In this episode we talk to Dr. Julio Torres, professor of Spanish at UC Irvine and specialist in bilingual education and instructed heritage language acquisition. Dr. Torres, who himself grew up bilingual between Puerto Rico and the mainland US, reflects on the language ideologies he encountered in his different Spanish and English classes and how they shaped how he viewed his own multilingualism. He now trains future teachers in critical language awareness and hopes to empower future generations of bilingual children and their parents to advocate for their language varieties and educational needs. He also gives parents advice on what to expect when their child takes a class in their home language and how to work with the teacher in productive ways.