Posts Tagged 'parents'
Lydia Breiseth is Manager of Colorín Colorado, a bilingual website serving parents and educators of English language learners based at public broadcasting station WETA in Washington, DC. The following is a guest post inspired by her conversations with SIT filmmaker Ken Schneider and some of the subjects from Speaking In Tongues .
by Lydia Breiseth
We recently had the opportunity to interview Ken Schneider , co-director of Speaking in Tongues , for the bilingual English language learner (ELL) website Colorín Colorado . Ken provided a great behind-the-scenes glimpse of the film's production process, as well as some thoughtful insight on attitudes towards dual-language education around the country.
One of the words that Ken used has stuck with me as I think about ELLs who enroll in dual-language programs: courage. Courage, he says, is what enabled José and Maria Patiño, a humble couple with little education, to put their son Jason in a two-way Spanish immersion program rather than send him to school in an English-only environment. In the film, José notes that it would be difficult for him and Maria if their son lost his Spanish as the lines of communication would be broken - but that's not their only motivation in enrolling him in a dual-immersion program. Maria expresses her hopes her son will be "better prepared when he is older, to find a better job and have twice as many opportunities because he speaks two languages."
For most families like the Patiños, the overwhelming pressure to learn English is communicated in the schools and by the mainstream media. We meet a Latino father in the film who believes that his daughter is speaking too much Spanish at her dual-language program; his impassioned plea at a parent meeting for his daughter to learn more English underscores the desire that so many immigrant parents share to see their children succeed in the U.S. It also underscores the limited access that parents have to information about the benefits of building strong language and literacy skills in the first language, and the many kinds of benefits (academic, social, emotional, and cultural) of effective dual-language programs.
For the families that don't have access to that information when high-quality dual-language programs are offered in their school district , questions arise about which language to use at home. Sometimes Spanish-speaking parents stop reading to their children since they can't read aloud in English. Parents may see their native language as an obstacle rather than an asset, sacrificing the family's communication in the name of their child's success and thus creating a rift as the child grows older and speaks less Spanish.
This is an important part of the conversation that Speaking in Tongues has inspired: What does it mean for our ELLs to succeed? Does it mean fluency in English, even if it's at the expense of the native language (as we see in the case of Kelly's parents)? Or does it mean giving our children the chance to become fully bi-literate and bilingual? While many of their counterparts understandably choose the former, the Patiños chose the latter. So far Jason's prospects for a future with "twice as many opportunities" - and one in which his parents can play an active part - look bright. When the film was released in 2009, Jason was testing well-above grade level in English and Spanish, and he has identified the college he plans to attend.
José and Maria are parents whose courage we can learn from as we look to our rapidly-changing student population around the country. We need Jason to succeed, and we need José and Maria to be there alongside him every step of the way.
Special thanks to Dr. Karen Ford from the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education and Giselle Lundy-Ponce from the American Federation of Teachers for their contributions to this post.
After years of criticism from those who don't get their top choices and others who prefer that their children have a secure spot at a neighborhood school, the San Francisco Unified School District has bowed to the pressure to redesign their controversial lottery system .  The new system , which places a higher priority on neighborhood schools at all levels, while still offering families some choice, was revealed on August 18-along with the proposal for which elementary schools will feed into which middle schools . Traffic on immersion parent email lists has been quite busy lately, and most of these parents are less than thrilled with the district's proposals.
In a nutshell, the district plans to relocate established programs at some middle schools while establishing new immersion programs at underperforming schools and spreading the programs across a wider geographic area. It's complicated, to say the least, and it also raises the question for many families of whether or not to continue immersion beyond 5th grade.
According to the traditional plan for immersion, middle school instruction is reduced to two classes per day taught in the target language: a language arts class and social studies. It is assumed that immersion students who have been in a K-5 program have a strong foundation in both languages by this point, but in order to maintain high-level competency and academic skills in the target language, instruction must continue, just as it does in the dominant language, in this case English. In high school, kids who have steadily followed a K-8 immersion track are eligible to take Advance Placement and 300-level college courses in the target language, exempting them from language requirements when they enroll in college and in many cases giving them a head-start on credits toward their bachelor's degrees.
But by the time a child is 11 or 12 years old, language immersion is not the only factor to consider when choosing a school. Consider this post on the SF Advocates for Multilingual Education list recently:
Middle school starts being less about the parents' choice and more about the kids' choice. We ended up going with immersion for middle school, but other factors we considered included:
- GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) designation: Our child was identified for GATE. Did we want to push for a school with GATE programming in place even if it wasn't optimal for furthering her Spanish?
