At the May 2014 meeting of the Purdue University Board of
Trustees, Wayne E. Wright was approved as the Barbara I. Cook Chair of
Literacy and Language within the College of Education. Wright’s
appointment was effective 18 August 2014. Prior to coming to Purdue, Dr. Wright
was an associate professor in the Department of Bicultural-Bilingual
Studies in the College of Education and Human Development at the
University of Texas at San Antonio.
Wright was a Fulbright Scholar at the Royal University of Phnom
Penh, Cambodia, in 2009. From 2004–2008, he was an assistant professor
at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Prior to that, from
2003–2004, he was a faculty associate at Arizona State University East
and, from 2001–2003, an adjunct professor at Mesa Community College,
Northern Arizona University, and Arizona State University.
His research focuses on language and educational policies,
programs, and practices for language minority students. He has many
years of experience teaching in bilingual and ESL classrooms with
students from kindergarteners to adults. Wright is editor of the Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and
Advancement and is book review editor for the International Multilingual Research Journal. He is
author of Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners:
Theory, Research, Policy and Practice (Caslon Publishing, 2015). He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees
from California State University Long Beach and his doctorate from
Arizona State University.
Can you tell me about how you got into the field of
bilingual education and bilingualism, and how your career
unfolded?
How long do you have? I’ll tell you the short version. When I
was 19, I went on a mission for my church to Washington, DC, and once I
got there, I was assigned to work in what we call the Asian Program. And
essentially, what that was is there was a large number of Southeast
Asian Americans who were refugees from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam who
had resettled in the Washington, DC, area. A lot of them had joined the
church, and there were a lot of needs that they had: linguistically,
academically, culturally, and so on. So a lot of my mission was spent
helping people adjust to the United States and I did a lot of work
helping at hospitals and things like that, teaching English as a second
language. So that really kind of did two things: One is help me
understand the needs of newcomers and the challenges of adjusting when
they are coming to a new country, and also the horrors that people could
experience in other places and why that might bring them to the United
States. It also gave me a little dabble in ESL teaching, because we did a
little bit of that even though I had no experience or anything.
I also learned the language, so Cambodian became my second
language. Because I didn’t receive any formal training as it is usually
common for missionaries and I was just kind of thrown into it, I got
books—...and I would sit at home and I
would play these tapes, and I would learn to say things like, “where
are you going?” But it was a very formal variety, so the book would say,
“Madam, please tell me where are you going?” I was over at someone’s
house and I would say that, and they would laugh at me and say, “you
sound like a book, here’s how you really say it.” So through this
process of just authentic communication, I was able to pick up quite a
bit of the language.
I did it for 2 years; it was ‘86 to ‘88. I came home in 1988,
and I didn’t know what else to do. I was in community college, and I was
a business major, and then I found out from a friend of mine, he says,
“Oh you know what, the schools are looking for para professionals”—we
called them “college aids” back then—“and they need an aid that can
speak Spanish and Cambodian.” I said, “Oh, really?” So I went to take
the test, and I got approved, and I just went to my old high school, and
I knocked on the ESL teacher’s door, and I said, “I heard you’re
looking for college aids.” She looked at me, she says, “Yeah, but we’re
only looking for people who speak Spanish or Cambodian, sorry.” I said,
“Well, actually, I speak Cambodian.” She goes, “You what?” And then one
of her Cambodian students was sitting near the door and she overheard
me, and she ran over, she goes, “You speak Cambodian?” I said,
“Baht,” which means yes, and she
goes, “Wow,” and the teacher said, “you’re hired,” and that’s how I got
into education.
So I ended up working there, at the high school, then once word
got around that there was this guy who could speak Cambodian, they
moved me to an elementary school, where they actually wanted to do kind
of like a pseudo bilingual program. We would pull the kids out of their
regular classroom and teach social studies, and there was one teacher
that was teaching social studies in Spanish, and then I would do the
same thing in Cambodian with a lot of the newcomer Cambodian kids, and
it was kind of just the first little experiment with bilingual
education.
