Teachers Act Up!

I have been invited to speak at the Fall 2012 Georgia TESOL conference, October 26-27 at the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta.  The conference theme is “Great Expectations” and I hope to have these expectations of myself as I present ways I’ve used theatre with TESOL & Bilingual educators in the effort to “Act Up!” for social change! We’re still figuring out the details of when I’ll speak–I hope these details will soon be posted.  Meantime, I hope to see some of you at GA TESOL this coming fall!

Also, this fall another wonderful conference opportunity: The University of South Carolina is pleased to announce the Third Annual Latino Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Literacies Conference to be held at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC. The conference, sponsored by the College of Education, is designed for individuals interested in celebrating Latino children’s literature and literacies in their schools, libraries, literacy organizations, homes, and community-based sites of learning. Featuring internationally-acclaimed scholars Dr. Donaldo Macedo and Dr. Augustine Romero and award-winning Latina author/illustrator, Maya Christina Gonzalez, the conference is truly a unique experience.  The call for proposals is open.  Another great fall learning opportunity!

In an effort to inform bilingual or emerging bilingual students across campus about my fall 2012 course, I used the shortened University system title, Spanish Children’s Literature rather than writing the complete course title: Teaching Literature in Spanish for the K-12 Foreign Language Classroom.

Soon after, I received the email message below.  For humor and anonymity’s sake, I signed the email as from “The Language Vigilante”:

Hello Melisa,

Suggestion for a title change:

Unless you are aiming to have your students read only children’s
literature that is published in Spain, the title of your course should
read “Literature for Children in Spanish.” Your course description also
needs to be revised to show your intention for the course.

I actually find it interesting that although you teach teachers and
future teachers, your command of the English language and that of the
Spanish language needs improvement. This is not the first time that I
send you a correction for a message you send out. The previous time my
suggestion improved the error in Spanish.

–The Language Vigilante (pseudonym used)

Dear Language Vigilante,

My first instinct upon receiving this email (indeed, your second—you’d caught an earlier error on my blog when I wrote “feliz” instead of the plural “felices”), was defensiveness—

I used a version of the shortened university title [SPANISH CHILD LIT];

I know my Spanish (and English) can be improved—but aren’t we all, always, language learners (L1, L2, L3, L4…)?

Isn’t the point of emails and blogs vs. a piece of published prose to imply shorthand, thoughts in draft, to risk small errors in an effort at more immediate communication?

Isn’t there a more cordial, more humane way to identify mistakes in language that are less punitive?

Are you a mean, unhappy person?

Thankfully, just after reading this email missive, I received a link to “What We Nurture with Sylvia Boorstein,” aired on the NPR program “On Being with Krista Tippett”.  Boorstein, a celebrated Jewish-Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist, shared what the GPS might teach about “recalculating” in terms of our inner peace, what she called “equanimity”:

It [The GPS] never gets annoyed at me.  If I make a mistake, it says, “Recalculating.” And then it tells me to make the soonest left turn and go back….If something happens, it challenges us and the challenge is, OK, so do you want to get mad now? You could get mad, you could go home, you could make some phone calls, you could tell a few people you can’t believe what this person said or that person said. Indignation is tremendously seductive, you know, and to share with other people on the telephone and all that. So to not do it and to say, wait a minute, apropos of what you said before, “wise effort” to say to yourself, wait a minute, this is not the right road. Literally, this is not the right road. There’s a fork in the road here. I could become indignant, I could flame up this flame of negativity or I could say, “Recalculating.” I’ll just go back here.

I regret I am not more spiritually enlightened and I did indeed “phone a friend” (email actually) for support.  Indeed this moniker, “The Language Vigilante,” itself reflects how far I probably am from my own equanimity and enlightenment.  But I did make a wrong turn and while I have not yet spiritually arrived, the experience reminds me of a message I wish to send to other second language learners—indeed to anyone who still considers him or herself to be learning one’s first language in addition and/or through the medium of a second:

You will make language mistakes.

You will be misunderstood.

You will be judged.

You will need to find your own inner GPS system to “recalculate” and move forward.

One of the reasons most cited for the challenges of second language learning, especially for adults, is anxiety about not getting it right.  Indeed, the anxiety is often about getting it all wrong—so wrong you will feel misunderstood, falsely accused, infantilized and/or berated.  This is why children are often perceived as having a second language learning advantage—we are much more patient and nurturing (not always) when children make language mistakes.  We expect a three year old to make overgeneralizations and to have trouble with subject verb agreement (e.g. “he goed to the store” or “They goes to town”). Often, we see these productions as cute and developmental—inevitably children will acquire more standard language abilities.  But past a certain age—four, fourteen, forty— and beyond spoken dialect-friendly contexts—we expect more.

Language Vigilantes are everywhere-in the classroom, at the post office, lurking in soccer field corners and online chat rooms.  They are ubiquitous, they are punitive, and they are taking enforcement of grammar rules into their own hands.  We must prepare ourselves to hear these external (and sometimes internal voices), and say to them, “recalculating.”  In other words, when we are misunderstood or wrongly understood, we must teach and be taught numerous strategies to negotiate meaning and to know when being misunderstood is a language or grammar issue versus an issue regarding degrees of status and power.

In summer of 2001 I took a job teaching a visiting group of English foreign language (EFL) students from a women’s university in Japan.  Part English instruction, part tourism, the program included guided visits to historic sites in Philadephia and New York City. The young women were eager to practice English in real contexts and during our visit to Old City Philadelphia they decided to try to send postcards back home without my help.  The group of ten young women lined up at the clerk’s historic counter—circled really, helping one another navigate change purses full of new American coins and bilingual Japanese-English pocket dictionaries.  I stood outside waiting until one of the girls beckoned me to where an unhappy clerk demanded, “Either you do it for them or come back when they’ve learned more English!”

The young women were embarrassed—they knew they had aroused the clerk’s anger and they called for a lifeline in their English language teacher.  I was angry at the impression this postal worker conveyed—despite statues and bells in the name of liberty, “real” Americans were impatient and intolerant of difference.

Yet, the B. Free Franklin Post Office was the perfect place to experience the ironies of our democratic, yet intolerant, foundations.  It was Ben Franklin, who founded the printing press and safeguarded the development of American English, who published these racially and linguistically charged accusations against Germans:

Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. http://www.historycarper.com/resources/twobf2/increase.htm

In a country that has always demanded expediency, that took revolution into its own hands, that is as steeped in democracy as it is racism, it is no surprise there are Language Vigilantes, trigger happy with language errors. Excoriating language users, like myself, who fall short of perfection, Language Vigilantes exist in nations and languages around the world and believe they are doing the right thing—upholding standards, excellence, laws of decency and decorum.

