Teacher, do you know the fascinating history of bilingual education in the U.S.?

In this insightful episode, we are delving into the rich history of bilingual education, dating back to 1839. We explore pivotal moments, from early state laws permitting bilingual instruction to the significant shifts post-World War I and the landmarks in educational legislation. Unveiling key insights, Beth navigates the complexities of bilingual education's evolution, shedding light on its political, cultural, and educational impacts. From the challenges of transitional bilingual programs to the pursuit of nurturing bilingualism, educators will gain practical strategies and encouragement to support ELLs effectively. Tune in to gain invaluable insights into the past, present, and future of bilingual education, and leave empowered to advocate for your students and embrace the journey of linguistic and cultural diversity in the classroom!

Resources:

• ⁠⁠⁠Join the Equipping ELLs Membership
• Shop our TpT Store
• Article: Moving Forward... By Bringing Back Key Elements of the Bilingual Education Act
• Article: History of Bilingual Education

Beth Vaucher

Hey there, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the

start, and I hope that you are remembering my challenge to you at

the beginning of this year with our one word, and that is

advocate. You are students, and I want to encourage you through

this podcast on different ways that you can really speak up, speak

out and do what's best for your students. In today's episode, we

are going to be taking a look at the history of bilingual

education. And that might sound a little boring, like, okay, come

on, is this a history lesson? But I'm telling you, I was going and

doing tons of research for this episode. And it is really

fascinating to see when we actually started having bilingual

education, all the different things that have happened, the shifts

that have happened in our education and to see our history and so

that we can make decisions about how we can make change moving

forward. Because as educators and policymakers, one of our really

important goals, in my opinion, when we're working with our

english language learners, is nurturing bilingualism. We want to

make it clear that this journey that they are on is not just about

learning English, it's about valuing the incredible gift of their

native language, their culture, all while embracing a new one. And

so that really should be a heart of ours is even if you don't

speak their language, even if you don't have the knowledge or the

support or you're just unfamiliar with, how do I help the student

keep their native language? That is something that should be a

goal of ours, of not it just being about learning English, but

really about supporting the student to become bilingual or

trilingual. How some students know four or five languages, it's

truly incredible. What they can do now. This is not a new journey.

It's a path that has been evolving for centuries. And it's really

a lot of times you'll see as we look through these decisions, it's

so connected to the political landscape of its time. So you'll see

the shifts happen throughout these different decades that we're

going to hit on in a second. But I guess the big takeaway here is

even in the years and 70 years since really bilingual education

came into the US, they're still trying to figure out what is best.

They're still trying to figure out how can we get more funding.

They're still trying to figure out what are we seeing that really

gives our students success. So all that to say, if you're feeling

like, what is going on, why can't we get more support or funding?

I kind of came away with feeling like, you know what, everyone's

feeling that same way. There's just a lot of broken things, a lot

of money tied up in things that could be used better. But at the

end of the day, you are the one that's impacting your students.

And so what can you do that is going to make a change in their

lives? And that's what I want to hit on at the end here. So in

more recent years, we have seen more of a shift, a push of

supporting bilingualism our students. And I think that's really

great that it's moving from that English only to really supporting

our students with their native language. But I know that sometimes

this seems really difficult as the teacher, to know what to do, to

know how to do this. When is it appropriate to use their native

language? When is it not? What if I don't speak their native

language? All of those questions, if you've had them, I have had

them, too. So this episode, in the next couple of episodes, we are

going to be tackling and talking about all things bilingualism in

hopes to give you the knowledge, support and practical steps to

take so that you can support bilingualism even if you don't speak

your student's native language. And you can feel confident and

excited about what you're doing with them, knowing that it's

helping them, but also not taking away from your job of teaching

them English. So let's go back in time and take a look at the

country's climate, the culture, what has happened in the US in

education when it comes to bilingual education. Now, this really

surprised me as I was doing some research, and I will share the

links to some different articles that I had researched from. So

you can see where I'm getting a lot of this information. But what

bilingual education really came into the US. But as we look back

in history, it really is a rich and complex history because it

to pass a bilingual education law. And they were pin. They

permitted german English instruction. This expanded with states

like Louisiana and the New Mexico Territory, and they adopting

similar laws for French and Spanish. And by the end of the 19th

century, bilingual instruction was prevalent in so many different

languages, like Norwegian, Italian, Polish, Czech, and Cherokee. I

had no idea about this, even though I took classes on this, but I

once World War I hit the scene, that became a significant shift in

bilingual education. So there was a lot of rising concerns over

loyalty, american loyalty. And so a lot of the states enacted an

english only instruction law, and their real desire was kind of to

americanize those non english speakers. So this, we saw a drastic

dismantling of bilingual education, and this really persisted

lot of different bilingual programs. They saw the value, the

benefit of keeping those students native language. And then we

have a shift after World War I where it really shifts into this

english only instruction. So then I'm sure if you're familiar, if

you've taken classes on this, you're familiar with the Bilingual

rights. We're at civil rights activism. We have growing

immigration, and this really marked a pivotal resurgence of the

provided federal funding to encourage native language instruction

in schools. Now, there was also a huge supreme court decision that

decision. This happened on January 21, 1974, and it was ruled nine

to zero in the Supreme Court that under the Civil Rights Rights

must provide non english speaking students with instruction in the

english language to ensure that they receive an equal education.

