No Two Stories Are the Same with Emergent Bilingual Students
I had the pleasure of interviewing two women from my community and my social circle, both of whom immigrated to the United States as children but under circumstances significantly different from each other. One traveled on foot, illegally crossing the United States’ southwestern border under the guise of an afternoon hike with their “uncle,” a paid human smuggler. The other entered legally through an airport port of authority in the northeast, sponsored by family members who immigrated years earlier to the United States from her native community.
The first individual is Adriana Diaz. Adriana was born in the Ixtapa/Zihuatenajo area on the western coast of Mexico where she lived until migrating to what she said everyone called, “el otro lago,” at the age of eight. I met Adriana much later, when she was in her young 30’s, when she moved to Ithaca, NY with a family she supported by providing cooking and cleaning services. Selfishly, I wanted to hear Adriana’s Mexican immigrant story in part because it is particularly relevant to the geopolitical conversations happening on the news every day. Also, Adriana is civically engaged in our community, with a heart for helping others. She is understandably focused on children from the Latina community and had previously shared with me that her experience in the US K-12 system led to at least one squashed ambition. I wanted to know more about that, too, because I want to avoid ever being in a position to diminish another person’s flame. Finally, Adriana is a beautiful and reflective soul with a positive attitude. She’s learned a lot of things the hard way and I admire her resilience. We sat down together at the Ithaca Bakery, a local favorite breakfast spot, and hours later she finished sharing her story. It’s days later and the conversation is still at the forefront of my thoughts.
The second person I interviewed was Magdalena Kalina Bartishevich, one of my closest friends since the Covid era, when our respective sons’ friendship resulted in a social pod that has stood the test of time. Magdalena’s immigrant story appealed to me because of how pervasive her heritage pride is and how warmly she welcomes everyone to experience her culture in meaningful ways. Magdalena and I met over the phone while she was driving from work to pick up her son and mine, still best friends, from after-school care.
What I learned from my conversations is that no two stories are the same, and certainly not these two stories, with emergent bilingual students.
Summary of the Findings
Adriana Diaz, now aged 42 and female, was born in Mexico and immigrated to the San Diego area when she was eight years old. Today, she works in an administrative role at Cornell University and is taking collegiate math classes in her spare time.
Magdalena Kalina Bartishevich, aged 45 and female, was born in Poland and immigrated to central Connecticut when she was four years old. She now works in a senior leadership position within the alumni affairs division, also at Cornell University.
One of the many findings from my interviews with these two women that I found to be interesting is the fact that, despite a myriad of cultural and geographic differences leading to their arrival in the United States, their respective experience as emergent bilingual students in American schools and as children of non-native parents is incredibly similar. Despite that Adriana arrived illegally and Magdalena arrived legally, despite that Adriana made the trip on foot over rugged terrain to rejoin her mother who fled an abusive marriage more than a year prior and Magdalena flew into a port authority with her family being sponsored by a loving and stable host family of relatives, their memories and stories are similar.
Both women faced food insecurity as children in their native countries. Adriana lived in an adobe structure with no utilities and had to fetch water every morning, bathe in the creak, and pluck mangos from the trees on her way to school, which was a bench under a tree. She never saw a bathtub or a television until she moved to the United States. Magdalena vaguely remembers standing in line with their portion stamps for basic meal provisions in her (then) communist homeland and going to the forest to forage for mushrooms and other freely available edible food.
Both women were raised in a close family environment because their parents worked excessively long hours to make financial ends meet. Adriana’s mom and dad were separated, and she lived exclusively with her mom, however, her mom labored from morning until 11:00 p.m. every day and an aunt stepped in to help raise her and her siblings. Magdalena’s parents had contemporary and skilled labor positions but worked the gig economy at night and overnight to pay bills while grandparents and great-grandparents cared for her.
Both women found their childhood surrounded in cultural same-ness outside of the school setting. After immigrating to the United States, their families only spoke, and still only speak, their native language at home. They only socialized with individuals from the same culture. They made little intentional effort to integrate into a more diverse environment.
Perhaps there is bias in this next similarity because of my particular people interests and the personalities I’m drawn to, however, both women were and remain self-motivated in all of their endeavors, including their education, and took responsibility for their academic roadmap and success. When asked about particularly good or bad memories of their early elementary experience, both women recalled specific teachers and their lasting positive influence.
