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Effective Communicators in a Dual Immersion Class with Maria Vidas
41 Plays1 year ago
On today’s episode: Maria Vidas is a High Desert Middle School Spanish Language Arts Teacher and Dual Immersion Secondary Program Coordinator at Bend La Pine Schools in Bend, OR. Last year, she implemented our Effective Communicators Course in her classroom. Today, we talked with Maria about her experience as a dual immersion teacher and how programs like Effective Communicators benefit students of all backgrounds.
Topics:
02:00 Vida’s journey to becoming an educator
09:50 Bend’s community and student population
11:45 Effective Communicators in Maria’s classrooms
14:30 Issues of interest for Bend students
24:35 Sniffing out sensationalism in the media with students
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Significance of Language Mastery
00:00:00
Speaker
There is a power to knowing your language well and so my students correct me and I cherish that and I welcome that in it and then celebrate that.
Podcast and Guest Introduction
00:00:15
Speaker
Ed Madison, Hello everyone, welcome to the How to Have Kids Love Learning podcast, where we explore ideas and strategies for parents and educators to help students thrive.
00:00:22
Speaker
I'm your host, Ed Madison.
00:00:24
Speaker
I'm a professor and researcher at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication, and I serve as the executive director of the Journalistic Learning Initiative.
00:00:32
Speaker
a nonprofit organization that empowers middle and high school students to discover their voice, improve academic outcomes, and engage in self-directed learning through project-based storytelling.
00:00:44
Speaker
And I'm Ed's co-host, Beau Brusco, a former English language arts teacher and multimedia journalist, and it is my pleasure to introduce to you our guest today, Maria Vidas.
Maria's Role and Experience with JLI
00:00:55
Speaker
Maria is a High Desert Middle School Spanish Language Arts teacher and Dual Immersion Secondary Program Coordinator at Bend Lapine Schools and Bend, Oregon.
00:01:04
Speaker
Last year, she implemented the Journalistic Learning Initiatives Effective Communicators course, and we are delighted to have her on today to talk about her experience.
00:01:13
Speaker
Welcome,
Maria's Linguistic Journey and Identity
00:01:14
Speaker
Maria.
00:01:14
Speaker
How's it going?
00:01:16
Speaker
It's going well.
00:01:17
Speaker
I'm happy to be here.
00:01:18
Speaker
Maria, I think a good place to start is to sort of talk to us about your particular group of students in your area and maybe some of the struggles that they're facing and possibly how you relate to them as an educator in Ben Lapine.
00:01:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:40
Speaker
And if I may, I'm going to start actually with myself and who I am in this program for these students, and then we can
00:01:48
Speaker
I can elaborate a little bit on them as well.
00:01:51
Speaker
So I'm from Oregon.
00:01:53
Speaker
I grew up in Astoria.
00:01:55
Speaker
And having a name like Maria Vidas, there's a lot of assumptions about me and my identity.
00:02:00
Speaker
Spanish is not actually my heritage language.
00:02:03
Speaker
It's actually the third language that I learned.
00:02:05
Speaker
My first language is English.
00:02:07
Speaker
If I were to have learned it, Greek would be a heritage language for me because on my dad's side of the family,
00:02:14
Speaker
My grandparents were both born and raised almost completely in Greece.
00:02:20
Speaker
And when I was in high school, I actually studied French and I didn't start that learning until I was in high school.
00:02:26
Speaker
So when I graduated from the University of Oregon and knew I wanted to learn Spanish, I had studied anthropology there and I had thought that I wanted to go into like midwifery, nurse midwifery.
00:02:39
Speaker
But I knew that for the work that I wanted to do in the United States that
00:02:44
Speaker
knowing Spanish would be a really vital resource.
00:02:47
Speaker
So I moved to Spain.
00:02:48
Speaker
There's a scholarship available to teach kind of as an assistant teacher in the public education program in Spain.
00:02:56
Speaker
So that was my first encounter with dual language programs.
00:02:59
Speaker
I actually taught
00:03:01
Speaker
in the regular strand where students, you know, the early language development as a second language in most European schools, public schools, is pretty common.
00:03:10
Speaker
And so the school that I worked at was unique in that it was one of the few dual immersion programs in Spain that was actually providing opportunities for their students to get the, I'm not sure what they're called, the
00:03:26
Speaker
In Britain they've got tests that students have to do and similarly in Spain, where once you've obtained a certain level of school of studies.
