Growing Up In A Bilingual Classroom

Around 1959, bilingual education took flight in the United States. Starting in Miami and quickly making its way San Francisco, bilingual education soon led to the Bilingual Education Act, which promoted “No Child Left Behind”. Only twenty years later, the act acquired the attention of high schools around the country. Nonetheless, bilingual education is not always taken to be the cure-all for acclimating immigrants to the United States. In his article “Aria: A Memoir of Bilingual Childhood”, Richard Rodriguez argues that students should not take part in bilingual education by explaining how it takes away individuality and a sense of family through the use of ethos, diction, and imagery; Rodriguez also uses parallelism and ethos to point out how a bilingual childhood can help students feel connected to society.

In the article, Speak Spanish, You’re in America!: El Huracan over language and Culture, Juan Gonzalez, a journalist and broadcaster of the daily show, Democracy Now, describes how bilingualism has impacted the United States’ modern education system. He describes an amendment that would constitute English as the official in the United States, which he believes can be a potential threat to the educational system. Gonzalez suggests that instead of having an amendment that constitutes English as the national language, American schools should implement Spanish to highlight the importance of being bilingualism in the American educational system. A constitutional amendment declaring English as the national language would be damaging to bilingual students because it would limit their capability of communicating in English or their native language, and therefore they have would fall behind in classes and will not succeed in the American educational system. To highlight the importance of bilingualism, even more the educational system should implement a variety of languages.

I taught for 25 years at an inner city school. My students were all second language learners, and often their parents were totally illiterate. I entered this career not as a teacher, but as a social worker turned teacher. The Los Angeles Unified School District was in dire need of bilingual educators, so they offered a district intern program where I took college courses while I worked in the classroom.

Bilingual Education where Supporters feel that students miss a great deal by not being taught in their family’s language. That children that retain their family’s language will retain a sense of individuality. Their ethnic heritage & cultural ties. Helping Students acquire the skills of a classroom crucial for public success. Rodriguez also discusses the use of teaching and using a single language.

People of all ages constantly learn how to speak multiple languages. Children are taught to become bilingual, which increases their knowledge. A young boy named Richard Rodriguez grew up in San Francisco, California with a household of Spanish speaking family members. Rodriguez barely knew English when he entered his early years of Elementary school. Through the course of his education Rodriguez took note of how different he was from his family, and slowly began to lose his heritage. Rodriguez’s family embarrassed him since he was categorized as a Scholarship boy, which means a good student yet also a troubled son whose moderately endowed (Rodriguez 19).

Richard Rodriguez, son of Mexican immigrants, was born and raised in California. As a result, he was exposed to several languages during his childhood. Rodriguez grew up listening to Spanish at home, but English was a strange and foreign language for him. In his essay “A Memoir of a Bilingual Child,” Rodriguez compares his native Spanish to the English that surrounds him. Through characterization and the tone, Rodriguez gives the reader a better understanding of the similarities and differences he finds in the two languages present in his life.

As a current 5th grade teacher through Teach for America and Masters’ candidate at the Relay Graduate School of Education, I believe I would be an excellent fit for the English Teaching Assistantship in Brazil. Raised myself in a bilingual household, my experience teaching English as a Second Language students in Passaic, New Jersey has strengthened my language skills. Teaching in a bilingual classroom (English and Spanish), I teach a range of students: some only speak their native language while other students are quickly approaching proficiency in English. This has helped me switch between English and Spanish seamlessly—and guide others to do the same, a skill I would like to bring to learners in Brazil. Further, I am now capable of helping others think metacognitively about the process. In addition to being fluent in English and Spanish, I have taken on Portuguese to be my third language. Although I have conversational skills now, I am hoping to reach the intermediate level in the next year and greatly boost these skills through interactions in Brazil. As well as the language skills I’ve gained, I have learned to create engaging lessons and units that scaffold information to help increase understanding. I have also learned to create my own handouts, worksheets, and charts to assure student learning. As a teaching assistant, these fundamental skills will assure I can focus on teaching and learning from my students, instead of the basics of teaching. I am also excited to

