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 Germán, and Our Classroom is officially in session.
Roberto Germán [00:00:28]:
Welcome back to Our Classroom. Today I'm joined by Elise Genao, experienced educator and leader who has served as a preschool teacher. By the way, she's also the wife of somebody I grew up with, Carlos Genao. All right. And we didn't learn this until recently. Oh, the world is so small. Oh my goodness. So I'm excited because there's this familiar connection.
Roberto Germán [00:00:53]:
I'm thinking about Carlos, but I'm here to learn about Elise. Instructional coach, education manager, school administrator, and throughout her career has championed multilingual learners in predominantly Latino communities. We've had a plethora of folks who have that lens, have that background, and yet, you know, Elise has been recognized with several leadership and diversity awards and studied the renowned Reggio Emilia approach. So that's interesting, especially for somebody who has some Montessori background. Right, that there's, there's some synergy there. She has graduate degrees in early childhood education and educational leadership, along with bilingual and ESL endorsements, and has collaborated with NIEER for more than 15 years. And most importantly, she's the wife and proud mother of 3 daughters. Elise, welcome to our classroom.
Elise Genao [00:01:54]:
Thank you. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for the invite.
Roberto Germán [00:01:58]:
Yes. Yes. Well, you know, I've been wanting to get you on for a minute and was finding the right opportunity to do so. And when I learned a bit about your work, I said, you know what, I really would benefit from hearing and learning about translanguaging, and especially as it relates to the early childhood realm. You know, that's not necessarily an area in which I spend too, too much time, but, you know, I have some experience in early childhood, so it's good to stay fresh with what's happening in that particular realm. So let's jump in. What is translanguaging for those who are not aware, and why should early childhood educators care about it?
Elise Genao [00:02:50]:
So I thought about this question, and I think that we have to kind of understand the role that language plays in learning for young children, but really for all learners, before we jump into translanguaging and why it's important, because I think it'll answer itself. I don't know. When you hear the word, the word language, like, what do you define as language?
Roberto Germán [00:03:19]:
Communication, words, both spoken and written, you know, across a variety of people groups.
Elise Genao [00:03:32]:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it's all of those things. And I like, I like the definition of these 2 linguists, Bloch and Traeger, and they use more technical terms, but I'm going to put it in my own words, which is it's a collection of sounds with an agreed-upon meaning amongst a people group. So if this combination of sounds means, carries meaning, and it's understood by people in a specific community or geographic location, then it's language. And I like that definition because that brings value to all languages and all varieties of language. There is no one language is better than the other. So this idea that all languages have value.
Elise Genao [00:04:28]:
So I couple that with the idea, well, now we enter a classroom, and for early learners, for children in preschool, and I want to say Like from 0 to 8, you're in this window, this magical window of language learning. And so think of language as the pegs that you hang your ideas on. They are the— words are the pegs that you hang your learning on. That comes from Henry Ward Beecher, who was a theologian and a preacher, the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who— they were an abolitionist family.
Roberto Germán [00:05:04]:
I was just thinking, I'm like, huh, Beecher, where do I know that name from, Suralee? Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Elise Genao [00:05:11]:
So she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. And interesting fact, as I was preparing for this, I like— if I'm going to quote somebody, like, I want to know about them and what they stood for. So in— once he went to College of Amherst, Henry Ward Beecher, he graduates, he sets up a congregation in Brooklyn, and then as part of his abolitionist movement has reversed slave auctions. So has an enslaved person, gets permission from, you know, to have this enslaved person come and during the, during the church service tells their story, gives a sermon, passes a collection, and essentially the congregation buys that person's freedom.
Roberto Germán [00:05:59]:
Wow.
Roberto Germán [00:06:01]:
And so that is so powerful.
Elise Genao [00:06:04]:
And so, I like to use his quote because I do think— and I haven't read enough of his writings. He did write. I haven't read enough of his writings, but I believe there's a correlation between this idea of, like, language is what we hang our learning on and think about who reading was kept from. Like, there is social justice work around literacy and who had access to it and who didn't and all of that. That's another podcast.
Roberto Germán [00:06:31]:
Yeah.
Elise Genao [00:06:33]:
So if you think of language as these pegs, right, and the definition that I gave you before, that all language has value, there are also a lot of social theorists who think of language as currency or capital that give us access to, or, or this kind of like invisible merit in institutions like school, or, and conversely, within ethnic and social groups. There are languages— language is also like, there's like codes and performative gestures and markers that we do to be— to signify, like, belonging in a group or a particular community. So language is a carrier of culture. It's essential. It's the bedrock of all learning in every subject. So I want us, although translanguaging usually is where we think about it when we think of MLs, when we think about children who are learning a second language, But every learner is a language learner. The high schooler who's sitting in a physics class is learning language, hooking, hooking knowledge onto pegs. Um, a person in a, you know, a college, um, English class is doing the same thing.