Adriana said, “I had really good teachers. I had teachers who understood my background. I had a lot of teachers that were really supportive. I had a lot of teachers that believed in me. They were like, you’re going to college, you are a really bright student.” She even had one teacher that would stay after school to provide extra academic help, drive her home, and talk with her mother, something not likely to happen today, especially because he was a male teacher. “Mr. Guyatha was amazing. He knew, for example, that in my community there was a lot of crime and he introduced us to classical music. Every morning he’d have a blank piece of paper with crayons or a colored pencil and we’d listen to the classical piece that he picked every day. He’d play it for five minutes and then he’d have us open our eyes and draw any emotions that the piece caused in us. I’m never going to forget this teacher. I’m still in touch with him. I felt emotional when I found him on social media. There were many things that he would do to let us know that the life we left in Mexico was still a part of us.”
Magdalena said, “My kindergarten teacher, Ms. Finn, was, like, amazing. She remembered me decades later, she even remembered helping me with the language. She was just the kindest. I remember her kindness, I remember her patience, and that was in Kindergarten! And then my third-grade teacher was like, we have these three wonderful international students and we’re going to learn about their culture. He thought it’d be great if once a week we took turns saying our language and customs during his English class. My friends now still remember the words I taught them in third grade.”
It's no wonder both Adriana and Magdalena so vividly remember their teachers. According to Fillmore, Wong, and Snow, “What teachers say and do can determine how successfully children make the crucial transition from home to school. It can determine whether children move successfully into the world of the school and larger society as fully participating members or get shunted onto sidetracks that distance them from family, society, and the world of learning. For many children, teachers are the first contact with the culture of the social world outside of the home” (What Teachers Need to Know About Language, 2018).
There were, however, some differences, many differences, to be sure. Adriana moved to a sprawling city and was enrolled in an elementary school that not only had a huge percentage of native Mexican individuals enrolled alongside her, but also separated students from the English mainstream based on native language and strictly introduced the academic curriculum in Spanish throughout her entire elementary school. English was taught to her cohort for only one hour each day. Adriana recalled how different the Mexican culture was from the American culture within the school setting. She said, “The kids laughed when we spoke to them in Spanish because it was our only way of communicating. They called [us] immigrants, ‘pollos,’ we were not the kids that they would pick to be in their groups, so there was definitely that from classmates.”
Conversely, Magdalena recalls sitting under her desk during a full-day, fully integrated kindergarten class, the only immigrant that year, not understanding a word in a sink-or-swim language setting. She had no formal ESL instruction and even as she progressed through elementary school, was ultimately one of only three non-native American students and the only Polish student. “My problem was that I was very embarrassed [by my culture] and I’m not proud to say but I was. It was like an all-white, non-diverse, little town in Connecticut so I was literally the diverse person, me. Eventually, there were three of us, my friend Joshai was from Thailand, and there was also my friend Joan, who is half Japanese and half English. I was the Pollock. I had the weird name. So I was very embarrassed. My parents would only speak in Polish at the store and I’d be so deathly embarrassed by all that. I told my neighbors that my name was Mary. I remember I probably got free school lunch but for a long time my mom would pack me a lunch and it was only Polish food and I just wanted to have the normal hot lunch.”
Adriana’s native culture permeated her school setting. She was just a face in the crowd. Magdalena’s native culture was nearly unheard of. She was an outlier.
For Adriana, the submersion in Spanish-only elementary classes created downstream problems. “By the time I went to Junior High, which I had most of my classes in English and only like, two in Spanish, I was having a harder time understanding more than anything. You’re not even fully understanding what the teacher was saying. And then high school was even worse because it was all English. You’re going to laugh at this but I ended up ditching all my Spanish-speaking friends. I was like, I’m sorry guys but I can’t hang out with you anymore. I need to learn English. I was like, ‘Hey, you speak English so I’m going to be your friend whether you want to or not.’ I used to follow this girl named Heather around.”
At times during their youth, the women shared that they had adult responsibilities within the family unit because of language barriers and their ability to acquire their English proficiency faster than their parents. “I would lead the phone calls, I would do the talking at the stores,” said Magdalena. Adriana had a similar experience. She said, “I was paying the bills and translating to doctors. They would take me out of school when they had appointments.”
