Here’s your daily reminder that language maintenance (or growth!) is resistance. Saber es poder.
I hope you all remember this concern for the emotional welfare of migrant and first gen kids when things are better. It’s not too late to start again what was started in 2016, even if you lost momentum.
When a single billionaire can accumulate more money in 10 seconds than their employees make in one year, while workers struggle to meet the basic cost of rent and medicine, then yes, every billionaire really is a policy failure.
Read our op-ed here ⤵️
1972 Cat Stevens is subbing in my school today.
I understand expecting a politician to be a liar and/or not being able to follow through with some promises. Experience tells us this is logical. But why vote for him? Because he wasn’t Kamala? Seems to be the case.
Overhearing a lot of criticism of our new President’s policies from my students who were supportive of his election. 🤔 some say they didn’t think he would follow through and I don’t understand.
The super wealthy keep playing with us to gain and hold power & now they’re not even hiding it. Philly arena and tik tok ban were all just power plays at our expense.
while you’re listening to Dtmf, read up on what’s happen if in Cotui, DR right now.
I’m starting to think no one saw ‘El Ultimo Puertorriqueño’. 🤷🏼♀️ youtube.com/playlist?lis...
dreaming of a day when my students won't have to hustle, scrape, and beg to create a facsimile of something they should have always had.
Thanks! I just put it in my cart.
Especially in schools! We encourage the use of English for all academic purposes, as if community and world languages are not useful for learning outside of a language class.
How can we deny any student, in any educational setting, the opportunity to leverage their full linguistic repertoire? If we don’t fully understand #translanguaging, let’s get more comfortable with it! The students we serve deserve it!
Upholding long-existing educational policy around language and framing it as academic support or rigor does harm to children & should be a thing of the past by now. Celebrating xx history month does not mean cultures are celebrated when languages are excluded.
6/23: Still wondering why it’s so great for American- born monolinguals to become bilingual but if you speak a language other than English it’s not useful or helpful and you should just forget about it.
Does the wife of the president of Brazil have a fan club? I want to join.
Yuca, papas, chiles, tomate, etc.
Starting a unit on alimentos originarios de las americas as part of a broader unit on the connection between food and culture & el intercambio colombino.
1/22: In my career I have seen schools shut down for a few days to a few weeks for flooding, hurricanes, blizzards, lice infestations, norovirus, and flus. No one complained - safety was a priority. Is the fear that it might extend? No one wants that. Literally no one.
But when a high school student reads English at a 3rd grade level no one lets them off the hook. No one thinks that learning their heritage or native language might help and this is so counter intuitive and just ethically wrong.
The fact that some students feel ashamed that they don’t know a heritage language other than English to the degree they think they should is the result of racist language practices in and out of schools. Kids now feel they don’t need to expand on all the languages they have.
4/22: I wish people in educational administration really understood the value of language learning when it comes to languages other than English- specifically heritage language learning and native language classes. They’re more than enrichment.
5/22: The best thing about chaperoning prom is seeing students feel beautiful and set aside everything for a few hours to just let loose and have fun together. Nothing more restorative than a dance off circle at prom.
Something that always concerned me as an ESOL teacher was that there are stark differences in school cultures here and abroad that a student has to learn to recognize and overcome while learning language and content + social/family adjustments. This is a lot for a kid.
From 5/22: Linguistic racism in schools looks like creating English only spaces and calling it rigor and considering 1st language supports a crutch. Also, making language arts classes “X language only” spaces. That’s one way to create a power struggle within the brains of children.
Today I read a post with advice to get your Bluesky going that said to post your top 10 tweets from the other place. I guess that means my posts with 6 likes lol. It’s like a time capsule.
Can you imagine? I think it is possible to some degree, even within the system we have. Students deserve this. Change is hard and results are often not immediate, but always worth it.
some warnings: paternalism is not advocacy, & the more trusted adults in a kid’s life, the better. Popularity does not mean effectiveness. Your own teacher ego can become your biggest enemy.
I 💛 public school teachers, but we can also do better. Know who you teach. Know what you teach. Know how to teach. Care. Grow. Read. Research. Do no harm to students/communities. Decolonize your mind and your practice. Facilitate learning, de-center yourself in that process.