Elise Genao [00:07:52]:
The first grader in a science class, the preschooler who's learning to label things for the first time, every learner is a language learner. So now that we're kind of coming from that understanding, translanguaging— and I'm going to use Ofelia García's definition in my own words. She's kind of like the godmother of translanguaging out of CUNY in New York. It is the ability to use your full language repertoire, all of the language you know and all of the languages that you know, to make meaning and to learn new things, to express yourself. So to make meaning and learn new things and to express yourself. You're using every— all of your pegs. You're using all of your pegs to learn new things. And then when you want to express yourself, you draw from that.
Elise Genao [00:08:43]:
So the reason it's important is because when we tell children in any grade level, whether it's preschool, Because very young children learn— babies, there's research that tells us that even infants know which languages are socially dominant. So when, when children feel like there's some pegs that are undervalued here, there are some pegs that I hold that I can't use here, we are limiting what they are able to understand and what we can learn from them, like their ability to, to express themselves to us. So that's what makes translanguaging so powerful, is that we are creating climates— the temperature in the classroom has to be such where the child feels like they can say, express, draw, write, label, brainstorm in all of the languages they know.
Roberto Germán [00:09:47]:
That's, that's great. That's a great breakdown. And I'm thinking about the— how'd you frame it? You were talking about the classroom and the temperature of the classroom is what you said. I'm thinking about how it is that we can empower students, but certainly the— we need educators, we need teachers to feel empowered first. And so I'm wondering, what are 2 to 3 practical strategies that any teacher could implement tomorrow, even if they only speak English?
Elise Genao [00:10:25]:
So the first thing that I thought of was, even if you're not— you don't have a linguistic match between yourself and the students, um, to, to, to, to think about how How can I allow children to think and process in any language and maybe share the final product in English? So at different grade levels, that looks differently. That might be a turn and talk in younger grades. That might be like discussing in a small group. That might be annotating a text, being able to annotate a text in any language. For young, young children, for preschoolers specifically, It's really bringing awareness to the fact that people, people speak multiple languages and that it's okay, even if I'm the teacher and I don't understand, to, to, to allow them to speak in those languages. The other— another strategy that I like for all teachers to model is vulnerability. So you create that kind of classroom environment where everyone is a language learner, even me, the teacher. When you're introducing something and you say to the children who are multilingual, how do you say— how do you— what do you call a highlighter? In English, it's a highlighter.
Elise Genao [00:11:47]:
Do you know the word? And what do you call this in your— who knows? And you try and fumble with the phonemes and fumble with the pronunciation to model what you're expecting that 3 or 4 or 10-year-old to do. So you're also creating this environment where mistakes are okay, where even I make mistakes, where we're correcting each other, helping each other with pronunciation and the meaning of words. So it's like the whole classroom becomes a place where language— languages are welcome and we're building on, adding to each other's language banks.
Roberto Germán [00:12:23]:
Yeah, I love that. One of our norms at Multicultural Classroom is to value vulnerability. And so when— whether we're working with adults and doing professional development or we're doing student-facing workshops, we always share that And so we try to set that as one of our norms. Like, hey, you know, we want you to feel that this space is one in which you can be vulnerable, you can make mistakes, you can learn from your failures. Right. And that's all we want to see. We want to see you learn. We want to see you grow.
Roberto Germán [00:12:54]:
We want to see you move forward. And in order to do that, you need to be willing to take those risks.
Roberto Germán [00:12:58]:
Mm-hmm.
Roberto Germán [00:13:04]:
the encouragement, uh, not just from the teachers to students, but now I'm putting my school leader hat on, and as a former school leader, what, what should principals and district leaders be doing to create environments where multilingual learners thrive?
Elise Genao [00:13:26]:
So I thought, I thought about this a lot, and I think this strategy goes for both the teacher and the leader, right? And we talked about like the temperature in the class and I think creating an awareness that people speak other languages and that's something to be celebrated. There are some school leaders who do a wonderful job of highlighting, of creating schools where children feel seen and celebrated. I also think that school leaders, school leaders have to think about when they go around and do walkthroughs, who's not talking, right? So I wanna say that, like, I had that experience as a school leader where I became principal of a school, 55% of the school were predominantly Spanish speaking. I had like 12 languages being spoken within the school. And I noticed as I toured the school and walked around my first few weeks that all of my MLs were silent, that there was this understood, like, be here. But they were— if you're not talking, you're not learning. Right? So they were— they had understood something about their role, their own voices—
Roberto Germán [00:14:54]:
Mm-hmm.
