Teaching Multilingual Children

  Language and Power

I must admit that reading this week's assigned articles has left me a little frustrated with regard to the lack of context from which these articles originate.  This may be partly due to my reading the articles out of order, after watching the CUNY lessons on teaching emergent bilinguists.  In reading Aria by Ricardo Rodriguez, I gained a sense of how a child might live in a world as a non-English speaking person attending an English speaking, Catholic school.  The child, Ricardo essentially had two personas....the private family life which was described as warm and loving, contrasted with the public personality of being a student in an English speaking world.  Apparently Ricardo attended school at a time when English was the only spoken language in the schools and that was what was expected from the students as well.  Unfortunately at the time, teachers did not attempt to incorporate trans-language skills, nor did they demonstrate any capacity for empathizing.  In fact, in the article, the teacher even re-named the child Richard, the English variation of Ricardo.  In my opinion, no teacher should change a child's name.... ever.

The writer, Ricardo even mentioned how he longed to be greeted by his real name, at least at the beginning of the day.  He reminisces.... if only the teacher called him by his real name, it might have helped him develop a trusting relationship with his teacher.   Sadly, the teachers also altered the fabric of Ricardo's home life when they visited the parents for the purpose of encouraging English to be spoken in the home.  The family naturally agreed to this for the benefit of their children, and to please the teachers.  Ricardo reflects on how that visit and request for English to be the spoken language in the home, changed his father, who became oddly silent after that visit.  One could summize that the the father's interpretation was that it was wrong to speak Spanish in the home, or that to continue would ultimately cause harm to his childrens' educational process. The loving, intimate familial spoken language was halted.  Over time the family was forced to assimilate into the American culture, thereby losing their own culture in the process.

Our challenge as teachers is to recognize and celebrate a child's identity while also equipping them with the literacy skills they'll need to be successful in a competitive educational and professional work force.                                                             





In Teaching Multilingual Children, Virginia Collier emphasizes the importance of truly appreciating the unique linguistic and cultural differences of each child.  This is a key concept teachers should embrace.  Collier suggests seven guidelines, one of which reminded me of our lesson on Delpit.  Guideline number three:  "Don't teach a second language in any way that challenges or seeks to eliminate the first language.  To affirm the home language, means to not be told that they are wrong, or that what they say is vulgar, or bad."  This parallels with our discussion about formal language; the language of those in power as compared to informal language which might be spoken in the home or with peers, with the example given, of the use of the work "Ask" vs. "Aks."

The other guidelines outlined by Collier and also discussed in the CUNY video lesson cuny-teaching-bilinguals-webseries/ made complete sense to me and actually seemed like common sense.  I wonder if these or similar guidelines are taught to educators who are certified to teach English as a Second Language?  We could talk about in class hopefully. Despite the research and evidence that supports the benefit of students learning linguistic skills of their first language, which facilitates and speeds up the process of learning a second language, modern day curriculum continues to dismiss the first language altogether with an "English-only" approach.  How is it possible for our educators to ignore evidence-based research?