B-MEIS Newsletter - March 2021 (Plain Text Version)
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FOSTERING HOME SCHOOL CONNECTIONS: WHEN TESOL PROFESSIONALS DOUBLE UP AS PARENTS OF MULTI-BILINGUAL CHILDREN Clara Bauler, Stephanie Abraham, and Ming-Hsuan Wu, Adelphi University, NY, USA
We recognize that today’s more connected and dynamic world presents unprecedented challenges and opportunities for parents who are raising multilingual children. Particularly, lockdowns and school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic provided renewed opportunities for parents to interact with their children in their home languages more often (Serratrice, 2020). On the other hand, the coronavirus health crisis associated with racial justice movements have tested multilingual parents who work full time, home school and conduct research and/or teach culturally and linguistically diverse learners. With challenges and opportunities in mind, five TESOL professionals discuss their experiences as parents of emergent multi-bilingual children. Our discussion questions were:
Because I grew up in a monolingual home, coming into this field gave me confidence that I could raise a child who was bilingual. Also, it helped me respond to the racist comments directed at my child like he needs to “speak more English” or that he's already “behind.” In turn, it has shaped our family language policy, instead of being strict, I just focus on my child as a language speaker of a lot of languages. So, we use all of our languages very flexibly, not trying to police languages when we are at home. My current research project is at a bilingual, community-based literacy center in Philadelphia. When I was collecting data at this research site, I expired the translanguaging and flexible nature of the place. My advice to parents would be to stop separating languages and correcting language practices especially for young children and create authentic positive experiences around the language that you want your child to learn. The pandemic has pushed all of my child’s schooling to home, so in a way I can embrace a more flexible linguistic approach to his schooling, while also maintaining his bilingualism. We, both my spouse and I, read to him and teach him in English or Spanish. In terms of the racial justice movements, as White woman who is often living in diverse spaces, I struggle with talking with my very young child specifically about anti-blackness. Clara My interest in Second Language Acquisition stems from my passion for multilingualism. Yet, every day I am confronted with prejudice against how I am raising my children bilingually. I feel constant tension between what is popularly believed to be good for bilingual children and what I do as a parent-researcher. For example, ever since my children were born, people have insisted that I should only speak in Portuguese with them. I refused to do that. All the research I have read and believe in is based on evidence that bilingual children translanguage. At home, we make sure to use all the linguistic resources we have at hand, and I am always in awe at my children’s flourishing bilingual abilities. So, the most valuable tip I can give to parents is to relinquish the idea of “perfection.” The beauty of linguistic diversity is in its uniqueness. Embracing “imperfection” is something that has helped me move forward as a bilingual parent. I want my children to feel free to use their “imperfect” bilingual powers, and not feel shut down because they made a mistake or pronounced a word with a perceived “foreign” accent. Celebrate all your children’s attempts at using language, no matter how “perfect” they are. Seeing that linguistic discrimination and racial discrimination are so intimately connected helps me advocate for not only my children, but all bilingual children I fight for in my work as scholar and teacher educator. Nilufer While raising bilingual children, knowing second language acquisition theories was very helpful. When my children were young, I made sure that I spoke only Turkish to them because I knew that even though their first language was Turkish, their native language would be English once they started school. Also, according to research conducted on literacy, bilingual children can transfer their literacy skills into their second language. So, my sons started to read when they were around four years old. When they started to read in English, they could already read and write in Turkish. When my younger son started school, he went through the silent period. His teacher was very worried that he was silent in the class. I explained to her that this was a very common stage in second language acquisition, and he would be over it soon. I collaborated with my son’s teacher to help him go over the silent period quicker and happier. The impact of COVID-19 and current events had an immense effect on my child’s psychology. We talked about the importance of social justice. The most important lesson we get from our conversations was that we are all part of the culture; we consume and produce culture. Therefore, it is very important to have global competencies. Etienne I began teaching EFL after college, and I have enjoyed most of my career immensely. When Kaylin, my younger daughter, was born, I decided to speak to her only in French while everybody else in the household spoke to