Category Archives: Bilingual

Going to Mexico or to Iowa

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“Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go.”

Christmas is drawing near and my classes are emptying. All across America, classes are emptying. It’s very common for parents to pull kids out to go back to Mexico for Christmas break and an extra week or two (or even more!) on either side of vacation. It’s possible to catch up the missing math and English but it hardly ever happens. The math especially disappears, never to be recovered.

Eduhonesty: We let them go too easily. We ought to be sending regular letters reminding parents of the academic cost of these long vacations, repeat reminders before plane reservations are made.

“It’s just a few days,” parents will say.

Many students can spare those days, too. The problem is that we don’t always know which students can successfully sacrifice that snippet of education. We also send a message with those extended vacations: You can take extra time off to play when it suits you. This is poor preparation for the adult world, where such efforts often end with demands to clear out your desk and leave the building for good.

For parents: Sometimes there’s no choice and children have to miss school. But a week of missing math can make a kid’s whole year miserable if it’s the wrong week. Lost points from that week can pull a grade down, turning an “A” into a “B” or a “C” into a “D.” In the worst case, a student may end up repeating a course when lost points resulted in an “F” in the endgame. Overall, vacations that take children out of school should be avoided.

Musings on books

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Given the 2003 study by L. M. Morrow, “Motivating lifelong voluntary reading,” that states that “students in classrooms with libraries read 50% more books than students in classrooms without them,” I wonder why school districts don’t focus more on purchasing diverse books for purposes of building up classroom libraries, especially highly visual books designed to benefit reading-challenged and bilingual students. Is this simply a matter of a shortage of funds or is it a matter of allocating resources according to curriculum requirements that do not include random, recreational literature? Is it a combination of these two considerations as well as other factors? The last two districts I worked in spent little money on classroom books.

Eduhonesty: I am afraid part of the problem is overly rigid curricula which do not allow time for activities that are not specifically planned. We have left little time for books that don’t directly address the test. In my last middle school position, we eliminated silent reading time because there was no “empirical proof” that silent reading provided educational value. We substituted a test preparation period instead.

Scary Estimate by a Sped Teacher

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Walking to the gym beside a new special education teacher, she tossed off this observation:

“I spend about 60% of my time doing paperwork and 40% giving instruction. I hoped there’d be less of that here (than in her old school) but it seems to be the same.”

We commiserated over government paperwork demands, a real burden in bilingual education as well.

Eduhonesty: At a certain level, those government paperwork demands begin to impact instruction. Time spent preparing mountains of paperwork cannot be given to planning future instruction. After a long day of paperwork, many teachers just grab an appropriate or semi-appropriate lesson off the internet, minimizing preparation for the next day since the present day is pretty much gone.

When I asked her if she was a bilingual student…

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I was talking to an attractive Hispanic girl as I walked up the stairs of my school, a new student who was beginning seventh grade. She was all smiles, excited about the upcoming year, a cheery presence in the somewhat battered corridors of this older middle school.

I asked her if she was a bilingual student.

The smile vanished, replaced by a look of indignation.

“I’m not stupid!” She said emphatically.

When I explained that I was the bilingual teacher, she let it go. We resumed our banter. But this is one aspect of Illinois bilingual programs that never seems to hit the radar and I think it should. What is the effect of being in a bilingual program for year after year? One effect is having to deal with the contempt of those students who passed the exit test long ago, or those students whose parents withdrew them from the program as quickly as possible. In other words, one effect is being made to feel stupid by your peers.

I can just see this likable girl telling a friend at lunch, “she’s still in the bilingual program,” while the two of them make small moues of disgust. The Hispanics don’t associate much with the African-Americans here and, interestingly enough, the “regular” students and bilingual students keep apart too. Some of this partition is a natural consequence of having separate classes, but I’d be willing to bet that “I’m not stupid!” figures in as well.