Elise Genao [00:14:56]:
—that disturbed me, like, deeply. And so when I think about leadership, leader walks into a class, and you see, like, your eyes automatically go to, like, who's talking, the back and forth between the teacher and the students, what kind of— what's the task at hand, what's the level of rigor of the task. And so I challenge leaders to go into classrooms and look for the children who have assumed silence as like an acceptable form of learning. We know that it's not. And then to learn a little bit more about them. That's one thing. The other thing is that to look at— a lot of times leaders are looking— or think of MLs, and you think automatically of the children that tested into ESL or bilingual and that need that support. But the truth is, is that's not everybody.
Elise Genao [00:15:55]:
Like, if you are English proficient— for example, I have 3 kids who walked into school with fluent English but speak Spanish, right? And so sometimes we don't necessarily have a full grasp. Those ESL and bilingual numbers don't tell us about everyone's linguistic background. So how do you really know? Like, know your students, know your families. And then I think just based off of like the definitions of language and all language having value, I think school leaders have to pay very close attention to language hierarchies. Like, we exist in a schooling system that is measuring success against a norm, a standard, which is Standard American English, that that is what's most valued. And that is essentially right now what's going to get kids to, to like, that's what our texts are written in. That's what they're going to be asked to write in. That is, that is it.
Elise Genao [00:16:57]:
And to see that the other languages, including Black English, including other varieties of English, are also assets to be built upon and not a problem to be fixed. Like, I feel like for the majority— in the majority, when I hear teachers talk, it's like it's always a deficit. It's always a problem to be fixed instead of seeing it as let's build upon what you have. Let's add pegs to your repertoire because you need those pegs in your community, with your family, with, you know, for, you know, to kind of like exist around the people that love you and love on you. And then you're going to add these other pegs so that, that act as currency, act as keys to open doors. It's a long-winded answer, but all of those things.
Roberto Germán [00:17:45]:
No, no, no. That's, that's good stuff. That's good stuff and very important stuff for school leaders and teachers to be thinking about as we're considering our environments, how welcoming our environments are, how much our environments encourage students to embrace the fullness of their identities, including their language identities, and whether that's being celebrated or not. Right. We want students to, to feel like they belong. We want them to feel affirmed in their identities. We want them to be celebrated in their languages and in all of their representation. And that brings me to books.
Roberto Germán [00:18:28]:
You know, I'm always thinking about what are books that are good for our children, what books should be in different classrooms. And so I'm wondering, what are your favorite children's books for bilingual learners?
Elise Genao [00:18:43]:
All right. So I have— there's so many. There's so many. I have a few off the top of my head, but I want to— I want to put in a plug for Lee and Low, which is a provider of books.
Roberto Germán [00:18:55]:
Yes, yes, yes.
Elise Genao [00:18:56]:
Dedicate themselves exclusively to bilingual books, books that are in English but represent like a myriad of cultures. Like, we love them, we love them, and we try to connect districts and teachers with them all the time. And we use a lot of their books in our trainings with teachers.
Roberto Germán [00:19:15]:
So we have a really good relationship with Lee and Low, and they send us books all the time.
Elise Genao [00:19:21]:
Yeah, I bet. Yeah, they're amazing. They're amazing. So I want to say that I'm going to give some titles, but I also want to talk about how important it is to contextualize the books to the children in your class. So if you're facing a Latino, a majority Latino or Latinx population, and you have mostly kids from the Dominican Republic, you want to search for things that are culturally relevant to them as well as others, right? So, you know, this idea that like in an early childhood classroom, it's play-based There's lots of materials, and people think that because they have a sombrero that they've like checked the box, right? Like, uh, unless you're a mariachi, you're not wearing a sombrero every day, right?
Roberto Germán [00:20:07]:
I've never had one.
Elise Genao [00:20:11]:
So the idea—
Roberto Germán [00:20:12]:
and I lived in Texas. I lived in Texas for 7 years. Uh, yeah, I never had one.
Elise Genao [00:20:17]:
So this idea that know your kids, know your families, know where they come from— there are 21 countries that speak Spanish, and And there are cultural characteristics that we now have books that talk about empanadas and plátanos and all this like amazing stuff.
