Lisa M. Dorner, Ph.D.

teacher, researcher, life-long learner

New Conference on Bilingual Education in the Midwest

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Do you work in a dual language program that serves bilingual and bicultural students? Are you interested in developing more equitable programs and enhancing educational opportunities at your school?

Building Raciolinguistic Justice in Midwestern Dual Language Programs through Research-Practice Partnerships is a year-long project supported by the Spencer Foundation; coordinated by me, Trish Morita-Mullaney, Deborah Palmer, and Amy Young; and implemented in partnership with many other bilingual educators and scholars. The project is designed to enhance and develop critical consciousness in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) in the US Midwest.

What is DLBE and why is critical consciousness important for it? Dual language bilingual education is a unique educational approach where teachers provide content instruction in English and another language, aiming to develop bilingualism, biliteracy, and biculturalism for a diverse student body. Yet despite the fact most programs integrate and serve students from various backgrounds, DLBE continues to face persistent challenges with equity, especially for students of color and youth who speak languages other than English (see here). This is true in all program models regardless of the label (one-way, two-way, 90/10, 50/50, etc.). In turn, we must build critical consciousness, that is, processes to study such inequities and take action to disrupt them.

The project has three main goals:

  1. Document and more deeply understand how Midwestern DLBE programs serve diverse students, especially children of color from bilingual and bicultural homes.
  2. Develop research-practice partnerships and new research agendas for understanding and addressing equity challenges through critical consciousness.
  3. Foster a community of practice and network of researchers and practitioners to build antiracist, equitable DLBE programs across the region.

We invite DLBE educators to join our webinar series this June! Partnering with the Cambio Center and CARLA, these four webinars will develop an understanding of DLBE challenges and opportunities across Midwestern DLBE programs. The webinars are organized around four actions that enhance critical consciousness:

  • Historicizing Dual Language Communities and Ourselves—Tuesday, June 14
    Learn about deconstructing mainstream explanations of the past and foregrounding individuals’ and communities’ local histories.
  • Critical Listening in Dual Language Education—Thursday, June 16
    Explore ways of engaging students, educators, and families with others for meaningful and transformative connection through developing curiosity and attention, sharing, caring, reciprocity, and responsivity.
  • Embracing Discomfort in Dual Language Spaces—Tuesday, June 21
    Experience and learn from the inevitable unsettled feelings one might have in recognizing, reflecting on, and acting against the ways in which our own privilege, sense of entitlement, or silence reify and reproduce social injustice.
  • Interrogating Power to Develop Equity in Dual Language Programs—Thursday, June 23
    Examine ways of calling out oppression, and working to push those in power to take note of injustice and to transform systems.

All webinars will take place on Zoom from 4–5:30 p.m. (Central Time).

For More Information

A Culture of Inclusion – or Not?

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This image is a hand drawing of a photograph from a school district website ~2015. On their homepage, this district had a rotating, colorful set of pictures, with children working together, learning, and studying. At a glance, we might feel pride if this was our district, agreeing with the words written next to the images: “innovation, vision, leaders, inclusion, rising to the challenge.”

But we must take a closer look: Who are the children in the images? Who is centered? Who actually feels included in the district, and who is considered a challenge?

In a recent publication, “School District Responses to Cultural and Linguistic Change: Competing Discourses of Equity, Competition, and Community,” Dr. Sujin Kim and I explore these questions through a study of website design and district visions and missions (as of July 1, 2020, the full text is available at this link). We found that some district websites used a promotional genre “to sell” their quality to viewers (presumably families who either live or might be moving to the area). One website was quite jarring, putting words like “innovation” and “vision” next to white children, while placing the phrase “rising to the challenge” nearby the only Black student pictured. Meanwhile, Asian children, who made up a sizable number of students at this district at the time, were only ever featured with their faces blurred out or backs to the camera, as in the picture above, which suggests the very opposite of “inclusion.” Only one district in our study employed a narrative genre, using their website to tell the story of their development as a community that welcomed immigrants and refugees, with accompanying photos of smiling children with different skin tones and clothes, such as hijabs.

In our current times, it is (again) all too apparent that our country needs to learn that #BlackLivesMatter, that people of color, including immigrant families and multilingual indigenous peoples, have not been included, have been disenfranchised, have even in some cases been eliminated. I hope that by raising an awareness of the discourses around us, we can begin to break these cycles of exclusion and removal. This includes carefully attending to the ways that pictures and words come together in our lives, which are increasingly displayed and lived online: What subtle (or not so subtle) messages are they sending? How can we change harmful discourses by re-working images and words that we use and that we choose to share?