Which grade level was that?
All grades. I would pull a first-grade group, a second-grade
group, all the way through the fifth grade. And I’d have them for
anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes. In the process of this, I was working at
Thrifty’s Drugstore scooping ice cream, and I decided that I didn’t
enjoy that, but I loved working in the school. So I went and changed my
major to education and, of course, the teachers that I worked with were
like, “Wow Wayne, you’re really good at this and you should think about
changing your major to teaching,” so eventually the message got through.
I changed my major to education, and then I finished my
bachelor’s degree and I planned to just go right into the classroom, but
then I had an opportunity to go work and teach in Cambodia for a year
or so. The district said go to Cambodia, come back, we’ll have a job for
you. So I went to Cambodia, was there a year and a half, and then when I
came back they had a job waiting for me. They had an elementary school
in Long Beach that was half Cambodian half Latino, and I became the
kindergarten teacher, and the first year was more of kind of a sheltered
English instruction approach, but then they decided to actually create a
bilingual program modeled after one that was up the street that a lot
of my colleagues had been able to start, and so we became the second
school in the country really to have a Cambodian bilingual program.
And which years were those?
That would have been ‘93; ‘94 is when I came home, and so
between ‘94 and 2000 is when I worked there. So I was there, happy,
program was doing great, we were expanding it, kids were doing great.
Proposition 227 happened, then the following year they took the program
away. Then they started making us do these really horrible phonics
lessons, and then high stakes testing was starting to take off. And I
just realized that these policies were very harmful for my students and
were really limiting what I could do as a teacher. During this time, I
finished my teaching credentials, and I had also finished my master’s
degree, and Terry Wiley was one of my professors at Cal State Long
Beach, and my thesis actually looked at the policies and programs of the
district for the Cambodian students. It was frustrating to be able to
write this thing at the time, when all the good things that had happened
were being taking away again. The bottom line is I decided I wanted to
leave the classroom; I didn’t want to leave the field.
Terry Wiley kept talking about how [I] should do a PhD program
sometime, and so I finally said [to myself], oh maybe now is
the time to do that. I actually had gone to his house and
talked to him about different PhD programs, and I started applying to
programs. Then I got a call from him saying, “Wayne what programs are
you looking at?” And I said, “well I’m really interested in UPenn where
Nancy Hornberger is, but those programs at Arizona State look really
good.” He said, “I’m glad you said that, guess what?” And that’s when I
found out that he had gotten a new job and he was going to be the
department chair of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Arizona
State University. So I went there and then, of course, I had a great
opportunity to really explore language and education policy and worked
with the Bilingual Research Journal during that time,
helped start the Journal of Language, Identity, and
Education at that time. Then my dissertation looked at some of
the same issues of bilingual education and Proposition 227, or 203 and
No Child Left Behind, and how all those were converging in Arizona in a
way that made education worse for English language learners. From there,
[I] got the job at University of Texas in San Antonio in bicultural and
bilingual studies and got to work helping to train ESL and bilingual
teachers.
I see, I see, interesting. And so now the second
question is now that we’ve contextualized your interest and your journey
within the field, now the question is very broad about the purpose,
scope, outcome, the process of bilingual education and bilingualism. How
would you define them?
Well, I really agree with Ofelia Garcia when she says that
bilingual education should be the only way to educate students in the
21st century. We were talking a minute ago about how…most people in the
world are bilingual or multilingual, and that’s the reality, and when
you have less than 200 nation states but 6,000 languages or more than
that, then I mean that’s just an actual consequence of reality. And so
I’m in favor of bilingual programs and multilingual education programs
that accept that reality and prepare students to work in a world that is
multilingual and bilingual. But stepping back from that a little bit,
the schools have done a very poor job, not just in the United States,
but around the world, of educating language minority students. I think
it’s a huge issue of equity and equality to ensure that all students
have an equal access to education and all students have the opportunity
to learn the dominant societal language; it’s going to be a key to
getting to other places, while also maintaining and developing their
home languages which are also a huge asset for society. I’ve always been
motivated by, you know those kinds of programs. So I would like to see,
as the field grows, more recognition of that. I think the United States
has kind of been closed off and only looking in terms of bilingual
education in the United States. And I think there are a lot of lessons
that can be learned by looking globally in terms of how these issues are
playing out, what they can learn from us, what we can learn from them.