When we language learners and language users encounter one of you (especially those “cops in our own heads” [Augusto Boal, 1979), we must stop, take a deep breath, acknowledge the sting of being judged and/or misunderstood, and say to ourselves: recalculating.  Wrong turn.  Pull over, phone a friend, find a new teacher, persist.  Insist on your right to use language and to make mistakes, to become your own best teacher, and to continue down the path of communication with dignity, humility, and love.

This is not to argue against correction and the art of revision–surely this post is badly in need of another major edit.  We must simply greet the Vigilante, Critic, Editor, Censor, and say to them: Hello! Good to be reminded you are there.   Thank you for the directions? Turn left when I made a right? Okay, I’m already moving forward, finding my own way, recalculating.

The Sunday 3/17 issue of the Times had an article about “Why Bilinguals Are Smarter,” arguing that bilingualism facilitates a kind of mental flexibility and muscle that has been proven by empirical studies with infants to the elderly; simultanous bilinguals (those that grow up with two languages) to successive bilinguals–those who learn a second language later in life.  That “bilingualism is a cognitive advantage” coincides with a similar message from Dr. Stephen Krashen who visited our college last week—but beyond bilingualism, he also noted that cognition improves through two additional activites: reading and drinking more coffee!

Read copiously, speak more than one language, drink a daily cup (or three) of coffee—this sounds like a treasure map to bliss.  I would only like to add to this list all the health benefits of chocolate and red wine in addition to empirical evidence that “retail therapy” actually does work (everything in moderation of course).

The NYTimes article sites a 2004 study with preschoolers on a sorting task, a 2009 study with babies and their “anticipatory gazes,” and a recent study with elder bilinguals who proved more resistant to dementia and Alzheimers—this is all great news and I’m indebted to scholars in the field of bilingualism who labor on studies to help prove what so many of us already know (through experience, through narrative, and yes—through rigorous study) to be true:

There are advantages to being bilingual.

This must have been the 15^th, 25^th, or maybe 37^th article on the advantages of bilingualism that I’ve read in respected periodicals over the last 10 years.  (If I were more bilingual, I might be smarter and know with more precision how many of these articles I’ve read).  What I don’t understand is why the public continually receives this message, why so many of us ‘uhhum’ in agreement, and yet how seldom this makes a real difference in how we deliver language and literacy education to U.S. schoolchildren.  We still fundamentally believe (through unquestioned tax dollars) in the importance of tests to showcase student learning; tests that are exclusively in English; the misperception that any K-12 educational programming that is done in a non-English language will hurt students’ cognitive and test-taking abilities; test results are the be all end all indicator of student learning…..and the cycle continues.

Immigrant parents know the value of bilingualism but receive the implicit and explicit messages that what is important is to learn to read and write English.  English to pass the tests. English test scores to get to the next grade level.

Last week I translated for parent-teacher conferences at a local school and in one session a boy’s mother was warned that the tests indicated her son was way behind grade level reading.  Dr. Krashen pointed to the irony that “grade level” means 50% and that if one understands the math, it is impossible for all children at a certain age to be “at grade level” because only 50% can actually be there! (I am still working out the math but I think I get his point!).  The parent, hearing the serious message –that her child might not pass to fourth grade– through my interpreter’s voicebox, asked “But what can I do? He only wants to play soccer, and he doesn’t want to read.  And I don’t read English.  What can I do?”

My mind began to wander to newspapers and magazines in Spanish about soccer matches, wondering if the parent might find internet sites or an engaging soccer “home-run” story in Spanish to share (read Jim Trelease on the home-run story).  I dared to add another unstated question to my translated list: “What language can I read to my child in? Is it okay for me to read in Spanish?”

The teacher responded: English.  Read in English.  Maybe find an older sibling or a neighbor that can read to him in English if you can’t.

What that parent (and child) “can” do was lost.  Research has shown, continues to show—25, 37 times over—that reading, in whatever language, promotes universal literacy skills.  Reading in a non-English language actually HELPS reading skills in English.  Why wasn’t this the teacher’s first message? Because in our current testing climate and monolingual culture, despite all the news articles and research extolling the cognitive benefits of bilingualism, it’s still perceived as a deficit—especially when it comes to immigrant children and their families.

Those of us who read the NYTimes article (or any of the others like it) may all agree that bilingualism is an advantage. But it’s an advantage we seem to agree we U.S. taxpayers and voters can (and some zealous patriots still say ‘should’) all live without. The ways we shape, (over)test and (under) fund our public education system denies that bilingual advantage from all U.S. children, but most outrageously it is denied from immigrant youth who have the most potential access to growing up bilingual.  Immigrant youth, especially the density of Spanish speakers in the U.S., introduce an invaluable language resource into our school systems that is not only untapped, it’s plugged.

The article explains “Why Bilinguals are Smarter” but it doesn’t yet begin to explain “Why (most) Americans Aren’t Bilingual.”  Does this make us “dumber” than the rest of the bi/multi-lingual speakers in the world?

My son gave me a picture of an owl he’d colored in preschool with the word “Merhaba” written above it.  A scholar from Turkey has been visiting his classroom while on a one year fellowship in early childhood education.

“Merhaba means hello!” I say, hoping he’ll be impressed.

“I already know that!”

Oren, not yet five, is confident about non-English languages.  When his best friend’s  mother spoke Chinese during soccer practice, Oren asked her if she also knew Spanish.

“No, I don’t.” She shrugged.

“Why not? I speak Spanish!”

“I guess you’ll have to teach me.”

“And you can teach me Chinese!”

I can still remember the excitement and awe I felt when I brought my first non-English word home from school to my mother.

“Do you know how the Sioux Indians say hello?” I handed her this grade school question much like I had handed her a yarn covered jar pencil holder and a caterpiller magnet.  Getting older meant I could give her gifts of the mind.

“Hau,” Mother said triumphantly, forming a stop sign with her raised hand.  Although she spoiled my chance to wow her with my new knowledge, I was proud of her Lakota fluency.  When she later greeted some of my grandmother’s neighbors in Spanish, I was overwhelmed with pride.

I learned “merhaba” ten years ago from my friend Serif who had also had a one year visiting scholar position at my university.