her in English. I knew she wouldn’t speak French since we are in the US. However, I would be satisfied if she was able to understand. Today, I occasionally speak to Kaylin in French. Conversely, a conversation with my older daughter is usually a patchwork of French and English. This approach would probably give any child some exposure to both languages as they grow up. Adults learn a foreign or second language; a child can acquire a language by osmosis if they are appropriately immersed in more than one language at a time. This would be my advice to any parent who wants their child to grow up bilingual. My children are grown and live on their own except for the youngest one, who is already 19 years old. For me, communication is essential today and prior to the onset of the current pandemic. My philosophy is to teach by example whether I am in class or at home. My children know the importance of mutual respect, compassion, and standing up for what is right. I learned these values from my parents, and they guide me daily. Ming-Hsuan My children are exposed to Mandarin, Hakka, and Taiwanese and I always make sure that they are given enough time to learn and to process their thoughts. Being in the SLA field helps me stay optimistic about their language development. I know it is never too late to learn a new language as long as they have enough input and output and can find connections to the language. However, I struggle with raising bilingual and bicultural children in the US because of the Eurocentric school curriculum and English-only, or anti-immigrant ideologies in the society. Very few schools truly value bilingual education. My research on heritage language education suggests that when learners have positive identification with their heritage and identity, they don’t resist learning their heritage languages as much. Fostering positive identification and appreciation of the heritage culture is important for these learners, because without such positive identification, it is possible to lose the language that they were most familiar with as children. Ever since my daughter faced some racist remarks at school at the beginning of the pandemic because of her Asian look, I became more active on social media in my local community to raise awareness related to biases and stereotypes. We openly talked about how different groups were affected by the pandemic and why the racial tensions across the US escalated in 2020. I believe that it’s never too early to talk about these issues with young children and this becomes even more urgent during this difficult time. Closing Like research has shown, a common thread among us was that encouraging our children to draw on all their available linguistic resources was positively associated with developing multilingualism, biliteracy, academic knowledge, and a heightened sense of identity (García & Otheguy, 2020; Shin, 2017). We live in an increasingly more connected and global world where attitudes regarding linguistic diversity, especially when parenting, might have a crucial role in building bridges that overcome prejudice and discrimination. As demonstrated by all of our shared experiences, keeping an open mind towards how bi-multilingual children use their languages to make meaning and relate to others can be an important first step into that direction. References García, O., & Otheguy, R. (2020). Plurilingualism and translanguaging: Commonalities and divergences. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 23(1), 17-35. Serratrice, L. (2020, November). Languages in lockdown: Time to think about multilingualism. http://lucid.ac.uk/news-events-blog/blogs/languages-in-lockdown-time-to-think-about-multilingualism/ Shin, S. J. (2017). Bilingualism in schools and society: Language, identity, and policy. Routledge. *This collaborative paper is a result of a TESOL-BMEIS webinar hosted on October 15, 2020. To watch the webinar, please go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woo1ErRdbJM&feature=youtu.be
Dr. Stephanie Abraham is an Associate Professor of Language and Literacy Education. Her research and pedagogical interests focus on the documentation of the rich language and literacy practices of racialized, emergent bilinguals, as well as helping their teachers develop high quality, critical pedagogies. Dr. Clara Vaz Bauler is an associate professor of TESOL/Bilingual Education at Adelphi University. Her research focuses on how digital media technology can be used to support multilingual learners’ academic writing skills while valuing their voices, linguistic assets and composition strategies. Dr. Nilufer Guler is associate professor and director of Ed.D. program at Rockhurst University. Her research interests include teacher education, ELL education, and internationalization of higher education. Dr. Etienne A. Kouakou currently teaches at the CUNY Language Immersion Program (CLIP) at Hostos Community College, mentors TESOL teacher candidates at Hunter College, and teaches College Composition at Queens College. Dr. Ming-Hsuan Wu is an assistant professor in TESOL/Bilingual Education at Adelphi University. She draws upon her language learning and cross-cultural experiences as well as her research to illustrate the importance of implementing a culturally relevant pedagogy when teaching diverse students. |
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