But I’d like to see more programs that are provided as
opportunities. And I think there’s a trend now where monolingual parents
of these big dominant languages, like monolingual English speaking
parents in the United States, see societal advantages of their children
being bilingual. So they’re actually seeking out dual language programs
or other programs, and I think that’s a positive development, but I want
to make sure that when we move in that direction that it’s not only
serving the needs of those students and those parents but it’s an
equally beneficial, mutually beneficial thing. And so yes, I want
everyone to be bilingual, but I don’t want everyone to become bilingual
and then still have the language minority students on the short end of
the stick. We have to be very careful about how we move forward in that
direction.
But if you think about how the field evolved from
where it started in the 70s and 80s and how far we’ve gotten up to this
point…what will be your comments about the changes that
happened?
Yeah, well that’s a whole dissertation right there, but I mean,
in general, we have the Bilingual Education Act to thank for getting
the federal support for education and promoting and providing resources
for districts to start bilingual education. I think that we were limited
by the federal government’s involvement, because it tended to favor
transitional models over…what we call the stronger models, the models
that actually lead to higher levels of bilingualism and biliteracy. An
effect of that might be…the growing popularity of the dual language
models. But you know, in general, when we had really the heyday, when a
lot [of] states were allowing bilingual education, then when we have the
propositions, the 227, the 203, the question 2 really targeting some of
the largest states with the largest English language learner
populations, along with No Child Left Behind, that really helped [make]
bilingual education kind of take a back seat. You know, it took a few
steps back. Even in the states that didn’t have restrictions on
bilingual education. Because of what was in No Child Left Behind and
some of the other challenges that also discouraged bilingual programs,
and so we really took a big hit.
But I think it’s important to note that even in the states that
have the laws, bilingual education didn’t get eliminated. And so a lot
of people have this false notion like, “oh, well, they don’t do
bilingual ed in California anymore.” Well, no, actually we do. Arizona
and Massachusetts all had programs that survived. So, Jose Gonzalez
actually said something interesting, he was one of the editors of the Bilingual Research Journal, and he said, in a way,
maybe, what those propositions did, was like we have a forest that’s too
overpopulated, [and] you have a fire to clean up the brush. Maybe that
helped to get rid of some of the programs that weren’t very good or were
too transitional in nature. Then, what survived were the stronger
programs that were more about developing bilingualism, biliteracy, and
things like that. I don’t totally agree with that a hundred percent, but
I think he has a point. But what we’re seeing now is that there’s
starting to be a resurgence back to people understanding like hey, maybe
bilingual education is a good thing…California was the first state to
create the Seal of Biliteracy, which means that we’re going to value and
recognize graduates who can prove they have proficiency in two
languages right on their high school diploma, and a few other states
have copied that now, and even in Indiana they’re talking about it. And
now there’s going to be a measure on the California ballot to basically
repeal proposition 227 and, if that gets repealed, I think that’s going
to help start a new wave of favoritism towards bilingual education in
the United States, and so I’m excited about that.
At the same time, while we’ve been struggling with fighting to
defend bilingual education in the United States, the research that I’ve
been doing in Cambodia, for example, has been very exciting, because
there they’ve realized as we did awhile ago (but seem to forget), “Wow,
this is how we can actually make education accessible to all students in
the country, especially linguistic minorities, who we’ve been having a
really hard time to reach.” Because we realize now that if you don’t
speak the dominant language, and we send a teacher that can’t speak
[the] minority language, then that’s not very effective: Kids don’t want
to come to school, and then the teachers don’t want to teach them. But
if we do bilingual education, that seems to solve a problem. I see that
happening in other countries around the world where they’re turning to
bilingual education as a solution to solving just basic access to
education issues...
