reimaginingenglish

[reimaginingenglish]

The Goal

It is important to me as a teacher that I incorporate as many diverse and multicultural books and texts into my classroom lessons as possible. As I grew up feeling underrepresented (or not at all) in the books, plays, short stories, and poems I read in English class as a student, I never want my students to feel as I did growing up.

I plan to fill my shelves with all sorts of books, including many that feature people of color as the protagonists. Many such books are being banned right now in Texas, but I am determined to provide access to as many as I can for my students. Links such as the one provided above compile lists of multicultural and diverse books, and I will be consulting them when designing my classroom library.

I never want my students to feel othered for their differences, and linguistic diversity in particular is something to be celebrated in an ELAR classroom. Sometimes there is a feeling or emotion or situation that can only be captured in a specific language, and I never want my students to feel like speaking a first language other than English makes them deficient or anything of the sort. My goal and hope is to normalize linguistic differences in my classroom and offer each language and its speakers a place of respect.

[reimaginingenglish]

Interrogating Power By Confronting WME

Black linguistic practices have often been stigmatized as an inferior dialect of English because of the superiority given to White Mainstream English (WME). At a conference, educators called for Black linguistic justice as African American Vernacular English (AAVE) has been devalued in schools and subsequently, the world. Baker-Bell et al. (2020) discuss several demands they want to see integrated in schools in their article entitled “This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice!” While I see the importance of each demand, I want to start by making sure I do not police Black students’ (or anyone’s, for that matter) language practices or penalize them for using AAVE in my classroom. Even though I will be teaching “proper” English in my class due to curriculum standards, I want my students to know that there White Mainstream English is not superior to AAVE or any other dialect. 

[reimaginingenglish]

Dual Language Integration

In my future classroom, I would like to integrate my emergent bilinguals’ students native languages by identifying target vocabulary words in each unit and asking my students for the translation in their native language. Like in the poster below, I would write the vocabulary words and their translations (in whatever language(s) are spoken by my bilingual students) on the whiteboard and ask the same students what connotations the translated words have in their language. Doing this would normalize the speaking and usage of languages other than English and would hopefully make emergent bilinguals feel more included and integrated in the classroom.

[reimaginingenglish]

Historicizing Bilingual Education

Bilingual education has had a complicated history. Many minority groups have been neglected and even oppressed by the government. There have been many laws and acts that have been passed that take away funding or interest in bilingual education. In the 20th century, Native Americans were forcibly sent to boarding schools where they were punished for speaking even a word of their native language (Bear, 2008). Black students have been continually pushed out from dual-immersion programs due to lack of access and because their linguistic practices are not valued in school (Shepard, 2021). 

Many other students from other non-White backgrounds who grew up speaking a non-English language have also reported that they feel their first language is not as valued as English and have lost the ability to interact with it as a result (Liao, 2021).  As someone who has gone through a similar experience, I do not want my future classroom to be a place where emergent bilinguals feel like they must let go of their native language in order to belong. I want to respect their identity as bilingual students and help them to develop a deeper relationship with their native language while learning English.

[reimaginingenglish]

The Importance of Labels

This diagram sourced from the Minnetesol Journal shows how labels, specifically deficit labels, act as limitations for students. As seen in the top right corner of the image, labels such as “LEP” (limited English proficient) and “ELL” (English language learner) negatively position students by associating them with ideas of “limited” and “lacking” as if not being fluent in English is all that defines them. Such deficit-laden labels position teachers to view students as incapable, and positions students to view themselves as deficient (Colombo et al., 2018). Thus, it is important to me that I use terms such as “emergent bilingual” and “emergent multilingual learner” in my future classroom because they take into account the fact that these students are developing in more than one language. Not only so, but using asset-based language and labels will help me to positively view my students and will hopefully help my students to view themselves positively as well.

[reimaginingenglish]

Translanguaging

This website features 15 texts in Spanish and English and can be used for translanguaging purposes. As many emergent bilinguals in Texas come from a Hispanic or Latinx background, integrating texts with both Spanish and English creates opportunities for these students to engage in literacy at a deeper level and develop a better understanding of the texts (Seltzer & de los Rios, 2021). Translanguaging allows for students to feel more comfortable and at ease in the classroom as they can interact with a familiar home language and frames other languages besides English as also being important and worthy of respect. I want to incorporate multilingual and multicultural texts into my classroom so that my emergent bilingual students feel like they have a place of belonging.

[reimaginingenglish]

My Classroom Layout

At this link, you can view (in 3D) the classroom that I designed with fostering conversation in mind. In order to normalize bilingualism and reduce the stigma around racialized bilingualism, it's important that group work be structured in a way that allows both elite and racialized bilingual students to have the opportunity to be positioned as experts (Flores, 2019). The way that the aforementioned classroom is designed and arranged is to foster comfortable conversation by placing students in circular groups. The idea is that this arrangement will help my students learn from one another. I can walk around the classroom and listen to the conversations and learn from my students as well.