“Incredible! Incredible!” He said when I returned a book to him at his small campus apartment.  I can see him now: one hand raised above his head, the other grabbing a slice of white bread or cup of tea.

After eating a meal in the dining hall, “incredible!”  After watching the annual town bike races, “incredible!”

“How was your day?” I asked when I’d run into him at the bus-stop.

“Incredible! Incredible!”

He did not strike me as unusually upbeat or awestruck, so after several months of new friendship I asked, “How do you say incredible in Turkish?”

“Inanilmaz! Inanilmaz!”  The same inflection, the same gestures to the heavens, the same stress pattern and number of syllables.   From then on when he shouted “Incredible!” I parroted the word back to him in Turkish.

I packed this one word with me when I visited his family in Turkey the following year.   I was giving a paper in Spain and it seemed easy enough back then (single and childless) to continue my journey East to see Serif at home, roasting kestane kebap (chestnuts) with his mother on an electric stove, watching his daughter pass out tiny glasses of copper-colored tea.  I couldn’t make out much of what he said to his family but I had no trouble hearing this common interjection. Inanilmaz! wasn’t very useful when they sent me on an errand to buy a loaf of bread (ekmek), but it brought a smile to new Turkish friends’ faces.

Oren wasn’t as impressed.

“Inanilmaz, means incredible!” I said, as if I had given him fifty cents for the toy crane machine in the mall.  He’d already clawed something better.

“What I’m learning is mor.  Mor means moth.”

“Moth?”

The next day his regular classroom teacher explained, “They’re learning colors and there was a purple butterfly.  Mor means purple in Turkish, that’s where he probably got that from.”

Turkish has an unimpressive rank among the world’s most commonly spoken languages (between 20 and 30). There are few Turkish speakers in our town; no Turkish restaurants, no Turkish cartoons, and I can’t think of a single Turkish actor.  However, in our university town, we can regularly find a handful of Turkish academics and this year one has decided to teach in the campus pre-school class. While learning more commonly spoken and/or highly valued world languages (e.g. Spanish, French, Chinese, Arabic) may feel more vital for Oren’s future in the “linguistic marketplace,” the reality is that in the United States few children learn the importance of any language relative to English. Colin Baker  (2011) writes that fewer than 1 in 20 U.S. Children become bilingual through foreign language education (p. 116 in Foundations of Bilingual Education). While people around the world manage to acquire fluent English as a second language, monolingual Americans relax in the clouds, much like Jack in the Beanstalk’s giant, mindless of his golden egg-laying goose.

Oren has just started making connections between spoken and written English, asking to title pictures and to “make books,” cutting images of animals out of the New Yorker, taping them to the inside of a folded piece of colored paper and dictating sentences for each “page.” Why not add another skill in early childhood, to learn to say the “same thing” differently in non-English languages, and to use context cues to make sense of differently patterned sounds and syllables.

When I left his classroom, another child and his mother were counting the school steps in Spanish.

“…siete, ocho, nueve, diez!”

“¡Muy bien! ¿Y dónde aprendiste español?”

“Oh we don’t speak any Spanish,” the mother apologized.  “We only know to count from one to ten.”

While my question seemed to have blown an adult fuse, I perceived a flicker of understanding from her son.  He knew the exclamation of praise and the upward inflection of a question.  While he might have remained silent or mistakenly answered “Purple!” or “Moth!” I could sense he captured the rhythm of adult-child turn-taking.

How many other American children might become at ease with other languages through early exposure?

The demand for early childhood English instruction is huge the world over.  How to read English fairytales, how a boy can learn to catch the giant’s goose while he sleeps.

Proud of the little Spanish and less Turkish he’s learned, I know what Oren would say.

“I already know that!”

Let me introduce myself: I have been in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia since 2001.   For over ten years I have been fortunate to work with numerous Georgia teachers from your districts and this year is no exception.  I am currently advising an incredibly bright educator from one of your districts who is in her first semester of the Educational Specialist (Ed.S.) degree  program in TESOL & World Language Education. She brought  distressing news yesterday. Her district will not acknowledge this degree  and she will likely drop out of the program. If my UGA courses were only filled with Georgia teachers, then I might soon be out of a job.

Though she is not an ESOL teacher, her elementary classroom is filled with over 60% of students for whom English is their second or additional language.  She came to our department and program to deepen her understanding of language arts and literacy instruction with English language learners.  She is to be commended for pursuing a degree that will require extensive reading, applied projects, research practice, personal time, and ultimately, curriculum modification.  Her degree program, if she is allowed to complete it, will ultimately help her  improve instruction, increase job satisfaction, and promote her own retention and professionalization in the field, allowing her to become a literacy leader in her classroom, school, and district–contexts that are increasingly multilingual and multicultural.

However, I have just learned that she may have to drop out of her degree program. Due to changes in your districts’ policies, she and her colleagues will no longer receive any compensation for advanced degrees (beyond a B.A. with certification), no matter how much it may help her to improve practice and enhance student achievement outcomes.  In a climate that does not reward the rigor and expense of her study, she feels she has no choice but to quit.  She is extremely disappointed.  I can imagine other young Georgia teachers who might desire to  enhance their understanding of practice and improve instruction, feeling trapped in a climate that uses test scores as the basis for advanced pay but discourages any further study to understand how tests and curriculum work, especially with the huge number of newcomers to our Georgia school districts.

Your teacher and I wondered: is this about finances–the district need to halt salary increases? Is this about politics? The district afraid of teachers who become advanced critical thinkers and ask questions about the testing climate that we find ourselves in and explore complimentary additions or alternatives? Is this about scandal–wanting to stem the tide of teachers pursuing “advanced degrees” from untrustworthy institutions (online or otherwise)? Is this about distrust and disappointment–believing that degrees even from recognized institutions such as UGA–have little effect on practice?

As a Professor who has worked intimately with so many Georgia pre- and in-service teachers (helping many of them to achieve their initial certification for your employ) and who hopes to continue various partnerships with your linguistically and culturally rich school systems,  I would like a better understanding.  What is the reason School Superintendents use to justify a policy that will ultimately discourage educators from pursuing advanced knowledge?