-Music and other extracurriculars: Our kid loved the flute and had a talent for it. Alas, the immersion school did not have a band where she could continue-and we had just finished paying off the flute we bought on an installment plan!
-Transportation: Whether or not your kid can ride public transit or walk home can affect choice. We ruled out one high-performing school in part because of location, though it did have a great band!
-After school programming: The ASP our daughter had attended since 1st grade had been a walk-to Boys &amp; Girls Club, but a middle school far away made that no longer feasible.  We considered yet another school because of its proximity to the same B&amp;G Club  where she would be able to continue in the ASP.
-How the kid is faring in the target language: Our elementary school did not use standards-based report cards at that time, and since no testing or assessments were done regularly in the target language, I felt VERY unclear in the fall of 5th grade whether this non-native speaker kid was strong enough in the target language to handle the demands of middle school academics. If a kid really is struggling in the target language in early 5th grade, a reasonable parent might want to cut their losses rather than have the kid continue!
-How the kid feels about it: My kid went through a period of being "sick of this" in 4th and early 5th grade but made the decision to continue. I think that was mostly a social decision in that her close friends were almost all continuing immersion at one particular middle school, and she wanted to stay with them. But if a kid's best friends are going elsewhere, the kid might be better off not being forced to continue immersion if he/she has not really bought into the concept.
What do you think, parents? How does continuing immersion rank as a priority in your middle school preferences? Are there other considerations families need to keep in mind? Leave a comment below!
My baby is starting kindergarten today. It's the end of an era for our family, and I've been a little emotional.
He's ready, I know. And he'll do fine. But he's still a bit nervous.
The fact that one of his best friends will be in his class is a huge comfort to all of us! And of course, we know the school and his teachers already and couldn't be happier about either.
But the fact remains. My not-quite-five-year-old will spend 6 hours a day in a relatively unfamiliar environment being spoken to in a language he doesn't understand.
He knows this. He's not sure how he feels about it.
Last week the two of us sat down to watch Speaking in Tongues together. He took it in, despite his tender age. His brother's school-now his school-is featured. There are lots of familiar faces. He certainly got a sneak preview of what his coming year might be like.
But when he watched the scene of the Cantonese kindergarten class being led through backpack protocol by their teacher on the first day, he froze.
"How do you feel about that?" I asked.
"Not good," he said in a small voice.
I swallowed hard. This scene is always touching: tiny little kindergarteners in a big, unfamiliar school bewildered by the speech of the only adult in the room. But here I was imagining my own shy little guy-whose name begins with "A", like Alex in the film, the first student to go before the class and be led through the backpack drill-going through the same thing. Ouch. Will he be able to handle it?
Please don't let him be one of those kids who cries at drop-off!
"Will you be a teacher in my class sometimes?" he asked.
He's been through two years of co-op preschool. That means he saw me or his dad in his classroom at least one morning a week for the three days per week he attended.
"Sometimes I'll be there," I said. "But I won't really be a teacher, and I can't come at first."
Our kindergarten teachers welcome parent volunteering, but if we can't speak Mandarin, our tasks are limited to cutting and stapling in the back of the room, and chaperoning the occasional field trip. Moreover, parents are asked not to be in the classroom at all for the first couple of weeks so the kids can get used to the routine.
I may end up with separation anxiety.
As we talked, I realized my little boy was under the impression he would be spending time with his older brother, entering second grade, while he was at school. It was hard to burst that bubble. A summer of a little too much togetherness has had my boys at each others' throats more often than I care to think about lately, so the fact that my younger son was comforted in the knowledge that his brother would be around was heartwarming.
"You might see each other when you're finishing lunch, and he's starting lunch, or maybe sometimes in the halls, but that's all," I was forced to tell him. "You will be in your classroom with your teacher. He will be in a different classroom with his teacher."
He took it in. Solemnly.
We watched that scene again. "See," I said, "the teacher's really nice, and she's showing them what to do. If you just watch your teacher, you'll figure it out. And you already know some Chinese!" I said encouragingly. The fact that this scene is in Cantonese, and my son's day would be in Mandarin, made little difference at this point, I figured. Still, she said the word for backpack quite a few times...I had picked it up. And it sounded familiar. I found myself hoping it was a cognate!
That evening at dinner I asked my older son "So, how do you say backpack in Mandarin?"
"Shi bao! I've told you a million times!"
Shrugging off the derision of my seven-year-old, I turned to my younger son. "See. It's the same!" I told him. "Shi bao! You already know backpack!"