I am Bilingual. What is Your Superpower?

Every year, at the beginning of the school year I do a community building activity where we all think of what we are good at and then decide what our superpower is and share it with the class and display it in the hall. I must say that usually more than half of the class says that their superpower is that they can speak two languages. I think that making kids value this is huge! They think that learning a foreign language is cool! A century ago, that wouldn’t have been the case but right now our students are living in a globally connected world that is eager to know more about one another.

Here is a picture of one of my students last year. I printed it for her and then she had to write a paragraph sharing what she thought she was good at and why. Sorry, I sent the writing home with the students but if you are interested in doing this activity you could just use a blank piece of paper for students to write or create a sentence frame using Microsoft Word.

I am a superhero because _____________________________

Soy un superhéroe porque _____________________________

I don’t Need to Share With Other Kids!

I saw this blog post on my social media this morning and I clicked on it
thinking that it was going to be about all I stand against. I mean… I thought it was going to provide me with true reasons why parents complain about their back to school supply lists. I really thought it was going to help me understand why some parents think that sharing is not caring. I have heard comments in the past like the ones Monica shares in her post. Why would anyone buy an extra box of tissues?…”ESPECIALLY when those might not get used by my kids?”.

http://community.today.com/parentingteam/post/why-i-wont-buy-one-extra-box-of-tissues-for-my-kids-school-supplies-signed-a-frustrated-parent_1477939498?cid=sm_fbn_pt

I still remember last year when a parent who could be classified as not one of the neediest in our school, decided to take EVERYTHING home when I reminded her that in our class we share all supplies. She said… well if my son is not the only one using these special things I am taking them home! I tried to explain to her that many our her son’s peers were not able to bring anything to share and that we would love to keep some of the supplies she brought and she continued to say, I guess you are buying it all then! I wasn’t mad but I was disappointed in her behavior. We, teachers, try to so hard to make kids understand that each one of them matters and that we don’t discriminate. And here she was, a grown up modeling for her son, to not share with those who couldn’t provide for themselves. I was in shock for a couple of days.

Don’t think that this supply list had more than 10 things listed on it. At our district teachers don’t come up with the school supply lists anymore because parents have complained about them. I understand that when you have several kids it can get expensive. However, why are you buying the fanciest binders, folders, pencils….? They don’t need to be stylish (even if your child asks you too), they only need to serve one purpose, assist in his or her learning!

I teach at a very poor Title One School where we are lucky if kids bring school supplies the first days of school. How could I let the few kids that do bring some special folder to keep it in the classroom? I don’t want the rest to feel like they don’t have a special folder so on our school supply lists we make sure to note to parents that we SHARE it all!! If they are able to bring any, we very much appreciate it but if they cannot it is okay.

I mean our main goal is to make education available for everyone and not a hurdle. That is why sometimes our community partners have helped us in the past and have donated school supply items. Sadly in the last 3 years, we have seen a reduction in Title One school funds which we used to use to purchase some of these items, and guess who ends up buying it all now? You guessed it! The teachers do!

Every year I complain about the amount of many I spend out of my paycheck and we are talking thousands of dollars because if I have 46 students who are not able to bring anything from the basic supply list that the district send out, I end up buying it all! And that total quickly adds up! When January comes along, what do you think we do then? Buy some more! And this total doesn’t even cover the money spent on special activity materials or even markers, Clorox and kleenex (which or district believes is too expensive to ask for).

So I thank parents like Monica who understand why we ask for such materials and don’t mind providing for those who can’t afford to. From teachers like me, THANK YOU!

 

 

Which Language Would you Choose?

After deciding what language you think you should learn next it is time to share your choice with the rest of us to make yourself feel a little more accountable. Don’t forget to specify why you selected that language on the second question. The poll will be open until August 13, 2017.

Although the brain is not a muscle it acts as one because you can exercise it until it improves. According to this video by Mia Nacamulli posted in Best British Centre‘s website, there is enough research that shows that those who are bilingual or multilingual have higher gray matter and more brain activity than those who are not. It is crazy for me to believe that before the 1960’s many countries believed that being multilingual was considered an impediment! However, we have enough evidence now to understand all of the benefits of learning a new language brings.

Did you know that the majority of humans are at least bilingual? However, not all have all four components of a language mastered (speaking, writing, listening and reading) but anyone with time can become proficient in all four.

