|
We would like to welcome the reader to the new issue of the
newsletter of the Bilingual Education Interest Section (BEIS). Last
year, BEIS celebrated its 40th anniversary, which prompted the topic for
the current newsletter: the past, present, and future of bilingual
education. For this special issue, we decided to interview established
scholars, activists, and administrators who have made a significant
contribution to the development and growth of the field.
As such we hereby offer interviews with Wayne Wright, Sonia
Nieto, David Rogers, Kate Menken, and Ofelia García. Each of them has a
unique and inspiring journey to bilingual education, at times personal
and at times professional, driven by natural curiosity, local
circumstances, diverse experiences, and the desire to provide best
education for their students. Their stories shed light on the field as a
whole as they take us back into a time when they were students and
teachers themselves to then bring us back again to current times. Each
of these journeys highlights important implications for what lies ahead
for advocates of bilingual education.
As the interviews organically evolved, the order of their
answers and type of follow-up questions vary, yet they provide a broad
spectrum of meaningful comments which may further enrich readers’
knowledge about the scholars and the field. Without further ado, we
invite you to take on this personally moving, intellectually
stimulating, and professionally enriching journey into the lives of
those who have lived and/or studied the origins of bilingual education
and continue to work relentlessly toward the betterment of the
field.
Andrés Ramírez is assistant professor of TESOL and
bilingual education at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Ratón, USA. His
research focuses on the academic achievement of emergent to advanced
bilinguals in K–16 contexts.
Alsu Gilmetdinova is a PhD candidate in the Literacy
and Language Education Program at Purdue University. Her interests
revolve around bilingual education, language policy, and
TESOL. |
