Educational Research

Running Head: Case Study

1

Case Study

2

Case Study

Your Name

Florida International University

First Video: Getting Acquainted

My Experience with Practices of Language in Spain and Florida

I was born in Spain, speaking Spanish as my only language. Then, I moved to the United States and, in the process of adapting to a new country and culture, I learned English and became bilingual. When I was a child going to school in Spain, almost 100% of the students in the schools that I attended were Spaniards. Every content was given in Spanish. Even in foreign language classes, Spanish was used intermittently during lectures. In contrast, when I moved to the United States, the schools that I attended had, for the most part, “English only” policies in the classrooms. Although the great majority of students were Hispanic, I had to attend ESOL classes where most professors expected students to only speak in English, and I even had an ESOL teacher that did not know Spanish at all. This was especially hard to deal with when having in mind the events that were happening during the 2010s, where hundreds of Cubans and other Latinos were arriving in Miami on a weekly basis. We were always taught English the same way babies learn a language, from scratch. However, the fact that our own language that we already had was deemed as useless or even unwanted academically was extremely shocking. The only class where Spanish was, sadly, celebrated was in Spanish classes. However, one important thing that did occur in my schools was that information sent home was in English, Spanish, and Creole. Even during the open house, the teachers would talk to our parents in the language they were more comfortable with (if they knew it).

Although I do not have any field experience in any school, I have worked as a Chemistry tutor during my second year of college. During this time, I found myself being challenged by having students that did not speak English fluently, and more often than not, they only spoke Spanish. For these instances, being bilingual became essential, and I resorted to teaching Chemistry in Spanish and repeating the concepts in English afterward. Although my main goal was for the students to understand the concepts they were having trouble with, I also saw the importance of them having the knowledge in English since that is the language they would be tested in. Another challenge I faced while tutoring was heavy accents and miscommunications due to language differences with non-Hispanics. Given that I do not know much about Asian culture, these instances happened every so often. Simply asking to word things differently or asking for a further explanation is usually enough to get through these challenges.

If I were to have real field experience, I would like to try and see first-handed how things are done in a bilingual school. I would love to learn about how the teachers at a bilingual school deal with things such as the standardized tests and the preparation of students for University. I want to see how they face the challenges that being bilingual entails, and how they make parents involved with the school. I also want to see how this approach works for education that caters to coordinate bilinguals and subordinate bilinguals.

Advocacy for ELLs in Florida and the Florida Consent Decree

Just like Puerto Ricans advocated for ELL’s rights of equal education in the 60s, many organizations in Florida pushed for a Consent Decree, which serves as protection of the rights of ELLs and grants them access to equal education. There were many organizations involved in advocating for ELLs in Florida and in the case of creating the Consent Decree in the 80s: LULAC (the League of United Latin American Citizens), the Haitian Refugee Center, the Haitian Educators’ Association, the ASPIRA of Florida, SALAD (Spanish American League Against Discrimination), the Florida State Conference of NAACP Branches, the Farmworkers’ Association of Central Florida, and AHEAD (American Hispanic Educators’ Association of Dade). The Consent Decree placed attention on some issues of ELL education and how they should be handled, such as identification and assessment of ELL students, equal access to appropriate programming, the personnel involved with ELLs, and the monitoring of the outcome measures of ELL education (The Florida Consent Decree: A Summary).

Additionally, the Consent Decree enforces the state of Florida to comply with some federal and state laws that account for the education of ELLs. Some examples are the “Title VI and VII Civil Rights Act (1964),” “Equal Education Opportunities Act (1972),” and the “Florida Education Equity Act (1984)” among others. These acts all forbid discrimination and segregation due to race, skin color, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability, and nationality to students, faculty, and staff. This ensures that all ELLs are delivered quality education and equal instruction, as well as ensuring that no student or faculty can be discriminated against or segregated.

The Meaning of Translanguaging

For many years, the Education system has focused on teaching languages as separate, distinct knowledge that cannot be mixed. Translanguaging has been used to defy the obsolete thought that a student who, in the case of the United States, is an ELL should not use their native language through their learning process in school. Translanguaging refers to a process or way of communicating where students are encouraged to use their entire language repertoire to communicate and learn. For instance, students should be encouraged to use their native language while learning, as well as the new language they are learning instead of being put in an “English only” classroom where they are limited by language. Translanguaging utilizes all the things ELL students know to allow them to learn equally to those who know only English. This is an incredibly important technique and resource in order to create an inclusive culture where students are not limited or judged by their lack of knowledge of a certain language, and it also honors the cultural background of the students.

