Languages Look Good on Paper
By Laura Sexton, Spanish teacher and author of PBLintheTL.com
He didn’t have to sell me on it. The principal who had backed my son to the hilt for the past four years while maintaining his support for his teachers and what was best for students, he didn’t need statistics to sell me on educational innovation. And what Spanish teacher worth her salt needs to look at graphs of demographic trends and test scores before signing her daughter up for dual immersion kindergarten? Heck, I had already promised my kid a trip back to Mexico and the “abuela” who lives to spoil her if she just agreed to sign up!
But in that same kindergarten registration dual immersion meeting was a young woman who missed a few months of my Spanish II class right about the time I went on maternity leave myself five years earlier. That didn’t make Spanish any easier for her, let me tell you. She put the name of the baby who came into the world just a few weeks ahead of mine on the same dual immersion list with my baby’s. I could tell the statistics hadn’t convinced her either, but how could she disappoint Sra. Sexton? Her questions hinted that she was reconsidering by the time the signup sheet reached the front.
In the meantime, the district where I teach has made moves to shift upper level language learning to the virtual world and lower level language learning into the middle schools. That looks real good on paper, right? Our kids can keep pursuing higher and higher levels of language learning, building up those test score trends and college admissions and scholarship stats.
But will they really be learning language? Or will they just have some classes that look good on papers that principals can hand out at meetings?
As a language lover and an educator, and as a citizen of the world, I am really loving all of these businesses and school administrators talking up the increasing demand for Globalization, for Cross-Cultural Communication. I am loving the Seal of Biliteracy bills that are beating out pushes for coding to replace language classes. The lip service sounds so supportive!
But these statistics and “support” are undermining everything that language learning is about.
There was a time when languages were weapons, trained on separating the scholars from the slackers. Language was was supposed to be some intellectual litmus test for la crême de la crême, proof of a student’s worthiness to advance. That’s why politicians and parents, tycoons and even teachers, say they believe everyone should learn another language, but then remain wistfully monolingual themselves.
Language was used to divide, so now divided adults pretend they believe it’s what kids need without believing it themselves, just because it looks good on paper.
But you know who does believe that other languages will matter in their lives?
Kids who get hooked on telenovelas or anime or K-pop, of course they believe. Kids who can understand walking tours in another country, obviously believe enough to explore other countries in the first place.
But kids who use their second language to tell parents how their babies did in Sunday School: they believe, too.
Kids who step in in the checkout lines at grocery stores and amusement parks where they work to help confused customers: they believe.
Kids who can joke with their bilingual co-workers in restaurants believe.
Kids who can impress their dates’ mothers who don’t speak English believe.
Kids who get compliments from waiters for being polite in another language believe.
I say kids, but it’s true of anyone who has ever felt confident enough to use another language in a community outside their classroom. If they can see the power — not just at admissions time — of what another language can do for them as people, they will believe.
No numbers are going to make a nervous mom feel good about dual immersion kindergarten. No platitudes from politicians who “regret” not learning another language are going to inspire an adolescent to become bilingual.
The real inspiration is living the language, using it to do things you couldn’t do before. This means we all — parents and teachers, CEOs, and senators — need to make a huge shift in how we treat language learning. Because the connections and the community that come with more languages have to happen to be believed. They must be action instead of distant promises, opportunities for application rather than checkboxes on an application. The finer points of the irregular preterite will not make this happen, and selling SAT scores only keeps the communication at arm’s length.
We have to come to language learning from a place of understanding, a place of building on what you have to make a bridge to what someone needs. We have to focus on taking a risk to reach out rather than perfect pronunciation or adjective agreement.
Until we do, languages will look good on paper, and no one but the linguistically inclined will believe languages really matter.
Laura Sexton is a passion-driven, project-based language educator at Gaston Early College High School in Dallas, North Carolina. In her blog, PBLintheTL.com, she shares Ideas for integrating Project-Based Learning in the world language classroom, including example projects, lessons, driving questions, and reflection. Follower her on Twitter at: @SraSpanglish.
To be reminded why your work is so very important and for more stories and advice, visit our collection of teacher perspectives at The Art of Teaching.
You can view the McGraw-Hill Education Privacy Policy here: http://www.mheducation.com/privacy.html. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author, and do not reflect the values or positioning of McGraw-Hill Education or its sales.