00:03:34
Speaker
it's you've completed the compulsory education.
00:03:37
Speaker
And then you you can possibly go into the workforce or do a professional training or go to the university and depending on those grades that you get on those exams.
Teaching in a Homogeneous Community
00:03:46
Speaker
you, those pathways open up for you of, you know, you can go to more elite schools and universities.
00:03:53
Speaker
And I know that in a lot of places like to become a doctor, you have to have higher grades on that, on those, um,
00:04:01
Speaker
And so the school and the first experience and encounter with dual language instruction that I had was at this school, El IES Galileo in Valladolid, Spain.
00:04:14
Speaker
And they were preparing students.
00:04:16
Speaker
It's a working class community.
00:04:18
Speaker
There's a lot of gypsy students, a lot of immigrant students in that school who were accessing this really exceptional program that was allowing students that if they wanted to, they could take the tests and
00:04:30
Speaker
at their school, and then even continue their education in the university system in Britain.
00:04:37
Speaker
And so that was, of course, not serving heritage speakers in any capacity because there is a big, pretty big expat community that speaks English in Spain, but not in that neighborhood and not that would be accessing the public schools.
00:04:52
Speaker
And so I lived in Spain for about 10 years, and I also got my degree in teaching English as a foreign language, continued to work at
00:04:59
Speaker
in and around Valladolid in different capacities, working with small children and then continuing to work with baccalaureate students who are then on that track to go to the university.
00:05:11
Speaker
And I realized that I really enjoyed teaching and at a certain point with my kids and my family.
Multilingual Families and Educational Barriers
00:05:17
Speaker
My husband is actually from Morocco and so we are raising our kids trilingually, which is kind of another layer to the work that I do.
00:05:24
Speaker
I have a really, really wonderful friend who
00:05:27
Speaker
is also raising a trilingual family.
00:05:28
Speaker
So she kind of troubleshooted that for us.
00:05:31
Speaker
And so a lot of my practice comes from that experience in the home too, where my husband exclusively engages with our kids in Arabic.
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Speaker
I started to mix it because I realized there were times when he needed to be traveling to visit his family where they weren't hearing Spanish or Arabic in the home.
00:05:48
Speaker
And so I was like, well, I guess I better learn Arabic.
00:05:51
Speaker
And so now
00:05:52
Speaker
I've got our daily kind of routines in the morning.
00:05:54
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It's English time.
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In the afternoon, it's Spanish time.
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Speaker
And in the evening, it's Arabic time.
00:05:59
Speaker
And then when we decided to move to the States with my foreign degree and hoping to get our kids into the dual immersion program, I applied to work here in this community.
00:06:09
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And it is a pretty dramatic shift to be working with mostly homogenous, linguistically homogenous, with a few situations of cultural diversity, whether students are gypsy students or what the gypsies in Spain called payos, which is more like the dominant
00:06:29
Speaker
Spanish culture.
00:06:30
Speaker
Sometimes there are Bulgarian immigrant students or Moroccan immigrant students in the classes that I was teaching in that kind of dual language or second language development setting in Spain.
00:06:41
Speaker
But here, by design, our dual immersion programs, that's actually a specific term that refers to programs that are teaching two languages, but they are also teaching them
00:06:53
Speaker
to a very specific and at least when they enter the program calculated demographic of half heritage speakers in one of the target languages, in our case Spanish and half heritage speakers, we might say, or native English speakers.
00:07:09
Speaker
Because studies show then that those relationships that develop within that setting, in addition to the leadership that kind of naturally evolves when students are more comfortable in one language or another, really elevates the experience of both the academic and the social experience of all of the students in a program like that.
00:07:30
Speaker
So it's a very different shift to be suddenly teaching and operating in a language level
00:07:39
Speaker
that for some students offers even more privilege than they already have when they're walking into the classroom.
00:07:46
Speaker
And for other students, it's almost a barrier in their home experience if their families only know that language.
00:07:55
Speaker
And then there's another layer here that's really, really amazing within the populations that we serve in Oregon and especially in Central Oregon is that our systems, I mean, this isn't the beautiful part, but our education systems
00:08:08
Speaker
Educational systems are very limited in recognizing they're mostly federal mandated systems that are, from my vantage point, quite antiquated.
00:08:17
Speaker
They don't account for trilingual families like our own or multilingual individuals in the system.
00:08:25
Speaker
It's really just like you are either an English language learner or you only speak English according to that system.
