








































Article 
 

Yixuan Wang is a doctoral student in TESOL and World Languages in the Department of Language and 
Literacy Education at the University of Georgia, Athens, GA; email yw61560@uga.edu. 
 

Poetry in TESOL Teacher 
Education: A Chinese Teacher’s 
Identity Negotiation and 
Reconstruction Before and During 
the Pandemic 

GATESOL in Action Journal 
2020, Vol. 30(1), pp. 32–47 

ISSN: 2331-6845 

 
 
Yixuan Wang 
Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of Georgia 
 

Abstract 
This case study explores how Meili (pseudonym), a pre-service teacher in a TESOL and World 
Language Education program, negotiated and reconstructed her identity as a multilingual graduate 
student in her emergent bilingual poems through two poetry classes offered in spring 2018 and 
summer 2019. Her reflections and stories in the interviews are analyzed under the framework of 
arts-based research. The findings point out that this non-English native multilingual teacher 
negotiated and reconstructed her emerging teacher-poet identity through bilingual poetry in three 
main ways: (a) she challenged the long-existing norms and judgments set by her English 
monolingual peers by bringing her multilingual voice in her English poems, (b) she combined her 
personal experiences as a multilingual international student in the U.S. to reconstruct an ideal 
identity that she aspires to as a pre-service teacher, and (c) she used translingual creative writing to 
exhibit and expand her linguistic and cultural repertoires which contribute to the ongoing 
construction of her teacher-poet identity. This analysis has implications for poetry and other arts-
based approaches to be included in TESOL teacher education to help pre-service and in-service 
teachers from diverse backgrounds disrupt problematic norms in the field during and after the 
pandemic. The affordance of poetry also enables multilingual teachers to mediate and reshape their 
desired teacher identity through their poem writing combined with their life experiences.  
 
Keywords 
TESOL, teacher education, multilingual teachers, pre-service teachers, poetry 

 
 
Background 
The United States and other western English-dominant countries have been popular destinations 
for international students. In the U.S., international students are a fast-growing population with 
diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Among international students, Chinese international 
students are the fastest- and largest-growing group of international students in the U.S. (Qi et al., 
2018). Although international students generally face some shared and common challenges, 
previous studies demonstrated that students from Asia, Africa, and South America in the U.S. face 
more challenges compared to their counterparts from Europe and North America (Qi et al., 2018). 
Even among Asian international students, a salient difference would be language barriers that 

mailto:yw61560@uga.edu


Wang 33 
 
Chinese students face since they have lower TOEFL iBT scores (a mandatory language test 
international students have to take to apply for universities in the U.S.) compared to students from 
India where English is an official language and Korea where English is not an official language 
either (Educational Testing Service, 2018). When the language barrier is an enormous challenge 
to Chinese students, the hardship becomes even more difficult for Chinese international students 
who are enrolled in the program of TESOL or World Language Education (WLE), in which 
language proficiency is a prerequisite. Noticing this issue, many scholars advocate to offer more 
creative approaches, such as poetry, in TESOL programs to help international students navigate in 
the new host country for their new life, study, and identity (Cahnmann-Taylor et al., 2016; Harman 
& Zhang, 2015; Kamhi-Stein, 2013). Along with these advocacies, scholars also urge to disrupt 
the standards set by English native practitioners in the field and offer more creative ways for 
international students to achieve better in their academic performance and pre-service training 
(Cahnmann-Taylor et al., 2016; Cahnmann-Taylor & Hwang, 2019).  
 As most of the teaching all around the world has been interrupted and altered due to the 
pandemic, it is time for educators and learners to make transformative and critical changes. The 
recent upheaval of policy that could influence all international students in U.S. academic programs, 
particularly TESOL, programs should take actions to not only nurture pre-service teachers’ 
academic and professional development but also self-agency and intercultural competency. Thus, 
in the midst of a global pandemic, I ask two questions related to both arts and the world of TESOL: 
 

1. What role does arts/poetry play in teacher education? 
2. What can arts-based approaches offer in TESOL teacher education? 

 
What follows here is a case study of a Chinese international student’s personal experience. 
Through the analysis of three interviews with her, the analysis exhibits problematic norms and 
concepts that many TESOL and WLE practitioners still carry against international and multilingual 
teacher candidates, the negotiation and reconstruction of this bilingual teacher’s identity, and the 
affordance of poetry in TESOL teacher education programs. The analysis itself also illustrates the 
importance of using arts-based research in both teaching and research (Cahnmann-Taylor & 
Siegesmund, 2018; Mulvihill & Swaminathan, 2019).  
 This study begins with a review of the long-existing binary of English-native speakers and 
non-native speakers in TESOL, translanguaging practices of bilinguals/multilinguals, and the arts 
in TESOL practice, specifically poetry. After the review, the context of culture and situation is 
explained to better illustrate Meili’s situations in her program and her workplace as an international 
bilingual educator who was reshaping her identity as a bilingual, novice teacher, and emerging 
poet.  
 
