How would you complete this statement? An English language learner's (ELL's) first language is like a __ because __. What ideas come to mind?
The vocabulary you used to fill in the blanks can reveal a lot about the choices you might make in the classroom. For example, using words like barrier, roadblock, and hurdle to describe students' first languages may lead to classroom practices that devalue or seek to replace those languages with English. This kind of mindset makes students' first languages seem like deficits. On the other hand, words like key, bridge, or gift place importance on students' first languages and may frame the daily decisions of the classroom so that those languages instead become resources. To help ELLs reach their highest potentials in school, teachers must first be willing to uncover their beliefs and ideologies concerning their emergent bilingual students.
The children in today's classrooms are becoming increasingly multilingual. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, during the 2010–11 school year, 10 percent of K–12 students in U.S. schools were ELLs—almost 5 million students. Meanwhile, the teachers most often teaching ELLs are monolingual, middle class, white females. An ideological disconnect only compounds these linguistic, racial, and ethnic differences.
What Is Ideology?
Ideology can be understood as the beliefs that are so ingrained in our thinking that, at first thought, they may appear as common sense. It is important to note that these beliefs do not develop in a vacuum; they are accumulated and learned through experiences over the course of our lives. The stories you were told as a young child, the bits of conversations you overheard, the influences of the media and popular discourse, your own experience learning language(s), your teacher preparation programs, and experiences in the classroom all influence your ideology.
Paulo Freire (1998) describes how ideology affects a teacher's mindset in the classroom:
It is a posture of unconditional respect for the students, for the knowledge they have that comes directly from life and that, together with the students, I will work to go beyond. My coherence in the classrooms is as important as my teaching of contents. A coherence of what I say, write, and do. (p. 94)
Even if you responded to the question at the start of this article in a way that valued students' first languages, would your bilingual students agree with your assessment? Maybe you didn't actually use the word barrier, but your behavior in the classroom tells students that their first languages are only causing them problems.
Challenge Ideology
Ideology is often difficult to uncover. The following ideas and strategies may help teachers discover and challenge their ideologies of language and of emergent bilingual students.
- Consider your experiences with other languages: Think about how your experiences learning a second language may affect your current thinking. Did you learn a language in school, or did you acquire it by listening and speaking at home or in your community? Did you love learning German in high school, or did you find your French class difficult? Did you value learning another language, or did you view it as a decontextualized and meaningless process? Take a minute to consider how these past experiences may influence your teaching of emergent bilingual students.
- Understand the power of vocabulary: What words do you use when speaking of students who know multiple languages? Do you label these students as limited English proficiency (LEP) students, non-English proficiency (NEP) students, English language learners (ELLs), or English learners (ELs)? Labels are powerful because they reveal our ideology and aspirations for students. The work of García, Kleifgen, and Falchi (2008) urges educators to consider using the term emergent bilingual when describing students who are learning English. This term reflects an ideology that views multiple languages as assets. It shifts the conversation from focusing on English as the only goal of education to valuing multilingualism.
- Observe your students: Do your emergent bilingual students take risks in your classroom? Do they feel able to speak in multiple languages? Do they share stories or examples from their home cultures? Think about how you could try to incorporate classroom routines and opportunities to show students that you care about their first language as well as their process of learning English. Simple actions such as labeling classroom items in the native languages of your students or incorporating greetings in students' native languages can demonstrate the teacher's desire to appreciate multiple languages and cultures.
- Take risks: In your own life experience, you may have never been in the language minority. Now is your chance to step out of your comfort zone. Attend a cultural event, religious service, or performance in a language that you do not know. Visit student homes with an interpreter or enroll in a class to learn another language. If you have the means, a week or two in another country as part of a language immersion program for teachers is an excellent way to increase your empathy and awareness for emergent bilingual students, while learning a language yourself.
- Read different perspectives: Read the works of authors such as Paulo Freire, Gloria Anzaldúa, Pierre Orelus, Antonia Darder, Richard Valencia, and Guadalupe Valdés, which offer counterstories that challenge dominant views of language. Read memoirs of the lives of bilingual or bicultural adults to better understand the relationships between language, culture, and identity. For example, through extensive interviews, observations, and the writing of oral histories, Guadalupe Valdés (1996) presents a comprehensive picture of what life was like for immigrant families. Gloria Anzaldua's <LINK URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderlands/La_Frontera:_The_New_Mestiza" LINKTARGET="_blank">Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza</LINK> (1987) is a foundational piece in challenging the dominant views of language.
- Join groups on social media: Follow groups such as NAME, NABE, Rethinking Schools, and CELT on Facebook or Twitter. Discussing different perspectives on issues surrounding language will help you to challenge your thinking. Consider attending state or national conferences from these organizations to broaden your views.
- Talk to your students: Most important, get to know your students. It sounds simple, but in the rush and shuffle of the day, you can easily forget to do it. Genuinely listen to their stories, meet their families, and get to know their communities. Ask them what it is like to be an emergent bilingual in your school. Pay attention to what they say and what they do not say. Do you allow your own assumptions and biases toward a student's home culture to become part of the curriculum? Or, do your students feel comfortable enough to explain or correct your cultural knowledge? A caring teacher will not view ELL students as cultural minorities and will reach out to the community to learn more about their cultures. Ask your emergent bilingual students to teach you phrases in their first languages, and actually learn to speak these phrases correctly. It may be challenging, but that is the goal—to challenge your ideologies.