** I've been writing nonstop for four hours to complete my final paper for my class in Fundamentals of Bilingual Education. No creative juice remains in my fingertips to write a blog entry at this time. And so, I hope you enjoy my nine page essay, instead. ;) **
Downthe Rabbit Hole: A Personal Philosophy on Bilingual Education
Theoriesand philosophies are wonderful things. They provide people with aconcrete idea as to how to go about something, and this is trulyinvaluable. But one key thing theories and philosophies often arelacking is imagination, creativity and wonder. Theorists andphilosophers can find themselves so bogged down in the studies, thestatistics and the logic behind it all that they forget the mostimportant thing: the magic to inspire students down the proverbiallinguistic rabbit hole.
Arabbit hole is a wonderful thing that opens new perspectives andpossibilities and indeed learning a language should be no differentthan Alice's experience of going down the rabbit hole. The experienceof learning a new language should be so thrilling and adventurous,that students cannot help but want to delve in further. At the sametime, not only should bilingual education be a sort of enchantedadventure, but it should be taken into serious account that inteaching a student a new language, one is effectively creating awhole other individual with a separate personality and world view.
Indeed, a Czech Proverb declares, “Learn a new language and get anew soul.” It is thus imperative to inspire students to makethemselves vulnerable and motivated enough to embark on such ajourney through a vast, unknown linguistic world, all whilediscovering and shaping a part of themselves they never before knewexisted – literally. In fact, this is not a mere whimsicalbelief, but a concept that has been researched and proven. In "DoBilinguals Have Two Personalities? A Special Case of Cultural FrameSwitching," as published in the Journal of Research inPersonality, researchers make a strong case that yes, along with asecond language, comes an autonomous personality. As the studyconcluded that:
“...[thereis] the tendency of bi-cultural individuals (i.e., people who haveinternalized two cultures, such as bilinguals) to change theirinterpretations of the world, depending upon their internalizedcultures, in response to cues in their environment (e.g., language,cultural icons). The results from the present series of studiessuggest that CFS can be primed with something as subtle as thelanguage, and can affect not only their attributions or values, butalso their personality.” (Gosling)
Thus,it can be seen that bilingual teachers are not only teaching studentsa second language, but also a new perspective and a new part ofthemselves! What a responsibility bilingual teachers have, but alsowhat an opportunity to expand their student's worlds!
Myphilosophy has been formulated on personal experience – both as astudent who has studied six languages over the past 14 years in bothacademic and non-academic settings, and as a teacher who has taughtEnglish in formal and informal academic settings for the past fouryears. My philosophy is also formulated on main ideas fromdual-language bilingualism, as practiced by JOYLOVE as well asimmersion bilingualism, as defined by Stephen Krashen.
Iam fully aware that my bilingual philosophy may be ridiculed forcoming across as a rather “new age,” in the sense that Buddhistvirtues, youthful thinking, creativity, humor and whimsy are at thecenter of my philosophy, but I to these skeptics I would merely sayto go to a classroom and compare the students who are receiving a“traditional” bilingual education, replete with pedanticexercises and teachers yelling at them to speak in the targetlanguage, with the students in my classrooms, who are happily havingfun with projects, games, songs and dances, speaking automatically inEnglish at every chance they get, and then ridicule it.
The thing is,traditionally students have been greatly underestimated, and so hasthe power of thinking outside the box. And that is precisely whatthis philosophy seeks to change.
Expertand theorist Stephen Krashen asserts that, “language acquisitiondoes not require extensive use of conscious grammatical rules, anddoes not require tedious drill" (Schutz). While all of theteachers I teach with at my current school certain gave me a weirdlook when I began implementing my philosophy in their classrooms byridding the classes of these rules and drills, six months later I amhearing that they used my presence in their school as their mainselling point at their last parent meeting in which parents wereasked to renew their children's enrollment in the private school forthe coming year!
Theschool I work at is a private bilingual school whose parents payupwards of 650 euro per month in hopes of their children becomingbilingual by the time the graduate. The school works under the guiseof strict immersion, and the only two classes the students take thataren't in English are Math and Spanish Language. It is my experiencethat the success of the immersion program at my school is directlyproportional to each teacher's attitude towards the theory, as wellas their comfort with the English language.