Personally, I think that translanguaging is extremely important to implement in classrooms due to its benefits on how it makes the students feel, the practicality of it, and the morality of implementing it. By using translanguaging, students are not being judged any longer by their nationality or ethnicity, and they are included and integrated in the same way native English speakers are in the classroom. Separating the students who are emergent bilinguals in ESOL classes creates categories and segregation of students. Additionally, students might feel inferior to native English speakers because of the extreme expectation of having them use English and no other language. Translanguaging also has incredible benefits, such as expanding a student’s repertoire of language even further not only in English but also in their native language. Lastly, translanguaging honors and values the cultures of students instead of pushing it away and punishing students for doing things that are normal in their culture or speaking in the language that they speak at home.

I also think that, although it is critical to implement translanguaging, it can be extremely challenging. Getting the right training and becoming capacitated to implement translanguaging is key, but one also needs to know about the culture of the students, their languages, their body language, and the differences between cultures. Also, a teacher that wants to implement translanguaging must be capable of dismissing their prejudice, which can be challenging.

Scaffolding Through Translanguaging

Teachers may use translanguaging as a scaffolding method in the classroom and helping them through their learning process by providing different types of support. One of the ways of doing this is having materials that are inclusive and that reflect a variety of cultures, such as having role models or literature pieces from people that have the same cultural background as the students or having books and resources in the native languages of the ELLs. Another way of implementing scaffolding through translanguaging would be naming things around the classroom in two or more languages so that students can recognize them. Anything that provides support to how students learn in their native language, as well as the new language they are learning, can be used as scaffolding, including having students help other students understand the concepts and words better in the languages they speak.

Second Video: Being an Advocate for Bilingual Students

Utilizing Student’s Background as Resources

In a classroom of emergent bilinguals, there are always social challenges in question, such as cultural bias and prejudice. Students are often labeled and excluded due to their language, nationality, or even race. Because of that, it is vital to create a safe and inclusive environment for students. Ms. Conte does this by using her student’s background as a resource to create a culturally welcoming environment and to help students become bilinguals. The way she thought of doing this was, at the beginning of the school year, giving each of her students a worksheet to represent themselves and their language by drawing a language and culture self-portrait depicting parts of their body and giving them cultural meaning. For instance, the students might color the mouth of their drawing with the color they use to represent English or Spanish depending on the language they speak in. This way, she could have a better look at the cultural composition of her classroom and act accordingly to her students’ needs. Also, she includes multicultural literature in her classroom, which can help students relate to their situation and help the teacher understand their needs even better.

Some additional things that Ms. Conte and Ms. Condon-Kim could implement in their classrooms are, for example, simple activities that can lead to learning more about the students’ culture. For instance, having students bring an item from their family that has cultural importance and explaining what it means can be a good way of learning about the students’ culture. Another thing they could try out would be doing assignments on stereotypes and encouraging students to discuss them as a group. I also feel that the families of the children could become more involved in their education, so the teachers could also contact the families of their students and introduce themselves at the beginning of the school year, as well as inviting them to participate in the classroom to talk about their language, culture, and viewpoints.

Culture of Inclusion Through Literature

As mentioned earlier, Ms. Conte and Ms. Condon-Kim utilize literature pieces and books that contain bilingual and multicultural characters in their classroom to create a culturally inclusive environment. Having books and stories that the students can relate to gives them perspective on how other students might feel and help them connect with each other. This also applies to the teacher, since it allows the teachers to have insight into the lives and struggles their students might be facing in school or their community. In a specific book she showed in the video, Ms. Conte shows that the main character of the book is a girl that has a very different cultural background to the rest of the students in her class and how she, even though she did not know English, went through her days at school. Ms. Conte ingeniously utilized this opportunity to ask her students for indirect feedback. She asked them what the teachers and other students could have done to help the girl and to make the situation better or more comfortable, as well as asking them their opinion on the book.

As a student, I have participated many times in this type of practice. Although most of the classes I have had focus heavily on English literature written by English speakers, there have been instances where I have been able to read multicultural pieces. For example, in my AP Spanish Literature class, we read stories and books from different Hispanic countries that have very different countries and even some different languages. We read about Spaniards and their life in communities where reputation is everything and about Peruvian myths related to Native American culture. In this classroom, I felt very comfortable, since I was able to relate to many of the things we read about, and I learned about some of my classmate’s cultures at the same time. One instance where we read an actual multicultural piece was in our AICE English Literature course, where our teacher decided to make us read “The Namesake,” from Jhumpa Lahiri. Her story consisted of an Indian family that moved to the U.S. and how they struggled within their family by adapting to the language, cultural differences, and lifestyles. Constantly fighting between old and new traditions, this story made almost all of us, immigrants, relate to how challenging migration is. It was an eye-opening book.

