Roberto Germán [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Our Classroom. In this space, we talk about education, which is inclusive of, but not limited to what happens in schools. Education is taking place whenever and wherever we are willing to learn. I am your host, Roberto German, and our classroom is officially in session.
Roberto Germán [00:00:29]:
Welcome back to Our Classroom. Happy to be here with you all. And I am joined by Lorena, the one and only. Oh, my. Here we go. Ready, folks? Last episode, told you Lorena was a little long winded. And, you know, we just. It took us a while to get to around to the questions I had laid out, so broke this up into a series.
Roberto Germán [00:00:59]:
Whatever. You're welcome, everybody. So, multilingual speakers in the US, part two. You ready? I guess. Let's do this. In what ways do you believe multilingual speakers, particularly students of color, are undervalued in the current education system? And how can this perception be shifted? So, again, this is a big question and a big topic. Oh, but I see yourself. I'm gonna do my best setting a tone here.
Lorena Germán [00:01:37]:
I'm gonna do my best to be succinct. So in what ways do I believe that this particular group of students of color who are multilingual speakers are undervalued? Well, we see that in policy most concretely. So, for example, in states and districts where we see that there is not enough support for their welcoming, for their success, for their transition out of, for example, you know, ESL courses or programs, when they can easily, historically and systematically fall through the cracks, we see that that is a lack of valuing them and their participation and even their success. Right. And so those are some of. That's a simple way to answer that. But I guess the layer that I want to add is that this is not a new thing. Right.
Lorena Germán [00:02:39]:
Like, I don't know if we talked about this in the. In the other episode, because it's been a minute, but it was a week ago. I forgot. I forgot what we discussed in my world. It's been a minute. But what I just want to highlight is that this is not new. The lack of support of welcoming folks into our schools and into our districts and into our educational system that are not your typical mono English speaking kid. We've always had a problem as a nation welcoming folks into our district.
Lorena Germán [00:03:18]:
What does that warm welcome look like? Well, I think being proactive versus reactive. So if you're in a district where, you know, you have a big multicultural community, you know, having positions in place already as a district. Right. Being proactive and so thinking through, like, okay, well, if we're gonna have this event, then we need to have translation and or we need to have translated materials. Oh, I'm a school. Okay. Do we have someone in the building that speaks Spanish who maybe is just our day to day interpreter, instead of making, you know, your one spanish speaker teacher be your translator, which is an extra job. And so those are some of the ways that you can welcome families.
Lorena Germán [00:04:00]:
And then when it comes to students, you know, like, we were just serving at a school this week here in Tampa, and I really appreciate it throughout the entire campus, seeing signs of labels of things in both languages. So, for example, it would say door and underneath it, Puerta. And so that, to me, is like, oh, it feels like as a school, we are all learning both languages. We are all here to immerse ourselves in the fact that we are possibly a bilingual school, or at least we have a bilingual population. And so how to make it welcoming for, in that case, that you're saying that's a school that has a significant spanish speaking population, but in other schools, they might have multiple groups, multiple languages. And so that should be reflected. Also, sometimes you have schools that are, all right, they're going to highlight one language, typically Spanish, but you might have other sizable populations, ethnic populations, and diversity of languages. And that should not be ignored.
Lorena Germán [00:05:10]:
Right. They should be finding ways to make things accessible and amplify the other languages that are represented in your school community. Right. So it's about, you know, embracing these young people and not in their languages and their communities, because sometimes that looks like, oh, yeah, I accept them. I love it. They can speak it in the hallway, no problem. But there isn't an approach to actually honoring, celebrating, and sustaining these languages and cultures in a way that feels authentic to the kids and to their community, their parents, or whatever, their caregivers. Well, let's continue to build off of this.
Lorena Germán [00:05:56]:
How can educators effectively celebrate, affirm, and sustain bilingualism and students mother tongues within the classroom environment? Right. So that's a good question. Well, what would you say? I mean, you. I mean, I'm gonna answer it, too, but I'm wondering, from your kind of administrative side, what do you think are some ways to sustain bilingualism? Well, I think I'd be looking at bringing students and families to the table to hear from them. I'm big on collecting data and both quantitative and qualitative and using that to inform some next steps. But to me, it's also about empowering the different stakeholders, empowering families, empowering students. Sometimes we come up with stuff in schools without even truly giving thought or voice to the people it affects the most. So I would want to do some type of survey and get, and collect data, collect responses again from those impacted the most to get a sense of, like, all right, you know, what is it that you need? What would be to your benefit? How can we enhance the learning experience here? How can we enhance your experience as a member of this community? What would make you feel like you're celebrated, affirmed? What would make you feel like we're sustaining bilingualism and your mother tongue within the classroom environment? I mean, I have some ideas and some conclusions I would draw based on my understanding and prior experience in various school settings, but I would still try to suspend my assumptions and would also.
Roberto Germán [00:08:02]:
Right. You know, because I can. It's not like I would be abandoning my ideas. I think my ideas are good, but I would start by, you know, trying to hear from folks first. To me, that's a, that's a significant step in the process. That's good. Um, I think in the classroom, it's hard sometimes to give these answers because what, what works for one person in one setting, right, with one group of kids in this one community is not necessarily going to work the same in other places. But generally speaking, I think having, you know, books that reflect bilingualism in the classroom is always good.