I mentioned to you the Handbook of Bilingual and
Multilingual Education (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015) that’ll be coming out later this
spring. We’re really excited about that because it
outlines not only the theoretical foundations of the field, but then it
has a big kind of global perspective section, where we have countries
from every continent except Antarctica, authors writing about what is
happening in those countries or those regions. It’s not all pretty, it’s
not all, “Oh yes, we do bilingual education, everything’s fine.”
They’re each addressing a lot of the challenges in terms of policy
versus actual practice, but again it does show that bilingual
education’s alive and well and that we’re able to have a kind of
dialogue and the debates that we need about how to make it better, and
more effective, and have it serve more children, and to be able to use
it to reach issues of equality and equity and things like that. So
that’s my hope, too, in terms of the field going forward, is that we
recognize what’s happening and that as we get rid of some of these
restrictions that we have, we can go on and create even better and
stronger programs that serve more and more people. That answers the
question? I feel like I’m rambling here.
Yeah I think so, I think you even answered one of my
next questions. Where do you want the field of bilingual education to
go, and what aspects of your current work or past work have contributed
to these goals? I guess more specifically, what are some challenges, how
do you envision overcoming them, and what are some questions that you
think should be answered or pondered over?
Well, I think one of the challenges that I mentioned earlier,
number one is just to overcome restrictions. So you’re looking at
language ideologies, and those in power, if they have certain
ideologies, then that’s going to form the kinds of policies they have,
and so we see cases of restrictionism. We’ve seen cases where when it is
allowed, it’s a very limited form. Even in Cambodia where I was
documenting programs, it’s very much a transitional model, because the
minister of education said, “This is great, but you can only do it for
three years.” And it’s very much in their mind the whole purpose of this
is to transition to the dominant language, not to maintain the native
language, and, of course, those that are fighting for it don’t see it
that way, but they see this as a “foot in the door” strategy, right? And
so my hope for the future is that we can take weaker forms that exist,
make them stronger, and create programs where they don’t exist, whether
it’s going to be weak or strong, and then build them up from there.
And I think that the more and more people that benefit from
bilingual education…I think about the kids who are in dual language
programs now who are going to have some language skills, and when they
grow up, they’re not going to have the same kind of negative attitudes
hopefully towards other languages that maybe their parent’s generation
did, and so the more and more that grows, I think there’s going to be
more openness to that. I think, too, as the demographics of the United
States shifts, where, for example, and I think Texas is a good example,
there was very little opposition to bilingual education in San Antonio
and that’s because San Antonio is 59% Hispanic, and they’re not afraid
of two languages. In fact, they’re proud that their city is bilingual
and bicultural, so it’s only natural that you have bilingual and
bicultural programs. So I think as the nation becomes more and more
diverse and minorities become the majority, that we’re going to have an
electorate that’s going to be more friendly towards bilingual education
and multilingual education. And I want to make sure that we have the
kind of research that’s going to guide people…to open the right kinds of
models and programs and that are based in the realities of how people
actually use languages in real life, their daily lives.
How did your own work contribute to these goals?
…I feel like a lot of my work is focused on the negative: on
the bad policies, on the bad programs that have happened, and trying to
warn of the repercussions of those, so that my hope is that it can be
used to inform better policies and programs in the future. My own
textbook, Foundations of Teaching English Language
Learners (Caslon Publishing, 2015 ) isn’t necessarily a book
about bilingual education, but it gets used in the types of programs
like our EDCI370 here, where [the course is] designed to help prepare
all teachers to work with English language learners in their class, but
what I try to do in the second edition even more than the first edition
is to have a bilingual thread throughout all the chapters. So that as
teachers are learning about different program models, about reading
instruction, writing instruction, that that’s always there…reminding
them that these kids have another language and that’s a strength that
can be drawn on, and that biliteracy is a good thing to develop. So I
think that, too, we get more and more teachers to understand and value
those things, having been added to, then they’re not going to be
opposing if their school wants to start a bilingual program, but they’ll
be supporters of that because that kind of a support in a school is
important. So, so I hope that book is helping make a difference.