Theoretical Background 
 
The Binary of English-Nativeness and Non-Nativeness in TESOL 
The expanding role of English as a global lingua franca leads to the demands for more qualified 
English teachers in the world. Nonetheless, about 80% of English teachers around the world speak 
another language as their native or first language (Faez & Karas, 2019). However, these non-native 
teachers’ teaching skills are often doubted and challenged since the field has linked teaching skills 
with “native like” English proficiency. As a result, such a problematic concept situates “non-native 
English-speaking” bilingual or multilingual teachers in a discriminated side, worsening the 



34 GATESOL in Action Journal 30(1)  
 
tolerance and embrace of English varieties and localized English in the world. Gradually, this 
binary lead non-native teachers to identify with the ideology of “nativeness” in the field, ranging 
from teaching skills to cultural understanding and teaching. This deep-rooted ideology further 
favors native teachers as well as influencing non-native teachers to perceive themselves as inferior 
and deficient in English (Nguyen, 2017). Phillipson (1992) challenges such “native speaker fallacy” 
and he asserts that this proposition is unequal and unethical (p.185). A growing number of scholars 
call for breaking down the dichotomy and promote counter discourses (Pennycook, 1994). To 
empower non-native speakers in the field, Samimy and Brutt-Griffler (1999) also advocate for the 
necessity to “develop an identity of their own construction that neither prescribes a limited role for 
them in the profession nor specifies definite boundaries to their capacities therein” (p. 418). 
Therefore, TESOL teacher education becomes extremely important to non-native teacher 
candidates’ experiences in the training since teachers tend to bring in their own experiences in the 
program into their future classrooms and form their own beliefs from the programs. For this reason, 
it is critical to examine if courses offered in TESOL teacher programs are able to influence pre-
service teachers’ perceptions and beliefs of non-nativeness and diversity, and if the courses could 
empower non-native bilingual/multilingual teacher candidates to disrupt problematic norms in the 
field (Mahboob, 2010). When seeking for critical pedagogy changes and transformations, arts-
based teaching and learning offered possible solutions.  
 
Art and Poetry in TESOL Teacher Education  
Dewey (1934/2005) explores the concept of art experience, noting that a person not only transfers 
materials into art, but artworks also transform the person. Life’s challenges and changes create 
momentum for personal development and growth. Dewey points out that the human development 
speeds up when a person overcomes challenges and difficulties to make progress (Dewey, 
1934/2005; Richards, 2017). In this process, a person’s artistic transformation takes place when 
the past experience is carried into the present experience with the desired imagination of the near 
future (Eisner, 2002). Art helps people better understand the sense of self, the world, and their own 
life experience (Dewey, 1934). Thus, Dewey’s notion of art as experience highlights the 
importance of art in human development and growth. As international students constantly face 
challenges and difficulties during their stay in the U.S. for academic purposes, especially during 
and after the global pandemic, art should be involved in their life as much as possible to help them 
carry prior life experiences to their current experiences to fulfil the goals of self-development and 
self-growth.  
 With the increasing needs for English teachers in other countries, more and more 
international students come to the U.S., seeking a graduate degree in teaching English as a second 
language (ESL) or a foreign language (EFL). To help these students adjust to the new environment 
academically and socially, poetry has been adopted by TESOL teacher educators as a creative, 
aesthetic, and critical vessel. Hanauer (2003) conceptualizes that poetry has certain value in 
promoting multilingualism and understanding diversity in human life. Unlike other linguistic 
approaches, poetry makes it possible for poets to express their thoughts in an aesthetically 
pleasurable way, and thus brings back adornment to the original thoughts. Hanauer (2003) also 
states that poetry offers access to the first-hand experiences in the world, which connect readers 
with the understanding of the artist’s experiences, thoughts, and emotions that are related to the 
poems. He further argues that bilingual/multilingual poems have pushed against the assimilation 
that the dominant monolingual power posts on the multilingual minorities.  



Wang 35 
 

In recent research which focuses on poetry in teacher education, especially with 
international students, scholars demonstrate that by writing bilingual/multilingual poems, 
multilingual teachers push against the norms set by dominant monolingual practitioners and bring 
in both multicultural and individual voices in the field. Adding poetry in language teacher 
education also introduces the new concept of poetic Zone of Proximal Development (P-ZPD) 
which offers dialogic possibilities to help TESOL teachers identify themselves as collaborative 
artists in creative multilingualism (Cahnmann-Taylor & Hwang, 2019). P-ZPD can also “impact 
imitation, grammar, vocabulary, authority, and other classroom concepts in many global EFL 
classrooms” (Hwang, 2016, p. 159). Training pre-service teachers to be artists means to help 
students think and act actively and strategically, seeing opportunities when others might see as 
limitations and impossibilities. The arts make great contributions in TESOL education to help 
students view English as a meaningful “home” from multilingual perspectives and enable creative 
and agentive multilingual proficiencies. Artful TESOL practices also connect instructors’ and 
students’ linguistic and cultural repertoires to learn from cross-cultural sharing, failure, and 
revisions. Through such an aesthetic self-discovery, students’ authorhood and creative agency will 
be sharpened and developed (Cahnmann-Taylor & Zhang, 2018). In another word, poetry provides 
teacher candidates with a space for sharing personal/life experiences with multicultural, 
multilingual, and multilevel meanings to forefront the process of translanguaging and shaping a 
new identity as a teacher.  
 