Benefits of Bilingual Books

Utilizing bilingual and multilingual books and resources is quite beneficial to both students and teachers. Students, both English speakers and ELLs, can learn how to sympathize and empathize with each other through learning about the experiences they are each going through. In other words, it helps students connect with one another. Additionally, reading about characters from different cultures provides students with more cultural knowledge and brings up discussions about cultures, stereotypes, prejudice, and other aspects of how cultures interact with one another. These books also provide an example for the students that read them because they often feature emergent bilinguals who share their experience, which students can learn from. Also, students are likely to learn new words, phrases, body language, and other cultural mannerisms. Reading bilingual books can make students more open-minded and it can give teachers hints about how the students feel about the classroom, as well as to get to know what some students might be going through while being emergent bilinguals.

Languages and Class Control

Given that Ms. Conte is a monolingual teacher, she faced a challenge when having to provide quality education to emergent bilinguals because she did not understand her students when they spoke languages other than English. She felt uncomfortable for not being able to have control of the classroom. She eventually found out that being a teacher did not mean knowing absolutely everything and that, as an emergent bilingual teacher, she needed to think of herself as a co-learner. She learned that she was supposed to learn along with her students with patience. She realized that was she was going through with her students was exactly the same thing her emergent bilingual students felt during school. By facing this challenge, Ms. Conte was able to emphasize with her students and learn from them.

I have been challenged by having students who only speak a language other than English coming to seek tutoring, so I can sort of understand how Ms. Conte felt when she was not in control of her classroom. Before taking this course, I used to think the same way. I thought things needed to be taught a certain way, but I realized that I was wrong. Students need to be able to express themselves in the ways they want to, and it is a teacher’s job to learn along with their students. If a teacher cannot learn from their students and only want to teach, that also means they do not want to improve themselves as an educator. Every student is different, every classroom is different, and even every community has variety. It is up to us to adapt and learn how to work with what we are given to provide the best education we can.

Third Video: Bilingual Superpowers

Graphic Novels and their Benefits

Teacher Ballantyne-Berry uses graphic novels to teach her students through translanguaging. Graphic novels are useful when teaching emerging bilinguals due to their characteristics. Graphic novels contain visual representations of what the story is about, giving emergent bilinguals the ability to understand the context and situation even if they do not fully know English. This allows them to make connections between images and the English words that are attached to those images, such as expressions, actions, objects, etc. Additionally, it helps students keep track of the characters in the story. A standard novel will just have words, and the differences in language, syntax, and semantics within the different languages the students speak and English can make it harder for students to actually understand what they are reading and which character is speaking. In addition, graphic novels can represent the different cultures of the students in the classroom and can keep the students focused and entertained while learning.

Using the Graphic Novel Assignment

Ballantyne-Berry’s method for using graphic novels as an assignment can be divided into three parts: planning, drafting, and final drafts. During the planning, Ballantyne-Berry has her students write the things that they will be talking about in their graphic novel in a notebook. She provides them with a checklist of the things they should include. She uses translanguaging for this assignment because the students are allowed to use their native language to express complex ideas that they are not sure on how to say in English while inspiring her students to use English for the things that they have learned in class. Students use their bilingualism as a resource for coming up with the things they will write in the graphic novel. During the drafting part, the students make a sketch of the graphic novel using their entire language repertoire and receive help from the teacher. Then, in the final drafts, they complete their graphic novels and turn them in.

Using Language Repertoire as a Resource

In her classroom, Ms. Ballantyne-Berry has students of varying cultures and that speak different languages. She utilizes translanguaging by allowing her students to use their entire language repertoire as a resource in her graphic novel assignment as well as in the class discussions when the students are working together and sharing what they will put in their autobiographical graphic novels. She allows students to write complex ideas in graphic novels in their native language. She shows examples of this by showing a notebook that has some answers to the checklist she provided in English and some in Chinese and in a graphic novel from one of her female students who decided to write certain parts of her graphic novel in her native language. She also encourages her students to discuss the assignment in whichever language they find more comfortable. To show this, she mentioned that a male student spoke Mandarin with the other students when talking about the assignment except for certain words that he thought were funny, such as “banana,” which he tended to say with an exaggerated accent on purpose. Ms. Ballantyne-Berry states that this has helped her learn where her students need more help and where they are standing concerning the English language.