In speaking to one district’s administrative secretary by phone this morning, I heard an unusual name (I’ll call her “Brigitta” to maintain her anonymity)–so I asked: Are you German? Indeed, she is! She was an immigrant child when her family moved to our state from Europe.  However, her English is so proficient and Georgian, that I would not have known this unique history had her name not been an indication.  All Georgia students bring with them unique lingustic and cultural histories–English dialects and world languages, past and future tenses filled with diversity.  Present-day ESOL students add an opportunity for all Georgia students to increasingly recognize and build upon the languages and cultures around and within us and become advanced in world literacies–joining global markets with people who will often look, speak, and act differently from ourselves.  I believe Georgia teachers who are in our TESOL & World Language program take back a wealth of strategies to their classrooms,  strategies to  help ESOL students acquire English literacy as well as strategies for ALL students to acquire multicultural skill sets in regular education as well as foreign language classrooms, skill sets that are invaluable in today’s and tomorrow’s economy.

I am afraid these new county policies will have adverse effects–forcing teachers to choose between remaining stagnant in your districts or pursuing advanced degrees and seeking other districts/states for employment or other professions that will honor them.

What are the discussions on your end? Help me to understand your dissatisfaction or distrust.  I don’t think this is just because you want to empty my classrooms.  This will not be the case.  We have growing international enrollments from students from around the world who know the value of additional languages, language teaching pedagogies, and multiculturalism.  If your constituencies do wish colleges of education to retool and reform to your needs, what do you perceive those to be? Are you interested in knowing more about we have learned through our studies and collaborations world-wide?

We are very interested in a dialogue between Education Professors and Education Stakeholders–Superintendents, district and school administrators, teachers, staff, parents and children.  Let us imagine the future together, identifying the complex and varied literacy skills our students need to be able to successfully join international university classrooms and workplaces in our state.

Sincerely yours,

Dr. Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor

Vocabulary lists!

Grammar exercises!

Phonetic translations!

A 60 minute audio CD!

Do these sound like fun to you? What about a laundry list of classroom related vocabulary transliterated into English orthography—from report card (el informe/ ehl een-FOHR-meh) to playground (el patio de recreo/ ehl PAH-tyoh deh rreh-KREH-oh)? What about verb conjugation charts? A 3000 word bilingual glossary?

My eyes glaze over as I review the available books on the market directed toward teachers wanting to learn beginner Spanish.  I am momentarily drawn back to Summer 2003 when I wanted to experience beginner world language learning again and I enrolled in a Hebrew Ulpan for 6 weeks in Israel. Colin Baker (2011) writes, “The word Ulpan is derived from an Aramaic root meaning ‘custom, training, instruction, law.’  This movement started in 1948 after the State of Israel was established and emergency measures were needed to teach Hebrew -quickly- to large numbers of immigrants.  Until 1948 Hebrew had been largely a liturgical rather than spoken language –intense cultural activity and language learning helped to shape the nation.

I remember turning the pages of my well worn pocket Hebrew-English dictionary searching for the vocabulary word to complete five sentences about a picture of an elderly man seated on a park bench with a dog. I remember the sweat and fear at night before facing my Israeli teacher in the morning and my classmates who seemed to soar ahead of me either because of their backgrounds from Hebrew school lessons in the States or because they were recent immigrants to Israel and needed to know how to buy a refrigerator in Hebrew and not Amharic or Russian.  I remember feeling frozen on the first day of class when I was asked to describe myself—and I didn’t have the words for soccer, poetry, teacher, or scrabble player.  But I did have my cousin’s Hebrew version of Dr. Seuss’s “My Book About Me.” In the comfort of my aunt’s home in suburban Tel Aviv prior to my arrival at the language institute, I learned to say “I am a girl,” “My hair is brown and curly” and “I have 16 teeth downstairs.”  I had gone to the market with my aunt several times prior to attending language classes and I had also learned to say tomato, green pepper, corn, and chocolate (she was making “Israeli salad” and I wanted the chocolate). So I spewed these vocabulary words as if I were on Dick Clark’s $10,000 Pyramid game and the category clue was “Misha’s first and only words in Hebrew.”

While I can remember the exasperated feeling of studying a foreign language late into the night to complete my practice exercises, I also remember moments when the vocabulary lists came to life.  I had just learned the Hebrew word for terrorist (this was in the vocabulary list with buying a refrigerator).  Only a few weeks after my arrival I picked up a copy of Haaretz, a Hebrew language newspaper, and there was the word “terrorist” several times between the front page and the want ads listing all kinds of kitchen appliances. It seemed strange as a beginning language learner to have “terrorist” appear alongside lists which included household items and parts of the body.  However, when I googled for more information about Nehariya, an Israeli city where I would soon visit with extended relatives, the first automatic pairing that appeared was “Nehariya – Attack.”  It became abundantly clear that if one wanted to learn Hebrew in contemporary Israeli society and keep all one’s body parts, that “terrorist” was just such a word one wanted to learn sooner rather than later.

Reading over these beginner Spanish books reminds me of this experience with language learning in Israel, but what I can’t remember now are any of the Hebrew words I learned from my own study of word lists.  “I’d like some Chocolate,” “What’s your name?” “You have a nice refrigerator”—I must have said each of these phrases a dozen times during my six weeks of study, visits to relatives’ houses, and tourism.  Did I fail as a student of language learning? Did I waste thousands of shekels on my courses, the plane ticket and chocolate bars if the result is back to square one? This was nine distant summers ago and since then I’ve had very few opportunities to use communicative Hebrew.  In fact, my bilingual Israeli uncle predicted this would come to pass.

“Why would you want to study Hebrew?”

“I’m a linguist and a language educator—I love learning and teaching languages and I haven’t learned another language fluently other than Spanish in a long time.”

“But no one speaks Hebrew. Why don’t you study Russian? Or Chinese?”

“You speak Hebrew.”

“But I also speak English. You’re going to study Hebrew but you’re not going to speak it to anybody.  It’s a waste of time.”

Hmph, I remember thinking.  I’ll decide what is a waste of my time! I also wanted to study Hebrew so I could feel more connected to my family’s language.  But as a person of Jewish descent with Yiddish and German as languages of “inheritance” and Hebrew a relatively new, adopted language of home, my “family language” is quite unclear.  Having nation-state as well as institutional (religious) status, Hebrew may seem like the most “valid and authorized” language of the Jewish people. But here was a member of my own family telling me he’d already learned English so why study something so unncessary, something I would never practically use?