Mia suggests that there are three types of bilingualism. I must say that I agree with this almost 100%. I would classify as a Compound Bilingual because I learned Spanish and Basque simultaneously since I was a little girl. I learned about the world around me as I was learning both languages at the same time. However, I would classify as a Subordinate Bilingual because when I came back to the US. I was learning English by translating it to either Spanish or Basque. Those were my primary languages and I simply learned what the equivalent words, sayings, phrases were to match what I already had in mind.

There is a third category in between being  Compound Bilingual and a Subordinate Bilingual and I must admit that most students with Hispanic descendant at my school fall under this category called the Coordinate  Bilingual. Even if we start in Kindergarten teaching how to read, write, speak and comprehend Spanish and English, these are the students who continue to speak their native language at home while learning English at school.

Although the dual language program strives to have students fall under the Compound category (learning both simultaneously) since school in the US starts so late (compared to other countries), students already know how to conversate in their own language by the time they come to Kindergarten. Nevertheless, thanks to dual language programs, these same students are able to become proficient in two components of language proficiency, writing, and reading, that they didn’t have before starting at a bilingual school.

What are your thoughts? Should bilingual schools like mine try to ensure that students can receive preschool in the target language so that they learn about the world around them simultaneously or will they always be under the coordinate category because they will continue to speak Spanish at home and with friends while learning English at school?

What type of bilingual are you?

Which Language Should I Learn?

As you read in my previous post there a ton of benefits to learning a new language. But what language should you learn? In this audio recording, I explain the elements you should consider before choosing a new language to learn.

Remember, it is never too late to start learning a new language!

The Benefits of Being Bilingual

Regardless if you learned a new language as a child or as an adult there are benefits that come from learning another language.

Did you know that most people in the world are at least bilingual? Being monolingual is actually the minority. Being bilingual makes life easier when watching a foreign movie, traveling abroad, understanding other people’s cultures better and many other benefits for the brain. Here is a visual of the benefits of bilingualism.

 

Source: Laura.net Retrieved from http://bit.ly/lbXgH5z

 

After finding this visual I realize how lucky my students are because their parents made a choice to enroll them in the dual language program at my school. Many parents made this decision solely so that their children could communicate with their elders but for most of them, it was because of the benefits they believed they will encounter later in their adult life.

I must admit that it made me happy to see that by learning new languages I have a lesser chance of getting dementia (which my grandma is currently suffering from). I can also tell you that I can focus on tasks for a long period of time and I see that my students can too, compared to the students enrolled in the English only program.  I also see that my students don’t have such a hard time transitioning to new tasks and have a great memory! Sometimes even better than me and I am known for remembering things everyone said that people forget they even said them.

Finally, my students seem to catch on to grammar rules a lot faster and make connections between languages. This helps them improve grammatically even in their native language because they are aware of how the mechanics of the foreign language they are learning go and are forced to pay attention to things they didn’t necessarily care about learning before. In my adult Basque class, I teach, I have seen this consequence clearly. I mean… they didn’t even know what an adjective was in their first year. I was shocked! Their response was: We only know how to speak English, don’t ask why it works or what something is. Now they even know the names of the tenses in both languages simply because they had to use their native language to make connections that they would retain.

So I guess I have to thank my mom for working hard at making me trilingual (she actually tried to make me quadrilingual) and also encourage more parents to take on this opportunity that you may be able to offer your children (possibly free of cost like at my school).

Do Generational Differences Make an Impact in How Teachers Should Teach?

The readings for my blogging class this week were very thought provoking and I think you will find them thought provoking as well. After reading Prensky‘s article, I was convinced that it made perfect sense and that to an extent I could see the generational difference in my everyday life. My boyfriend of 7 years (there is also a seven year age difference) and I have repeatedly talked about how our different upbringings and ways of doing things have made us converse differently, seek different things and learn differently. In fact, when I had just read this article, before reading the other two (that disprove it) I showed him how it was describing us almost perfectly, We both agreed that it made total sense and described us to a T. We process information very differently. He needs a lot more thinking time, and I seem to get frustrated when people are too slow to catch on. Just like in the article by Presky, I, who you could call a Millennial get impatient when things are not moving fast, I am definitely used to obtaining information quickly and the only thing I do while I am not multitasking is sleep! He, on the other hand, is a Gen X-er. He can only focus on one thing at a time, hates when things go too fast and he can’t keep up, needs a lot of time to process new information and he likes doing on his own. Before continuing with my reading I was sure that I was a digital native and Josh was a digital immigrant.

However, when I read the other two articles (by McKenzie and Reeves) I quickly realized that I may have jumped on the idea of identifying myself as a digital native too quickly because these two articles clearly concluded that Prensky’s claims are not supported by good references and he forgot to address how his claims relate to any learning theory. “Without better research, the debate will continue about the impact of the Information Age on the learning needs, preferences, and potentialities of the Net Generation” (Reeves, 2008).