​The United States is a nation filled with a multitude of different cultures which come alongside with a variety of languages. These languages are what help society to communicate with one another and to expand their horizon of thinking. As the United States progresses so does the culture. The culture of the United States is no longer what it once was. A nation of a predominately Caucasian race, who only speaks one language, is now a thing of the past. The National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition (English Language Learners) states that from the 1997-1998 school year to the 2008-2009 school year, the number of English Language Learners in public schools increased from 3.5 million to 5.3 million which comes to be a 51 percent increase. They also reported that the overall student population grew to a 7.2 percent increase during this time. A huge generation of a multicultural society is rapidly growing and it is our responsibility as a nation to educate this new generation to its fullest potential. We as a nation can wither choose to ignore the reality of this new generation by forcing one language on students classified as English Language Learners, or we can choose to cultivate the knowledge of language so that this new generation may prosper in more ways than one. We do not want to become a society that promotes, as R.A. Berman summarizes in his statement from his article The Real

There are so many diverse student groups in the United States. Two that are really of interest to me are English language learners (ELL), and students in foster care. Though they have many similarities, they are also vastly different.

The Bureau of Exceptional Education and Student Services (bureau) received a state complaint from Ms. Kim Satterfield on September 15, 2016, alleging that the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind (FSDB) violated federal and state laws relating to the education of students with disabilities. Specifically, the allegation is whether the FSDB implemented a policy that would not adhere to the student’s individual educational plan (IEP) and not support the student’s preferred language and means of communication.

Asylees are foreigners that have been admitted to the United States and are unable or unwilling to return to their home country due to persecution or fear of persecution. They need protection from persecution based on their race, religion, membership in a social group, political opinion, or national origin. They are capable of applying when they are in the United States or at a point of entry.

Whenever I was asked about what it was that I wanted to be or do when I grew up my answer was always: “I don’t know, but I do know that I want to work with children.” There are many fields in which on can work with children. For instance, there is medicine, social work, law, and education. It was not until high school that I began to really think about what field I wanted to go into. Therefore, I began to volunteer at my local library and started to babysit. This led to me realizing that education was the field I want to pursue in my career. However, it was not until college that I narrowed that down to early childhood education, but to be even more specific I want to work with bilingual/ELL children in that age range. I attended a bilingual program up until the fourth grade and it was a very fulfilling experience for both my parents and me. Looking back and having done fieldwork at schools I came to realize that I want to give back to a specific field that helped me learn to read and write in the English language and not let me forget my first language which is Spanish in my early years of education. I had teachers that incorporated both languages to help not just me, but all of the students in the classroom.

Nearly everyone is required to take at least two years of a foreign language in order to attend college in the United States. But, how much does one really remember from that long ago high school Spanish Class? Imagine how much easier language would be to master, and how much more would be absorbed, if the languages were introduced in Kindergarten. By implementing more bilingual education programs within the United States Education System, children will begin to improve drastically academically, cognitively, and socially; Bilingual Education will also help to improve cultural awareness within both the American Education System and the United States itself.

Bilingual education is an academic approach followed by some instructors, which is using the native language for new English learners for instructions. Within the international context, bilingual education has become a necessity due to the high number of immigration, colonialism and the great number of local languages (Yushau & Bokhari, 2005). This approach in instruction has reflected back positively or negatively in many dimensions such as social, psychological, and pedagogical. However, bilingual instruction is an effective way of teaching English as a second language, in case of well implementation it can be seen as an educational advantage. This literature covers a wide variety of opinions that revolves around a topic that researchers find it controversial, this review will highlight the major question and findings which emerge in

For this investigative assignment, I interviewed three of my closest friends about their perspectives on bilingual education in the United States. One of my friends, who I will call “A,” said that bilingual education is important for students because it helps them broaden their perspectives on the world. Students are exposed to learn different cultures and respect them, promoting multiculturalism in our country. “A” said that if students were only exposed to English-only classroom setting, they would most likely be ignorant of other cultures. She also told me about her experience when she was in an ESL program during her middle school year. She described the program as useless because she and her classmates learned broken English from each other. She somehow managed to get out of the program and put herself into the mainstream English class. My other friend, who I will call “B,” stated that bilingual education is helpful in developing a wider cultural perspective and cultivating a person suitable for the globalized world. As a foreign-born American and working as an international student coordinator, she emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and respecting different cultures. She believes that bilingual education can help students to achieve better knowledge on growing multiculturalism in our country. My last interviewee, who I will call “C,” also believes that bilingual education is important to cultivate young minds by helping them to respect not only their own but