This week’s readings and videos helped me understand how theories are applied in classrooms with emergent bilinguals and some of the devastating educational biases that affect EBs. Teaching Bilinguals (Even if You’re Not One): A CUNY Web Series (2017) poses a similar pedagogical stance as Paulo Freire in which teachers should position themselves as mutual learners rather than an information donor. The webinar exemplifies this theory by showcasing the teachers' interest in learning about the Spanish language from their students. Throughout the video, the teachers also encouraged students to translanguage to express critical thoughts they may struggle to express in English. John Dewey’s work on culturally relevant pedagogy also makes an appearance in this web series. Teachers in these schools implemented multicultural literature that speaks to the students. This segment reminded me of an example I heard in class: students from rural areas are more likely to visualize texts about creeks and prairies than urban students.
Garcia & Klefigen (2018) also discussed the implications behind denying EB’s the right for challenging curricula. I attended a low-resource urban charter school with a high population of EBs. Due to increasing pressure from stakeholders, many EB’s were deprived of a culturally relevant curriculum that were denied agentic and collaborative learning. Similarly to what Garcia was analyzing, my school also had high stakes accountability testing through MCA testing. This reminds me of the individual and community linguistic rights. Students are told to focus on English acquisition and are prevented from utilizing their multifaceted linguistic repertoire to aid their learning.
In contrast, Espinet et al. (2019) describes KAPPA school as a school that celebrates multiculturalism and encourages EB to take challenging courses that many deem unfit due to their deficit thinking. I have heard of the term deficit thinking in a previous couse and I think it encapsulates the reasons why educators may think EB’s are not ready for AP or IB classes.
The idea of student ambassadors that communicate in the home languages of parents who are school searching is intriguing. The schools are improving parent-school relationships by demonstrating that this school embraces bilingualism and parent involvement. Which helps parents, “ identify the school as a safe space” p.121 Espinet et al. (2019).
I wanted to end with a quote from this week that I found the most interesting and that slightly relates to the Sound House reading from last week.
“We dont have or possess language, but … we learn to use it and live with it” p.253 Lier (2000)