It is clear that this topic needs to be further researched. However, in the meantime, I believe that if a new idea is proposed there is some small fact or truth that triggered it in the first place for someone to take the time to write about it. Although I know now that Prensky’s article may not have a solid research behind it, I have to play with and investigate some of the ideas that the article pushed me to think deeper on because there may be a shift in the future or simply because a colleague may want to push Prensky’s ideas on me.

Here are some of the things I stuck with me from all three readings:
-The idea of needing to communicate with my students in the language and style that they understand without changing the content
– Provide choice on how they prefer to work, perhaps they would like to listen to music while they work, create a product for a project using a device of their choice,…
– Allow them to multitask and see if they are capable of doing so if not, don’t encourage it
– Can’t assume that everyone learns the same way even if they are from the same generation
– Don’t take what one source says as the only truth but instead compare it to what other sources say and then decide what your beliefs are

If I have a colleague that believes that Prensky’s ideas are the only ones that make sense because the students are surrounded by so much technology and they don’t know any other way, I would suggest him/her reading the counter research and asking questions to challenge their thinking like:
– Do you think that students learn more when enrolled in a distance course? – Provide me with some research to back up your statement.
– Do you think that the way we are teaching our students is not helping them get a job in the workforce? – Provide additional research.
– Where do the traditional learning theories fit in all of this?
– Can we generalize that all of our current students are surrounded by the impact of technology? What about poverty? What about students in different countries?

These are just questions that you should ask yourself. I encourage you to go and research more about this topic and find that extra research to back up your beliefs in case any parent, administrator or colleague were to ask you why you do what you do.

Reeves, T.C. (2008, January 22-25). Do generational differences matter in instructional design? Online discussion presentation to Instructional Technology Forum from. Retrieved from http://paeaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/10c-Gen-Diff-Matter.pdf

The Positive Impact of Technology in my Journey to Become a Polyglot [Guest Blog Entry]

 

About the Author
Timothy Johnson is a language enthusiast. He has traveled to more than 14 countries and knows six languages (English, Spanish, French, Basque, Latin, and Portuguese). He is currently in the Basque Country attending an intensive Basque Langauge Immersion Course. He will be there for the next two weeks living with students from all over the world that are also learning Basque. On top of that, he is registered nurse in Idaho and has an associate degree in Music. You could say that he is a very versatile and interesting fella.

 

I think technology has changed the amount of access we have to authentic examples of language and the ability to access and interact with native speakers has changed. It used to be that people studied foreign languages as a topic of study, such as chemistry or geography but were unable to use the language in real life interaction. My experience has been more in line with the interactive, globalized spirit of our age. For instance, through Skype, I was able to continue practicing Basque with a native speaker through a Euskara/English conversation exchange which allowed me to not lose as much ground between learning sessions in the country.
Another invaluable aspect of technologically inspired interconnectedness are the friendships and net of relationships with native speakers I have been able to maintain through social media. Low maintenance and steady long term Facebook contact, for instance, makes for much more meaningful friendship and language interaction in person during the short weeks of travel to the country where that language is primarily spoken. As a wannabe polyglot and lover of languages and people, I feel very fortunate to live in the tech savvy age that I do.

How does the Future Look for California’s Bilingual Programs?

Two weeks ago I had to take an MTI (Mathematical Thinking for Instruction) class where I met several teachers that were moving to the Treasure Valley and needed the class to get certified in Idaho. On one of the breaks during day three of our workshop together, one of the ladies asked me to share how her child could get into the bilingual program where I taught. While I was explaining the very simple process to those interested in the crowd, the two teachers from California at my table were in shock of how easy the process was and how much support we got from the community.

At first, I wasn’t sure why they were so astonished about our success, especially because I had heard on the news that California had passed Proposition 58, California’s Multilingual Education Act, repealing the English-Only requirement of the previous 227 Proposition passed in 1998.

My understanding was that this was great news for California and would push for public bilingual schools. I had always thought that California was way ahead of us because I knew of successful language immersion schools located in California but what I had not realized, was that they were not public bilingual schools. Later that week I started researching the topic and I realized that although the future looks brighter for multilingual schools in California a lot has to be done to repair the damage done for the last two decades.