Translanguaging in Poetry 
Translanguaging is a process when multilingual speakers use their multiple languages in meaning 
making. This discursive process of multi-language use, often simultaneously, is an expansion of 
languaging featured with speakers’ complex navigation in multiple linguistic and cultural 
repertoires (Carnagarajah, 2011; García, 2009). Under this framework, scholars push back against 
the false view of bilingual speakers’ cognition, which describes bilingual speakers as inferior 
speakers of both languages and double monolinguals (Baker, 2011; García, 2009; García & Wei, 
2014).  
 Since English has become the second or the third language of many people all over the 
world, translanguaging is prevalently used and implemented in numerous countries. Because of 
this change, the space for translanguaging is expanding in educational settings at the same time. 
In higher education in the U.S., as more and more international students come to the U.S. to pursue 
an undergraduate or a graduate degree, these students certainly employ translanguaging skills in 
their personal and academic experiences. Hence, such vital change in higher education also 
requests TESOL educators to accommodate these bilingual/multilingual students’ needs, and to 
foster their prior skills that they acquired in both their native and second or third languages. 
Allowing and assisting students’ translanguaging practices opens the door for more potential and 
possibilities in TESOL programs (De Costa et al., 2017).  
 
The Current Analysis: Contexts and Method 
 
Context of Culture 
The context of culture in this case study is surely consistent with the larger culture of the TESOL 
world. Meili started her graduate program as soon as she graduated from college in 2018. Meili’s 
program and its faculty make efforts to reshape beliefs and ideologies of multilingual learners and 
world English in multiple courses for pre-service and in-service teachers. Among graduate students 



36 GATESOL in Action Journal 30(1)  
 
in the program, the teaching experiences of students vary. For students who do not have much 
teaching experience, like Meili, they applied for the program mainly for a pre-service training 
before their future career. Meanwhile, there are also students who are full-time teachers already, 
working on another degree for better career choices. Thus, for Meili and many other international 
pre-service teachers, they regard U.S. in-service teachers as experienced authority in TESOL and 
WLE. However, idolizing experienced teachers in their pre-service training could be inappropriate 
since some experienced teachers could bring in misbeliefs about multilingual teachers in the 
TESOL and WLE world, even though many courses have been correcting and shifting such false 
concepts. If these pre-service teachers internalize and continue this misconception in their training 
and future teaching, they might look down upon their own identities as multilingual and idealize 
the “native speaker fallacy”. Blindly following and legitimizing this norm set long ago by English 
native monolingual educators is harmful for international and multilingual teacher candidates, 
especially in their negotiation and reconstruction of their identity as promising educators in the 
field. Their internalization of these norms could also further hinder their performance and teaching 
in diverse classrooms where they might serve a great number of multilingual students.   
 
Context of the Situation 
In a university in the Southeastern U.S., Meili, a Chinese international student, enrolled in two 
poetry classes offered in the graduate-level TESOL and World Language Education program in 
spring 2018 and summer 2019. When Meili took the first course, it was the first semester of her 
first year in the program. The course offered in 2018 was a Master-level poetry course for pre-
service teachers. In the course, there were four Chinese-L1 international students, including Meili, 
and four other English-native students (English-Spanish bilingual speakers and English 
monolingual speakers). In the doctoral level course offered in 2019, Meili was the only 
international student along with other U.S. students who are both English-Spanish bilingual 
speakers and English monolingual speakers (six in total). At the end of the second course, Meili 
had two English poems published in U.S. poetry journals. The purposes of these two courses are 
helping students acquire poetic crafts to write poems to cross linguistic, cultural, and disciplinary 
boundaries as well as immersing teachers in the process of writing poetry, regarding themselves 
as poets, to create more cross-cultural and meaningful instructions in their own language classes. 
Meili was selected as the focal participant because she took both courses, and she was the only 
international multilingual student in the summer course who experienced challenges from other 
multilingual or monolingual U.S. peers. As Meili felt powerless and lonely in the summer course 
when a U.S. English-L1-multilingual in-service teacher consistently picked on her language use 
in her poems, Meili wrote the poem “For International Students” to push back against this U.S. in-
service teacher’s grammar critiques. In the poem, Meili had written about not only language 
barriers she faced in the program but also many other challenges that she had to overcome in the 
new host country. 

When the first interview took place, it was the beginning of her last semester in the program 
as a pre-service teacher. Upon the time the second interview was conducted, Meili had already 
been working as a full-time Chinese teacher in an elementary school in the U.S. for almost a 
semester. The third interview was conducted in the summer of 2020 before Meili went back to 
China to be a full-time English teacher in a local elementary school. In the first two interviews, 
Meili and I both used English most of the time. For the last interview, Meili chose to use Chinese 
with only a few English words as she felt more relieved to speak Chinese for the last interview.  
 



Wang 37 
 
Data Collection 
To have a better understanding of Meili’s prior experience with poetry and literacy before and 
after she enrolled in the program as well as the two poetry classes, three semi-structured interviews 
were conducted and audio recorded in the fall semester of 2019 and summer of 2020. The first 
interview mainly focused on Meili’s reflection on the summer course. One of her poems entitled 
“For International Students” is also partially included in the analysis (see Figure 1 below) as a 
poetic reflection on her own experiences in the U.S., which epitomize Chinese international 
students’ collective experiences in her program. The second follow-up interview covered more of 
her early childhood and family literacy practices that indicate her rich poetic repertoire of biliteracy. 
The third interview unveiled her reflection of the rapid changes in her life before and during the 
pandemic as well as how poetry engaged in her life during this unprecedented time. 
 