Regarding their post-compulsory education plans, Adriana recalls she wanted to be a marine biologist after years of authentic curriculum influence by the outreach education efforts of the nearby SeaWorld staff. “The only bad experience I ever had was when I met with my high school counselor, and we were going through the process of which college I was going to go to. I remember learning, when I asked my mom for my social security number for the college applications, and my mom was like, ‘You don’t have one.’ My counselor’s response was that since you can’t do that, let’s just rethink this whole thing [your dreams].” As a graduating senior, Adriana had just found out she was an illegal immigrant.
Magdalena also had to lead her higher education endeavors. “It creates a lot of burden on the first child, I think. I knew the culture better. I knew how to navigate things better, so I felt a responsibility to do that, whether or not they wanted me to do that I felt like I had to. When it came time for college, maybe it was because I was self-motivated, but they didn’t have to worry.”
As an adult Adriana says being an immigrant and having gone through the K-12 system, “you understand the importance of representation.” Magdalena said, “I think now my adult life, especially being a parent, being an immigrant affects how I parent, who I surround myself in terms of non-discriminatory [people]. I’ve had a complex about fitting in. Now I don’t fit in with the Polish people because I’m so American, but do I fit in with the American people?
How thought-provoking.
Reaction and Analysis
The native and American cultural gaps and the responsibilities imposed upon the young immigrant individuals featured in both my interviews were vast. In both cases, the parents were reluctant due to insecurities or incapable due to schedules of playing active roles in their children’s education. But what I gleaned from their dialogue was that it wasn’t necessarily because they didn’t care or want to be involved. The parents were immensely proud of their child’s academic accomplishments, they simply had significant competing priorities teetering on the edge of survival. “Children often learn a new language quicker than their parents so that their parents rely on them for help in interpreting and translating. Through their language brokering activities, children speak for their parents and help them to solve problems, thus facilitating family settlement and family function in their new environment. Thus, children of migrants who interpret and translate play principal roles in constructing versions of the new world for their parents (Hall and Sham, 2007: 4)” (Bauer, 2016).
With the complexities around parental involvement, and the burden of education falling perhaps harder on the shoulders of immigrant children compared to their peers, teachers play an incredibly pivotal role. According to Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzales (1992), “We have learned that it is feasible and useful to have teachers visit households for research purposes. These are neither casual visits nor school-business visits, but visits in which the teachers assume the role of the learner, and in doing so, help establish a fundamentally new, more symmetrical relationship with the parents of the students” (pg. 139). Adriana’s example of the teacher who would drive her home and talk with her mother about her school progress is a prime example of how far an effort like that can go. Even though Adriana’s mother had attained only a second-grade education of her own, she wished for more and better for her daughter.
Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzales also say, “Teachers play a unique role as agents of socialization—the process by which individuals learn the everyday practices, the system of values and beliefs, and the means and manners of communication of their cultural communities” (pg. 139). This is validated by Magdalena’s third-grade teacher’s efforts to celebrate her uniqueness and impress its value upon the other students.
Clearly, it is not only the culture inside the classroom that matters but also the authenticity and value of instruction from inside the broader geographical community with a funds of knowledge approach to content and instruction. “By capitalizing on household and other community resources, we can organize classroom instruction that far exceeds in quality the rote-like instruction these children commonly encounter in schools (see, e.g., Moll & Greenberg, 1990; see also Moll & Dfaz, 1987) (pg. 132).
Related to the importance of funds of knowledge, content-based second language instruction, as demonstrated by Adriana’s examples of visits by SeaWorld outreach educators, clearly hit the spot in driving her enthusiasm for learning. It drove her career dreams for years and helped build her vocabulary at the same time. This application of content-based language teaching literally translated into one of the first areas of conversation Adriana felt comfortable delivering in English. “Natural language acquisition occurs in context; natural language is never learned divorced from meaning, and content-based instruction provides a context for meaningful communication to occur (Curtain, 1995; Met, 1991); second language acquisition increases with content-based language instruction because students learn language best when there is an emphasis on relevant, meaningful content rather than on the language itself; ‘People do not learn languages and then use them, but learn languages by using them’” CoBaLTT. (2019).
Both Adriana, at the age of eight and third grade, and Magdalena, integrated into kindergarten at the age of five, were sufficiently young to be better positioned for language acquisition than their parents. Still, Adriana recalls being ill-prepared for classes taught using only the English language in high school, even after five years of education in the US school system. Magdalena recounted a story of a time she was yelled at for not knowing she was entering the boys' bathroom. For nearly a year after that happened, she was afraid to even try. “Learning of foreign languages happens best at a very young age. However, without proper methods of teaching, teachers will not be able to reach the learning objectives, which they were attempting to reach” (Shilova, Masterskikh, Mensh, & Zemlyanova, 2020, pg. 1475).