I ran into this article written by Ashley Hopkinson:

A new era for bilingual education: explaining California's Proposition 58

The article above answered many of my questions, however, many have not been covered and I am not sure they will be answered in time for the new school year because the new law just went into effect on July 1, 2017, and school starts in August! This does not give schools much time to prepare to start a new program. How will they find qualified teachers to fulfill these jobs? What extra requirements will they be asking teachers to have when applying for a bilingual specific job? Honestly, if I had not gone to college to become a bilingual teacher my general educations classes would not have prepared me to teach in an immersion program.

Sadly for California, most of the teachers that did major in Bilingual Education left the state to teach in neighboring states. There are so many things you should be aware of and prepare for when teaching in a bilingual setting, that it would scare me if some schools in California jump full steam ahead with bilingual schools without much preparation. If so, I am afraid that they would fail.

In my opinion, they should start slowly, building a core pillar at a time. The first year they could start with Kindergarten only and adopt a trial curriculum. At the end of that year, they could review and decide what needs to be changed or added. If ready, the following year they could start with a first grade class on top of the Kinder class and so forth until they get all the way to High School.

Another concern I have is how they will go about deciding what schools will offer the bilingual program and what language it should offer. Will they look at the area’s demographics? This is a big task for which I don’t think they are ready to roll for the 2017-2018 school year. Plus, how will they hold districts accountable for offering what is best for the students? For example, if half of a school’s students are native Spanish speakers and a high percentage of parents are interested in having their child in the program who gets to decide the future of the school? But what happens if some parents in that school are against it or dislike change, what process will the school need to follow to ensure parent and student satisfaction? Hopefully, time will answer all of these questions.

To conclude, I am hopeful that California is ready to help English Langauge Learners become fluent and academically ready in their native language as well as English. In addition, the good news is that many English speaking students will have the opportunity to learn a foreign language while helping those who are learning English. Everyone wins!

Did Einstein Have to Pass an English Proficiency Exam?

As a teenager growing up in the Basque Country, I remember when my mom informed me that we had received a letter letting us know that French was going to be canceled and that English was going to be offered instead the following school year. After decades, the district had decided that English had become the global language of the world, therefore, the language they would start offering for an hour a day starting in fifth grade would be English. At first I was sad, it was going to be my third year receiving a foreign language (besides Spanish) and I was excited about it being French because I had many family members that lived on the French side of the Basque Country plus my mom and aunt had taken French growing up because French was believed to the global language back then.

However, later in life when I started traveling, I did see how English was taking over the world and had indisputably become a common language. I could see how Basque, my native language and the language I spoke in school, was too small for the world, Spanish was strong but not so much in Europe and English had helped me in my travels to the UK, Australia, New Zealand and even Singapore. I was starting to appreciate the fact that they had decided that I needed to take English instead of French back in Middle School.

However, the other day I found a very interesting Ted Talk that made me see this whole situation with new lenses. Patricia Ryan has been an English teacher for over 30 years in Dubai. She was sent from the UK to Dubai when Dubai was looking to “modernize” the country. One of the things they did to achieve this goal, was to bring in lots of English teachers to provide English classes for the citizens of United Arab Emirates. In the Ted Talk below she shares how she is happy that there is a common language for the world to understand one another but that she is sad to see languages die. Did you know that a new language dies every 14 days?

As Patricia says, everyone wants their child to receive the greatest education possible and it is true that the top 5 universities in the world happen to be in English speaking countries. This makes more and more parents push their children to learn English instead of minority languages that are of cultural significance to them.  It is like we are pushing students to become fluent in English and we don’t care so much about their aptitudes they bring in if they don’t possess the language. However, once they know English or demonstrate a good proficiency level in the TOEFL exam (American test of English), then we no longer see a barrier and we start to listen to their ideas.

It is like we are not giving people enough credit for what they know when they come from a foreign country. They may know amazing things and have insightful ways to look at things that we have not considered simply because their language has ways of differentiating things that ours does not. Did you know that countless of words we used daily came from the Native Americans? Some of these include barbecue, caribou, chipmunk, woodchuck, hammock, toboggan, skunk, mahogany, hurricane, and moccasin. Languages are influenced by culture and when we lose a language every 14 days we don’t know what great ways of looking at the word we are losing.

Einstein didn’t have to pass an English proficiency exam. His work was translated into multiple languages just as important texts did back then. Do you think we are missing out on great ideas and theories others discover because the authors cannot speak English or do not have the money to pay for the $150+ to take an exam to get into a good university? And what is your opinion about losing so many languages? Is there something we could do to avoid it? What consequences do you think that would bring?

Ryan, P. (2010, December). Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_ryan_ideas_in_all_languages_not_just_english?autoplay=true#t-34851