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Book Cover for: Latina Pedagogies of Care: How Cariño Can Give Tired Teachers Power and Hope, Ale Babino

Latina Pedagogies of Care: How Cariño Can Give Tired Teachers Power and Hope

Ale Babino

Despite decades of educational reform, many teachers and students still remain under-resourced and underserved-academically, materially, and spiritually. In this important new book, award-winning educators Ale Babino and Rocío Almanza show how teachers can reclaim their humanity in a system that oscillates between toxic positivity and cynical despair with Latina Pedagagogies of Care, or teaching with cariño.

Rooted in Latina/Chicana feminist wisdom, this book introduces seven liberatory principles that re-center teaching as an act of communal healing and transformative justice. With stories, dichos, and time-tested strategies, Babino and Almanza invite readers to name the pain of the herida abierta--the open wound of educational harms--and respond with care that re-humanizes and re-tools both students and their teachers. They offer actionable strategies you can try in your own classroom and in community connected to Latines' voices and experiences so often sidelined in educational theory and practice.

Educators, teacher educators, and scholars alike will benefit from this book's tender witness, personal testimony, and pedagogical tools. The authors join readers on their path toward a more wholehearted and honest teaching practice for themselves and the students they serve.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Routledge
  • Publish Date: Apr 15th, 2026
  • Pages: 328
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 0.00in - 0.00in - 0.00in - 0.00lb
  • EAN: 9781032871202
  • Categories: Multicultural EducationInclusive EducationTeaching - General

About the Author

Alexandra (Ale) Babino, Ph.D., is, above all, a maestra. For over twenty years, she has worked alongside bilingual students, families, and communities with the expressed purpose to nurture their biliteracies, identities, and agency with cariño. She currently serves as an Associate Professor as part of the Multilingual and Multicultural Studies (MMS) program at Texas Woman's University. Across roles, her work invites educators to cultivate spaces where cariño and empowerment grow together--fostering both individual and collective flourishing.

Rocío Almanza, Ed.D. is a kindergarten teacher and adjunct professor at Texas Woman's University. Over the past 24 years, she has received multiple awards for her teaching of students and district teachers. Her personal experience as a sequential bilingual and twice immigrant allows her to embrace the dualities of her students and colleagues. Rocío's students are her cariños which is an echo of her abuelita's words and the legacy that lives through her.

Praise for this book

"Latina Pedagogies of Care is the book our hearts and minds have been waiting for. Rooted in lived experiences of Latinas, testimonio, and ancestral wisdom, it offers a soulful yet incisive response to the deep wounds in our education system. With cariño as both method and meaning, this work dares to name the pain, bear witness to our communities, and offer strategies to rehumanize teaching from the inside out. It's not just a pedagogy--it's a lifeline for tired educators who refuse to give up on their students, their spirits, or themselves. I can't think of a more timely or vital offering for our field--and for our collective healing and liberation."

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D., Professor in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring

"The book Latina Pedagogies of Care is timely and relevant in today's pressure cooker classrooms where high-stakes assessment where teachers who are expected to do more with less has taken its toll on teachers as well as children. Chronic teacher burn-out and how to combat it has become a central issue for schools and districts. This book is beautifully and eloquently written from deep in los almas (the souls) of its two authors. It is rooted in the emotional issues that surround being a teacher who is Latina, and expected to take care of the academic, and social needs of children while rarely being advised to take care of herself. With emotion at its core, the book then generates a pedagogy about teaching (bi)literacy, but more importantly about how a pedagogy of cariño (care and nurturing) can help to re-energize and nurture the resolve in tired maestras (teachers) who are so critical to the future of our education system."

Kathy Escamilla, Professor Emeritus, University of Colorado, Boulder

"Through vivid vignettes, honest testimonios, and rich attention to the legacies of Latina/Chicana feminists, Rocio y Ale invite their readers--especially overworked and tired teachers--on a journey of self-reflection, self-discovery, and healing. Their ground-breaking, genre-crossing, translanguaging exploration of their decades of lived classroom experiences as bilingual maestras illuminates how educators can cultivate the wisdom and strength necessary to sustain their bodymindspirits and keep on keeping on in the beautiful struggle to shape a healthier, more caring, and more just world. In the dark and dangerous times we find ourselves today, this book is the medicine we need to reclaim and remember our collective humanity."

Marnie Curry, Ph.D., Author of Authentic Cariño: Transformative Schooling for Latinx Youth

"The book Latina Pedagogies of Care: How Cariño Can Give Tired Teachers Power and Hope beautifully weaves a much-needed net of support for our dedicated bilingual teachers whose strong commitment and advocacy for their students continuously face dehumanizing approaches and deficit orientations in schooling systems. When frustration and discouragement leads the way toward depletion and exhaustion, the caring nurturing of teachers' bodymindspirit in means that honors our authentic identities, and ways of being and knowing is primordial. This book brings together pillars of cariño to hold and sustain bilingual educators' experiences and pedagogies, and cultivate the power of community and healing strengths; its content is a beautiful soothing whisper of cariño and love with a mighty embrace and unity for la lucha that we walk on together."

Adriana Álvarez, Associate Professor at University of Colorado-Denver

"Healing, humanizing, and hopeful, this book is a form of therapy in itself. The authors name the feelings at our core and identify practical, hopeful, collaborative ways to overcome the exhaustion and burnout inherent in teaching. Warm personal stories move us toward collective action, toward our own power, toward becoming an "empowered guerrera." Practical strategies support the reader to thrive while continuing to engage in the ongoing struggle. This book is timely and important; anyone and everyone would benefit from reading it!"

Allison Briceño, Ed.D., Professor and Chair, Department of Teacher Education, SJSU

In education, we often focus on what students need, however, Dras. Babino y Almanza have called attention to the importance for Latina educators, across educational settings, to first care for themselves, in order to care for the needs of their students. In this timely book, the authors offer Latina Pedagogies of Care to Latina teachers to center their own well-being alongside collective healing. The teaching profession is already fraught with challenges and obstacles, such as high-stakes testing, that often lead to teacher burnout. However, for Latina educators, the historical sociocultural conditions and struggles of Latine communities in the U.S. amplifies the burnout experience. This book affirms the Latina teacher experience and provides a guiding path towards sustaining and thriving praxis.

Ganiva Reyes, Associate Professor and Chair at Miami University y Racheal Banda, Assistant Professor and Literacy & Language Graduate Coordinator at Miami University

Written in an engaging style that radiates warmth and enthusiasm, this book is a joy to read--clear, inviting, and accessible even to the most exhausted educators. The authors share their cariño with us by making complex ideas feel like a conversation with trusted colleagues who truly get it.

Laura Chávez-Moreno, Assistant Professor at University of California-Los Angeles, and author of How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America

"Latina Pedagogies of Care: How Cariño Can Give Tired Teachers Power and Hope seeks to restore the bodymindspirit of educators. Drawing on the concept of cariño, Babino and Almanza name the challenges teachers face, acknowledge their experiences, and offer strategies for collective healing. Nos recuerdan que para sanar, tenemos que seguir pa'lante. Each chapter provides heartfelt wisdom and practical tools to rehumanize education and sustain teachers in their vital work. A timely contribution to conversations about resilience in education, this book is a call to care, connect, and move forward--together."

Soria E. Colomer, Associate Professor at Oregon State University