Figure 1 
Excerpt from “For International Students” Poem 
 

 
“For International Students” 
 
For you cross the sea with 2 overweight luggage; 
For realizing even YouTube ads know your race; 
For feeling you shouldn’t speak your mother tongue; 
 
… 
 
For hearing “We only hire Americans”; 
For depositing triple security when not having the SSN; 
For changing the tire, then worrying about the next-month-rent; 
For longing to hear your native songs in restaurants; 
For furnishing your apartment from dumpsters; 
 
…  
 
For not relating to family newborns; 
For hating yourself when parents sell their house for tuition; 
For lying “I’m great.” 
 
Note. The poem is patterned after Jubilate Agno by Christopher Smart. 

 
Data Analysis 
A thematic analysis was conducted to examine the collected data and identify recurring themes 
and issues. Line-by-line transcription reading was employed in the first round of inductive 
thematic analysis. Transcribed and translated data were coded in the chronological order. All 
themes and categories were generated from the data without any pre-existing presumptions. By 
using the software QDA miner, pattern and frequency of words were collected and categorized. 
Some of the frequent words that appeared in the data were “identity”, “experience”, and “bilingual”. 
After the initial coding, a second round was conducted to analyze the contextual connections and 
relationship of the patterns. There were three core pattern codes established in this stage: prior 



38 GATESOL in Action Journal 30(1)  
 
experiences of literature and art, experiences as a non-native bilingual speaker in the U.S., and 
affordance of poetry in the ongoing negotiation and reconstruction of identity. Under each of these 
themes, there are several developed sub-codes to better explain, connect, and explore each main 
theme. Since Meili already employed translanguaging practices during all three interviews by 
using both languages, “translanguaging” was also coded and categorized as one of the sub-themes. 
 Although the terms of “native” and “non-native” speakers are still prevalent in TESOL, 
this paper will consistently use alternative terms, such as “English monolingual,” “English-native 
bilingual/multilingual,” and “English non-native multilingual.” These terms are selected to avoid 
spreading and reinforcing the long-existing binary.  
 
Findings 
 
Prior Experiences of Literature and Art  
When international pre-service teachers study in the U.S., their academic ability and knowledge 
repertoires are usually graded and judged by their English academic writing. This U.S.-centered 
practice usually neglects the profound cultural and linguistic foundation that these students already 
established in their native language and culture. The data and findings displayed below showcase 
Meili’s previous life experiences that shaped her knowledge and ability in language and literacy 
that the U.S. academic practices often overlooked.  
 

Meili’s family literacy practice. In the second interview, Meili revealed her family’s 
literacy practices when she was a child. These valuable practices with family members established 
her early literacy skills in her native language. In the excerpt below, Meili described her family’s 
reading practices with her mother and uncle: 
 

Once I finished my homework, my mom read books. We were in the same room but doing different 
things. . . she read the book and I read the book. We shared thoughts together. . . Even now, we still 
recommend books to each other. . . Sometimes I read with my uncle. (personal communication, 
November 27, 2019). 

 
This vignette demonstrates that her mother helped her develop regular and constant reading habits 
in her family. Apparently, through reading books while Meili was doing homework, her mother 
became a role model for Meili when she was young. They shared their thoughts on books they 
read. Her mother helped her develop her reading ability and possible critical thinking through book 
discussion. Through her narrative here, it is not hard to understand that her family offered great 
literature resources for her to accommodate her reading needs.  
 

Prior experience with literature and cultures of different countries. Because Meili’s 
family fostered a great environment and provided her with resources for her literacy and reading 
development, she was able to read many translated books from world literatures and cultures, along 
with developing her literacy in her native language ( 《 》are used with book titles in Chinese):  
 

I liked books such as Little Women, Harry Potter, and Anne of Green Gables. And 《黑骏马》

(Black Beauty), 《古堡里的月亮公主》 (The Little White Horse). And some Chinese books. In 
middle school, that was numerous! So many. . . like Jane Eyre, Pride and Perjurious, Sense and 
Sensibility, and Emma. Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, Les Misérables, but all in Chinese 
though. . . High school, I read some Russian, French, and Japanese literature. I read《安娜. 卡列



Wang 39 
 

琳娜》(Anna Karenin) and 《复活》 (Resurrection). But I don’t really like Russian literature. 
They combined so many descriptions of scenery and the language is kind of obscure. French 
literature,《羊脂球》 (Boule de Suif), 《茶花女》(La Dame aux Camélias), 《基督山伯爵》

(The Counte of the Mounte Cristo), 还有一些莫泊桑的短片小说集 (And some other short stories 
from Guy de Maupassant). Japanese literature,《菊与刀》 (The Chrysanthemum and The Sword) 
(personal communication, November 27, 2019).  

 
Her narrative here is an epitome of her experience of foreign literatures and understanding of 
diverse cultures through reading classics from her native language and other languages. When 
recalling these books, she also had a short reflection on Russian literature and her understanding 
of Russian literature back then. This means she connected her prior experience with her literacy 
and understanding of Russian literature with her present literacy level to make such a reflection. 
This excerpt also proves that Meili established primary understanding and gained knowledge of 
literature, languages, cultures, and histories of other countries, being culturally competent. These 
experiences surely enabled her to understand multicultural materials at a young age. 
 