Tweet your ideas to #ChangeTheDiscourse @lisamdorner

Multilingual Family Engagement

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Migration. Whether searching for greater opportunities or enriching experiences, or escaping poverty or war, people are on the move. Worldwide, the United Nations reports that more than 250 million people do not live in the country where they were born, an increase of 49% since 2000. In the United States, the percentage of children who have at least one immigrant parent or caregiver grew from 18% to 27% between 1997 and 2017. More than 20% of households speak a language other than English. Some schools that have never served students who speak other languages now have to design English language development or bilingual education programs. (Dorner, Song, Kim, & Trigos-Carrillo, 2019)

In this recent article published in Literacy Today, colleagues and I reflected on how schools manage this kind of change, especially: How do they integrate, support, and reach out to immigrant, multilingual families? Research has long suggested that traditional family engagement in schools fails to incorporate diverse communities in meaningful and empowering ways. This contributes to ongoing marginalization based on race, ethnicity, class, language, and immigrant status. In our work with various school districts, we encourage educators to shift their thinking from what families might need to how they, themselves, can lead. In the article, we provide examples of how to host literacy days in families’ languages, what we learned, and how to work with parents as partners in developing school-wide events.

We conclude: Too often, schools view home languages and cultures as deficits, with families merely receiving information and services.  If families and classroom teachers are at the center of family engagement, they will be leaders and agents, and together we can transform our English-only and monolingual spaces to multilingual, culturally sustaining ones.

 This article originally appeared in the November/December 2019 issue of Literacy Today, the member magazine of the International Literacy Association.

Immigrant Family Engagement Grows in Carthage MO

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As part of the SEE-TEL project to strengthen equity and effectiveness in “English Learner” education in Missouri, teachers and school leaders across the state are working to enhance family engagement with multilingual, immigrant parents. One tactic is hosting family conversations among educators and parents, in small groups, where parents have a chance to share their educational perspective and experiences. In a story about Carthage School District’s participation in SEE-TEL, The Joplin Globe reported that families rarely have such opportunities. We truly need to ‘flip the script’ on typical parent programs in our schools. Rather than ask “What do we/the school need to ‘give’ to parents?” schools should more often ask families: “What would you like to share with us?”

Besides an immigrant parent panel about raising children in US schools, SEE-TEL educators attended presentations about new ways to value multiple languages and literacies at the SEE-TEL Summer Institute. About this work, Emeli Jimenez, a dual language teacher in Carthage, Missouri said: “Hearing the parent panel motivated me more to be part of this program, because it is my job to set the foundation to make sure that Spanish has a status that is higher than what it’s being given.” As someone who grew up speaking Spanish, she added: “I want to make sure that kids see me as a professional, and I want them to know and realize that Spanish is important and that people that speak it are also important and have value.” Over the next four years, SEE-TEL will study whether and how such programming shapes school climate, culture, and student outcomes; check back for updates!

Addressing an Ever-Changing Immigration Context in Schools

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My colleague, Emily Crawford, and I recently wrote an article for EdWeek that addressed what educators should consider in this historical moment of ever-changing immigration law and policies. As professors who help to prepare school leaders and language teachers in Missouri, we offered some practical advice in four areas: (1) What are educators’ legal and ethical responsibilities to im/migrant, refugee, and transnational students and families? (2) How can schools and teachers prepare themselves for newcomers and for situations like nearby raids from Immigrant and Customs Enforcement? (3) How can educators prepare themselves and their students to develop critical media literacy in an era of “fake news”? (4) What do we need to do to cross boundaries, develop empathy, and encourage love in our teaching and learning?

Overwhelmingly, this country is made of individuals who have traversed oceans, climbed mountains, and weathered incredible hardship to build a new life for their families. Historically, the most recent newcomers — no matter where they come from — are viewed with suspicion, but eventually they develop strong bonds with long-time residents and contribute significantly to their communities. We know we can do better than building walls; we know strong societies are integrated societies built upon frameworks of understanding and love, not gates and isolation. We depend upon schools — and ourselves — to work toward a brighter future than blurs rather than builds boundaries.