Lisa M. Dorner, Ph.D.

teacher, researcher, life-long learner

Change…& Bilingualism for All?

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Exactly one year ago today, I sat at work and saw email after email announce the closing of schools, the pausing of travel, what felt like the shutting down of society: change was certainly upon us. The COVID-19 pandemic had shuttered school buildings, forced learning (or the attempt at learning) to go online, and entirely changed our ways of life, from shopping to working to gathering with friends. And then came more reports of Black men killed by police, not to mention further injustices and inequities to various marginalized groups laid bare by the pandemic: higher rates of COVID infection and death among low-income, Black and immigrant populations, and less access to educational opportunities in urban and rural districts across the country as the pandemic spread far and wide.

In the midst of all of this, I had the opportunity to re-analyze data collected about the development of language immersion schooling in the Midwest for an edited book titled, Bilingualism for All? Raciolinguistic Perspectives on Dual Language Education in the United States by Nelson Flores, Amelia Tseng, and Nicholas Subtirelu. I see this book as part of broader conversations about educational and racial equity happening across the country right now, as we considered who has access to bilingual programs and how they work or not for marginalized populations.

Historically, the phrase “bilingual education” brings to mind specialized programs for children from immigrant families who speak languages other than English at home. In the past 20 years, however, there has been widespread development of what is now called “dual language” education, which ideally (though with many challenges) brings bilingual education to a wider group of students. Some programs aim to purposefully integrate immigrant/transnational youth who speak a shared home language (e.g., Spanish) with English-dominant youth. Other programs are designed to support bilingual and biliteracy development in children who come from mostly monolingual, English-speaking homes. This is the kind of program I followed for nearly 10 years.

I have to say, it was an amazing school and educational opportunity for a very diverse group of students. This program was designed by a bilingual African-American woman and met its main aim to bring bilingual education to Black youth whose families had never had this kind of opportunity before. However, as I discuss in the chapter of Bilingualism for All?, state and federal policies that focused on English language arts development promoted a slow shift in the school away from their founding aims. After many years of reportedly low standardized test scores, the school was pressured to change its approach to language education; as part of this, they decided that students needed to perform proficiently on English exams before they could be taught content material in another language. Essentially, this positioned Black youth in the school as “language-less” – as not even being competent in their own native language of English – completely neglecting the actual multilingual and multiliterate capacities that Black youth have and do bring to school. (For more on the richness and history of Black language in the U.S., check out the Black Language Syllabus and Marcyliena Morgan’s work.)

The change at this school was slow; it was subtle. But it had real material consequences in terms of whether and how Black youth from this city could continue to access and develop bilingualism in a way that has been possible for students who live in more advantaged circumstances. In future work with schools and educators, this underscores the importance of studying change itself, of asking why and when do we change our educational approaches, and what are the outcomes of doing so? What new policies or practices cause us to position a certain group of students in a certain way? Does this result in inequities of access or opportunity? How can we advocate for (re)changing those policies to (re)position youth and instead recognize and center their capacity and creativity?

For sure, the only lasting truth is change. The hopeful news is that if we inquire into our circumstances, if we consider a range of perspectives and unintended consequences of the policies around us, we may be able to bring about helpful rather than hurtful change. How have our current circumstances changed you? And what change do you want to bring about?

What’s Dual Language Education?

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What’s a dual language (DL) program and how can you start one? This is a serious question across the United States (and world), as more and more schools are recognizing the value in preserving families’ home languages and working toward bilingualism for all students. There are many models, though a good majority of DL bilingual education programs in the U.S. mix students from two language backgrounds (for example, English and Spanish). By providing content instruction in students’ languages, DL programs develop students’ bilingualism, biliteracy, high academic achievement and cultural competencies. While it’s difficult work (see my earlier posts), we know a lot about how to create equitable programs. At a recent conference sponsored by Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, I devised a workshop focused on how to build a dual language program and simultaneously enhance equity for transnational students designated as English Learners. Here are my slides from that workshop – happy planning! Whats a DL Program 2019

Critical Consciousness in Two-Way Immersion Education

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From research studies to school websites, it is often written that two-way dual language (TWDL) bilingual education programs share three core goals: academic achievement, bilingualism and biliteracy, and sociocultural or intercultural competence. Colleagues (Deb Palmer, Claudia Cervantes-Soon, and Dan Heiman) and I have been thinking: this isn’t enough! Building upon our research review (RRE 2017), we proposed a fourth core goal: critical consciousness.