And then I mentioned again the Handbook of Bilingual
and Multilingual Education, it’s really the first handbook
that deals with the issues the way we did. So there was an International Handbook of Bilingual Education (Greenwood, 1988) that was published I think
20-something years ago by Christine Bratt Paulston and [it] was like our
section three: Here are a bunch of countries and here’s what they’re
doing with bilingual ed. But what our handbook has is [it has] the first
section that lays the theoretical foundations of the field in terms of
language policy, language rights, culture, second language acquisition,
research, assessment, etc. So those chapters kind of help lay that
foundation for the field. Then the second section looks at bilingual
education in different groups and different school levels. We have a
chapter on preschool, elementary, middle school, high school, higher
education, but also nonformal bilingual education, and then looking at,
for example, special education and gifted and talented students and deaf
students, so looking at those special populations. I failed to mention
we have a chapter on translanguaging by Li Wei and Ofelia García in that
foundational section. And then that kind of sets the stage for these
global perspective chapters where drawing on those foundational issues,
drawing on those different levels, they’re able to get an expert view of
what’s happening there. I’m really hoping that handbook will prove a
nice tool for people to use to really understand the field and move it
forward. And then, of course, the book with Colin Baker, you know to be
able to take this foundational book that’s being used around the world
and being able to bring it up to date with the latest theories and
approaches. The book I am talking about is the Foundations of
Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters, 2011) by
Colin Baker. So between these textbooks and this more “researchy”
handbook, you know we’re putting products out there that people can turn
to as resources, and hopefully that will have an influence on the
field.
You mentioned the fact that you are trying to have a
bilingual thread in your textbook, and you said something along the
lines of how important it is for ESL teachers or teachers working within
the field of TESOL to be aware of bilingualism and to tap into
students’ bilingual strengths. Can you now talk a little bit more
broadly about the role of BEIS—the role of the Bilingual Education
Interest Section within TESOL?
Right. I think that’s critical, right? Because in a lot of
places, sometimes people think that ESL and bilingual education are
opposites, and they’re against each other. And to be blunt, if you go to
NABE (National Association for Bilingual Education), it’s predominantly
Latino educators and scholars, and if you go to TESOL it’s primarily
White and Asian, right? And so there are some kind of racial and
linguistic divides there among the field, but TESOL has always, at least
at the service level, been supportive of bilingual education, and I
think an interest group within TESOL is critical to be able to show
that. And TESOL has come up with some statements very much in favor of
linguistic diversity and bilingual education. I’d like to personally see
TESOL take a stronger role, especially since NABE has had some
challenges recently and their conferences are dwindling in attendees. I
think they’re starting to turn around a little bit, but I think TESOL
can really step up and take more of a leadership role. And I think TESOL
has a better advocacy platform. I think they have more good lobbies on
the legislature than necessarily NABE did. I’d like to see TESOL take
more advantage of that, and hopefully, the BEIS group can be the driving
interest with that and be the ones that are pushing by example to take
this certain position they can stick to, and to lobby the right kinds of
issues on Capitol Hill, and also to make sure that bilingual education
is addressed at the conferences, so that there’s always sessions that
deal with those issues.
And any other final comments, questions, or recommendations?
No. I just think it’s an exciting time to be in the field, and I
think for the first time I’m a lot more hopeful than I was maybe 5 or 6
years ago, where I’m starting to see the tide shift a little bit even
in those places where there [are] more and more restrictions. I’m
starting to see those restrictions fall away; if we can get even more
and more people to recognize the benefits, then I think we can have
changing attitudes, which can lead to change in policies, which will
lead to more effective programs that are going to be more helpful to
more students. So I’m always a hopeless optimist.
Okay, well thank you very much.
Alsu
Gilmetdinova is a PhD candidate in the Department of Literacy
and Language Education at Purdue University. Her interests revolve
around bilingual education, language policy, and TESOL. |