Fourth Video: Knowing your Students

Teacher’s Work and Principles

The quote that Ms. Chapman-Santiago read in the video expressed how you cannot truly understand someone else until you walk in the same shoes as them. This quote pertains to a teacher’s work because in order to teach your students you need to know them. You need to know who they are, where they come from, what they know, what goes on around their life. If you do not know what a student is going through and develop empathy, you cannot provide what they need and give them quality education.

Working by this quote can start with something as simple as learning how to pronounce a student’s name right. Nieto goes more in-depth into how to get to know your students better with different strategies. A teacher needs to confront their own biases and prejudice, it is easy to stereotype a student, but you need to be able to empathize with how they feel about being categorized or judged in that way. Teachers should also get to know the families of the students and their community to understand what students may be going through and to get to know their culture, this way teachers can have an easier time understanding the students’ attitudes and reactions, for example. Lastly, doing something such as trying to learn a new language can make the teacher understand the perspective of emergent bilinguals and how learning a new language can affect a student (Nieto, 2011).

Students’ Use of Body Language in the Classroom

Ms. Chapman-Santiago brings up the importance that she sees in paying attention to the body language and behavior of students. She mentions that students’ reactions can help a teacher take the class in the right direction and at the pace that students need. Some examples that she presents are that whether students seem to get into an assignment or to try to avoid looking at it can tell a lot about how they feel about the assignment. Also, she says she has had students that have behaved strangely, and talking to them aside has led her to understand their situation better, and even tackle some deeper issues these students had.

Paying attention to body language is even more meaningful when dealing with a culturally diverse set of students. Communication can be misread when the cues come from different cultures. An example could be how in some cultures, a wrinkled nose means that the students are not understanding the concepts (Puerto Rican) and in some others, it means “no” (Alaska Native cultures). Asking students what their body language means can be used as a tool by teachers to assess the situations in the classroom (Davis).

Even though I do not remember any moment from when I was a student where body language was important and I have not had any field experience, I learned how to understand common body language cues while I tutored Chemistry in college. When you would see a student crossing their arms or their legs and expressing closed body language, it became obvious, with time, that they were not understanding the material and they were struggling with it. In the same manner, when a student would move their hands a lot or fidget with their pencil, it was noticeable that they were impatient or that they were nervous. This last one often happened during exam weeks. Although some of the body languages felt intuitive, some of it was hard to decipher until you got to know a student better.

Benefits of Using Home Language

Emergent bilingual students have an entire repertoire of words, knowledge, and skills that they bring from their culture and language. Expecting them to only use English in the classroom limits how much they can add to a discussion or assignment, and it often leads to demotivation. Having students use what they know in their home language can be empowering for them and thus making them more interested in learning. It can also provide useful information about the students’ educational level to the teachers. Ms. Chapman-Santiago shared that it is important to see how students perform in their home language to see how proficient or comfortable they are in their home language. This is due to differences in the students’ situations. Even if two students are from the same country, they had different experiences and might have very different educational backgrounds. As an example, she mentions two students that speak Arabic in her class. When given a prompt in Arabic, one of the students wrote a page and the other one wrote only two lines. At that point, Chapman-Santiago knew that she had to change some things to adapt to the needs of the second student.

Home Language as Scaffolding

Ms. Chapman-Santiago uses different strategies to support students through using their home language as a scaffold. One of the things she does is give her students translated excerpts, copies, and prompts. Furthermore, she allows students to discuss the assignment instructions in the language they prefer to make sure they understood the assignments correctly. Although they have to answer their assignments in English, her students are free to use google-translate, dictionaries, and ask other students for help. Another thing shown in the video was that Ms. Chapman-Santiago has posters around her classroom that have things written in different languages so that all the students can understand them. By doing this, she creates a set of support systems that helps emergent bilinguals use their home language to learn English and do assignments using all the knowledge they have outside of the English language.

