Rodriguez, Collier; Videos Bi/Multi-Lingual

Aria by Richard Rodriguez, 2004

" It would have pleased me to hear my teachers address me in Spanish when I entered a room. I would have felt much less afraid...I would have trusted them". 

As a young child, Rodriguez 'wrongly imagined that English was an intrinsically public language and Spanish was an intrinsically private language'. He went on to recall how he noted the difference between classroom language and the language at home. 

Rodriguez recalls a home visit from his teachers in which the teachers suggested to his parents that it would be better to  have the children practice English at home.  As Rodriguez and his siblings spoke more English at home among themselves and with his parents, he began to notice that there was less communication and conversation between the children and parents.  

Once Rodriguez "confidently spoke in English at school, the calming assurance that I belonged in public had taken root".  As he gained the feelings of being an American citizen, it cam at a cost.  That cost was the closeness of home.  He noted that as the children learned more English, the private, the conversations of home, became less. 

He concludes the article with this: "...while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into a public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality". 

This article tugged at my heart.  In an effort that Rodriguez succeed, his teachers impressed on his parents that he should practice/speak English at home. In suggesting this to the parents, they gave the parents that the L1 should not have been valued in the pursuit of their child(ren) succeeding in school.  That their private (home) language should be spoken less in order that English could be mastered.   

Teaching Multilingual Children by Virginia Collier, 2004 

"The key is the true appreciation of the different linguistic and cultural values that students bring to my classroom".   There are seven guidelines put forth by Collier to teaching English to L2 learners.                                                                                      

Of the seven, I would like to focus on the third guideline that she puts forth.          Collier states, "Don't teach a second language in a way that challenges or seeks to eliminate the L1".  The most important goal is to help students master the                 language used in formal schooling, academic language proficiency, and to give   

students the language tools to use in all contexts in the outside world".   This is where Rodriguez's teachers did a huge disservice to him and his family.   

In a bilingual classroom, bilingual pedagogy research indicates that teachers should ' clearly separate the two languages of instruction'.   In a bilingual classroom, code-switching should not be forbidden.  In addition, when children are learning an L2, translanguaging should be recognized as a tool students are using to make sense of the L2.  In a bi-lingual classroom, it is imperative to make the 'teaching of an L2 as well as the learning as culturally relevant as possible for students'. 

The above example is what should not be hanging in a bilingual, multi-lingual, or ELL classroom!

Videos:

Number 1:
Teaching Bilingual Even If You Are Not One
Students should not be punished for using words in their L1 while learning an L2. 
Translanguaging is critical and intentional when learning an L2.  It also shows the ability to attach meaning in one language to meaning in another language. 

Number 2:
Knowing your students:
Empathy: even if you can not speak the language of your students, you must still build a relationship with the. By observing body language, facial expressions, and modifying work.  In addition, create scaffolds using cues that go beyond language.

Number 3:
Advocate for bilingual students
Learn about the languages of your students
Find resources that celebrate bilingualism
As the teacher, allow yourself to become a co-learner.  In this, your students can teach you some words or phrases in their L1 as they are learning an L2 from you.  
The culture of inclusion is a long term goal of the emergent bilingual.

Going back to the article, Aria by Richard Rodriguez, he felt that his L1, was a language to be spoken in private; in public, to be accepted, he had the sense he had to master the language that was public, English.  In mastering academic and conversational English, while he gained a public identity, he lost his private closeness within his family relationships, especially with his L1 speaking parents. 

I wonder how different his relationships would have been within his family had Rodriguez's teachers encouraged the use of both languages in the home? I wonder, if when he used the tools of code-switching and translanguaging, if his private, home conversations would have been enhanced rather than become less frequent?

https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137385758        

Hi Everyone, 

This is my second attempt at this post.  I tried to delete an image from my original post and somehow deleted the entire post.  After spending an hour or so trying to recover the original post, I gave up and created a new one.  I hope it makes sense and I apologize for it being late to post.

I will revisit this post tomorrow.  I hope it makes sense!

See you Wednesday!

Maria