Early experiences with art and literacy. Similar as books, Meili also had adequate 
experience with the arts when she was little in both school and home settings. The public schools 
that she attended helped her with artistic experience: 
 

We also had writing competition and calligraphy competition. I drew pictures and handwrote for 
our newsletters. . . I drew pictures that matched my articles and combined them together to make 
posters (personal communication, November 27, 2019). 

 
Meili’s school back then provided many art-related activities to help students develop art 
experiences as well as multimodal literacy by using multi-semiotic approaches. For example, 
Chinese calligraphy is a kind of art combined with both literature and art, because writing 
characters on the paper to make artwork requires the artist’s ability of understanding the meanings 
of characters and content as well as making aesthetically beautiful handwriting at the same time. 
The combination of pictures, handwriting, and articles in newsletters and posters that Meili made 
also created opportunities for her to develop multimodal literacy of understanding the pictures and 
the texts in the process of meaning making.  
 Poetry, specifically, is another type of the arts that is important to Meili, her family, and 
other Chinese children according to her narrative:  
 

when I was in elementary school, we had poem reciting competitions. Teachers liked us to use 
poems in our writing. So, I always write my favorite lines from poems in my notes and use them 
frequently in my writing (personal communication, November 27, 2019).  

 
Using poems in her writing seems like a common practice for Meili, which helped her understand 
the history and culture of her native language and carry the legacy in her own writing. These poems 
later undoubtedly became a part of her linguistic repertoire and her English poem writing. In her 
home setting, poetry also had its own priority: 
 

when I was a kid, my mom taught me how to recite poems . . . when I had summer break, I still 
remember this, my mom required me to be able to recite one poem every two days. She picked the 
poems and I really liked them (personal communication, November 27, 2019).  



40 GATESOL in Action Journal 30(1)  
 

 
Her mother’s requirement of reciting one poem every two days during summer breaks showed the 
importance and her value of poems in the family. Along with the book reading routine, Meili’s 
mother made many influential decisions on literacy education and art education for her daughter. 
Besides Meili’s prior life experiences, her life experiences in the U.S. are also important 
components in her English poems.  
 
Experiences as A Non-Native Bilingual Speaker in the U.S. 
 

Collective experiences of Chinese students. Carrying her prior life experiences, Meili 
came to the U.S. as a graduate student in TESOL and WLE program. As a Chinese student, she 
found the community in which she found a sense of belonging: 
 

I got a lot of help from other Chinese students. . . The person who picked me up at the airport. The 
first day when I was here was New Year’s Eve. And my roommates cooked a lot of food for me 
and helped me with my luggage (personal communication, November 27, 2019). 
 
Within the community of Chinese peers, Meili learned and shared common experiences as 

a Chinese international student, for example: 
 
I think we have some similar experiences like the social security number thing. It’s like when we 
first came here, we all don’t have social security number and I still remember my first apartment. 
And we have to pay a-thousand-dollar security deposit. Everyone just does that. (personal 
communication, September 29, 2019). 
 
In this example, she recalled the experience of paying a higher security deposit for her rent 

since she did not have the social security number, like all of the other Chinese students (indicated 
by her use of “we” as heteroglossia and a collective voice) when they first arrived. This experience 
later appeared in her poem (see Figure 1 above) along with many of her personal experiences. One 
example of her personal experiences that she included in her poem was an online English teaching 
job which rejected her application due to her citizenship: 
 

They said, “We can’t hire you, not because like you are Asian, but because you don’t have 
American citizenship.” The funny thing is that their customers are Chinese students. I think 
probably I can do it, because it’s teaching Chinese students how to say English, right? (personal 
communication, September 29, 2019) 
 
From the comment on this experience, it is obvious that she regarded herself as a qualified 

and eligible candidate of this English teaching job, because teaching English to Chinese kids 
should be her expertise based on her academic, linguistic, and cultural competence. However, her 
citizenship became the main reason for the company to reject her. This experience exemplifies the 
challenges Chinese and other international students have to face in their stay in the U.S. for 
academic purposes. This kind of hardship is exclusive to international students and immigrants 
because U.S.-born students, monolingual or bilingual, would not have such concern in the program. 
This kind of hardship and challenge adds more uncertainty to their stay in the new host country.  
 



Wang 41 
 

Friendship and tension with English-L1 peers. During her stay in the U.S., she had both 
friendship and tension with U.S. peers. Although some English-L1 peers came from different 
cultural and linguistic backgrounds, they were able to understand Meili’s poems during the poetry 
class. However, not all encounters with classmates were pleasurable to Meili. In the second poetry 
class, a U.S. English-L1 bilingual peer criticized Meili’s grammar in her poem and further created 
intense tension which aligned with the long-existing binary of nativeness and non-nativeness in 
the field: 
 

It’s just I feel like she thinks every grammar mistake is because of my English proficiency. That’s 
weird. That’s weird. Because I know English is not my native language, so I make mistakes. I 
accept that fact. But that’s not an excuse like she can blame me, or like she can pick my grammar 
mistakes every time when she saw my poems. Terri is just like she saw this line and she just 
assumed that I made it because my English is not very good. I don’t like it (personal communication, 
September 29, 2019). 
 