L1 and L2 in Language Learning

The role of L1 in second language acquisition is to provide a base of language to pull from. The L1 allows the student to add their knowledge of syntax’s, morphology, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics their newfound understanding of the SLA. If the students comfort level in the L1 is strong the communication between the SLA will amount to a smooth and effective one. This is why Ms. Chapman-Santiago constantly displayed cognates within her classroom and translated some assignments in her students L1. For example, in her students’ journals, prompts are translated in their L1 to strengthen their fluency in that language so the use of the L2 is more comfortable and done with ease of comprehension. Second language acquisition theory is tied to techniques used in second language development by understanding the importance of L1’s fluency and comprehension to help students become fluent bilinguals. In Behaviorism, L2 learning is a daily ritual process. In Input, L2 learning follows a set of rules that are present in L1 and its intrinsic. In Interaction, L2 learning is done through peer discussion and result in collaborated meaning. In SCT, L2 learning is created by outward interaction with others through communication and therefore an inward knowledge is formed. When it comes to teaching Behaviorism, L2 is modeled by the teacher which allows students to use their repetition skills. In Input and Interaction, L2 teaching bring forth challenging information from the teacher that passes the EL’s linguistic knowledge, and it creates room for cooperative learning through peer interactions. In SCT, L2 teaching is the expansion of EL’s ZPD through interaction with all forms of resources available. Errors within the SLA theories are corrected immediately, specifically and intentionally depending on the level of the EL, left for negotiates within meanings created through peer interaction, and seen as common mistakes that indirectly need corrections.

Fifth Video: The Benefits of Bilingual Education

Pushing for More to Educate Students

As we have seen time and time again through these videos, teachers have found value in the students’ L1 and the skills they bring from their culture and home language. For this reason, Sara Vogel says that teachers can “Push for more.” It is not enough with acknowledging that emergent bilinguals know things other than English, it is important to keep expanding the students’ knowledge in both their L1 and L2.

Ms. Aponte does this by engaging in a bilingual education program where students learn both English and Spanish to become bilingual and bi-literate. It is not enough with knowing how to speak in the two languages, students need to be literate in both. If a student forgets their home language because they do not use it, they would be losing a million opportunities. That is why Ms. Aponte pushes for more. Students need to use everything they have in the classroom. They have so much to offer and use that they bring from their L1 and their cultural background, and that cannot go to waste. There needs to be more translanguaging and culture sharing, and students need to get more quality education to achieve the final goal: bilingualism and biliteracy.

“My Name is Jorge on Both Sides of the River”

According to Ms. Aponte, “My Name is Jorge on Both Sides of the River” is a book that she considers life-changing for her emergent bilingual students. The book depicts the story of a Mexican boy and his struggles to learn English and being bilingual. The book is in two languages, and some of the poems in Spanish have English words and vice versa. Given that Aponte’s students are mostly Spanish-English bilinguals, this book is tremendously easy for them to relate to. The students are especially impacted by this book because they share a similar story with the main character, they speak those two languages and can understand it fully, and the main character serves as a role model for the students. In addition, Aponte mentions that the use of language and how it is utilized is very powerful. Seeing this through a book that uses the two languages the students know to give power to what they are reading can give the students confidence and determination for their own learning experience.

Bilingual Education Programs

When students attend bilingual education programs, they have the opportunity of using their entire repertoire of knowledge, skills, and language to learn and develop. Bilingual education programs strive for the bilingualism and biliteracy of all of their students, where every student ends up reading, writing, and speaking two languages. As Aponte mentions, it is also beneficial for the families of emergent bilinguals, since they feel more comfortable participating in the students’ school life. The goal of bilingual programs is to ensure that students do not lose their native culture or background, but rather preserve it. Students are encouraged to communicate, write, and speak in ways that make them feel connected to their background. Creating an environment where students are expected to be themselves creates a positive classroom environment and growth, not only educational but also social and mental. These students are also using their skills from their native language to learn English, which improves their proficiency and helps them have another tool in their pocket.

Bilingual programs have a positive impact on English speakers. It allows them to be inclusive of all backgrounds, learn about various cultures and diversity, and become a tool in personal development. These students will have the experience of working with bilingual students and will take these wonders with them as they age. They will be introduced to different foods, words, cultures, expressions, traditions, etc. that they would not have known before. Merging these students sets up a diverse classroom setting as well as space for all students to work and help with each other which helps with their social skills. In addition, having bilingual education is beneficial for students because biliteracy gives them many opportunities for the future. Apart from having an easy time when traveling, bilinguals are often preferred by employers and may even be paid more. Moreover, research has shown that bilingualism has cognitive benefits and promotes the process of creative thinking, and it has been shown to not be related to any sort of disorders (which is what people thought before). It opens many doors for all students, whether they start as English speakers or English learners.