00:08:32
Speaker
And within that system, there is no capacity to recognize that
00:08:36
Speaker
Somebody might be Latino, identify as Latino.
00:08:40
Speaker
The term used is the same as in census as Hispanic, but there is no capacity to recognize this person might identify as Latino, but they're indigenous.
00:08:49
Speaker
And so the home language is actually Purapecha or Mayan.
00:08:53
Speaker
And they're flagged as Hispanic, Spanish speaking at home when the reality is they're not engaging in Spanish as a first language, it's a second language
00:09:04
Speaker
or a third language because now maybe English is more dominant.
00:09:08
Speaker
So it's been really fun to get to know the,
00:09:12
Speaker
the people that we work with and to see how the conversations that emerge in a Spanish language classroom just kind of inherently bring out and celebrate so much more nuance to their identity to begin with.
00:09:28
Speaker
And then to help us understand as an education system, really the barriers to opportunities that are especially our multilingual families and students face.
00:09:42
Speaker
What's the social economic sort of determiner for the students that you serve there?
00:09:49
Speaker
I can't give specific details on that.
00:09:51
Speaker
That's something that we're still working on in terms of flagging, you know, like Bend as a community is pretty divided socioeconomically from the East and the West side.
00:10:02
Speaker
Most of our student population who are heritage speakers are coming from the East side of Bend.
00:10:07
Speaker
And most of the students that we're serving who are, you know, there's a bit of more of a mix between the East and the West side in terms of the English speakers.
00:10:15
Speaker
because they're drawing a little bit more from all of all of bend so it's i i've spent enough time in areas like dc where there's a really diverse multilingual community starting with ambassadors and you know folks are at the the top of the economic spectrum um you know right down to folks who are doing more manual labor work um
00:10:42
Speaker
But in Bend, that's not something that I'm seeing except for in kind of anecdotal examples.
00:10:48
Speaker
Most of our multilingual community are immigrants and immigrants seeking asylum or who may have experienced irregular pathways to come to our community.
Student Agency and Societal Issues
00:11:04
Speaker
Many students then are coming in
00:11:07
Speaker
with parents who left their education at grade school level or a little bit higher.
00:11:15
Speaker
In the short video that John, one of our videographers did with you, you mentioned that you noticed that kids are coming in seeking agency and that the work that you've been doing with them through JLI this year, it's really this past academic year, allowed that to sort of blossom in a sense.
00:11:35
Speaker
I was just curious about what you observed.
00:11:38
Speaker
Eighth graders, it's like there's a fire that's lit under them almost, you know, some of them are hit in seventh grade, some of them maybe not until they're a little bit older, but there is a maturity when
00:11:56
Speaker
Most of them, some of them more respectfully than others, but most of them have a need to begin to question authority.
00:12:03
Speaker
And they'll do that in any way that they have access to.
00:12:06
Speaker
And so to provide all of my students opportunities to question and to engage in conversations and to even point out what the adults have missed.
00:12:15
Speaker
is really satisfying to me because I see that need so strongly, even though I might assume, and I've stopped assuming it because I've seen it happen so many times, even if I feel like I've developed a good relationship with my students in sixth and seventh grade, they might still come in in eighth grade questioning the work that we're doing, questioning me or looking for ways to question my authority even after, like this is the third year that I'm knowing them.
00:12:41
Speaker
And then on top of that, there is a criticality
00:12:46
Speaker
to being bilingual that I think is really vital and necessary to be a part of the program.
00:12:54
Speaker
Not all students are drawn to that.
00:12:56
Speaker
Not all of our families politically align with that desire for criticality.
00:13:02
Speaker
But for me, because we're serving both native English speakers and the very diverse group of heritage Spanish speakers,
00:13:15
Speaker
There has to be a level of criticism and agency to say, no, I'm going to tell my story as, you know, I'm an, I'm a native Purapecha speaker.
00:13:26
Speaker
Who's also learning Spanish.
00:13:27
Speaker
Who's also engaging in this very, I would argue very white community here in Bend.
00:13:34
Speaker
And then what does it mean then for a native English speaker, who's becoming increasingly proficient and literate in this second language?
00:13:42
Speaker
Utilizing this resource and entering into other conversations and so not just looking at their agency for what their eighth grade inclinations are, but then also aligning that agency with the values of the program, which is to say me as a European descent.
