Pearls of Bilingual Wisdom with Dr. Ofelia Garcia

Bilingual in America

Sometimes as a podcast host you get to speak with a giant in the field and you just can’t get all of the conversation to fit into one episode so what are you to do??? Well, you decide to split the interview into 2 episodes! Yarina and I had a chance to speak at length with a well-known expert with broad and strong roots in the field of bilingual/multilingual education, a true pionera: Dra. Ofelia Garcia.

If you are unfamiliar with her work within the world of education you should know that she began as a teacher in NYC Public Schools before bilingual education even existed as an instructional model. She is Professor Emerita in the Ph.D. programs of Urban Education and of Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures (LAILAC) at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has been a Professor of Bilingual Education at Columbia University’s Teachers College and Dean of the School of Education at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University. She has authored and co-authored numerous books with other gifted researchers.

When Yarina and I reached out to her about joining us on the podcast she responded by saying, “Sure, anything for teachers and our kids, who are holding our society up during these hard times.” Listen in to hear about the need to compare bilinguals in the US and their language skills within their own context, addressing the cracks in our educational systems and working towards educational opportunities that dismantle practices of cognitive injustice.