 The tension started when the peer, Terri (pseudonym), picked on Meili’s grammar use in 
her English poems. Although Meili admitted and understood her own limitations in writing English 
poems as a non-native bilingual speaker, she did not think it was acceptable for Terri to criticize 
her unconventional grammar use every single time. Ironically, Terri herself is also an English 
native bilingual speaker who has been teaching Spanish for more than a decade in the field. From 
this scenario, the tension between native speakers and non-native speakers of English still exists 
in the field. Even English native bilingual educators can spread and repeat such misconceptions in 
and out of the pre-service training. Since Meili and other students mainly interact with people in 
the program during the graduate training, it is critical to stop false beliefs in teacher education so 
that students like Meili can have better experiences in their training.  
 At the earlier stage of the global pandemic in 2020, Meili also experienced tension and 
misunderstanding from her colleagues in a U.S. elementary school. As she recalled, her students 
asked if she had been to China in the last fourteen days in February 2020. When she started taking 
precautions since she got the information from Chinese media where she learned this virus is 
extremely contagious, her American colleagues did not think it was necessary: 

 
They only believe what they want to believe. . . They don’t understand why I prepare disinfectant 
and masks. They don’t believe scientific and medical information from other countries… I’m 
always foreign to them (personal communication, August 10, 2020).  
 
Since COVID-19 was first identified and spread in China, her students inevitably 

connected Meili and the virus together. As a Chinese native bilingual speaker in the U.S. during 
this time, she certainly experienced racial related distrust and misunderstanding from her working 
and living environments. When dealing with these tensions in both academic and professional 
settings, poetry became a critical tool to record and reflect. 
 
Affordance of Poetry in the Ongoing Negotiation and Reconstruction of Identity 
 

Connecting prior and present experiences. At the point of writing her poem to 
international students, Meili connected her prior and present experiences in her poems. As 
discussed above, paying a higher security deposit for rent took place when she first arrived, in the 
first several weeks. However, the encounter with the online teaching job happened later in her stay. 



42 GATESOL in Action Journal 30(1)  
 
Thus, in the same poem, Meili connected her earlier experiences and later experiences in one poem 
to convey the scenarios of her life in the U.S. Her three-semester experiences in the U.S. were 
composed in each line in the poem, representing the most important moments of her stay in the 
new host country. By writing this poem, Meili got opportunities to recall and re-experience these 
events to reflect on hardships and challenges she had as an international student. Many experiences 
depicted in this poem have tight connections with her identity as an international bilingual speaker, 
for example, “For realizing even YouTube ads know your race.” This line represents how the 
environment in the U.S. reflects and reshapes her own understanding of her identity as being 
international and non-native, which might not be the same as her prior experience in China. Living 
in a homogenous region in China, Meili has never experienced being marginalized and non-native. 
This new experience in the new host country made her reconsider and reshape her own identity.   
 

Empowering bilingual voices. By writing and teaching poems, Meili’s bilingual voice 
and desire of empowering bilingualism were strengthened in an artistic way: “I want to keep my 
non-native voice. It’s interesting. Sometimes, English is very, very, very, not flexible as Chinese” 
(personal communication, September 29, 2019). After taking the second course, Meili confirmed 
that she aimed to have voices from both languages that she can speak in her poems, especially 
keeping her English non-native voice. The reason behind this goal is based on the inflexibility of 
English compared to her native language, Chinese. She was able to have this goal because of her 
knowledge of both languages as a bilingual speaker. After using both languages, she made such 
choices and goals to keep her non-native voice as a choice of a bilingual poet. This goal could be 
interpreted that her bilingual voice was empowered through poetry, challenging the voice and 
standard set by monolingual English speakers.  
 

Enhancing cross-cultural understanding and translingual practice. As Meili started 
her own teaching in fall 2019 in the U.S. as a full-time Chinese teacher in an elementary school, 
she used poems in her classes to foster her own and her students’ translingual practices to help her 
students in meaning making: 
 

I will write the first complete sentence as an example, using both Chinese and English. And then, 
I will leave some blanks for them to finish. . . One kid wrote “我是 (I’m) Pikachu.” And he drew a 
picture of pikachu, so funny (personal communication, November 27, 2019)! 

 
The method Meili used to teach poems in her classes is truly translingual as well as multimodal 
just like what she did when she was a kid in her school for newsletters and posters. As a Chinese 
teacher who can speak both Chinese and English, Meili not only teaches Chinese in her class but 
also English. For some kids in her classes, Chinese is probably their third language, because 80% 
students are African Americans, and 10% students are Latinx. Therefore, by learning, writing, and 
drawing in her classes, students had chances to learn Chinese, as a new language, through poetic 
and multimodal ways. 
 At the same time, as a bilingual speaker herself, Meili also respects and encourages 
students to employ their translingual ability in the school settings: 
 

I encourage them to use more languages in class. I have some kids who can speak Spanish. So, they 
were so surprised when I say “Hola” and “Gracias”, and they are so happy. They ask me “How do 
you know español?” I speak Spanish to them, and they use Chinese with me, and usually English. 
It’s a way to improve the relationship between us (personal communication, November 27, 2019). 



