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New prof hopes to empower youth 

Teresa Hernández González draws links between language, identity and education

By Anna Sarkissian

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Education professor Teresa Hernández González believes we need to modify the school system so that teachers are not the only sources of information.

“Teachers help with tools and processes. But if we break the power relationship, everyone will feel enriched by the experience,” she says.

Hernández González came to Concordia in August. Since then, she’s been busy with her courses and adapting to life in Montreal.

As for her colleagues, she gets the impression they really care about their work. “They are very professional, they’re not just here to do the hours and get paid,” she says.

In her native Spain, she received a top-ranked grant from the Spanish foundation La Caixa to study in the United States, which included dinner with the King and Queen of Spain.

While completing her master’s in intercultural communication at the University of Pennsylvania, she was appointed by the Dean of the Graduate School of Education to sit on the International Programs Committee, which oversees all graduate programs. During that time, she met Noam Chomsky at a conference. For Hernández González, the experience was eye-opening.

“I fell in love with language and realized how much you can learn about people by studying their speech,” she says.

For the last nine years, she worked as an English teacher in primary education, helping to integrate a ground-breaking bilingual program administered by the Spanish Ministry of Education and the British Council.

Hernández González explains that the curriculum was designed for youth in public schools who might normally struggle with the school system. Students are presented with an additional challenge: classes in English. Remarkably, the project was so successful that it now serves as a model for other schools and has been exported to South America and other countries in Europe and Asia.

Now she is completing her doctoral thesis at the University of Valladolid, Spain, and expects to defend it in June.

Hernández González is chiefly interested in teaching English as a second language and the study of language as it relates to culture, power and social relationships. Her current research focuses on ethnography in education and at identity construction in young gypsy women in Spain.

“I see education not as a job but my way to leave this world better than the way I found it,” she says.