Conclusion
As the title of this document suggests, one thing present in my findings is the fact that no two stories are the same in any setting, but to include the emergent bilingual classroom.
Although collegiate teaching classes provide frameworks for teaching methodologies, what I glean from this interview experience is there is not likely to be a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching emerging bilinguals studetns. Not only will each person have individual needs and varying motivating factors, but also the learning environment will take on many different shapes and sizes. I do think there are some ideas that could have merit as a geographical blanket solution, such as in communities along the southern US border where the vast majority of non-native speakers speak Spanish. For example, The Vision 2020! Plan. “The Vision 2020! Dual Language Program (2018) was developed to allow students to focus on five key areas of language acquisition: first; focus on high academic achievement rates; second the students transfer their first language abilities to a second language; third the students become bi-lingual, bi-literate and bi-cultural; fourth a great intercultural relationship is fostered between the children that participate as they gain respect for their own culture and other cultures; and fifth, the program helps build a school and community with stronger intercultural relations. (Thompson, 2019, pg. 48)”
This sounds exciting, practical, and effective, and could also be used in other communities where there are dominant immigrant populations. There are lessons to learn, however, from Adriana’s experience of jumping into a more mainstream English-speaking setting.
I also like a modified approach as was featured in the article, It’s our kuleana: A critical participatory approach to language minority education (Davis, Cho, Ishida, Soria, & Bazzi, (2005). That article details an effort to honor, preserve, and use the native Hawaiian language insomuch as it is an authentic, relevant, and motivating factor in students’ academic quests. Motivating factors continue to catch my attention and the stories shared by Adriana and Magdalena were no exception.
Whether educators and school systems choose a bilingual setting or not, research and literature overwhelmingly support meeting the learner where they are with content that is familiar and meaningful. “The way the subject is taught is expected to spark interest but with the lack of interest in the subject, students will not feel sufficiently motivated to actually learn something. Hence, motivation is essential for learning any foreign language” (Shilova, Masterskikh, Mensh, & Zemlyanova, 2020, pg. 1475).
In addition to providing instruction that is meaningful and effective and in addition to the responsibility for the foundation of immigrant children’s pathway to opportunity throughout their life, I can’t help but reflect on an almost theft of childhood that seemed to exist with both Adriana and Magdalena. Not that they said as much, but their lives so significantly varied from mine as a native citizen. One thing I found missing in their stories, was any reference to downtime or playtime. Any silly antics. I’ve found through these two stories, and others I’ve accumulated along the way, our schools and our communities need to better welcome and buddy-up to immigrant students.
References
Bauer, E. (2016). Practising kinship care: Children as language brokers in migrant families. Childhood, 23(1), 22-36. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568215574917
CoBaLTT. (2019). Content-based second language instruction: What is it?
Davis, K., Cho, H., Ishida, M., Soria, J., & Bazzi, S. (2005). It’s our kuleana: A critical participatory approach to language minority education. In L. Pease-Alvarez and S. R. Schecter (Eds.) Learning, teaching, and community Download Learning, teaching, and community(pp. 3-25). NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Fillmore, Lily Wong and Snow, Catherine E.. "1. What Teachers Need to Know About Language". What Teachers Need to Know About Language, edited by Adger, Carolyn Temple, Snow, Catherine E. and Donna Christian, Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters, 2018, pp. 8-51. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781788920193-003
Fuligni, A. J. (2006, July 1). Family Obligation Among Children in Immigrant Families. Migrationpolicy.org. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/family-obligation-among-children-immigrant-families/
Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory Into Practice, 31(2), 132-141.
Shilova, L., Masterskikh, S., Mensh, E., & Zemlyanova, M. (2020). Learning English language in primary school: Motivational factors and their role in management strategies. International Journal of Educational Management, 34(9), 1475-1489.
Thompson, T. D. (2019). Supporting English Language Learner Students’ Transition into K-12 Regular Education Classrooms.