When my six weeks of study had ended, I visited for a week with non-English speaking relatives in the Northern part of the state on my own when my need for Hebrew loomed large and impossible.  I remember the awkward silences when I had already exhausted my lists of produce and descriptions of my brown hair and brown eyes.  The show “Friends” was playing but it was dubbed in Hebrew and I couldn’t laugh along with my peer-aged cousins.  I was a dead linguistic weight at parties.  We used smiles, gestures, and at times avoided one another all together.  Then mid-week a Spanish word slipped out when I was reaching for one in Hebrew.  My elder cousin’s husband, Yom Tov, asked, “¿Usted habla español?” Yes! I said YES! Sí! I rattled off all the words I had been storing in the winter of my silent language acquisition period.  Yom Tov was of sephardic descent and grew up in former Yugoslavia speaking Ladino, the spoken and written language of Jews of Spanish origin. Despite the fact that the Ladino language is a variety from 14^th and 15^th century Spain and Portugal when the Jews were expelled, we could still understand one another. Yom Tov and his wife Ruthy took me to the local police station to purchase fresh eggs, we took a boat tour of their coastal city, we travelled to museums and dance festivals.  I began to think my investment in Hebrew resulted in a new understanding of Spanish diversity and a personal connection to the Spanish language I had not anticipated.

This is not to regret the six weeks I spent studying Hebrew vocabulary lists and the awkward nights I spent trying to write using cursive Hebrew consonants and dots for vowels.  Serious language learning of any kind is a form of character building, I reasoned, so that embedded within struggles to acquire discrete parts of language are lessons in culture, humility, second language acquisition processes, and communication with a capital “C.” Linguistic Anthropologist, Dell Hymes,  discussed the difference between competence and performance in a language—that despite the absence of grammatical or cogntive feasibility or social appropriateness, living people get things done through second, third, and fourth languages regardless.  Becoming a beginning language learner in any non-English language places the U.S. learner in the shoes of an essential human boundary crossing experience—one that continues to be lived daily by those who are immigrants in this country and whose children often appear in our classrooms.

Most teachers to whom these beginner Spanish books are directed can’t afford to leave their families and classrooms to take 6 weeks off to study Spanish in Mexico and I would bet that few teachers are going to actually use McGraw-Hill’s Spanish for Educators text or even online language progams such as Rosetta Stone with enough regularity to become fluent or absorb the “more than 3,000 key Spanish words and phrases” they claim to teach.  However, unlike my experience learning (and quickly losing) beginner Hebrew, Spanish language use has a daily, living purpose in many teachers lives.  There are Walmarts all around us (not to mention the much more interesting and vital small Mexican tiendas and weekly “pulgas”, Spanish for “fleas” short for “flea markets”) where Spanish vocabulary can be touched and tasted—selling pan dulce (Mexican sweet bread), Caribeño Goya products, even Saints candles or veladoras.  There are Spanish language newspapers, television and radio stations, markets and celebrations all around us where we can learn language in context and build bilingual relationships over a lifetime greater than intensive, but isolated, language study abroad.  But my Israeli uncle’s voice nudges me, asks again:

“But why would anyone learn Spanish when all the Spanish speakers are learning to speak English? You’re going to end up speaking in English.  It’s a waste of everyone’s time.”

Certainly, there is an element of truth.  While many in the U.S. believe that Spanish speaking immigrants “never learn English,” this is a misinformed misperception.  Sociologist and demographer, Calvin Veltman (1990) has created a generational model of language shift documenting that by the third generation, all Latinos speak English regularly and less than 20% continue to speak Spanish, with fewer than 4% preferring to speak Spanish rather than English (p. 122).

The value and power of English has prevented generations of Americans from needing to spend time learning other languages or valuing and preserving their own families’ non-English linguistic resources.  If we seek motivation by need alone, then we will never move beyond our widespread monolingualism, denying English speakers the opportunity to deepen our understanding of how language and communication work in other cultural systems as well as furthering understanding of our own English language and cultural system.  We must move from need to want, we must want to become language learners as adults so that we model for children the real possibilities of a life time of world wide language learning.

“Mommy, Mommy!” My son shouts and runs into the kitchen where I am grading papers.  He is watching Toy Story 3 in the other room.  “Buzz light year is speaking Spanish!  They pushed his button!”

Would that we could all push a button and start spewing out vocabulary in another language.  In bed that night Oren asks me if I can say various words in Spanish.  “Wall,” he says.

“Pared,” I answer.

“Dinosaur.”

“Dinosaurio.”

He looks up at the glow in the dark stickers around his room.  “Star!”

“¡Estrella!”

“You know everything Spanish!” he says, impressed by our short translation exercise.  What parent doesn’t want to hear they know it all?  I don’t tell him how many words I don’t yet know in Spanish but I do try to model for him that I want to learn more and that learning in context and interaction is the best way to acquire communication skills in another language.  For me learning Spanish and bits and pieces of Hebrew, Turkish, French, and other languages is because I have been lucky enough to experience the joy that comes with questioning cultural and linguistic assumptions.

Learning a second or third or fourth language helps to develop this questioning into a lifelong intercultural skill—questioning assumptions for what a casserole looks like, or when and how to give a compliment, invite someone to dinner, even how to ask and answer a question. In an increasingly diverse cultural and lingustic society, we must develop such intercultural skills in order to communicate with those who are different and there is no better way to develop this skill than through exercises in learning another language—regardless of the fluency level attained.

Do I recommend these beginner Spanish books for teachers? Maybe.  Having a book filled with everyday language and Spanish for professional purposes can indeed be helpful as a reference or resource for practice and support. More often than not, an online bilingual dictionary can be just as helpful if not more so.  Without meaningful contexts for regular practice and genuine desire, vocabulary lists are static and useless.

What kind of book can be written to cultivate such desire to “waste time” studying langugaes other than English?  What resources are those that are the most useful for learning Spanish or another language in a timely and joyful manner? I intend to write my way through to the answers!

Hymes, D. H. (1971) Competence and performance in linguistic theory.  In  R. Huxley and E. Ingram (eds) Language Acquisition: Models and Methods. New York: Academic Press.

Veltman, C. (1990). The status of the Spanish language in the United States at the beginning of the 21^st century.  International Migration Review, 24 (1), 108-123. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2546674

Below is a partial transcript from an interview I had with a parent whose fourth grade child attends the only elementary school in our community where Spanish is part of the daily curriculum. “D2” is her second daughter.  “D1” is a middle school student who also has Spanish as a subject and said with certainty that her little sister “speaks Spanish better than I do!”

MOM – I don’t know what they’re doing, but they got this certain website that she goes to and listens to the- she can tell you all about it. She runs around the house singing Spanish songs all the time.

MISHA – [to the fourth grade youth] And how did you learn all the Spanish that you know?

D2 – from Spanish class

MISHA – But how do you, what helps  you to learn?

