Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Rodriguez: Questions

What is our role as educators, who are people in positions of power? Rodriguez’s experiences growing up demonstrate how the teachers at his school, who were also nuns, forced his family to abandon their native language to “help” the children learn English more quickly. Clearly these teachers overstepped their mark during their so-called home visit, and the repercussions had devastating long-term effects on the Rodriguez family.

This article also raises the question, ‘What role does the church play in education?’ Rodriguez describes his parents feelings during the nuns visit “What would they not do for their children’s well being? And how could they have questioned the Church’s authority which these women represented?” (Rodrguez, 2004. P.35). If a school is church run, do the teachers have more power because of the nature of their dual roles, as teachers of education and as nuns?

What really struck me about this article was how Ricardo’s parents were stripped of all their dignity and power as parents because of this forced decision to speak only English with their children. I was also bothered by the grief that Ricardo felt at the loss of speaking his native language at home and being forced to speak English as a child. Then as an adult, he recalls encountering Spanish voices in public places which creates sadness and longing for his forgotten past.

Rodriguez’s experience is very unfortunate. It reminds us as educators and people of power that we need to value both languages and cultures. In my first year of teaching, I struggled with how to value different languages in the classroom and still keep everyone safe. What happened is some of my students were speaking Spanish in the classroom with one another which turned out to be a way to tease non Spanish speaking students. The tricky part for me was that I couldn’t monitor what was being said in Spanish because of my lack of knowledge in that language, so I decided to make a rule that no-one was allowed to speak Spanish in the classroom. I now cringe at the message that this was sending to my Spanish speaking students even though I explained my reasons behind the rule. Thankfully since then I have learned other ways to foster other languages in the classroom and still be able to keep all students safe. These are some of the ways I have since found to be very effective at promoting bilingualism/different languages:

  1. Ask a class parent to visit the classroom and share their culture/language. For example; Chinese New Year.
  2. Learn and use different languages as a class: greetings during Morning Meeting, singing ‘Happy Birthday’ in both the student’s native language as well as English
  3. Ask students to read texts from books or their own writing that is in their home language
  4. Research family histories/biographies and share these in class
  5. Read-alouds provide opportunities for students to make connections with language, each other, and the world around them
  6. Home visits (not like the one in the article!!!)
  7. Pot lucks/feasts at school

So, this brings me to my last question: “What other ways can we value students’ home language and bridge the gap between home and school?”

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