Appendix: List of Questions
The following are the interview questions used for this paper:
The first individual is Adriana Diaz. Adriana was born in the Ixtapa/Zihuatenajo area on the western coast of Mexico where she lived until migrating to what she said everyone called, “el otro lago,” at the age of eight. I met Adriana much later, when she was in her young 30’s, when she moved to Ithaca, NY with a family she supported by providing cooking and cleaning services. Selfishly, I wanted to hear Adriana’s Mexican immigrant story in part because it is particularly relevant to the geopolitical conversations happening on the news every day. Also, Adriana is civically engaged in our community, with a heart for helping others. She is understandably focused on children from the Latina community and had previously shared with me that her experience in the US K-12 system led to at least one squashed ambition. I wanted to know more about that, too, because I want to avoid ever being in a position to diminish another person’s flame. Finally, Adriana is a beautiful and reflective soul with a positive attitude. She’s learned a lot of things the hard way and I admire her resilience. We sat down together at the Ithaca Bakery, a local favorite breakfast spot, and hours later she finished sharing her story. It’s days later and the conversation is still at the forefront of my thoughts.
The second person I interviewed was Magdalena Kalina Bartishevich, one of my closest friends since the Covid era, when our respective sons’ friendship resulted in a social pod that has stood the test of time. Magdalena’s immigrant story appealed to me because of how pervasive her heritage pride is and how warmly she welcomes everyone to experience her culture in meaningful ways. Magdalena and I met over the phone while she was driving from work to pick up her son and mine, still best friends, from after-school care.
What I learned from my conversations is that no two stories are the same, and certainly not these two stories, with emergent bilingual students.
Summary of the Findings
Adriana Diaz, now aged 42 and female, was born in Mexico and immigrated to the San Diego area when she was eight years old. Today, she works in an administrative role at Cornell University and is taking collegiate math classes in her spare time.
Magdalena Kalina Bartishevich, aged 45 and female, was born in Poland and immigrated to central Connecticut when she was four years old. She now works in a senior leadership position within the alumni affairs division, also at Cornell University.
One of the many findings from my interviews with these two women that I found to be interesting is the fact that, despite a myriad of cultural and geographic differences leading to their arrival in the United States, their respective experience as emergent bilingual students in American schools and as children of non-native parents is incredibly similar. Despite that Adriana arrived illegally and Magdalena arrived legally, despite that Adriana made the trip on foot over rugged terrain to rejoin her mother who fled an abusive marriage more than a year prior and Magdalena flew into a port authority with her family being sponsored by a loving and stable host family of relatives, their memories and stories are similar.
Both women faced food insecurity as children in their native countries. Adriana lived in an adobe structure with no utilities and had to fetch water every morning, bathe in the creak, and pluck mangos from the trees on her way to school, which was a bench under a tree. She never saw a bathtub or a television until she moved to the United States. Magdalena vaguely remembers standing in line with their portion stamps for basic meal provisions in her (then) communist homeland and going to the forest to forage for mushrooms and other freely available edible food.
Both women were raised in a close family environment because their parents worked excessively long hours to make financial ends meet. Adriana’s mom and dad were separated, and she lived exclusively with her mom, however, her mom labored from morning until 11:00 p.m. every day and an aunt stepped in to help raise her and her siblings. Magdalena’s parents had contemporary and skilled labor positions but worked the gig economy at night and overnight to pay bills while grandparents and great-grandparents cared for her.
Both women found their childhood surrounded in cultural same-ness outside of the school setting. After immigrating to the United States, their families only spoke, and still only speak, their native language at home. They only socialized with individuals from the same culture. They made little intentional effort to integrate into a more diverse environment.
Perhaps there is bias in this next similarity because of my particular people interests and the personalities I’m drawn to, however, both women were and remain self-motivated in all of their endeavors, including their education, and took responsibility for their academic roadmap and success. When asked about particularly good or bad memories of their early elementary experience, both women recalled specific teachers and their lasting positive influence.
Adriana said, “I had really good teachers. I had teachers who understood my background. I had a lot of teachers that were really supportive. I had a lot of teachers that believed in me. They were like, you’re going to college, you are a really bright student.” She even had one teacher that would stay after school to provide extra academic help, drive her home, and talk with her mother, something not likely to happen today, especially because he was a male teacher. “Mr. Guyatha was amazing. He knew, for example, that in my community there was a lot of crime and he introduced us to classical music. Every morning he’d have a blank piece of paper with crayons or a colored pencil and we’d listen to the classical piece that he picked every day. He’d play it for five minutes and then he’d have us open our eyes and draw any emotions that the piece caused in us. I’m never going to forget this teacher. I’m still in touch with him. I felt emotional when I found him on social media. There were many things that he would do to let us know that the life we left in Mexico was still a part of us.”