D2 – We go to a website called Señor Wooly

MISHA – Wooly? Ok, I don’t know that. What do you learn there?

D2 – There’s Spanish videos and you can do karaoke and you can listen to the video and sing along.

MISHA – And you like to do it?

D2 – (nods yes)

MISHA – That is so cool. I’m so happy for you. Now next year they’re trying to decide if we’re going to have any more Spanish here at the school or not. Would you recommend that we keep Spanish at the school?

D2 – (nods yes)

MISHA – You would? Why?

D2 – because it’s fun!

Ah, that’s the ticket! If language educators (like the one at this elementary school) can make learning non-English languages fun and inviting, then maybe we can have more success encouraging future American youth (and adults) to enjoy Spanish, French, Chinese, or Arabic class.  I did look up “Señor Wooly” and there are a few free videos on youtube to give you a taste of the way to make learning languages fun, funny, and do-able through music,repetition, and comedy.  Check out “Puedo Ir al Baño,” a ballad sung by an adolescent pleading with his strict teacher for permission “to go to the bathroom,” backed up by a chorus of understanding peers.  Or for even heartier laughter check out “Soy Guapo,” a pop tune sung by a dandy of a dude who claims repeatedly, “I’m handsome” cheered by two women (“¡Ay, Victor!”).  This “Guapo” gets out of household chores, bills, even reading. By being handsome he gets all his desires met.  It’s over the top fun and while singing along to this guy not needing to be funny or have any personality, the song helps teach dozens of vocabulary words, expressions, and challenging grammar points (¿personalidad?–¡él no la tiene!/ personality? He doesn’t have it!–no more struggles with teaching the direct object with the verb tener!).

It’s not that all target language learning is fun and games.  However, when I review the overwhelming variation of “Spanish Level One” books that exist, the market is flooded with dry vocabulary lists.  Señor Wooly is indeed a sight for sore eyes & ears, utilizing technology to embrace context and interaction as essential components of effective language acquisition.

When my husband turned 40, we placed candles in a circle around the golf ball design on the cake.  My two year old daughter cried, “like ashes ashes, we all fall down!” connecting the candle circle to one of her favorite song activities in her daycare class.  Young and old, language learners make connections between what is known and what is unknown.  Our natural creativity makes leaps and bounds between experiences.  My children have been working with a Spanish speaking nanny for 4 weeks now (about two days a week).  I encourage her to do the following:

1. interact with the children in a natural setting doing regular, daily routines–in my case, going through morning rituals of getting dressed, eating, and readying for the drive to school.

2. try to introduce contextualized language–when asking the kids to put on their zapatos and calcetines, to show them their shoes and socks when saying the words

3. to encourage repeated production just as I do in English when trying to teach good manners.  “I want more yogurt!” my son screamed this morning.  “Más yogurt, por favor,” I rephrased for him.  “Más yogurt, por favor,” my son repeated, mumbling obediency.

4. to accept all English productions

When we were in North Carolina, my daughter waved her hands in the air and shouted “These are manos Mommy!”  Then she counted out the pasta she would eat on her plate “uno, dos, tres, cuatro!”  These are small steps for small language learners.  But I can’t wait to show them “puedo ir al baño!”  to see if this can appeal even to very young children.

This is not to say that language learning is all fun and games.  It’s not.  Real frustrations occur all the time. My son standing at the sink told his Spanish teacher today that “I don’t understand Spanish!” and then proceeded to follow her request in Spanish to go outside and play.  Language learning is not always to be taken lightly, especially when real needs have to be met.  I remember having spent the entire summer in Mexico feeling quite fluent.  I was leading a group of college students on a long term stay in the Mexican state of Veracruz and had finished my work to head home.  My flight was delayed for several hours and finally cancelled.  I had to navigate getting on a different flight, making connections to my home destination.  I was tired and frustrated and embarrassed at the airline ticket counter when I simply gave up speaking Spanish.  I knew the Delta employees were also bilingual and they would be in their language comfort zone to explain my flight options to me in English.  Such code-switching is not always possible when operating in an L2 but it made me aware what a luxury it was to be able to draw on more than one code choice in order to be heard, to get needs met, and occasionally have fun.

I was delighted to hear this young girl feeling so excited about her Spanish class.  I was even more startled yesterday when I visited a dual immersion elementary school in Clayton County, “Unidos.”  The fifth grade chorus treated my UGA students and I to a short bilingual concert where it was difficult to tell which students had Spanish at home and which did not.  The children’s accents and fluency were so outstanding!

“What has your experience been in this program? Is it ever hard to learn another language?”

“Yeah! At first I was so confused!”

“Yeah, like I didn’t know what was going on!”

“But now it’s easy and its fun to speak two languages.  Like we have this new girl in our class and she speaks Spanish but we’re helping her in English.”

“When we go to restaurants, the people there are all like “You speak Spanish! Well, alright!”

There’s a whole story written by Dell Perry Giles about the challenges of opening up an elementary school where two languages are used for instruction.  But she made it happen.  To watch these children sing effortlessly in two languages was a gift.  They are showing us by their songs as well as on their state mandated test scores (which equal or surpass the scores of their district peers) that learning more than one language in the context of a public U.S. school is indeed possible and enjoyable.

In my campus mailbox I received this letter dated 2/13/2012

Dear Prof. Cahnmann-Taylor:

Acting upon the recommendation of the University Review Committee, I am truly pleased to notify you that you will be promoted to Professor effective with your 2012-2013 contract.  Promotion is a significant achievement in academic life and a recognition of the valuable contribution that you make to the life of the University.

Please accept my hearty congratulations and my personal thanks for all that you do for the University.

