I enjoyed everyone presentations very much. It made me question a lot of what I know about how policy has worked to linguistically set back nearly every non-white, immigrant, and deaf community in being successful in school and in feeling welcomed in the classroom as a learner. The presentations on Korean and Mandarin LPP stuck out to me because they really developed the impact of immigration to the US as a key marker in the enactment of policy. It was also very interesting to see how the Korean and Chinese communities have worked to establish modes of language instruction outside of what is traditionally offered in schools. Learning about the bilingual Korean schools established in California was something I had never heard of before and I am from California. Especially after learning California declares English as its official language I was happy to hear that there are bilingual schools established for the Korean community that allow for students to continue interacting with language outside of only family influences.
A connecting factor of all languages is the importance of family/community influence in the persistence of their use. For example the role of community when speaking AAVE is a large part of the language itself. AAVE is a tool used to connect within ones community and this connection to your community influences your identity. In this instance language is used as a direct channel of connecting to a community. In the Korean, Chinese, and Spanish communities we learned, language learning is used to continue the persistence of cultural practices. It is a key feature that people use to connect to their culture, but descendants struggle to maintain this connection because of the difficulty finding ways to incorporate language within the institutionalized American culture. I think its interesting how the access to language use outside of school is the main factor in identity creation, yet schools and the policies presented have seemed to always separate the two. Moving forwards I hope schools continue to work towards allowing the linguistic identities of students into schools and seeing these abilities as strengths to empower their learning.