Blog #10 - Love of Language

My love of language started in my home. I had an array of grandparents from different cultural backgrounds and they wanted to be sure that I had an appreciation of all of it. I guess you can say that my respect for different cultures started at home as well, being that I saw my grandparents respect one another whether it was for the love of their grandchildren or not they shared their backgrounds with one another and respected their differences. Portuguese, Cherokee (Tsalagi), Choctaw (Chahta Anumpa), and French Creole were languages that were heard and spoken in my home, not to mention the cuisine. Although my parents and grandparents made sure that my first language was Standard English, they also wanted to make sure that I had knowledge of their native languages as well. It was pretty cool though when it was time for family reunions as well. My mother made sure that we visited relatives that lived all over, so when my cousins came from their respective homes, my sister and I were the translators. (Even though we all lived in the US). Relatives from Connecticut, Louisiana, and California all spoke with different dialects and accents which made it a challenge for them to understand one another. Therefore, as I began to travel picking up languages and the dialect of those languages wasn’t as difficult for me as it may have been for most.

As an educator I have taken a great interest of bilingual education in our public schools. I feel as though it is completely one sided if only Hispanic children are given the opportunity to this type of education. In many other countries bilingual is made available to all children and has left the US in the dust when it comes to linguistics. I would love to see bilingual education as a co teaching effort in the US. This would put teacher’s minds at ease and also give them an opportunity to learn another language as well. The students of this country would no longer be last in an ever changing world when it came to language if we would implement foreign language into our nation’s curriculum. We have and are doing our students a disservice by not exposing them to various languages. In the Southwest region of this country it is imperative that bilingual education take place in the classroom, starting with Spanish instruction for all students in all subject areas. I know that this is a fear for quite a few teachers who feel as though their jobs would be at risk, but in a co teaching model all stand to benefit. My plan would be to assign a language based on the majority of minorities in that particular region. For example, the Northwest would focus on Japanese and Chinese, where as the Northeast would focus on French bilingual education. The North central region of the US could focus on German where as the Eastern seaboard could teach Russian and Italian. I know this is a pipe dream, but how cool would it be that our nation could be just as multilingual as it is multicultural. Other countries teach English as a mandatory second language, but what is awesome about their curriculum is that students get the opportunity to choose a third language as well.

When I taught in Japan most of the teachers I worked with understood academic English which made it easy for me, but to challenge myself I tried to speak Japanese whenever I wasn’t teaching, I co-taught with a teacher whose native language was Japanese but was certified to teach English. This was an awesome pairing due to the fact that I was there to help students with the conversational portion of the English language as well as day to day vernacular. (The stuff that wasn’t in textbooks) This caused me to study English more in depth because I wanted to be sure that I could address any questions about the English language beyond my academic and regional knowledge. I had to explore Great Britain, Australian, Irish, Scottish, and American English to truly give my students a full and fair view of the different styles and types of the English language. What I learned in the process of this research is that just as vast as the English language is on American soil it is just as vast everywhere else too. Also, that each language has a large variety of dialect and accents due to regional and grammatical differences. This taught me that there is a standard in any language, but to get to the heart of the people is to understand and appreciate their dialect as well.