Promoting Bilingualism and Multiculturalism
Through Powerful Learning Communities
Sonia Nieto
Loyola Marymount University
February 2009
Framework for understanding quality education
for linguistic minority students
Sociopolitical
context of schools
and society
(institutional/ ideological)
Personal values
and commitments
(individual)
Comprehensive
school reform
(collective)
Sociopolitical context
[who has power? How it is used?
Who benefits? Who loses?]
• Societal level:
– Who counts?
• Who has access to education? health care? employment?
housing?
• Who can speak their native language in the community? at work?
– What counts?
• Whose language is “standard”?
• Whose lifestyle is “normal”?
• School level:
– How do school policies and practices benefit some students
over others? (curriculum, pedagogy, disciplinary policies, hiring
practices, parent outreach, etc.)
– Ex, Curriculum: Whose knowledge counts?
• What knowledge does the curriculum reflect?
• Whose perspective is represented?
• Who benefits? Who loses?
Quality EDUCATION for linguistic
minority students =
Access
Equity
Asking “profoundly
“profoundly multicultural
multicultural questions”:
questions”
Asking
• Who’s taking calculus? physics? Are there enough
labs for all students?
• Is the bilingual (ESL, ELL, or special education)
program in the basement? (hall closet?under the
stairway? next to the boiler?)
• What are our children worth?
• Who’s teaching the children?
Seven Basic Characteristics of
Multicultural Education
• Anti-racist/anti-bias
education
• Basic education
• Important for all
students/people
• Pervasive
• A process
• Education for
social justice
• Critical pedagogy
Anti-racist, anti-bias education
Not simply celebratory
Doesn’t automatically “take care” of racism
Inclusive of biases other than racial (gender,
language, social class, sexual orientation, etc.)
Anti-racist, anti-bias education
Confronts racism and other biases directly
through content, approaches, and pedagogy:
Welcomes “dangerous discourse”
Teaches young people skills in combating bias
Pays attention to how some students benefit over others
in school policies and practices
Basic Education
• As necessary as reading, writing, arithmetic,
and computer literacy
• Part of the core curriculum
• A more representative, more truthful canon
• Preparation for living in an increasingly
diverse, complex, and interconnected world
Important for all students
• Not just for “urban,”
“minority,” “at risk,”
“disadvantaged”
students
• All students have
been miseducated,
although in different
ways
Pervasive
o Not a specific subject matter, unit, class, or teacher
o Not just ethnic tidbits, holidays, festivals, or fairs
A philosophy;
a way of thinking
about the world
Pervasive: Permeates everything
o Curriculum
o Pedagogical
approaches
o Sorting practices
o Staff diversity
o Reading materials
o School traditions and
rituals
o
o
o
o
Assembly programs
Letters sent home
Bulletin boards
Outreach to homes and
community at large
o Athletic programs
o Cafeteria food
Education for social justice
o Recognizes the injustice and
inequality in the world
o Prepares students to be
citizens in a multicultural and
democratic society
o Focuses on the role that
students and teachers can play
in turning injustice into justice
o Puts learning into action
o Is democracy at its best:
messy, complicated, and
sometimes full of conflict
A Process
• Beyond curriculum and materials,
textbooks and units
• Dynamic, ongoing, ever-changing
• Involves intangibles
Relationships
o Communication
o Learning preferences
o
Critical pedagogy
o Recognizes that
knowledge is neither
neutral nor apolitical
and that every
educational decision is
a political decision
o Teaches students to
question, explore, and
critique
o Helps teachers and
students understand
different perspectives
o Helps students and
teachers move beyond
their partial (and
therefore) limited
experiences
o Not about “political
correctness,” but about
affirmation and respect
for all students of all
backgrounds
promoting bilingualism and
multiculturalism
•
•
•
•
Teaching as solidarity
Teaching as advocacy
Teaching as sociocultural mediation
Teaching as political work
Teaching as Solidarity
At my undergraduate college, I
was in the majority. That was
mostly who was in the program:
White women who were native
speakers of English. But in the
BEM Summer Program, out of
30 students, there were a
handful of native English
speakers…
Mary Cowhey
Teaching as Solidarity
Bill Dunn
Coming out of the closet as a
Spanish speaker
In my work, I often act as a bridge
between different cultures. Part of
my evolution as a teacher has been
in self defense: I have learned to
make my life easier by making life
easier for my students; but another,
greater part of my experience has
been a deep curiosity and yearning to understand the
lives of my students. In my struggle to understand, I
have learned not only a great deal about my students,
but also about myself…
Teaching as Advocacy
Ambrizeth lima
I teach because I believe that
young people have rights,
including the right to their
identities and their languages…
This has meant that I’ve had to
engage in many struggles to
retain bilingual education {a
right that was eradicated in
2002 when the voters of
Massachusetts supported the
elimination of bilingual
education through a ballot
initiative)…
Teaching is about
power. That is why it
must also be about
social justice.
Teaching as
Sociocultural mediation
I'm a White, middle-class woman
who grew up in a White, middleclass neighborhood and went to
a White middle-class college. I
know if I was really going to
teach today’s kids, I had a lot to
learn…
Mary Ginley
Teaching as Political work
Diana Caballero:
When I started teaching over 35 years ago in a
second grade classroom of a New York City public
school, I was motivated by a passionate belief in
equality and social change. My commitment to
educational change stemmed from my personal
background as a working-class Puerto Rican growing
up in the South Bronx in the 1950s.
“Teaching is always political” (Paulo Freire)
LESSONS LEARNED
From these teachers and from other research
• Diversity is a resource, not a problem
• Students with previous schooling need more than language
instruction
• Students do not need to be separated from same-language
peers to develop English language skills
• Parents and community members need to be welcomed and
involved in the education of their children
• Teachers need to confront their unexamined assumptions to
understand how racism and other biases operate in schools and
influence both their teaching and their students’ learning
• Teachers can - and should - have high academic standards
while at the same time affirming students’ identities
• Students are often our best teachers
Learning from students
Only as learners
recognize themselves
democratically and see
that their right to say “I
be” is respected, will they
become able to learn the
dominant grammatical
reasons why they should
say “I am.”
Paulo Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers:
Letters to Those Who Dare Teach, 1998