Magdalena said, “My kindergarten teacher, Ms. Finn, was, like, amazing. She remembered me decades later, she even remembered helping me with the language. She was just the kindest. I remember her kindness, I remember her patience, and that was in Kindergarten! And then my third-grade teacher was like, we have these three wonderful international students and we’re going to learn about their culture. He thought it’d be great if once a week we took turns saying our language and customs during his English class. My friends now still remember the words I taught them in third grade.”
It's no wonder both Adriana and Magdalena so vividly remember their teachers. According to Fillmore, Wong, and Snow, “What teachers say and do can determine how successfully children make the crucial transition from home to school. It can determine whether children move successfully into the world of the school and larger society as fully participating members or get shunted onto sidetracks that distance them from family, society, and the world of learning. For many children, teachers are the first contact with the culture of the social world outside of the home” (What Teachers Need to Know About Language, 2018).
There were, however, some differences, many differences, to be sure. Adriana moved to a sprawling city and was enrolled in an elementary school that not only had a huge percentage of native Mexican individuals enrolled alongside her, but also separated students from the English mainstream based on native language and strictly introduced the academic curriculum in Spanish throughout her entire elementary school. English was taught to her cohort for only one hour each day. Adriana recalled how different the Mexican culture was from the American culture within the school setting. She said, “The kids laughed when we spoke to them in Spanish because it was our only way of communicating. They called [us] immigrants, ‘pollos,’ we were not the kids that they would pick to be in their groups, so there was definitely that from classmates.”
Conversely, Magdalena recalls sitting under her desk during a full-day, fully integrated kindergarten class, the only immigrant that year, not understanding a word in a sink-or-swim language setting. She had no formal ESL instruction and even as she progressed through elementary school, was ultimately one of only three non-native American students and the only Polish student. “My problem was that I was very embarrassed [by my culture] and I’m not proud to say but I was. It was like an all-white, non-diverse, little town in Connecticut so I was literally the diverse person, me. Eventually, there were three of us, my friend Joshai was from Thailand, and there was also my friend Joan, who is half Japanese and half English. I was the Pollock. I had the weird name. So I was very embarrassed. My parents would only speak in Polish at the store and I’d be so deathly embarrassed by all that. I told my neighbors that my name was Mary. I remember I probably got free school lunch but for a long time my mom would pack me a lunch and it was only Polish food and I just wanted to have the normal hot lunch.”
Adriana’s native culture permeated her school setting. She was just a face in the crowd. Magdalena’s native culture was nearly unheard of. She was an outlier.
For Adriana, the submersion in Spanish-only elementary classes created downstream problems. “By the time I went to Junior High, which I had most of my classes in English and only like, two in Spanish, I was having a harder time understanding more than anything. You’re not even fully understanding what the teacher was saying. And then high school was even worse because it was all English. You’re going to laugh at this but I ended up ditching all my Spanish-speaking friends. I was like, I’m sorry guys but I can’t hang out with you anymore. I need to learn English. I was like, ‘Hey, you speak English so I’m going to be your friend whether you want to or not.’ I used to follow this girl named Heather around.”
At times during their youth, the women shared that they had adult responsibilities within the family unit because of language barriers and their ability to acquire their English proficiency faster than their parents. “I would lead the phone calls, I would do the talking at the stores,” said Magdalena. Adriana had a similar experience. She said, “I was paying the bills and translating to doctors. They would take me out of school when they had appointments.”
Regarding their post-compulsory education plans, Adriana recalls she wanted to be a marine biologist after years of authentic curriculum influence by the outreach education efforts of the nearby SeaWorld staff. “The only bad experience I ever had was when I met with my high school counselor, and we were going through the process of which college I was going to go to. I remember learning, when I asked my mom for my social security number for the college applications, and my mom was like, ‘You don’t have one.’ My counselor’s response was that since you can’t do that, let’s just rethink this whole thing [your dreams].” As a graduating senior, Adriana had just found out she was an illegal immigrant.
Magdalena also had to lead her higher education endeavors. “It creates a lot of burden on the first child, I think. I knew the culture better. I knew how to navigate things better, so I felt a responsibility to do that, whether or not they wanted me to do that I felt like I had to. When it came time for college, maybe it was because I was self-motivated, but they didn’t have to worry.”