Sincerely, 

Micheal F. Adams

President

My response:

Dear President Adams, Colleagues and Students at the University of Georgia:

I am filled with joy and gratitude on this day when I receive news of my promotion to full professor at this institution.  From the first day of my interview to today when I receive this letter, I have felt welcomed and respected.  On only one small occasion when I began at the University did one person in an administrative role of authority respond negatively to my research, referring to my request for funding as “boondoggling” to study American in-service teachers on a summer abroad program in Mexico.  My department chair immediately came to my defense and support and I found other sources of funding for work in local schools.  When some of the courses I teach such as “poetry for creative educators” and “theatre for reflective practice” were referred to as “boutique”courses, at first I took offense, believing that some colleagues in administrative positions felt these courses were unnecessary baubles, pretty and interesting but overpriced and excessive.  Nonetheless, I was allowed to offer these courses, to see their enrollments grow, and share the joy and muscle of creative thinking and learning.  I don’t think most institutions would allow me such flexibility in course development or generously support the guest speakers I have helped to bring to our campus: Ruth Behar, Joni/Omi/ Jones, Anne Waldman and Steven Krashen this spring.  And when Joni/Omi/Jones performed “Sistah Docta” and removed her shirt to perform the vulnerability of the black, female body on campuses of higher education, some administrative faculty squirmed in the front row, snickered uncomfortably afterward, and may have missed the point.  But no one stopped the show or pulled funding or refused my future applications (although my first application to bring another powerhouse African American artist was refused–I am sure it was because of budgetary constraints and I will try to bring poet Patricia Smith again!).  You have written on paper that you will promote me to full professor despite the fact that I protest at our campus arches against HB 59 which would essentially ban highly qualified but undocumented youth from attending our beautiful institution.  You give me license to be at the top of the University heap fully knowing that I was part of a gang of academic parents who protested the lack of daycare services at this institution until you finally opened a large daycare center this year to serve our community and both my children have spots in a campus daycare facility.  No future pregnancies for me but I smile every time I see the two new parking spaces reserved for expectant mothers in the College of Education parking lot and the new stroller and wheelchair friendly ramp that leads from the busstop to our building.  I have breastfed in many corners of our campus, posted a breastfeeding welcome sticker and rainbow queer-friendly flag in my office and have heard talk about building lactation rooms across campus.  When, in other public corners of Athens, Georgia, nursing mothers and I have been asked not to breastfeed, this campus has been nothing but friendly to me as a nursing academic mother.  Sure, it would have been swell if you’d had any kind of maternity leave policy that might have allowed me to navigate work and new motherhood with a bit less stress and strategy, but luckily I had a grant and flexible students and understanding colleagues and it all worked out.  Would I like this to change? You bet–I want our campus to continue to grow as a place that is welcoming to all kinds of diversities and life changes.  I would like never to hear another colleague snickering about a Jewish student who “tried to get out of a test” by complaining that it was Yom Kippur (the most holy and sacred day in the Jewish calendar).  I wish there were more open and explicit talk about what to do when experiencing harrassment on this campus and that we’d have fewer incidents covered up for years and fewer to no incidents at all.  I realize how tricky such policies must be and that it is my role now to participate in faculty governance to help create and sustain policies that favor people and ideas and shun intolerance, abuse, immorality, and narrow-mindedness.  I feel truly lucky to be here and honored by this promotion because it says you value faculty who publish and teach wildly across traditional academic boundaries, who question authority, and voice the taboo.  I have a published disclaimer that the thoughts and ideas on my blog are mine and mine alone and protect you–to the extent that I can–from our association. But now you have not only invited me to the table, but given me a long-term contract to remain in my white, cinder-block office which I have now painted athenian blue.  Thank you President Adams, for protecting me from many of the bureaucratic decisions that come with running a public university and for allowing me the freedom and time to write, think, teach, and learn and feel the urgency of continued critical, intellectual work. I’m sure we’ll get to know each other better in the coming years as I participate more actively in how to create and sustain the best possible environment for higher learning.  Upon receipt of this letter I feel honored and renewed, knowing my work at the University of Georgia has only just begun.

I can’t believe it–finally Glee addressed “Mr. Shuster’s” status as a so-called Spanish teacher at the high school–one who can’t and/or doesn’t speak Spanish!  Ricky Martin comes and saves the day as “David Martinez, a night school adult Spanish teacher (see Hulu.com for the show if you missed it).  Mr. Shu enrolls in Mr. Martinez’ class to improve his Spanish (and get a “tenure track” job at the high school)  and learns that “by 2030, the majority of Americans will use Spanish as their first language.”  After class, Mr. Shu (MS) and David Martinez (DM) have this conversation:

DM: No entiendo, tu eres maestro del español pero estás tomando clase de español

MS: Could you maybe say that a little slower, I think your accent is throwing me off.  Where are you from?

DM: Ohio. But my parents are from Chile and we only spoke Spanish in the house growing up.

Mr. Shu’s gaff that an “Ohio accent” is difficult to understand is an early comic moment that foreshadows the many blunders the Glee Club director/Spanish teacher will make regarding the language, culture, and identity of Latino USA.  In class Mr. Shu declares the Glee Club will sing songs written or performed by someone of “Latin descent or performed bilingually.” He explains:

Mr. S: Where do you think you’ll you be by 2030? Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, you’re gonna need to speak Spanish.  The reality is by 2030 more people on this planet will be speaking Spanish than any other language.

Mr. Shu (mis)ventriloquizes his own Spanish teacher’s wisdom and suddenly he moves the significance of Spanish in the U.S. to world dominance  (Look out English! Look out Chinese!) Despite the exaggerated statistics, I agree with Mr. Shu’s central message: “The world is changing, our culture is changing, and that needs to be reflected in here [in U.S. high school].”

Who would think Fox TV’s Glee club would be talking about Spanish as a vital language of our (inter)national future?! –that by the show’s end Mr. Shuster would hand over his Spanish position  to Ricky Martin and decide to go for a history position instead (my colleagues in Social Studies education should also have a field day with this episode!).

Well, as readers likely know by now, I prefer to remain on the positive, rather than cynical, side.  “Latin music” for Glee club ends up meaning a mostly English version of the Gypsy Kings “Bamboleo,”  Madonna’s “Isla Bonita,” and Elvis’s “Satisfy me” with one English-Spanish tranlated line. Although the hour long show is depressingly filled with the hyperbolic “hot Latin” (Okay, Ricky Martin is indeed eye and ear candy) and filled with stereotypes, Santana plays the critical cultural reader and educates her defensive educator.

Santana [to Mr. Shu]: You went from La cucaracha to a bull fighting mariachi!  Why don’t you just dress up as the Taco Bell Chihuahua and bark the theme song to Dora the explorer?  You don’t even know enough to be embarrassed about these stereotypes that you’re perpetuating!

David Martinez  invoked Lorca’s concept of “duende” had me over the top with GLEE! Okay, so duende was given short shrift, quickly and mistakenly translated as dwarf and pawned off as  Ricky Martin’s sexual energy.  He explains duende through a bilingual performance of “I’m sexy and you know it”:

David Martinez:
Cuando hago mi entrada, this is what I see
Todo el mundo para pa’ mirarme a mí
I got passion in my pants and I ain’t afraid to show it, show it, show it,
show it.