Forexample, the 1-3rdgrade teachers both have spouses whose native language is English,and thus they are used to speaking English every day and see thevalue intrinsic in it. Their classrooms operate in English only, andstudents who disobey the rule will find themselves sitting insideduring recess copying this sentence fifty times: “I will only speakEnglish in the classroom.” Because of the teacher's devotion to theimmersion setting, the students – some of whom spoke a handful ofEnglish words on the first day – can now carry on fullconversations on a variety of topics with seemingly little effort. Inthe other classrooms of the school, however, teachers motivationseems to be lacking, and thus the students' motivation is, as well. Ifind the success of the 1-3rdgrade students to be very telling and have made my philosophy heavilybased upon the idea of immersion, but the one main thing I wouldtweak with the way my school carries it out is in having such severepunishments for students who do not use the language.
Thisis where Tzu Chi Great Love Bilingual Preschool and Elementaryschool's philosophy becomes a key component of my own; Tzu Chimethodology states that students will never be “forced” intospeaking the target language, but instead will be gently lead in thedirection of doing so over a period of time (Tzu Chi). At the heartof bilingual immersion philosophies is the idea that one best learnsa language in as natural of a way as possible, just as babies learn alanguage. Yet punishing a child for not speaking the target languageat the right time does nothing to enforce comfort and confidence inthe target language, but instead discourages the student fromcommunication – which is, over all, extremely unnatural. One wouldnever punish or ignore a baby for using baby language to communicate,but instead one would patiently repeat the item of communication forthe toddler to hear and learn. At the center of Tzu Chi's philosophyis the belief in holding virtues such as respect and patience asparamount in a student's life and education, which brings me to thefirst guiding principle of my personal bilingual philosophy: Teachingthe value of virtues as a intrinsic part of bilingual learning.
Beforestudents can be introduced to the edge of the Rabbit Hole, they mustfirst begin to learn the importance of virtues such as love, respect,trust, patience, accountability, awe, compassion, courage, gratitude,generosity, honesty, humility, perseverance, tolerance andenthusiasm. Not only must they be taught these virtues, but thesevirtues must be modeled and upheld by their teacher. The journey ofbilingual learning is so delicate in nature that students must feelabsolutely comfortable, safe and confident before they are adequatelyprepared to embark on the journey.
Thisbrings us to the philosophies of Stephen Krashen, an expert andtheorist in the field of language acquisition and development. Heunderscores the importance of safety and security in the bilingualclassroom, stating that the first thing students need to learn a newlanguage is a clear lack of fear. Krashen further opines that:
"Thebest methods are those that supply 'comprehensible input' in lowanxiety situations, containing messages that students really want tohear. These methods do not force early production in the secondlanguage, but allow students to produce when they are 'ready',recognizing that improvement comes from supplying communicative andcomprehensible input, and not from forcing and correcting production”(Schutz).
Krashenonce again supports the idea of not forcing students in any way, butinstead in letting them explore and become comfortable with thelanguage on their own time and in their own way. Of course, a key wayto easing student's transition to their new language is to makecertain that they're being taught and modeled the virtues as listedabove. The consequences for not creating a safe classroom can bedevastating, even if all of the other aspects of the philosophy arein place.
Aglaring example of such a travesty can be found at my school wherethere is an English instructor who not only doesn't teach thesevalues, but goes against each one herself on a daily basis. Everyclass period she screams at the children, disrespects them, tellsthem they're bad, humiliates them in front of their peers, blamesthem for stressing her out to the point of getting physically ill,yells that she has given up on them, etc. It comes as no surprisethat her classes continue to be the worst behaved classes in theschool, with the worst grades, despite the fact they are provided thesame materials as the rest of the school, who are all excelling. Atfirst I thought this was their fault, but then one day the teachercalled in sick and I was asked to teach all of her classes for themorning.
WhileI was nervous about taking on this seemingly awful class on my own, Iwas intrigued at the possibility that maybe they weren't as bad asthey seemed, but rather perhaps they were merely responding to whatwas modeled for them? I was stunned when I walked in to the firstclass and they were all sitting at their desks, books open, pencil inhand, smiling up at me and waiting for their instructions. Somethinglike this would have absolutely never happened had their usualteacher been there; they would have been running around, screamingand causing disruptions. By the end of three classes just like this,all of the students were asking if I could be their permanent teacherfrom now on, because I was funny and very nice to them.