00:13:59
Speaker
Native English speaking educator, I can't tell you what you should care about or write about.
00:14:05
Speaker
You have to explore that.
00:14:06
Speaker
And so just inherently the whole process with JLI that students were first asking them, what bothers you?
00:14:13
Speaker
What do you notice?
00:14:14
Speaker
And what bothers you about the world around us?
00:14:17
Speaker
And then for them to take that work and go from there has been really powerful and really satisfying.
00:14:25
Speaker
What was some of the issues that your students decided to cover that stand out to you that you'd like to share?
00:14:32
Speaker
One of them, it was intriguing to me that they, of course,
00:14:35
Speaker
are heavily impacted by the wildfire and the smoke.
00:14:38
Speaker
So that was one of the things that they noticed.
00:14:41
Speaker
Mental health was a huge issue.
00:14:43
Speaker
Some of them were talking about it in terms of just student mental health.
00:14:48
Speaker
Others of them were intrigued about it in terms of being an athlete and mental health as an athlete.
00:14:56
Speaker
Gun violence as well, just because that was, when I first rolled this out,
00:15:00
Speaker
in August of 2022, that's when the Safeway shooting had just happened in Bend.
00:15:06
Speaker
And so that was something too, that they were really keen on discussing and researching as well.
00:15:13
Speaker
And it was really sweet to see there were quite a few students who wanted to turn their gaze back onto our educational community, whether it was looking at just the state of our buildings and our school and the environment that they're learning in, in a public education setting, you know, like there's paint peeling off of the walls
00:15:29
Speaker
those kinds of issues.
00:15:32
Speaker
The relationship, because there is, especially those eighth graders, their sixth grade year started online and then,
00:15:42
Speaker
the progression from sixth grade to eighth grade with the COVID restrictions was pretty dramatic.
00:15:48
Speaker
And so they were sort of thrust back into the classroom with both students and conceivably with teachers who, the transition as teachers was just so dramatic of what's important, what are we focusing on?
00:16:02
Speaker
And every year for it to evolve so dramatically that I was really intrigued by the work that some students did about
00:16:09
Speaker
the value of respect and in-person engagement in the classroom with regards to how students engage, whether it's respectful or not, and then even teachers and how teachers are engaging with them.
00:16:22
Speaker
So I thought that was really intriguing and also really sweet to see that some students really wanted to explore our program and look closer at our program.
00:16:30
Speaker
I'm just now remembering that I was really intrigued and impacted just reading the
00:16:34
Speaker
what the students were talking about was sexism in our schools.
00:16:37
Speaker
Because that's something that I know my generation likes to think that we've moved beyond and it's intriguing to see that the students who are reporting on that are confirming that's not the case.
00:16:49
Speaker
As a public program and as public educators, we have to be able to support everyone.
00:16:59
Speaker
And there are safeguards and policies in place that, as my understanding, have been in place for a long time that ensure families' agency and that their child will not be exposed to any information or any discussion about
00:17:21
Speaker
that they do not agree with them engaging with and the way that gets messy is what I think is controversial and what you think is controversial and what Ed thinks is controversial might be very different and so the opportunity to allow students to choose their own topic is one way to ensure that nobody is going to be um
00:17:44
Speaker
bothered by their child's topic because I'm prefacing that whole unit in ways.
00:17:49
Speaker
So that family communication is a huge piece in my role as an educator.
00:17:56
Speaker
But one of the things that since COVID has happened is
00:18:03
Speaker
when in the past students would come into our building, this was perhaps, I think that historically this has always been controversial because I know that from my experience in Spain, one of the hugest targets of
Education, Politics, and Media Literacy
00:18:17
Speaker
General Franco's fascist takeover were educators.
00:18:23
Speaker
Why?
00:18:23
Speaker
Because if you can't read,
00:18:26
Speaker
And if you make sure that there are no left-leaning, you know, the members of the republic in classrooms, you can more effectively eradicate any followers of the counter-political groups.
00:18:43
Speaker
entity which in that case was the losing party in the spanish civil war and so historically educators have always been targeted when there is uh when there are rivaling and especially in when there's a civil war and there is a takeover by one particular group that comes to power um and similarly most of the movements to um
00:19:11
Speaker
to, you know, fully educate and create literate communities where they have traditionally been disin, you know, uninvolved in the literacy movement or the opportunities to obtain literacy are aligned with
00:19:30
Speaker
specific political movements as well.
