Life in Bilingual Schools: The Change That Language Can Make

• In Event: 31.076 - Creating a Culture of Revolutionary Praxis: The 25th Anniversary of Life in Schools

Abstract

Life in Schools serves as a strong reminder that the realities of students’ lives must play a prominent role in teaching and learning and that structures must be created that are not merely pedagogical but that have a strong foundation in valuing students and the communities they serve.

In my area of work in bilingual education and now as coordinator of academic programs at a community bookstore located and serving a working-class Latino community, I see the importance of working to develop entire communities that can encapsulate Latino students within a responsive critical context that not only seeks to know who they are as cultural beings in the world and with an understanding of their resources and their needs, but also one that places a strong value on their specific cultural and linguistic differences.
Teaching is an ethical praxis but to be ethical requires a recognition of each individual’s rights as human beings – their right to live with dignity and free from exploitation and domination. As Freire (1998) discusses in Pedagogy of Freedom, “Respect for the autonomy and dignity of every person is an ethical imperative and not a favor that we may or may not concede to each other.

Bilingual programs, and especially two-way immersion programs attempt to provide a community-wide structure that raises that value of the minority language and culture for both minority language speakers and dominant group children while also providing a linguistic and cultural context for achievement in academic content and language development in both minority and English languages. These are contexts that are more likely to support culturally and linguistically diverse communities where parents may have greater access to engage with school-related issues because their language, interests, and insights may become integral to school functioning. This approach develops an ethical praxis that recognizes the value of every cultural and linguistic tradition and of students and their families to maintain their heritage (Stipek, Ryan, & Alarcón, 2001).

While this does not change the broader structural relations within which our communities of color are encased, it is a necessary component to simultaneous broader movements for social transformation. Our students of color must be allowed to thrive within the current system so that they can become the leaders in tomorrow’s struggle for a more democratic world.

Author

• Anaida Colon-Muniz, Chapman University