So this is huge. This is a huge turn of events for our ELL

students to receive equal education, to receive what they needed.

Education act. And when this started in 1968, this really their

purpose was to encourage native language instruction in school. So

they wanted to help students become bilingual. But what we see is

all of a sudden, the policymakers, they were defining bilingual

instruction as transitional, which is a way to say that the ELS

really are going to use their first language only as a temporary

strategy while moving them toward english only instruction, which

we see a lot of this happen living today in today's current

educational landscape. So we still have a lot of that

transitional. I was at a school where we had transitional

bilingual classrooms, and this really also limited the amount of

time that they would get that instruction in their native

reauthorization of the Bilingual Education act, which now their

verbiage and their language was that their goal was to provide

structured english language instruction and to the extent

necessary to allow a child to achieve competence in the english

language instruction, okay, to achieve competence in the english

time a student could spend in a bilingual program. So they limited

to that for a period of no more than three years. And this is

actually what I had when I was teaching in the US, in the Chicago

area schools. We had bilingual education programs, transitional

bilingual programs, where the students would start in kindergarten

or first grade, full bilingual, full Spanish, and then each year

they would have less and less Spanish. And by third grade, they

were full English. And to be completely honest, I did not see it

as a very successful program. They were not given enough time to

really become fluent in their native language, to be able to read

and write well in their native language. And so they were very

weak in their native language,

Beth Vaucher

And it turned out, in what I observed, that these 6th

graders who had done this program were really lacking in both

their native language and English. And it was a detriment to them,

Improving America's School act, they restored the law's emphasis

on bilingual education. So their stance was to give priority to

applications which provide for the development of bilingual

proficiency both in English and another language for all

participating students. So that's a great shift. But then,

unfortunately, that would be the last time that we see this kind

of language supporting bilingualism. Now under no Child left

the year 2000, the Bilingual Education act, which its main role

was to provide specific funding to districts that had high needs,

the Bilingual Education act had helped 691 school districts. And

162,000,000 by 2000. So their goal at this point was to be very

specific on who received funding and to really help those high

need schools. Because they had high populations of els, they

grants stopped because of the no Child Left Behind act. So what

specific schools that had high populations of EL students, and

they chose then to create a new system. They called it a formula

grant system, where they gave money to each state based on how

many els and immigrant children they had, which. That sounds

great. We want all students to receive the support that they need.

We want every school to have the teachers and resources and

support they need. But what happened was it meant that they were

giving way more students that support, which really thinned out

the budget.

The first year, the government, under no Child Left behind, the

government gave more than $660,000,000 just for supporting the

ELS. Okay? And this amount increased a bit over year, every year.

So, I mean, this is a huge amount of money that's being given. But

the downside is it covered a lot more EL students across the

country. So the problem what happened was, because the total money

didn't grow as much as the number of EL students, it really

thinned out, like I said, the amount of money that was being

got was about $147. So this means that a school with 100 El

students, and I know many of you listening, have at least 100, if

not more, EL students, possibly even on your caseload. But in your

school, you're thinking, yeah, 100 el students that we have that

for sure. That means that you would only be getting an extra

$15,000 for support those students per school year. You can see

that that really is. Isn't enough to make significant

improvements, like hiring another teacher or getting new resources

or having smaller loads of students on your caseload. And so this

is really where that shift of wanting to support all students is

absolutely so needed. But at the same time, as you know, because

you're in this situation right now, you're feeling the pain of not

having the funding to be able to really support your students.

You're feeling stretched thin, and you need more help. How amazing

would be to have another teacher to help you, right? So what

should happen? That's the big question, right? Something needs to

happen, because right now, there's no federal mandate for

bilingual education or the type of support english language

learners receive. All that is mandated is that the educational

programs offer equal opportunities for language. All that's

mandated right now is that the educational programs offer equal

opportunities for language education proficiency in children. But

we see that the success of these policies have really been

limited. Right now, we're seeing that only 68% of english learners

graduate from high school, compared to 85% of their non el peers.

And of those, just half are enrolling in college. And so this is

kind of a somber, sad place where we're at right now in history.

