What is Celebrated in your Multilingual Program?
I am waist-deep in reading Ratchetdemic: Reimagining Academic Success (2021) by Christopher Emdin (available on Amazon here) and I was struck by SO MUCH, but this quote stood out to me this week: "The environment created in schools- what is celebrated and what isn't - can create the conditions for the type of pedagogy that takes root" (Emdin, p. 133).
Here was my initial brain dump after reading:
How are we encouraging innovation in multilingual programming?
Do we praise "fidelity" of language allocation plans or do we celebrate student-affirming translanguaging practices? While language allocation plans can help us strategically map out language usage and language development over years in a program, do we pretend we don't know what students are saying when they're not conversing in the "target language?"
How do we lift up educators who challenge our biases and help us reflect on our practices? Do we try to quiet or stifle the disruptors in our schools? It's important to pause, reflect, and appreciate those that push our growth forward and challenge us by questioning practices that have been inherited.
Do we celebrate our students' test scores even when we know how damaging standardized testing can be? How is language growth celebrated throughout the school year?
By reflecting on student behavior policies, I always want to call myself out here on this point. I used to thank students for being quiet. I didn't ever stop to realize how damaging this could be, especially as a white educator serving linguistically diverse students who have been historically underserved and silenced. I should not have said "Thanks for being so quiet." I could have thanked students for walking in a way that wouldn't district the other classrooms we were passing by. I could have phrased this better. I don't want to praise students for their silence. This phrase time and time gets under my skin, and it's one I wish I would have used less.
Do we praise growth or achievement in our classrooms, in our staff meetings, or in our district data meetings? Should we? Which one should hold more value?
Do we quickly revert to old ways of doing things if the new way someone was trying didn't start off immediately successful? I attended a webinar recently on Language Justice and one story that keeps coming back to me was a time where a group of teachers pushed their leadership for more interpreters at a family event at the school. The school (reluctantly) provided interpreters and then was quick to point out that "no one utilized the interpreters so we're not going to spend money on that again" instead of reflecting: Did families know that we were going to provide interpreters? Would more families have come if we communicated this better? Did we ensure that families knew that interpreters were available? And pssst, yes- you should always provide interpreters not only because it's the right thing to do, but also because it's the law.
What are you celebrating? If what we celebrate allows practices to take root, then what should be celebrated in your school?
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