This week I attempted to go to Teen Coalition, but apparently instead of being able to go from 5-7 they want us to go from 3-5. Oops! 3-5 is going to be a significant difficulty for me, as I'm normally in school until 3:15. I guess going from 3:30-5:00 would be acceptable (or that's what Lola said anyway) but it's still a stretch. I was sort of bummed that I didn't get to work with the LCHC teens. Next month, I suppose, once all the confusion has cleared up.
In the blogs I noticed that a lot of people were writing about the Model Minority book, however... I'm going to focus on the Affirming Diversity book. I read a couple really interesting stories from immigrant students and children of immigrants, and I'd like to share my thoughts on those:
I read about Liane, the Eurasian girl with a French-Polish father and Chinese mother, and the support that was received from her school in her learning Chinese both in school and through her mother, and how that support helped her feel closer to her mom and her heritage. I thought it was very cool that her school offered her home language, but I had to think about the reality that in public school settings, at least in Massachusetts, that there are very few schools who offer or are capable of offering a language like Chinese or other languages that aren't English or classes that are ESL/ELL.
I do know that there are some schools in Connecticut that spend a week speaking and doing work in English and then the next week will be in Spanish. They zone the students dependent on whether they feel that would be helpful for them (i.e. my half brother goes to an English only speaking school because he does not speak Spanish but some of my mom's neighbors go to one of the English/Spanish speaking schools.
I also read about Manuel, who was from cape verde, and how Massachusetts had to scramble to cater to the Cape Verdean population. While I do think it is nice to have classes in Crioulu, and other languages to cater to every student, I think it would be just as productive to have ESL classes that have people schooled in these different languages to better serve immigrants in learning the predominant language of the United States. Not to discredit other languages, and perhaps I'm thinking of it backwards and it should be the English speaking population learning more of these other languages, but I think it would be helpful to help the students gain English language skills, rather than have classes that function under those foreign languages, which teach these academic skills but not the English language skills that they would need to excel in American Society as a whole.
My mother and I were having a conversation about this very topic as she was explaining how the English/Spanish speaking schools in New Britain, CT work. All I kept thinking was, "But how are they improving their English language skills with such a disjointed method of teaching? Wouldn't they forget the English skills in that week they're speaking entirely Spanish?" I thought about the schools I'm teaching in and how the students are getting ESL classes and it's an important thing to remind the Hispanic students to speak in English "We speak in English in __________ Class, boys and girls," and how those students even still struggle with the language skills they need to excel in the English speaking school. If we aren't enforcing constant practice of those language skills, how are they to improve them?
I really like your point of view and I have to agree. If these students are going to be required to take english classes in later years like in high school and college then how can they be expected to do well if they lack those skills. It is great that there are programs that will teach in their native language but that should just be temporary while they learn english. This is the idea behind the ESL programs and they have been successful with transitioning many students into regular classes. Also I would imagine that these students have a much greater understanding of english. It is sad that in our country there are fewer people that are multi lingual but I think that is beside the point when discussing schooling for immigrant children. It would be great if more people could speak their language but no matter what they need to have a certain proficiency in english to do well at schools in the United States.
ReplyDeleteI liked your article and understand what you mean when you talk about disjointed learning. But another example that might help you understand why that system works is the elementary school where I went. My hometown is very small and thus never offered anything but French and Spanish. But in Elementary school there was nothing but a cursory introduction into the language and culture of either language. And because of this I learned very little until middle school where we had more formal classes and could pick a language to "specialize" in. I feel like if I had the opportunity to be in a classroom like the one in CT, I would be able to speak both languages fluently and know the content, but because of how little early education I received it would be much harder for me to pick up a language.
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