As an adult Adriana says being an immigrant and having gone through the K-12 system, “you understand the importance of representation.” Magdalena said, “I think now my adult life, especially being a parent, being an immigrant affects how I parent, who I surround myself in terms of non-discriminatory [people]. I’ve had a complex about fitting in. Now I don’t fit in with the Polish people because I’m so American, but do I fit in with the American people?
How thought-provoking.
Reaction and Analysis
The native and American cultural gaps and the responsibilities imposed upon the young immigrant individuals featured in both my interviews were vast. In both cases, the parents were reluctant due to insecurities or incapable due to schedules of playing active roles in their children’s education. But what I gleaned from their dialogue was that it wasn’t necessarily because they didn’t care or want to be involved. The parents were immensely proud of their child’s academic accomplishments, they simply had significant competing priorities teetering on the edge of survival. “Children often learn a new language quicker than their parents so that their parents rely on them for help in interpreting and translating. Through their language brokering activities, children speak for their parents and help them to solve problems, thus facilitating family settlement and family function in their new environment. Thus, children of migrants who interpret and translate play principal roles in constructing versions of the new world for their parents (Hall and Sham, 2007: 4)” (Bauer, 2016).
With the complexities around parental involvement, and the burden of education falling perhaps harder on the shoulders of immigrant children compared to their peers, teachers play an incredibly pivotal role. According to Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzales (1992), “We have learned that it is feasible and useful to have teachers visit households for research purposes. These are neither casual visits nor school-business visits, but visits in which the teachers assume the role of the learner, and in doing so, help establish a fundamentally new, more symmetrical relationship with the parents of the students” (pg. 139). Adriana’s example of the teacher who would drive her home and talk with her mother about her school progress is a prime example of how far an effort like that can go. Even though Adriana’s mother had attained only a second-grade education of her own, she wished for more and better for her daughter.
Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzales also say, “Teachers play a unique role as agents of socialization—the process by which individuals learn the everyday practices, the system of values and beliefs, and the means and manners of communication of their cultural communities” (pg. 139). This is validated by Magdalena’s third-grade teacher’s efforts to celebrate her uniqueness and impress its value upon the other students.
Clearly, it is not only the culture inside the classroom that matters but also the authenticity and value of instruction from inside the broader geographical community with a funds of knowledge approach to content and instruction. “By capitalizing on household and other community resources, we can organize classroom instruction that far exceeds in quality the rote-like instruction these children commonly encounter in schools (see, e.g., Moll & Greenberg, 1990; see also Moll & Dfaz, 1987) (pg. 132).
Related to the importance of funds of knowledge, content-based second language instruction, as demonstrated by Adriana’s examples of visits by SeaWorld outreach educators, clearly hit the spot in driving her enthusiasm for learning. It drove her career dreams for years and helped build her vocabulary at the same time. This application of content-based language teaching literally translated into one of the first areas of conversation Adriana felt comfortable delivering in English. “Natural language acquisition occurs in context; natural language is never learned divorced from meaning, and content-based instruction provides a context for meaningful communication to occur (Curtain, 1995; Met, 1991); second language acquisition increases with content-based language instruction because students learn language best when there is an emphasis on relevant, meaningful content rather than on the language itself; ‘People do not learn languages and then use them, but learn languages by using them’” CoBaLTT. (2019).
Both Adriana, at the age of eight and third grade, and Magdalena, integrated into kindergarten at the age of five, were sufficiently young to be better positioned for language acquisition than their parents. Still, Adriana recalls being ill-prepared for classes taught using only the English language in high school, even after five years of education in the US school system. Magdalena recounted a story of a time she was yelled at for not knowing she was entering the boys' bathroom. For nearly a year after that happened, she was afraid to even try. “Learning of foreign languages happens best at a very young age. However, without proper methods of teaching, teachers will not be able to reach the learning objectives, which they were attempting to reach” (Shilova, Masterskikh, Mensh, & Zemlyanova, 2020, pg. 1475).
Conclusion
As the title of this document suggests, one thing present in my findings is the fact that no two stories are the same in any setting, but to include the emergent bilingual classroom.
