Dr. Sergio Loza, professor and Director of the Spanish heritage program at the University of Oregon, discusses his experiences growing up in Arizona in the late 90s and early 2000s when English-only and other anti-immigrant legislation was being passed. He describes how he went from hating school, doubting his abilities, and envying his white classmates to valuing his bilingualism, revering his community, and leveraging his talents to improve the educational experience of future generations. Dr. Loza attributes some of this shift to important mentors, teachers, classmates, family members and to his development of Critical Language Awareness. He recommends the following readings for those wishing to understand the power of language ideologies, especially in educational settings: Glenn Martínez (2003) https://brill.com/view/journals/hlj/1/1/article-p44_5.xml Jennifer Leeman (2005) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2005.tb02451.x Jennifer Leeman (2012) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280156348_Investigating_Language_Ideologies_in_Spanish_as_a_Heritage_Language Dr. Loza’s co-authored book with Dr. Sara Beaudrie is available here: https://www.routledge.com/Heritage-Language-Program-Direction-Research-into-Practice/Beaudrie-Loza/p/book/9781032190013 Note: Dr. Loza mentions the correction of the form haiga by some of his Spanish teachers. This form is an equivalent of haya from other Spanish varieties and has existed in parallel with haya since at least the Middle Ages across the Spanish-speaking world. The /g/ appeared in this form via a process similar to the one that led to the appearance of a /g/ in forms like vengo or traigo. Given that it frequently appears in rural varieties of Spanish, it is often stigmatized in a fashion similar to English ain’t.