Week 5 – Assignment A – Collier, Rodriguez, and Teaching Bilinguals

Week 5 – Assignment A – Collier, Rodriguez, and Teaching Bilinguals

Talking points:

1 – (Collier) – “Being a bilingual teacher seems to multiply the complications of teaching” (p. 223). This quote is on the first page of the article and stood out to me as soon as I started reading. I felt as though it connects to the rest of the article because of the way Collier presents the information. She goes through and presents seven guidelines for teachers to develop and utilize better teaching techniques to suit a classroom full of ELL / bilingual students. Being a teacher of students who understand and speak multiple languages can be tough because of how important it is to include both cultures in the classroom. This goes back to the concept of culturally relevant pedagogy; the inclusion of activities that connect to the identities of students is essential.

2 – (Rodriguez) – This reading broke my heart, as I could not imagine what it would feel like to be stripped of your identity in your own home. Rodriguez states, “In an instant, they agreed to give up the language (the sounds) that had revealed and accentuated our family's closeness” (p.35). While his parents were doing it to help Rodriguez learn in the classroom, it took away from their identities inside their own home. However, despite that, Rodriguez makes a point to share, “So they do not realize that while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality” (p. 39) which is also an important aspect of a bilingual education.

3 – (Teaching Bilinguals) – This video goes into the background of how ELL students were treated prior to the 1970’s in public school classrooms, specifically NY classrooms. After a movement to stop this treatment of students, it became recognized that it is important for teachers to leverage the language of students in the classroom. It helps them learn and further express their ideas and identities. Translanguaging pedagogy is something that is extremely important for students in our world where speaking and understanding more languages is more beneficial than it previously was.

Argument statement: (for all 3) – The authors make arguments that it is important to keep the culture, especially the language, or students alive in the classroom, even if the educator only speaks one language, to help with students and their retention of their identity.