Although collegiate teaching classes provide frameworks for teaching methodologies, what I glean from this interview experience is there is not likely to be a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching emerging bilinguals studetns. Not only will each person have individual needs and varying motivating factors, but also the learning environment will take on many different shapes and sizes. I do think there are some ideas that could have merit as a geographical blanket solution, such as in communities along the southern US border where the vast majority of non-native speakers speak Spanish. For example, The Vision 2020! Plan. “The Vision 2020! Dual Language Program (2018) was developed to allow students to focus on five key areas of language acquisition: first; focus on high academic achievement rates; second the students transfer their first language abilities to a second language; third the students become bi-lingual, bi-literate and bi-cultural; fourth a great intercultural relationship is fostered between the children that participate as they gain respect for their own culture and other cultures; and fifth, the program helps build a school and community with stronger intercultural relations. (Thompson, 2019, pg. 48)”
This sounds exciting, practical, and effective, and could also be used in other communities where there are dominant immigrant populations. There are lessons to learn, however, from Adriana’s experience of jumping into a more mainstream English-speaking setting.
I also like a modified approach as was featured in the article, It’s our kuleana: A critical participatory approach to language minority education (Davis, Cho, Ishida, Soria, & Bazzi, (2005). That article details an effort to honor, preserve, and use the native Hawaiian language insomuch as it is an authentic, relevant, and motivating factor in students’ academic quests. Motivating factors continue to catch my attention and the stories shared by Adriana and Magdalena were no exception.
Whether educators and school systems choose a bilingual setting or not, research and literature overwhelmingly support meeting the learner where they are with content that is familiar and meaningful. “The way the subject is taught is expected to spark interest but with the lack of interest in the subject, students will not feel sufficiently motivated to actually learn something. Hence, motivation is essential for learning any foreign language” (Shilova, Masterskikh, Mensh, & Zemlyanova, 2020, pg. 1475).
In addition to providing instruction that is meaningful and effective and in addition to the responsibility for the foundation of immigrant children’s pathway to opportunity throughout their life, I can’t help but reflect on an almost theft of childhood that seemed to exist with both Adriana and Magdalena. Not that they said as much, but their lives so significantly varied from mine as a native citizen. One thing I found missing in their stories, was any reference to downtime or playtime. Any silly antics. I’ve found through these two stories, and others I’ve accumulated along the way, our schools and our communities need to better welcome and buddy-up to immigrant students.
References
Bauer, E. (2016). Practising kinship care: Children as language brokers in migrant families. Childhood, 23(1), 22-36. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568215574917
CoBaLTT. (2019). Content-based second language instruction: What is it?
Davis, K., Cho, H., Ishida, M., Soria, J., & Bazzi, S. (2005). It’s our kuleana: A critical participatory approach to language minority education. In L. Pease-Alvarez and S. R. Schecter (Eds.) Learning, teaching, and community Download Learning, teaching, and community(pp. 3-25). NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Fillmore, Lily Wong and Snow, Catherine E.. "1. What Teachers Need to Know About Language". What Teachers Need to Know About Language, edited by Adger, Carolyn Temple, Snow, Catherine E. and Donna Christian, Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters, 2018, pp. 8-51. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781788920193-003
Fuligni, A. J. (2006, July 1). Family Obligation Among Children in Immigrant Families. Migrationpolicy.org. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/family-obligation-among-children-immigrant-families/
Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory Into Practice, 31(2), 132-141.
Shilova, L., Masterskikh, S., Mensh, E., & Zemlyanova, M. (2020). Learning English language in primary school: Motivational factors and their role in management strategies. International Journal of Educational Management, 34(9), 1475-1489.
Thompson, T. D. (2019). Supporting English Language Learner Students’ Transition into K-12 Regular Education Classrooms.
Appendix: List of Questions
The following are the interview questions used for this paper:
- Can you tell me your name and age if you feel comfortable with that?
- Where were you born and what was your life like before immigrating to the USA?
- What was the driving factor in your family’s move to the USA?
- Can you share any details on the immigration experience?
- Where did you go when you came to the USA?
- What is your first recollection of going to school in the USA?
- What part of your school experience made you feel good and bad?
- What did your social circle look like?
- Was there any tension between what you were learning at school and what was going on at your home?
- Did your family dynamic change in any way from before you came to the USA to when you lived here?
- Do you feel like the move was “worth it”?
- Were your parents or caregivers engaged in your education?
- Was there any particular expectation or pressure in terms of your academic performance?
- Was your cultural diversity celebrated, glossed over, or shunned?
- Do you recall if any of your curricula was relevant to you and your experiences?
- Do you have any memory of teachers that stood out for better or worse?
- Did you take English Learner courses?
- What motivated you to learn and when did that motivation kick in?
- If you could go back as a consultant to your school and offer advice, what would you say?
- How has being an immigrant to the USA directed the course of your adult life?