"Aria" & "Teaching Multilingual Children"

 

Richard Rodriquez’s deeply personal account “Aria” about learning English as a young Spanish-speaking child enabled this English-only speaker to empathize with the plight of families living in America with a home language other than English. Rodriquez recounts a turning point at age seven, after teachers who were also nuns visited his home to urge his parents to speak English in the home so that he and his siblings would fare better academically. His parents agreed, and Rodriquez recalled, “That day, I moved very far from the disadvantaged child I had been only days earlier. The belief, the calming assurance that I belonged in public, had at last taken hold.” (p. 36) As the young Rodriquez began to speak more and more English, distance grew between his parents and the children: “No longer so close; no longer bound tight by the pleasing and troubling knowledge of our public separateness.” (p. 36) Rodriquez seems to find the trade off worth it, arguing: “Bilingual educators… do not seem to realize that there are two ways a person is individualized…. [W]hile one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality.” (p. 38-39) I found this contrast between public individuality and private individuality pretty fascinating. On the one hand, private individuality seems to me more at the heart of a person’s soul – who we are when we are most free, whereas public individuality seems necessary for survival in human society.

Virginia Collier’s not so personal essay “Teaching Multilingual Children” comprehensively advocates for seven guidelines for English language acquisition, prefacing this by saying, “The key is the true appreciation of the different linguistic and cultural values that students bring into the classroom.” (p. 223)

Collier’s guidelines contrast with the method Rodriquez credits with his pursuit of mastering English. She discourages: the perception that a teacher’s duty is to “correct deficiencies"; eliminating the first language; and forbidding “code switching,” (which I originally took to mean hiding aspects of one’s personality or speech and embellishing other aspects to assimilate to whatever group, but in this case code switching describes alternating or blending words from multiple languages within a sentence while speaking). Collier rather encourages: awareness that building language skills in a child’s first language will translate to learning English; using “caregiver speech” (p. 224), (which I immediately recognized as true to how I speak to my children); teaching English and “home language together with an appreciation of dialect differences to create an environment of language recognition in the classroom” (p. 227); and tailoring curriculum specifically to the English language learner, a technique backed up by research showing that the “most successful long-term academic achievement occurs where the student’s primary language is the initial language of literacy.” (p. 233)

Collier describes the three major bilingual teaching models as: transitional, maintenance, and two-way enrichment, remarking that a school system will choose its model based on philosophical and political goals. (p. 228) Collier acknowledges the pressure of unhelpful policies, pressure on teachers to speed up the process, and expectations that, “Teachers must be creative and flexible, serve as a catalyst for discovery as students learn to operate effectively in their multiple worlds, be able to mediate and resolve intercultural conflicts, keep students on task, and serve as a support base.” (p. 223) While this sounds like a tall order, Collier reminds us of the “enriching experience” of teaching as being “rewarding in ways that many other jobs can never be. You have the chance to interact daily with live, growing, thinking, maturing human beings.” (p. 223)

To balance the challenges of bilingual teaching with its rewards, it sounds to me like there is zero room for what Ken Williams warns about in Ruthless Equity: “complacency… the enemy to equity in education… a willful falling short of goal and purpose.”

These readings have me reflecting on my desire to learn Spanish, which leads right to my fear of failing to learn Spanish. It seems so daunting. I wish I had an opportunity to study Spanish in school, and I fervently hope my children will become fluent in Spanish (and teach me, or we'll learn together?) by taking courses in the Providence public school system. I attended the PPSD school choice fair where I spoke with multiple principals of “dual language” schools to consider opportunities for my son to be immersed in Spanish. It turned out the programs weren’t really designed for English speakers, and we weren’t encouraged (nor explicitly discouraged) to choose those schools. I’m left hoping my kids will be able to take Spanish classes by middle school, but I worry that it will be more difficult to learn a new language the older they get, and they/we will be missing out on opportunities to communicate with our community members.

I had an experience last year that left me feeling like I needed to boost my skills to open new doors in my career. I’d been reading local community job listings every day for years to make sure I knew what opportunities were out there; I knew that having a Masters Degree or being bilingual in Spanish would be the two most advantageous lines to add to my resume. When I was deciding whether to come back to RIC, I asked my would-be advisor if RIC offered an introductory course for professionals and it sounded like the possibility existed. I enrolled, and the advisor was looking into whether a Spanish class could be cross-listed for graduate students, and after some back and forth, long story short, it wasn’t possible, at least for me. Why isn’t RIC, a “Hispanic serving institution,” more actively encouraging professionals to acquire Spanish language skills? I understand that their intention is to serve Latinos and Spanish-speaking students, but they will also benefit from their classmates, colleagues, and neighbors being better able to communicate with them, and it would foster social cohesion. Maybe the reason is simply that there isn't demand for such a course or courses. I want to be able to speak with and provide services for as many of my neighbors and community members as possible. I think Spanish courses that especially helped people learn Spanish from a customer service perspective would be so helpful. I’m really enjoying being back in school, and it felt important for me to be in a classroom again, but part of me wonders if I’d be better served by spending these many, many hours on Duo Lingo for a tiny fraction of the cost of an M.A. Ah, well, no tener remordimientos!