00:19:32
Speaker
And so that gets complicated when we are serving, of course, a politically diverse community in the public education system, as far as I'm concerned, as we should.
00:19:43
Speaker
And so having those conversations with students, whether it's about LGBTQ plus rights, if I'm interrupting a student, I had this question, a student asked me this very question, do I have to agree with LGBTQ plus?
00:19:56
Speaker
And my answer being like, you have to respect it in this space.
00:20:00
Speaker
You don't have to agree with that you can think whatever you want to think.
00:20:03
Speaker
You can think whatever you think.
00:20:05
Speaker
And so it's interesting to be navigating those tensions in ways that I don't think that that information is readily accessible.
00:20:14
Speaker
So we see it across the country in the news where, you know, such and such a teacher in Georgia, in Florida, even in Eugene, as I've seen in the news, is being singled out for reading this subject or utilizing or reading this book or utilizing this curriculum.
00:20:31
Speaker
And that is being politicized by certain factions.
00:20:35
Speaker
But the access to, you know, what is the policy in this school district?
00:20:40
Speaker
What are the requirements that teachers have?
00:20:42
Speaker
What even, even
00:20:44
Speaker
even being a teacher that I pride myself in communicating via email as a parent, I know that there's no way I can read all of the emails for all three of my children.
00:20:54
Speaker
And so it's an interesting dynamic where I think that we are at just politically at a juncture in our country where families are more keen and aware.
00:21:04
Speaker
It's showing up in social media cases across the country.
00:21:08
Speaker
And so it's sort of like, whoa, what are my kids doing?
00:21:12
Speaker
in their classrooms.
00:21:14
Speaker
And at the same time, because of COVID, families were kind of looking over their shoulder.
00:21:19
Speaker
Anyone who could and could work from home was looking over the shoulder of their students in ways that wasn't possible before.
00:21:26
Speaker
And even
00:21:27
Speaker
Even that implementation of digital platforms, I believe across Oregon and certainly across the nation so that students could be accessing learning even if they were home sick or in quarantine and those kinds of things, those continue today.
00:21:40
Speaker
So in theory, access to what our students are learning is more available than ever.
00:21:46
Speaker
The policies, I think, are really robust in terms of preserving parents' rights.
00:21:52
Speaker
to be choosing what books their students are reading, what kind of conversations their students are accessing, and that's something I pride myself on as a teacher.
00:21:59
Speaker
But I also know that those systems are reliant on, are predicated on our families being literate.
00:22:11
Speaker
And literacy not just as being able to decode
00:22:17
Speaker
language, but as that critical literacy, which kind of to me goes back to that agency piece in terms of JLI.
00:22:25
Speaker
Not all of my students might continue their bilingual journey or nor might they become journalists.
00:22:30
Speaker
But I know that even just as a parent, we have to be able to critically read any situation, any person, any graphic, any document that we receive to be able to effectively, you know,
00:22:44
Speaker
uphold our rights just to begin with, and whether we're looking at parent rights in the education system or as members of the United States, as people in the United States.
00:22:53
Speaker
So that's kind of that crux to realize that I may be fostering with my students a level of literacy, seeking to foster a level of literacy.
00:23:03
Speaker
that the families that I'm serving are not able to engage with.
00:23:06
Speaker
And then how do you support them?
00:23:09
Speaker
Is that a phone call?
00:23:10
Speaker
Is it a, you know, is that something that when we're having an open house that they're coming and being able to receive more information if they're not getting that, accessing that in our regular avenues of communication?
00:23:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think where this really gets interesting is it pertains to media and understanding and discerning what's credible and what's entertaining.
00:23:34
Speaker
We've done work, for example, with young kids where we've, and I say young, I mean middle school, sixth grade, where we'll show them like three different reports, weather reports, right, from three different sources.
00:23:48
Speaker
So one is a hurricane,
00:23:51
Speaker
And the news anchors are hanging from the lampposts and the wind is blowing and it's so sensational, you know, and then another one is like inside edition.
00:24:00
Speaker
And maybe the story is about ducks that are trapped in, you know, and no one, you know,
00:24:05
Speaker
And trying to have students, and then one is sort of like just ABC, you know, evening news, and it's reporting on the story, but it doesn't have that sort of sensational angle.
00:24:16
Speaker
And of course, the sensational aspect of it really, really sort of
00:24:21
Speaker
pulls at our emotions, right?