Roberto Germán [00:20:35]:
I have a poem titled Yo Soy un Plátano.
Elise Genao [00:20:38]:
I've read it. I've heard you perform it on your social media threads. Like, yes, yes, it's amazing. So, but I do have a few favorites. One of them is called— I just recently learned about it through a kindergarten teacher that we work very closely with. And it's called La Maleta. And you can get it in English, and you can get it in Spanish. But it is essentially about how we carry our own maleta full of all this love that our parents have poured into us.
Elise Genao [00:21:07]:
And then we go to school, and sometimes they ask us— they're like, no, that one's not good. You need another one. And the process that this girl goes through with her maleta and her various maletas— anyway, it's awesome. I would say that's like— Maybe— well, she read it to a kindergarten class. So I would say anywhere from like K to 3, K to 4, K to 5 could use that book. There's another one that I love called The Taco Truck. And The Taco Truck is about food trucks fighting for space. So it's like a falafel truck, the taco truck, all these different food trucks.
Elise Genao [00:21:45]:
And they kind of— I don't want to spoil it, but it's a wonderful story that— Yeah. On the surface looks like it's just about problem solving, but it has deeper themes that I think even older children can explore. If you're looking for a book to create awareness, sometimes for young children, books are a wonderful entry point into difficult topics. There's a series of books. I think they're even self-published. It's called Spanish Is My Superpower, but they have now like every language. Hindi Is My Superpower. So it's this little girl explaining how, how awesome it is to speak another language.
Elise Genao [00:22:27]:
And so those kinds of stories help monolingual kids to also view people who speak other languages as like, oh, that's kind of cool. Like you speak another language.
Roberto Germán [00:22:39]:
Hmm. Thank you for the book recommendations. I'm definitely going to check them out. Curious to read them with my children and see how they respond and they engage. But it's so helpful to me to get a sense of what other people identify as books that are great, in this case, for bilingual learners and for all learners, really. Right. But I really, I really want to sit with this idea of even how you define translanguaging. Uh, and the importance of, uh, every learner, um, fitting into that definition as opposed to just seeing it as like, all right, you know, this category of students, uh, this isolated group of learners.
Roberto Germán [00:23:36]:
Um, so thank you for broadening our lens in that sense. For, for folks who want to learn more about you, learn more about your work, or they're looking for resources beyond what you've already mentioned, where should they look?
Elise Genao [00:23:55]:
So they can follow me on LinkedIn, which is where I have like the majority of like all my professional activities and new things that I'm doing and where I share a lot of— we share a lot of resources through my work. I do encourage anyone who's thinking about knowing more, going a little deeper into translanguaging, to look at the resources from the CUNY, uh, school, um, C-U-N-Y, out of New York. They have a plethora, like, videos, guides on translanguaging depending on the subject, depending on the grade level. Like, if you're really interested in seeing what this looks like and you want to see lesson plans, like, it's all there. They, they've done a phenomenal job of compiling resources. Um, the one thing I thought about as you were talking, right, was also that monolingual is also translanguage. So if you are giving a presentation at work, you are pulling from certain— you're using certain pegs during that presentation. And if you leave that and you go to have dinner with your friends after work, you are drawing from— you're using other language features in that context.
Elise Genao [00:25:15]:
So that ability to pick and choose those language features depending on the context is translanguaging. Monolinguals also do it. That's great. That's great.
Roberto Germán [00:25:27]:
Hey folks, you got a whole course. You got a, you got a whole university-level breakdown here. Oh, this is good stuff. I love Love feeling that my cup is full from learning something new or something different or having a different twist or a different lens. And you've, you've given me plenty to process here. So thank you for your insight. Thank you for sharing your time with us and mentioning the numerous resources that we should look into. Folks, if you're not connected to Elisa now, please do yourselves a favor.
Roberto Germán [00:26:07]:
Go to LinkedIn and friend her, follow her. All right, maybe she follow you, maybe she won't. I don't know. She follows me though. All right, and so we are doing some great work here, uh, and we benefit from having the expertise of folks like Elise. So trust me when I tell you, you want to stay in tune to what she's doing, especially if this is of interest to you. If you want to learn more about early childhood, if you want to learn more about translanguaging, you got to go to the source. And Elise is one of those individuals who serves as a source of knowledge on this particular matter.
Roberto Germán [00:26:46]:
Thank you, Elise, for being here.
Elise Genao [00:26:48]:
You're welcome. Thank you for having me.
Roberto Germán [00:26:51]:
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 Germán.
Roberto Germán [00:27:19]:
Peace and love.
