Tongue Tied

Tongue Tied 

Teaching Multilingual Children, by Virginia Collier 

Aria, by Richard Rodriquez 

 

Last year, I was asked to participate in a book club at my school. The book the group was reading was Dispelling Misconceptions About English Language Learners by Barbara Gottschalk. One of the misconceptions discussed was that if the student's native language continues to be used at home, the student will have a more difficult time learning English. This aligns with the third guideline from the Teaching Multilingual Children chapter, don’t teach a second language in any way that challenges or seeks to eliminate the first language. Both authors explain that there is value in using a multilingual or bi-dialect approach to learning.  

In the chapter about Richard, he gives many examples of how losing his native language to learn his community's language made his life easier outside of home but made his homelife change drastically. He describes a loss of family connection that the family once shared through their language. It was very sad to hear him describe the negative emotions he felt; anger, unsounded grief, and a feeling of losing his identity. 

In Richard’s case, the family was specifically asked to use English at home. Collier explains that teachers should now use different approaches to help students learn English. The students should be freely allowed to code switch. Cose switching is something I had never heard of. This is when a person uses both languages and alternates between the two. “Code switching is a display of the integrated and sophisticated use of both languages”. 

I heard a student say something interesting the other day. He is from Mexico and is attending college in Massachusetts. He said he learned English in Mexico but did not speak it daily. He said it was extremely exhausting for him when he first arrived to college because he had to think so much every time he spoke. It eventually became easy for him, but I just thought it was so interesting and something most people would never think of. It’s something for teachers to take into consideration when a student isn’t participating as much or appears to not know an answer. They may just be mentally exhausted from speaking English all day.

This is link to a podcast featuring the author I mentioned, Barbara Gottschalk, talking about her book. Her book and other resources can be found at ASCD, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

RIDE Guidance & Trevor Project

Talking points 

Both of these reading assignments made me feel a bit frustrated that I was hired to work with students and not really given any guidance. These are great resources that everyone should be equipped with. In my district, the nurses are given a giant binder filled with forms and policies. This is not part of that information. Theres no official training or orientation.  

 

The Trevor Project website was very informative. There is so much terminology that I’ve never heard. I want to be informed and up to date. I want to be an ally for students. I especially like the fact that the site explained that this information is useful to avoid someone having to educate others on their identity. 

The RIDE guidance is very informative and well-written. The laws are provided, but additional definitions and explanations are helpful.  

 

The authors are conveying information to ensure students are in a safe and supportive environment. They are providing information to help the readers become stronger supportive allies for transgender or gender nonconforming students.  

Teach Out Articles

 Teaching About Toxins 

Kelley Dawson Salas 

The author is a teacher who was concerned about her students who were ill. One student was missing school due to asthma, another was struggling with understanding, processing, and recalling information due to lead poisoning, and others were unwell due to diabetes. She was also concerned about other children that were overweight. Her concern went deeper than just the health and wellbeing of her students’ individual problems. She states that these “are public health problems that plague my city (and others in the United States) and that disproportionately affect poor people, people of color, and other populations that are concentrated in urban areas”. 

The author decided to teach a unit on public health problems. She focused mainly on asthma and lead poisoning. She taught the students about the signs and symptoms but wanted the lesson to delve deeper. She “wanted them to know that these diseases plague some communities more than others because of environmental and economic injustice”.  After learning about asthma triggers, the students were able to come up with possible reasons for these statistics such as more factories in cities and more traffic polluting the air. The students also learned that homes in cities are more likely to have lead paint than newer, suburban homes. 

As a result of their lessons, the class made several changes to their classroom to minimize asthma triggers. They cleaned more often to have cleaner air, removed the carpet, and swept more to remove dust. These classroom changes were a good way to connect the lessons to a real-life situation, but the author states that in the future she would like to enhance the lessons to help the children make a connection to air pollution and their community. She summarizes her intention of the lesson by saying, “Their illnesses are not their fault. The environment they live in is sick-and that is not their fault either. Someone has to make a change in our community and in our environment, so they can be healthy. Why shouldn’t they help make those changes?” 

 

 

Privilege, Power, and Racism 

Allan G. Johnson 

 

The author writes about the lack of acknowledgement of privilege. It is the elephant in the room that is not addressed but must be addressed. People must realize that someone else's misfortune is their fortune. “We live in a society that attaches privilege to being white and male and heterosexual regardless of your social class”. Those who have the privilege need to be part of the solution. “The bottom line is that the trouble we can’t talk about is a trouble we can’t do anything about”. 

Johnson writes about the Diversity Wheel. In the center of the wheel there are six social characteristics that can describe a person; age, race, ethnicity, gender, physical abilities/qualities, and sexual orientation. The characteristics are most likely out of a person's control. The outside of the circle lists characteristics that could be more fluid; work background, income, marital status, military experience, religious beliefs, geographic location, parental status, and education. The wheel represents how society sees you, not necessarily the person you are.  Any small shift in the diversity wheel could change the opportunities that arise in one’s life. This pertains to the earlier article about environmental toxins. A change in someone's geographic location can affect the quality of their health and healthcare.  

Canaries in the Mine

Every child has a right to be free...A free person can expect to be seen and treated as a full human being, free from threats to her identity, to her cultural values and know-how, to her safety and health, and to her language and land. This made me think of the Johnson article where he wrote about getting along with one another. It seems like a basic concept, seems like something that shouldn’t be an issue like freedom. 

If nearly half of our children fail to follow directions, we should question the appropriateness of the requirement. I feel like this is the same for classes that have a lot of kids failing the class or if a lot of kids do badly on a test. I wonder, when this happens, do the teachers reevaluate how they taught the information? 

There are only three institutions from which American are allowed no escape: prisons, mental hospitals, and schools. I just thought this was a very powerful statement. Schools being placed in the same category as prisons and mental institutions doesn’t seem like it should make sense, but it does when you think about it in this way. 

The author argues that children deserve to be free of the restraints of a traditional school. Free to think outside the box and question the decisions that are made for them. Students’ curiosity and creativity should be encouraged, not silenced.