Collier, "Teaching Multilingual Children"

Collier argues how important it is that teachers of bilingual students try very hard not to lose site of their students' cultural identity.  It is not all she writes about but it is what stood out to me the most.  My school does not seem to fit the schools I think Collier is talking about, but I think Shea High School in Pawtucket would most definitely fit the population.  I don't recall the numbers but I do know that the school has a very transient group of kids and a high bilingual population.  I wonder under what literacy development curriculum they use to teach their students?

I struggled with my response this week because I do not have a clear or strong feeling as to which way is the best way to teach bilingual students.  It is clear that Collier feels the "most successful long-term academic achievement occurs where the students' primary language is the initial language of literacy".  This bothers me because I was always under the impression that the right thing to do was to dismiss the home language in literacy development and force kids to think, speak, socialize in the dominant language.  Isn't that the goal?  Isn't the goal to make sure all kids can function in the American culture, which is an English speaking culture?  Until this class, I didn't really think about what actually gets lost when students are forced to leave their first language behind.  Richard Rodriguez made it clear that his relationship with his parents changed drastically when Spanish was left behind.  I know many, many of my students speak Spanish, Columbian, Portuguese, Russian, etc. at home.  They talk about it a lot but we do not have a large group of kids that come to our high school not knowing English.  Of course, there are some and our one ESL teacher works with them but he has an average caseload.  So, this brings me to another question:  If the research shows that students are more successful under the curriculum I mentioned above, then why don't we follow the research?  I know it is all very political, but come on.  The research shows they will be more successful which means better retentions, standardized test scores, we could go on and on.  Just so frustrating.  Not to be cynical but I wonder if politicians want less people speaking Spanish.  It further oppresses people which maybe is the goal of the dominant culture.  However, I think my students that speak more than one language (many speak three or more) are brilliant and I wish I had been taught a second language when I was younger.

I thought about Freire (part of the Finn reading) when I read this article.  Finn says that Freire “saw that literacy campaigns were bound to fail as long as the ‘students’ viewed literacy as part of a culture that was alien to them”.   It makes sense to me that if I was a young child, I would feel more comfortable and successful knowing my home language fairly well before I took on a new language.  But what about the high school kid that only has a few years to catch on to the English language?  I don’t think we have much time to have a kind of dual curriculum where the student can be taught both in English and their home language.

So, through all of this I think of Mr. Tom (as the ESL kids call the ESL teacher at my school).  He has the entire League of Nations in his room and if you walk by you would be amazed at what he accomplishes in there.  He never speaks anything other than English and somehow the kids learn the English language.  Most students that come in as an ESL student have Tom 4 times a day and then he slowly gets them into the mainstream classes where they just need him once a day.  When these students graduate, they cry when they say good-bye to him.  Honestly, I think Mr. Tom is a magician …