Tee McDougal: From Bilingual Ranch Kid to Multilingual, International Educator!

When we suggested we pin the word “cowboy” to Tee McDougal’s boyhood identity, we were politely redirected to the term “farm and ranch kid.” But what an understated description! As a young boy and on into high school, he was milking cows, raising hogs, cultivating fields, bailing and bucking hay, butchering beef, digging irrigation ditches, stomping cotton in the hopper, erecting and repairing fences, and roping, branding, dehorning, and castrating calves and other farm animals, among other chores. The path he took to becoming a multilingual educator began with interactions with farm hands from Mexico. It continued through a 10-year career in the Native American jewelry industry, a Peace Corps assignment in Paraguay, and a 20-year career as a Spanish-English dual-language elementary school teacher in Albuquerque. And his career didn’t stop there. Listen and enjoy the scholastic and extra scholastic adventures of this former farm and ranch kid from southern New Mexico. We also discuss cognates, false cognates, and borrowed words.