Thestudents informed me their normal teacher treated them like adictator and they hated it. And they weren't being overly-dramatic,either. I'd seen her throwing books across the room and screaming,punishing the whole class with no recess for a week because ofsomething just one student had done, telling them they were stupid.Basically, they received no respect, no patience, no compassion, nogenerosity, no humility, no perseverance, no tolerance, no enthusiasmand certainly no love from this teacher - and it had completelystunted their English learning and levels.
Itwas then that I realized just how crucial virtues are in theclassroom - any classroom, of course, but especially in the bilingualclassroom. In a bilingual classroom students are being asked to doamazing things - to expand their mind and spirit into anotherlinguistic realm! If a teacher cannot create a nurturing atmospherefor their students to do such a thing in, then all of the grammardrills and amazing theories in the world will never get the studentsto really learn and grasp the language. Further more, the other thingthat became glaringly obvious after teaching those classes that daywas the importance of seeing things from the perspective of thestudents.
Oneof my most influential teachers I've ever had seemed to her studentsto have a magical power: the power of truly understanding us. Sheknew just as well as we did that the bookwork was more than dull andthe grammar rules were pedantic and tricky, and so she'd often go offbook and do crazy things. She'd make up catchy songs to quicklymemorize irregular verbs in various tenses and quiz us on the songsrather than on regurgitating the dry grammar rules. I still singthose songs to myself 13 years later when I have a doubt, and theystill work as amazing well as they did when I was 11! In addition, weall were encouraged to talk Spanish in (and out) of class, and wereoffered bonus points and a trip to the “dulce” jar if we wereespecially talkative. She always threw us “fiestas” at the end ofchapter tests we all passed, and would have us listen to cool songsin Spanish and have competitions to see how many lyrics we couldunderstand and transcribe. At the time, I just she was just a reallyfun teacher, I had no idea that what she was doing was secretlysetting me up for copious amounts of polyglot success in the future!
Shehad made Spanish seem like such a playful game that when I went to myinterview at my private high school and was informed the Spanishteacher would be sitting in on it, I nonchalantly answered herquestions (posed in English) in Spanish, just because I enjoyed usingthe language and thought it might make her smile. Not only did itmake her smile, but I was accepted into the school and placed in APSpanish as a Freshman, despite not testing into that level by a longshot! It was my comfortableness with speaking the language – riddenwith errors, of course – that convinced the teacher I should beplaced as a 9th grader with all Juniors and Seniors. Forthe first two months I felt like I could barely stay afloat, but bythe end of the year I had the second highest grade in her class andgot a 4 on the AP exam.
Itwas my middle school teacher's rapport with her students that madeher such a successful teacher. We never felt talked down to, like wedid with other teachers. Instead, she seemed to understand us. It wasdue in large part to this that we had no problem feeling comfortableenough in her classroom to try our hand at speaking Spanish. It wasalso due to the fact she made even the most difficult thing so muchfun. She truly made learning an exciting adventure which we werealways more than willing to embark on because we knew how much funwe'd have each class.
InAntoine de Saint Exupery's book, “The Little Prince,” the maincharacter – a young boy from a distant asteroid – declares that,“grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it istiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things tothem.” I cannot count the times I felt this way as a student, norof the times I see students at my school feeling this way,themselves. And it truly weakens the bilingual classroom's chance atsuccess. This is one thing my Spanish teacher had figured out: how toremember what it was like to be a kid and how to be on their level.It is thus my contention that for a bilingual classroom to trulythrive, a teacher must never, ever forget what it is like to be onthe other side of that desk. Too many instructors bark rules andinstructions at their students, pile on the busy work, yell at themto speak English, to have better handwriting, to stop makingmistakes.
Simply put, too many instructors take the wonder out oflearning a second language, which is such a shame, because learninganother language has the true potential, as seen previously, toliterally create another world and personality inside each and everystudent. By being on a student's level, you can truly make theexperience magical and implant vocabulary and grammar rules andexpressions abound without them ever realizing how sneaky you'rebeing, just as my teacher did with all of her silly songs that havesince made my command over irregular Spanish verbs almost perfect!