But it's also very exciting because we really can create change,

and that change might just be happening between you and your

students in your classroom, but change can happen. And hopefully,

we pray that it makes it to the federal level, where they do the

right thing, they put the money in the right place, they can find

that funding, and they can help really support this increasing

demographic of students that brings an incredible gift into our

classrooms. And so that's what we hope, and that's what we hope it

goes. But what can we do now? I think right now, in your

classroom, in your school, the biggest shift really continues to

be and to see and to support the beauty of bilingualism, we need

to see that this is an asset and not a deficit. We need to shift

with those teachers who are still seeing and saying English only

here. We only speak English here. That is not creating a culture

where the students can live and operate in two languages. Teaching

them English doesn't need to take away from them knowing and

learning their native language. And I want to be clear in this.

This doesn't mean that. Have to now do everything in their native

language unless you are. And we're going to get to this in a

future episode. But I want to be very clear about that because I

think sometimes these discussions happen and then we come away as

the teacher and thinking like, okay, I need to now translate

everything or I need to try to do things in Spanish or their

native language if you know that language. But that's really not

your purpose either if you are not a bilingual teacher. Because

the model, it depends on what model you're doing. If you're meant

to be teaching English, then you should be teaching English. But

you can provide and you can find ways to keep their native

language strong. And really just them knowing that they are able

to share things in their native language or that it's looked and

seen as a beautiful gift, not something to be afraid or ashamed

of, which is a lot of what I saw when I was teaching in the states

was that those students who spoke Indian at home, they didn't want

to share with their peers that their parents speak another

language. Those students who spoke Bulgarian at home, they didn't

want to share that with other people. They didn't want to share

that part of their life because they felt like they weren't

accepted. They weren't welcomed because they had parents who spoke

another language. And that's what the change we need to make first

is to show the beautiful cultural heritage within our classroom

and the beautiful gift it is to have parents who speak another

language, to have a home where you go to and you operate in a

different language. It's truly to have your brain be able to do

that is so remarkable and something that we should applaud. And so

that's the first place we need to start, is to just be creating

cultures and schools where that is accepted. That is such a

beautiful gift. That's almost the norm that you would want to know

another language because that's a superpower. We also need to ask,

and ask again for more support, for more funding. Do research on

your own. There is funding out there. They're continually coming

up with new grant opportunities, new ways that you can get funding

even just for your classroom. And so try to find those ways that

you can take that into your own hands and say, you know what? My

students really would benefit from having this. I'm going to see

what's out there that I can either get a grant for. I can do a

donor's choose. There's so many ways now that you can get the

things you need, and it might not have to come from your

administration, and there are good things that are happening, like

the seal of bi literacy. Beth Vaucher

literacy. The seal of bi literacy is a war given by

a school district or a state in recognition of students who have

studied in a. Gain proficiency in two or more languages by high

school graduation. And so things like this where almost all states

now in the US, I was looking at, they do have the seal of

biliteracy, so we can see the shift is going. And that's something

exciting that we want to get on board with. And we can help do

that in our classrooms, in our schools. And just to reiterate what

I said at the beginning, them, I just want you to know and realize

that the environment you are in is shifting and constantly

changing. And in the 70 plus years since bilingual education

really entered the US, there have been so many shifting ideas on

how to best support these students. And just lack of funding is, I

think, a huge thing. I think a lot of us know the best ways to

support these students, but the budget is not always there. So

just know that the environment you're in, it's okay if you feel

overwhelmed or just frustrated by what's happening, but don't stay

there. I want you to use that frustration to advocate for what you

and your students need. And don't be surprised if you start to see

some shifts happening by your advocacy. Small things really can

impact your students, your school.

So like the old saying goes, a tiny spark can set a great forest

on fire. So be that tiny spark. Find those things that you are

passionate about that you can really start to see. Hey, this is

what I meant to do. This is where I meant to show up and support

my students and help them to get what they need. And that tiny

spark, you could really make changes in our educational landscape

that are so needed. So don't be. Okay? You can take that part up.

All right, so join me next week as we continue our discussion

about promoting bilingualism and how you can do that even when

there isn't funding or resources or you don't speak their

language, there's a lot of ways that you can be that constant

support in your students lives. We're going to be hitting on that.

We're going to be talking more about the superpowers of

bilingualism. We're going to be talking about assessing and

looking at their native language to assess. We have a lot of

awesome podcast episodes lined up, so join me next week as we

continue this discussion. If you have any questions, you can send

me a message on Instagram at equipping Ells and I'd love to chat

with. You and hear more about your journey, where you're at, and

what you are advocating for this year. Have a great week, and I

will be back next week with another episode. Until then, keep

equipping your ells. Bye.