Lorena Germán [00:08:44]:
Making sure that we actually incorporate other languages when we teach. So, like, you don't have to know all the languages, but you can literally have, like, a banner of all the ways to say hello up in your classroom. And so that's one of the ways to use the physical space to celebrate bilingualism. You know, there's opportunities to share, you know, what's a word in another language that, you know, and then kind of posting that, maybe having an international word wall or, like, a bilingual word, I don't know, a languages word wall, something that shows that you are ready to celebrate and that you enjoy bilingualism and that it's a good thing and that you encourage it, too. That's another way to think of this idea of sustaining, is to encourage, is to promote, is to nurture. Right. And so those are some of the simple ways I could think of. I mean, I guess I could keep thinking, you know, like, across content areas, but that might.
Lorena Germán [00:09:47]:
Maybe that's too much. But one of the things that I'm, I'm thinking of is also the ways that we can incorporate it into curriculum and daily practice. Like, we have ways to incorporate all this stuff in so many, like, in so many different strategies and in so many different methods with what we do on a daily basis, you know, so I feel like I can't go into all of that. Cause that's too much. But, you know, I do think that we lack this. And what I will add is that I see this more often, this work of celebrating bilingualism and even some of the suggestions that I just made, I see more often in, like, elementary. And again, something just happens when we get to middle and high school. It's like seriousness takes over.
Lorena Germán [00:10:37]:
Right. This idea of kids gotta, this is it. It's time to get for real now, because now you gotta be successful in these very narrow ways. And so we stop celebrating all the things that either make us, you know, kind of who we are and who we become and everything that seems like fun and obviously I'm generalizing, but a lot of things that seem like fun and entertaining, we start to pull away and step away from instead exchanging it for what we think is rigor and seriousness and formalities. And I think bilingualism is absolutely one of those things. Yeah. I would say that as a former school leader, I was an administrator on all the levels pre kicked three through 12th grade. But thinking about my experience leading in middle and high school setting, I always found it helpful to spend time in the school level, grade levels that were, you know, below wherever I was serving.
Roberto Germán [00:11:43]:
So when I was serving on the high school level, it was helpful for me to spend time in the middle school environment and elementary when I was serving the middle schools, helpful to spare spend time in an elementary environment. Why do I mention that? Because listening to you say, like, oh, you see this particularly in the elementary level, and then to some extent, it kind of gets lost. There's a transition to middle and high school, and I think it's great when folks that teach middle and high school are able to spend time in these other environments and not lose touch with what's going on. But there's also things that you could learn from there that you could draw from, and it can inspire something that you could utilize in your own setting and vice versa, you know, loved it when, you know, like when I was middle school principal in Texas, you know, the elementary teachers from the lower campus sometimes come, you know, I appreciated when they were coming to see what's going on, what we're doing on the middle school level, because they could learn from us, they could draw from us, but it could also help them to better prepare their students to transition to the middle school environment so we could all learn from each other, and we should. And we should learn from each other. And talk about learning from each other and building off of one another. I think, yes, there's plenty of things in textured teaching that support what we're talking about as it relates to this particular topic of multilingual speakers in the US. And we know that texture teaching peers well with a number of different texts, including Enko Munidad lessons for centering the voices and experiences of bilingual Latinx students and shout out to the authors who are also our people.
Roberto Germán [00:13:34]:
And Luz. Carla Espana. Luz. Love the text. Beautiful work. And their book is really useful and resourceful to what we're talking about here because it brings bilingual Latinx students perspectives to the center of our classrooms and offers classroom ready lessons that amplify the various stories and identities of Latinx Latino Latina Latin A. I know people are using all types of terms, so I'm saying it all so y'all don't come to my neck. But this particular group, right? And they're talking about, like, you know, spanish speaking children in this case.
Lorena Germán [00:14:22]:
But the lessons apply for these other groups, right? You could take the concepts that are being taught in this book in Comunidad by doctor Carla Espana and Doctor Lucia Herrera and apply it to other groups that might make up your school population. Yeah. Yeah. That book is great. I often recommend it. I think what I appreciate about it, too, is that they are very hands on with it, and I think that's always important, right? To be able to say, hey, here's an idea, here's the concept, but here's how you're going to bring it to life. And so that book does a really good job of offering us strategies and mixed also with anecdotes of their lives and how things have worked for them and where even their research comes from, how it's very much stemming from their own lived experiences. So these are not two folks sitting in an ivy tower somewhere pontificating on what the immigrant experience might be like or what it's like to be, you know, a latina immigrant from a country in Latin America, right? But like, they've lived it.
Lorena Germán [00:15:32]:
They've taught these, these particular groups of kids as well. And they can speak to the theory, they can speak to the concepts, and they can build, you know, concrete ideas for us. So there you have it, folks. This was part two. Appreciate y'all tuning in. Next week will conclude this series. Multilingual speakers in the US with part three, so be ready for that. And again, in addition to textured teaching, if you don't have a copy of encomunidad lessons for centering the voices and experiences of bilingual Latinx students by Doctor Carlos Banyan Luz Delira.
Lorena Germán [00:16:15]:
Make sure you get a copy. It's wrap. Yay.
Roberto Germán [00:16:21]:
As always, your engagement in our classroom is greatly appreciated. Be sure to subscribe, rate the show, and write a review. Finally, for resources to help you understand the intersection of race, bias, education, and society, go to multiculturalclassroom.com. Peace and love from your host, Roberto.