00:24:23
Speaker
And, you know, and so we've actually, you know, talked about having young people think about when something really pulls at your emotions like that, notice that, you know, and interrogate it further, you know?
00:24:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:34
Speaker
And then in the dual language setting, that's a really interesting element and like another layer to that because
00:24:41
Speaker
In Central Oregon, the access to news is really limited.
00:24:45
Speaker
And then the students kind of noticed, too, you know, we looked even at the New York Times and some of those other newspapers that do have some articles in Spanish, but the multimedia resources are so limited from those more reliable news sources in ways that mean, and even some of the resources that I used with the dual immersion students talked about this, that
00:25:09
Speaker
the vast majority of the multilingual community, especially the Latino community in the United States, is accessing news on these social media platforms for lack of other platforms.
00:25:18
Speaker
And so it's been really, really fun to bring that part, you know, that barrier, the language barrier to access to reliable information into the conversation with the dual immersion students because they start to recognize that
00:25:33
Speaker
And we were doing it right at the, when the World Cup was happening.
00:25:37
Speaker
And so folks were super emotionally involved, of course, with Mexico.
00:25:42
Speaker
And when Mexico was eliminated, like really closely following until Argentina won.
00:25:46
Speaker
And there was one moment when both Argentina and Mexico were still in the running, when in social media, and the students actually told me about this, where there's a really famous Mexican boxer who goes by Canelo.
00:25:58
Speaker
And he had allegedly in social media, no, excuse me, Messi had allegedly like stomped on the Mexican uniform somehow or the Mexican flag.
00:26:08
Speaker
And so my students were coming in and really, really hyped up about it.
00:26:11
Speaker
Like, oh, Mr. Vidas, did you see what Messi did to the Mexican team?
00:26:15
Speaker
Like, what a shame, what a shame.
00:26:17
Speaker
And I started to look into it and realized that this was just that thing that like People Magazine had totally taken that and sensationalized it.
00:26:25
Speaker
And it was the perfect example because it was something that they were personally super emotionally involved with because they were really invested in their team winning, but also just adore Messi as a player.
Community Building and Language Development
00:26:36
Speaker
And so it was fun to kind of decipher that.
00:26:38
Speaker
And it was happening in real time where then people, of course, had to, you know,
00:26:42
Speaker
run another article like, no, it was a mistake and Canelo.
00:26:45
Speaker
So this, you know, famous boxer is also falling into those traps of being like emotionally pulled into these sensationalized things that he's seeing on social media that ended up not being true at all.
00:26:57
Speaker
One of the things you had mentioned in the video, you said something about creating a community of curiosity or a community of questioning, something to that effect.
00:27:08
Speaker
And I think what you just shared is a perfect example of that, of being able to help students acquire the skills necessary to actually be curious in a way that's effective and to question questions.
00:27:22
Speaker
in a way that's effective and actually leads them to the facts of the matter, which I think is so powerful, just as you discussed.
00:27:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:30
Speaker
And even with that example, you know, that it's so relevant.
00:27:34
Speaker
It's part of their day-to-day.
00:27:37
Speaker
And this was actually a sixth grader, so she won't engage with this with me until we get to eighth grade.
00:27:41
Speaker
But the student who had first talked to me about it and kind of pointed this situation out to me, I could utilize those JLI resources and that kind of that questioning of like,
00:27:54
Speaker
what is your sense of Leo Messi?
00:27:56
Speaker
What kind of a player is he?
00:27:58
Speaker
What kind of an attitude does he have?
00:27:59
Speaker
Does this seem like it's in character for him so that even without looking at other sources, I was able to utilize kind of that layer of questioning about is this a genuine experience or not for a student to kind of get to that conclusion anyway and then report back to me the next day when it was confirmed.
00:28:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:21
Speaker
Well, one last thing I want to chat about before we finish up here is, you know, your experience as a dual immersion teacher and program leader and, you know, being trilingual and just so much experience with language and all of the students you've ever had from all these different
00:28:39
Speaker
different backgrounds and different households.
00:28:42
Speaker
How have you seen language build bridges among students in your classroom, just developing language and increasing understanding?
00:28:53
Speaker
You mean like them being able to work in both languages?
00:28:58
Speaker
Yeah, well, I'm
00:29:00
Speaker
And I think Spanish is a really interesting language to be the vehicle for those conversations because, of course, language is dependent on human interaction.
00:29:14
Speaker
It's inherently social.
