergraduate and graduate courses at the City College of New York, Long Island University, and Brooklyn College.
She is currently an Assistant Professor of Bilingual Education in the School of Education at California State University, Channel Islands.
Dr. Herrera's teaching and research are in culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogy, translanguaging, critical pedagogies, and bilingual education policy. She is the co-author of En Comunidad: Lessons for Centering the Voices and Experiences of Bilingual Latinx Students with Dr. Carla España. Find her on Twitter @Dra_LuzYadira.
Translanguaging Collections: Affirming Bilingual and Multilingual Learners
The six Translanguaging Collections are comprised of 15 unique titles across Picture Books, Early Chapter, Middle Grade, and Young Adult texts. They include an Educator Handbook with planning guides, reading-in-community plans, and language studies for each anchor text. Every collection provides fifteen unique titles to help grow translanguaging within the classroom community and across the school community with professional learning opportunities.
Each collection considers culturally and linguistically sustaining topics:
Identity
Place and Change
Intergenerational Connections
Migration and Immigration
Community and Connections that Sustain Me
Changemakers