Although TWDL programs are designed to integrate students from diverse language, culture, and race backgrounds, equity is unfortunately still a challenge. We argue that centering critical consciousness—or fostering among teachers, parents, and children an awareness of the structural oppression that surrounds us and a readiness to take action to correct it—can support increased equity and social justice in TWDL education. In our most recent publication in the journal Theory Into Practice, we elaborate four elements of critical consciousness: interrogating power, critical listening, historicizing schools, and embracing discomfort. We illustrate these elements with examples from TWDL research and practice. In addition, we describe how such consciousness impacts and radicalizes the other three core goals, in turn supporting the development of more successful, equitable, and socially just TWDL schools.

Please take a look and let us know your ideas: how might these ideas work in your bilingual school or classroom? How can this help create more equitable and welcoming educational experiences, especially for children from immigrant families?

Foro Fulbright at Uninorte

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I have been so honored to be a part of the Fulbright Specialist program this past February and March 2018 in Barranquilla, Colombia at the Universidad del Norte. I’ve worked for the past few weeks with colleagues at the Instituto de Idiomas on a new undergraduate program: Lenguas Modernas y Culturas. This program has a special focus on not only teaching multiple languages (students will be proficient in two and know a third upon graduation), but also integrating ideas of critical citizenship, discourse studies, and global perspectives into their coursework.

On March 16, I presented some thoughts on this ambitious goal, based upon my own (and colleagues’) work on dual language/two-way immersion programs and transnational/lingual youth in the US (Heiman, 2017; Kim, 2018; Layton, 2017). This work is also inspired by colleagues in citizenship education, such as Nicole Mirra and Thea Abu El-Haj.

I welcome your ideas and feedback on this Foro Fulbright!

“Our future is not in the stars but in our own minds and hearts. Creative leadership and liberal education, which in fact go together, are the first requirements for a hopeful future for humankind. Fostering these–leadership, learning, and empathy between cultures–was and remains the purpose of the international scholarship program that I was privileged to sponsor in the U.S. Senate over forty years ago. It is a modest program with an immodest aim–the achievement in international affairs of a regime more civilized, rational and humane than the empty system of power of the past. I believed in that possibility when I began. I still do.”

[J. William Fulbright, From The Price of Empire]

How can we get out of our bubbles?

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This morning, I was listening to NPR, and I heard a story about how one young man decided to get out of his same old bubble. He built an app that used publicly-listed Facebook events to randomly choose new places for him to go — to get him out of that bubble. Attending random events, he made new friends and had various opportunities to view the world from new perspectives.

So how might we help develop similar bubble-popping experiences for young people? I believe that schools like the St. Louis Language Immersion School (SLLIS) can and do help children view the world in new ways. SLLIS has integration as one of its core values: integration across race, income level, language background, immigrant status, and more. The school immerses children in new perspectives, quite literally, by teaching students all of the typical subject areas using a language other than English. For most students at the school, English is their first and only language, but the school also attracts many children from multilingual households.

How else might schools pop bubbles? We cannot just put people together in the same room to explore new perspectives; we have to talk, think, and write about such experiences. In the spring of 2017, the Quality Teachers for English Learners project led by Dr. Kim Song supported a series of family literacy events at SLLIS. I participated in these events as both a leader and a participant with my daughter. Our goal was to work with families to support them sharing their stories, as one more way to “pop some bubbles” and learn from others. I’m thrilled to share the pre-press version of my daughter’s book, in which she documents how her school has opened her eyes to an Outside World.