Wang 43 
 
 This implementation has a close relation with Meili’s realization of her bilingual identity 
and the empowerment from poetry. As discussed above, poetry helped Meili realize and be more 
confident about her bilingual identity as well as the importance of keeping bilingual/multilingual 
voices. Therefore, Meili is able to resonate with her multilingual students and try to encourage her 
students to have multilingual practices in academic settings. The practices of translanguaging and 
poetry in Meili’s class strengthen the relationship between Meili and her students even though they 
are from very different cultural, linguistic, and demographical backgrounds. The multilingual and 
translingual interactions between Meili and her students further enriched their cross-cultural 
communication and mutual understanding by using different languages in literacy activities. The 
relationship between Meili and her students improved since translingual practices made students 
from different backgrounds communicate better in the classroom. The shared experience of being 
bilingual/multilingual and English non-native in the U.S. built a bridge for Meili and her students. 
Using translanguaging and poetry in her first in-service practice in the U.S. have significantly 
positive transition from her graduate training to full-time career. 
  

Current teaching and imagination of the near future. Poetry in certain ways also serves 
as a bridge to mediate new challenges she experienced during the pandemic in the U.S. and 
transition Meili’s imagination of her future in China, facilitating her ongoing negotiation and 
reconstruction of identity as a teacher and bilingual speaker. Before and during the COVID-19 
pandemic, she worked as a full-time teacher in an elementary school in the southeastern U.S. and 
used poems in her Chinese classes. Poetry can be an effective tool for her to reflect on her own 
teaching and life, as well as her reconstruction of identity as a teacher: “I guess I can put some 
teaching experiences in my poems in the future. My students were very surprised when they knew 
I published poems. They asked for copies so they can read after school” (personal communication, 
November 27, 2019). Before her job at the current elementary school, Meili already put her prior 
life experiences in her poem, although without teaching themes since she had limited teaching 
experience. Themes in her poems before are mainly experiences of her childhood, food, and her 
family (personal communication, November 27, 2019). However, now Meili plans to include her 
own teaching experiences and her transnational experience in both countries in her future poems 
as accumulated present experiences.  
 Meanwhile, her poems also help Meili and her students build community in- and after-
class. Since her students were surprised that Meili writes and publishes poems, they would like to 
ask for copies to read after school. In this way, a close relationship could be established through 
poetry reading and discussion (personal communication, November 27, 2019) from more diverse 
multilingual perspectives. In addition, reading Meili’s poem may help her students better 
understand her not only as their teacher but also an individual with multifaceted identity (e.g., 
bilingual, international, teacher, poet, etc.).  
 Another important function poetry has is helping Meili with her desired identity in the near 
future. Due to the severe COVID-19 situation, visa uncertainty, and discrimination against Asians 
and Asian Americans during the pandemic, Meili made the decision to go back to her home country. 
Obviously, this is another major challenge and change in both her life and career. As Dewey 
(1934/2005) points out, this could be one of the transformative experiences of self-development 
and self-growth assisted by the arts. Scholars have also regarded poetry as therapeutic in the 
present time. From a psychological perspective, “Poetic words not only forge links between the 
writer’s voice and the mind and heart of an individual reader, but also provide connection among 
members of a community” (Chavis, 2011, p. 13). Hedges (2005) also notes that poetry “can give 



44 GATESOL in Action Journal 30(1)  
 
us a sense of identity with the mood or thoughts or feelings of the poet . . . it broadens out our 
experience and helps us understand that some experiences . . . poetry also expresses affirmation 
and inspiration and offers hope” (p. 2). Echoing these points from scholars in both education and 
psychology, Meili also considers poetry one of the best ways to document this unusual life-
changing decision and this unprecedented time with her international and bilingual perspective for 
both international, multilingual, Chinese, and educator communities. She also asserts that poetry 
will also exist in her future classrooms when she goes back to China to teach English as one of the 
most powerful tools for language and literacy education: “Poetry is a good way to express self and 
who we are. It’s a good way to teach, especially young children. They are the hope of the world’s 
future. I can see that from them” (personal communication, August 10, 2020). She imagines and 
expects poetry in her classes to add more therapeutic creativity and possibilities for students in her 
classes. As an emergent bilingual herself, she feels happy about such possibilities and hopes that 
she could bring into teaching. Her imagination about changes she could make soon also reveals 
the self-agency and self-confidence she gained from poetry.  
 
Discussion 
 
Poetry as a Vessel to Connect Prior and Present Experiences 
Meili has been developing and expanding her linguistic and cultural repertories since she was 
young with help from her family and her teachers. From Chinese poetry and art to international 
literatures, Meili sharpened her cultural competence and literacy skills through literacy related 
activities. These prior literacy experiences later became resources to support her academic 
performance in the U.S. or materials for her English poems. The literacy practices her family and 
schools implemented in her childhood were also reformed and implemented in her classes in an 
elementary school in the U.S.   
 In terms of her experiences as an international bilingual, poetry gives Meili a space to 
record, think, retrospect, heal, and relive in those moments when she had hardships and challenges. 
To be able to write collective or shared experiences of Chinese students’ experiences in the U.S., 
Meili also brings in the collective voices of Chinese students in her poems to make a more solid 
reflection on the unique phenomenon of studying abroad as Chinese students. More Chinese 
students’ prior and present experiences were intertwined and combined in her poems for readers 
from different backgrounds. Poetry makes it possible to make human connections regardless of 
the different backgrounds that the poet and readers have.  
 