00:29:16
Speaker
It's that experiment that could never have been done intentionally because it would be too cruel.
00:29:22
Speaker
But the hypothesis is
00:29:25
Speaker
And there have been just a handful of cases of humans who've been so isolated and, you know, in a really traumatic and cruel way that would never be intentionally replicated, had been so isolated from human interaction that at critical times their brains didn't develop language in the same way.
00:29:44
Speaker
So that inherent interaction is
00:29:47
Speaker
to language development is really beautiful to be working with students in Spanish because there are registers in the way we show respect.
00:29:56
Speaker
It's the same in French and in many languages there is a formal tense within which we can choose to engage and so we of course I think immediately recognize respectful and maybe less appropriate or disrespectful language in English but it is so precise in Spanish and it's a little different across the Spanish speaking world but
00:30:15
Speaker
So to have those conversations with students with Usted and Tu, and even to point out and call out, you know, like I'm coming from Spain.
00:30:22
Speaker
Folks don't use Usted in the same way unless you're speaking to the king of Spain.
00:30:28
Speaker
But here in this, and so here in this classroom, you're going to hear me refer to each of you as Tu.
00:30:31
Speaker
I'm hearing a lot of you refer to me as Usted with your families.
00:30:35
Speaker
I've learned I'm only using Usted unless that family initiates it and kind of talking through those dynamics.
00:30:42
Speaker
And so
00:30:43
Speaker
Because in Spanish, there is such an inherent thoughtfulness to showing respect and recognizing what each person engaging in this conversation's role is in this community that we are together in this conversation.
00:30:59
Speaker
That's really powerful.
00:31:01
Speaker
It's also, of course, just we always are constantly confronted with language as either a barrier or an opportunity.
00:31:13
Speaker
too.
00:31:13
Speaker
And so I think that within our education system, whether it's just that deficit thinking to think that, you know, it's really 20th century thinking, but it's, there are still remnants of that, that guide some federal policy.
00:31:26
Speaker
And that also, unfortunately seep into biases in the way that we as humans engage with one another, that to be multilingual or to speak a language other than English is to be
00:31:38
Speaker
you know, mentally inferior, which was the educational theory that most 20th century education was predicated on.
00:31:47
Speaker
And so there, that kind of rebuilding of the value of language and multilingualism is also really powerful because it's, there is a power to knowing your language well.
00:32:07
Speaker
And so
00:32:08
Speaker
my students correct me and, and I cherish that and I welcome that in it and then celebrate that.
00:32:15
Speaker
And then sometimes intriguingly, they're the students who, who have the most like social, emotional and like socioeconomic barriers to education who are the, the strongest heritage speakers.
00:32:28
Speaker
There is a power to knowing one's language well that I'm trying to celebrate and foster too, because that,
00:32:38
Speaker
That is something that it's just so precious.
00:32:43
Speaker
Like at some point, my grandparents decided
00:32:47
Speaker
the English was better than Greek.
00:32:50
Speaker
So my first two, like oldest aunt and uncle, it was like they progressively learned less as my grandparents learned more English, there was less Greek in the household.
00:33:01
Speaker
And so I've inherited that experience and that choice in ways that I can encourage students, whether it's in our classroom, or it's at home to continue to choose to engage in that
00:33:12
Speaker
Just, you know, a lot of our students speak to that to be coming from another country and not knowing English and to be able to immediately make connections with their peers like, yes, we're important as adults in the classroom but not nearly as important as those peer connections and for them to have.
Preserving Language Identity
00:33:28
Speaker
that common language and to be able to connect with one another is really fun.
00:33:33
Speaker
And then it's not really part of our curriculum, but the students who do come in, whether they're coming from another country or whether they in their household setting have preserved that more colloquial language, there is a real power to have and, you know, being able to just throw a dig or an insult or, you know, throw the...
00:33:55
Speaker
the foul language around in the hallway and I'll hear it and I heard that and call them out on it but there'll be three other people who don't you know three other adults in between me and them who don't understand what they're saying and so that's really interesting too all that nuance to it thank you so much for just bringing that experience uh into this conversation Maria I uh I really appreciate it yeah uh and thanks for being with us on on this podcast
00:34:23
Speaker
My pleasure.
00:34:30
Speaker
How to Have Kids Love Learning is produced by the Journalistic Learning Initiative.
00:34:34
Speaker
For more information about our work, please visit journalisticlearning.com.