I’m sexy and I know it
Soy sexy y lo sabes

Hey, checalo.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle yeah (x4)

To the wiggle man, así menealo man yeah
Soy sexy y lo sabes.

Do I wish the show’s writers would have included some discussion of the term “duende” coined by Spanish civil war poet, Federico Garcia Lorca–you bet.  Lorca called the duende, “an emotive and poetic logic rather than a disembodied rational logic” (Hirsch, 1999, p. 13).  Duende’s etymological root comes from duen de casa [not dwarf!], “master of the house,” a house that is filled with emotion and death. I wrote in Teachers Act Up (p. 80): “Like the flamenco singer or bullfighter whose dark improvisational arts place them closer to death, duende allows one to succumb to mystery, and absorb its carnival of hunger, desire, sin, and sunlight.”  It’s NOT reduced to “passion in my pants.”

But we critical academics can’t remain all tied up in what isn’t all the time.  We must recognize the slow celebratory moments of cultural shift and laugh outloud when the show makes fun of a U.S. Adult Spanish student whose goal is to learn enough Spanish to say “Stop using my toilet to my maid” (hello, “The Help”).  The show illuminates U.S. Americans’ backwardness through great doses of humor and irony.  By the end, this same adult student is awarded “best conjugator” and gives thanks to her teacher:

Adult Spanish learner: Thank you Sr. Martinez. Thanks to you, Claudia knows now “to go” before she comes to work.

Oye (Yiddish groan not Mexican command “listen!”).

Mr. Shu is awarded “most improved” as he celebrates his fiancé getting the covetted “tenure track” position at the school and hands over his Spanish classroom to Ricky Martin.  Should I worry about the effect of this show, reinforcing Fox viewers’ understanding that diversity means the White English-only speaking guy (or woman–see the show’s take on Sue Sylvester) loses his credibility and his job to more qualified women and minorities? Or will viewers’ feel invited to sing along to bilingual lyrics by their favorite all American heros, gyrate their stiff hips to global Spanish rhythms, and rethink their attitudes towards cultural and linguistic knowledge.  Maybe it is important for English speaking Americans to take World Language & Spanish language education seriously?  English speaking Americans do great damage  to U.S. students’ future potential if they are “protected” from integrated schools, linguistic diversity, and the struggles inherent in learning different ways of being in a multicultural world.  And while we may be cultivating critical geniuses like Santana–at what price? We can’t hope that minority youth will trade in their anger and cynicism in light of ignorance and symbolic violence against cultural and linguistic “others.”  Until we pay more attention to world language education and -yes- history, we will never create learning environments that nurture respect, humility, inquisitiveness, and care.

In the meantime, who else saw the show?! Responses?!! LA Times blog on it, in case you’d like a  review of the various narratives.  Any other links to other “Gleeks” writing with loving criticism of the show?

I just spoke to the department of education representative for the Foreign Language Assistance Program.  In September I wrote a plea on this blog to readers to write their congressman:  please authorize FLAP funding–too few Americans can communicate in non-English world languages and this was the only federal program charged to increase world language abilities in public schools. “Was.” Past tense because on December 23 the entire congress voted not to reauthorize FLAP funding.  In January, the school where I’ve been working for 1.5 years to establish a meaningful Spanish-English world languages and literacies program was told they would not receive the third year of federal funding.  We only just got started.

January, 2012.

Six students sat around a half moon shaped table.  “Las ocho fases de la luna [the 8 phases of the moon],” their FLAP funded teacher said.  “Vamos a dibujarlas y ponerlas en orden [we’ll draw them and put them in order.]

Each child had 8 black color paper squares and a white crayon.  They drew and labelled the moon’s phases:

Luna Nueva (New Moon)

Creciente Iluminante (Waxing Crescent)

Primer Cuarto/Cuarto Creciente (First Quarter)

Gibosa Iluminante (Waxing Gibbous)

Luna Llena (Full Moon)

Gibosa  Menguante (Waning Gibbous)

Ultimo Cuarto/Cuarto Menguante (Last Quarter)

Creciente Menguante (Waning Gibbous)

As one child drew, her white crayon broke.  She learned how to ask for a new one in Spanish.  Another child sang Montell Jordan’s lyrics to himself “this is how we do it!” and numbered each moon phase, saying “uno, dos, tres, cuatro….” in Spanish, the language he speaks at home.  Another child worked on creating an index card “pocket” on a manilla folder–she learned how to say “tape” (cinta) and card “tarjeta,” and how to make a pocket by taping only three sides “solo los tres lados.”  She wanted a green marker to label her folder–her teacher pointed out that what she wanted was “el color verde” and pointed out that even crayola is multilingual–with “green/verde/vert” written in kelly green on it’s thick white side. Another child asked his teacher, “Do you have facebook?” And the teacher asked in Spanish what this had to do with the moon? The child replied that his facebook password would be “the moon.” The teacher and several hispanic students started talking about “facebook en español,” stretching a “science lesson” into a lesson about world communication and Spanish as a global language.

How does our world view shift when we learn that people look up and label the “same sky” differently, when we make connections to cognates such as “quarter” and “cuarto” and distinctions between words such as “waxing/waning” to “iluminante/menguante.”

Beyond acquiring a bilingual vocabulary, these children were learning to communicate like citizens of the world, making connections between science content and their lives as transnational citizens.

Senator Isakson wrote me back on September 15: “it is urgent that Washington get its fiscal house in order….I believe that in addition to passing a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget, we must also reform our broken appropriations process and reduce wasteful spending….I have nine grandchildren. The rest of my life is about seeing to it that we leave them a country that is as free, as prosperous and as safe as the country our parents left to us.”

Any American who wants to leave our children and our grandchildren with the greatest chance for prosperity and safety must take the teaching and learning of World Languages under serious consideration.

The FLAP representative tells me there’s a new appropriations bill on the table through reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) to sponsor programs for “well rounded education” that include “the teaching and learning of arts, foreign languages, history and civics, financial literacy, environmental education, and other subjects.”  While I was hopeful, my interlocutor in Washington dampened my spirits.  “It’s unlikely this kind of bill will go through in an election year.”

That’s alright.  I have lots of time.  One positive outcome of growing older is having to learn patience–this is how we do it!  Remember, too, the beautiful lyrics of Same Cook:

It’s been too hard living but I’m afraid to die

‘Cause I don’t know what’s up there beyond the sky

It’s been a long, a long time coming

But I know (oohhhh), change gonna come, oh yes it will