Reconstructing Identity and Imagining the Near Future through Poetry 
From her reflection during and after writing poems, Meili also pushes forward for identity 
reconstruction as a new teacher in the U.S. or soon in China. Although this process of 
reconstruction is an ongoing process, Meili understands what kind of teacher she absolutely does 
not want to be based on Terri’s reaction in the second poetry class. Due to the tensions with English 
native peers during their training, Meili learned that unconventional grammar use in bilingual 
writer’s creative writing is more like a choice instead of a mistake. Simply judging grammar 
mistakes in teaching and learning loses the opportunity to help multilingual learners add their voice 
in their writing. Meanwhile, such critiques could also hinder learners’ development of self-agency 
and self-growth.  
 Additionally, Meili combined poems and multimodal literacy in her poetry teaching with 
her students in the U.S. who are also bilingual, emerging bilingual, or multilingual learners. By 



Wang 45 
 
drawing and reading poems, her students had chances to learn Chinese, learn poetry, and have 
positive relationships with her. Such transformation has transformative impacts on both the teacher 
and students. The affordances of poetry and multimodal literacy help Meili move forward to her 
goal of being a teacher who can let students have fun and learn at the same time (personal 
communication, November 27, 2019).  
 
Translanguaging Practices in Multiple Settings 
Meili also explained how she uses poetry in multiple settings. In her personal life, poetry is a way 
of recording her prior life experiences, her life in the U.S., and some arrangements done by her 
family to help her settle once she goes back to China. Writing poems becomes a kind of relief and 
healing as she said, “It’s actually a kind of self-relief, because sometimes I feel really hard to work, 
to study, and to learn how to get used to American things. So, it’s kind of relief. It’s kind of growth” 
(personal communication, August 10, 2020). However, writing these personal experiences and 
emotions in English poems requires her constant translingual practices as a bilingual writer. In her 
classes, she also teaches poetry to help students from different backgrounds express themselves 
and have conversations in an aesthetic way to embrace and develop students’ translanguaging, 
multilingual skills, and identities. She thinks to write bilingual poems and to teach students to be 
creative writers disrupts both rigid language standards set by monolingual native speakers in the 
U.S. as well as rigid teacher-centered classroom culture from China. Poetry becomes a hybrid 
space between two countries and two cultures.  
 
Disrupting Problematic Standards of Nativeness and Empowerment  
The tension between Meili and another English-native bilingual peers in the poetry class also 
displays the dichotomy of nativeness and non-nativeness, although the peer herself is bilingual as 
well. However, since Meili chose to keep her non-native voice in her poems, her word choices and 
language use as a bilingual poet questions and challenges the standards set by English native 
speakers, which is not flexible to bilingual speakers in the U.S. in the process of meaning making. 
Confronting this tension is not an easy process for Meili, because she regarded experienced English 
native peers as role models in the field when she entered the program. Therefore, the huge 
transition from respecting to challenging shows the empowerment assisted by poetry in disrupting 
the problematic binary and standard by English native speakers, both monolingual and bilingual 
English-L1 native speakers. After this epiphany, Meili found a sense of self-agency in her poems 
as an emergent bilingual teacher poet who has potential to make changes in the field. Through the 
artistic approach, she found a way to push back the boundary of defining qualified and skilled 
teacher in the field and bring in more justice in the program and field for other pre-service or in-
service bilingual/multilingual and international teachers. 
 This case study with Meili further proves Dewey’s (1934/2005) theory of art as experience 
that reshapes people when people carry challenging moments in their life into arts-based 
approaches to achieve self-development and growth. Through poetry, Meili re-experienced and 
mediated the hardships she has been through in the U.S. as an international bilingual speaker in 
her program and her job. The process of creating artworks empowered her bilingual voice and 
agency as a graduate student and novice teacher. Most importantly, this transformation gives her 
confidence and hope in her future career, believing that she can bring positive learning experience 
to her students as a bilingual teacher-poet. Her creative poem writing offers her resources to 
negotiate, reconstruct, and imagine the desired identity she wants to shape as a teacher.  
 



46 GATESOL in Action Journal 30(1)  
 
Conclusion 
This study testifies the troublesome concept of nativeness and non-nativeness that many educators 
still hold in the field of TESOL and WLE. The negative judgement regarding non-native 
bilingual/multilingual teacher candidates as deficient and inferior better illustrates the importance 
of more arts-based approaches in teacher education for social justice and the embrace of 
bilingualism/multilingualism. Meanwhile, it is also an urgent necessity to find effective solutions 
from art to help international bilingual/multilingual students adjust to the new environment in the 
new host country during and after the pandemic. 
 This analysis also showcases benefits of arts-based educational research in future arts-
based research to expand educators’ understanding and knowledge of the field, teaching, and 
learning (Mulvihill & Swaminathan, 2019). Future studies could also use the approach of different 
kinds of art to explore the affordance of art in TESOL programs for social justice and meaningful 
changes.  
 This case study also has some limitations. Although Meili’s poems and reflections consist 
of many collective experiences of Chinese students, future studies on the same topic should recruit 
more participants to further explore the collective and individual experiences of Chinese and other 
international students in the TESOL and WLE programs in the U.S. The final impact of COVID-
19 on international and multilingual students deserves continuous attention in future research. 
 
 
 
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______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
Received: August 15, 2020 | Accepted: September 30, 2020 | Published: October 29, 2020 

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