After receiving a BA in Spanish with teacher certification at Michigan State University, I taught high school Spanish in Metro Detroit. A desire to improve my practice led me to the MA program in Language Learning at Wayne State University, where I later became a Teaching Assistant in the Spanish department. My classroom experience informs my research interests, particularly seeing how Spanish curricula often do not reflect the experiences of linguistically marginalized communities, including the Latinx community in the United States. As such, I am interested in how Spanish “foreign” language classrooms are a site where ideologies of language standards and native speakers are formed, negotiated, and challenged. In particular, I am interested in the ideologies behind the decisions to both use and teach different Spanish varieties, what aspects of different varieties are salient to the learners, and ultimately how these choices impact the formation (or not) of critical multilingual awareness.
Website link: https://resawyer.wixsite.com/my-site