Thisleads me to my final aspect of my personal bilingual philosophy: theimportance of creativity – absurd, outrageous, hilariouscreativity. A bilingual teacher should be a whimsical guide throughthe land of an uncharted second language, and the only way to do sois to become over the top and think as far outside of the box aspossible. One way I do this in my classroom is to take big class-widemade mistakes and make them hilarious by giving them outrageousliteral translations for what they are actually saying. For example,last week I taught the difference between the pronunciation of“burger” and “booger” by attempting to eat my own booger.Students laughed really hard, but I can guarantee not one of them hasmade the mistake since.
Similarly, I took student's use of “... shehas two years...” instead of “... she is two years old...” andinformed them that when one is at the doctor's office and the doctortells them that the only “have two years,” it means that they'regoing to die in two years. I then asked each one how old their petwas, and when one would use the verb “to have,” I would gasp andstart to pretend to cry, asking them what was wrong with their pooranimal. This made the class laugh hysterically, once again, and, onceagain, the mistake has never been repeated since that day. In myexperience as a student and a teacher, when students are able tolaugh, instead of feel embarrassed or, worse, bored, they areexceedingly more likely to remember a concept or a correction.
Anotherway in which creativity is important is in projects, portfolios andassessments. Too much of some bilingual programs focus themselves onbookwork, rules, vocab lists and exams. This cycle of learning alanguage can quickly become nauseating and students can quickly loseinterest – not to mention retain alarmingly little of what they aresupposed to be learning. By providing them with relatively real lifeuses and examples of the language, students are able to once againsee if as a Rabbit Hole full of wonder and adventure. Stephen Krashenasserts that, “Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in thetarget language - natural communication - in which speakers areconcerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messagesthey are conveying and understanding.” Through providing studentswith creative speaking, listening, writing and reading activities,students will learn to see the language as a sum of its parts, ratherthan a list of boring material.
Furthermore, by assessing studentsthrough creative assessments – such as listening assessmentsthrough music, movies, ads, etc.; speaking assessments through roleplays, discussions and games; writing assessments through letters,reports and proposals; reading assignments through songs, interestingpassages, websites, etc. - one is not only testing to see theirlevel, but testing to see how well they would be able to functionwith the language in the real world. Too often exams become aboutscores and not about testing knowledge and real-world abilities, andmaintaining a sense of wonder in the student and teacher is nevergoing to succeed by continuing to implement such a backwards way ofassessing students.
Ibelieve that when one teaches another a second language to anystudent – young or old, gifted or with special needs - they are notjust teaching them grammar and vocabulary, but rather they areopening their student up to a whole new universe and, at the sametime, introducing them to a whole new side to themselves that theynever dreamed existed by effectively guiding them to and down thatlinguistic and cultural rabbit hole. And the best way to providestudents with the safety, understanding and whimsy needed to embarkon such a journey is in delicately interweaving immersion, virtues,youthful perspectives and extreme creativity.
AlthoughI have only had the opportunity to test the bounds of my personalbilingual philosophy for the past half of a year, I can say withcomplete confidence that I am already amazed by the progress made bymy 250 students. Every day they jump up and down when it is time forEnglish class, every recess they run up to me to tell me the latestabout their lives – always in fluent (not perfect, but fluent)English and every day they grow as people, English speakers andbilingual learners. Their teachers and parents have personallythanked me for the adventure I put in their day and for how muchthey've learned – seemingly without having even begun to realize itthemselves! I cannot wait to continue to explore and learn fromothers and further develop my own personal bilingual theory. But, inthe mean time, I am incredibly happy with all that it hasaccomplished for me and my students thus far – as crazy and strangeas is may have at first come across to others! Sometimes, you justhave to take a risk and try something new, knowing that yourenthusiasm will be contagious and success will be achieved throughyour hard work.
WorksCited
Gosling, Samuel.Ramírez-Esparza, Nairan. Benet-Martínez, Verónica. Potter,JeVrey.
Pennebaker,James. “Do bilinguals have two personalities? A special
case of cultural frameswitching.” Journal of Research in Personality. November 21, 2004.
“TzuChi Great Love Elementary School.” http://elementary.us.tzuchi.org/elementary/home.nsf/home/index
