We No Speak Americano

Not only is this posting's title in reference to the topic for this week, its also from a catchy little ditty released a while back by Yolanda Be Cool & DCup.  It was then really popularized by Latino rapper Pitbull, sampled in his song, "Bon Bon."  Because of the high booty-to-bikini ratio of the Pitbull song, I decided to share the original.  Its  sorta a quirky little jam so enjoy it while you read the rest of my blog (plus the video is funny-dope):

Let me begin by saying, I'm no expert. There are education and language experts out ther that are much smarter than me. They know much more about educational theory and language acquisition than I ever care to know. That is my disclaimer, so let's start the discussion:

What do you know about ELL? Is this a new acronym for you? For me, its a label, that as an educator, is always in the back of my mind. ELL stands for English Language Learner. ELL students are those students who grew up in homes where English was not the primary language. You can always tell, in the education world, if there is a serious concern with students when they give it an official set of letters (ADHD, PBIS, RTI, etc.). Working with the diverse student population that I do, ELL students make up the large portion of our school. It was recent conversations with both administration and faculty that compelled me to write about this as a topic this week.

What sparked my mind dwelling on ELL students specifically was a conversation a group of teachers had in regard to a group of our students who indeed were struggling with their reading and writing due to ELL barriers. There seemed to be two camps: One which was sharing and discussing academic interventions to support our ELL students in their reading and writing. The other seemingly washing their hands of these students as they felt they will never be ready for college, despite anything we have and continue to do to support them. And to be fair, both camps' attitudes are felt at one point or another by every adult in the building...sometimes in the same day.

Now, part of the audacity of my school's mission is to get inner-city, under resourced students ready for college (hence the "college prep" part of our title). By choosing to work with this demographic, one has to be both an idealist and a realist. Ideally, I would like to believe that with enough attention and enough hard work, we can indeed get a 9th graders from a poor economic means, and diverse cultural backgrounds ready for college regardless of the fact that they read and do math like a 5th grader. Putting this into practice however sometimes proves more challenging than walking on water.

This may indeed be easier...
...than this. 
What's that?  You would like to spice up the challenge even more?  Sure, lets throw in the fact that a significant portion of our students are indeed ELL. What often needs to be reminded to the adults in the building (including myself I am ashamed to say), is that ELL does not equal learning disability.  Life, may in some ways be easier if it did.  We could draft up an IEP (another of those damn acronyms, meaning "individual education plan), as we do with students with disabilities, and get them support from the Minneapolis public schools and tap into a multitude of resources and social workers to help keep them on track.  However ELL is NOT a disability.  Information acquisition, writing ability and complex reasoning are not an issue.  Translation is. 
I have become especially sensitive to the ELL students as of late because of the Spanish class I am taking.  On a weekly basis we are required to write a 4 paragraph paper.  The topics are usually pretty basic.  As an example, one assignment was to write an instruction letter to our teacher on "How to have a good time in Minneapolis."  In my mind, I know without a doubt, how to have  a good time in Minneapolis.  I can explain to any English speaker how to do it.  I can write volumes and volumes in English about how to have fun.   However when it comes to writing this in Spanish, it simply takes a 5 minute writing assignment (in English) and turns it into 2 hours of translating, checking, and double checking my work to make sure my damn verb conjugations are correct.  And despite my dilligence and attention to detail, I still end up with a garbled piece of caca writing that looks like a 7th grader with an IEP wrote. 
Now, flash over to our students.  They are completely capable of learning the content we are teaching. As an example, say they are comparing an contrasting Marxism and Capitalism.
 vs. 

Not an impossible task but could pose a small challenge to any 11th grader in high school. First they have to read the material, and in their minds translate what is written into their native language. Then they have to form their arguments, then they have to translate their arguments back into English. They turn it in and receive a low grade, not because their comparisons and contrasting were bad, but because they couldn't for their lives put together a grammatically correct sentence. Tough stuff right?

Unfortunately, this is a very real situation. Some of our brightest students are ELL. Sadly, unless they have the work ethic of a work horse, they will rarely demonstrate their academic capabilities. The rock-and-hard-place for us is that we can't lower our academic standards for these students. As they struggle with their language, English first students at other schools are mastering the material with only 1/8th the effort.

Ready for the kicker? Our students are American born. This is the thing that keeps me up at night... If you are a 1st generation immigrant, or exchange student, Colleges and Universities have all the supports a person could want. They even are given certain allowances in their writing because of their status. But not if you are an ELL that was born on this side of the border. What are the ELL Americans to do? They are almost a "hidden" demographic, that gets very little attention. Well, part of our school's job is to not only get the ELL Americans into college but, maybe more importantly, we HAVE to teach them how to navigate the college's writing and math centers. We have to connect them with the right supports and right programs so that they can be successful. We have the task of finding the right colleges where we know, without a doubt, they will be able to succeed (which I might say, our college counselor does indeed do a superb job).

Ultimately however, I need to say this: if an ELL student isn't learning, then it is the fault of the teacher. If our students aren't learning its not because they aren't capable, but because the lessons aren't scaffolded in a way which will best support our students! Obviously traditional methods of teaching haven't worked and continue to not work. I have learned in my 7 years of education that there is a ginormous difference between teaching and learning. Just because I may have taught it, this doesn't mean that it has been learned. I have heard it a million times by some of the best teachers, "I don't get it, I taught it a million times!" Unfortunately, they never checked for how much was learned. My challenge then for myself and all teachers who work with ELL students: always support the students learning, not the teachers' teaching. We need to find new ways to reaching our students, to tap into their knowledge, and overcome the language barrier. At the same time, holding them to the writing and reading standards.

How then do we do this? Well that, I will leave to the experts...

　

My Name is Contreraz...and I am America.



My name is Contreraz.  I am America.  How is that for bold? When I say America, know I am using it as a synonym for diversity.  America is diversity.  Contreraz is diveristy.  Get it?  All it took was going to the Contreraz Family Reunion last weekend to be reminded of this.  Someone should have warned Billings, MT that this was going to happen.  The Magic City had a right to know it was being invaded by this bat-shit crazy clan of Mexicans.

Billings, MT before the "Brown Tornado" that was the Contreraz Family Reunion

We gathered for our first gathering on Friday.  About 125 of us at South Park.  It was a typical Montana-Mexican potluck:  Albertsons fried chicken, soggy taco salads, and $5 Little Caeser's pizza.  As I surveyed the gathering I saw lots of colors: brown, white, black, lots of economic diversity, and maybe a few cousins with criminal records. 

Then on Saturday, we had the Mexican Fiesta, the annual fund-raiser for Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church, the backbone to my family's faith. 

All day long, we imbibed in food, music (both live and recorded), folklorico and popular dance performances and drunken people watching. Oh and cascarones.  If you aren't familiar with the tradition of cascarones, basically you spend 25 of your hard earned cents on a confetti-filled egg, find some unassuming individual and slam the thing on their head without them knowing its coming.  The confetti part is only half the fun.  You also get to inflict a mini concussion all to the amusement of the those arround you.  Trust me, after 32 years on God's green earth, it never gets old. 

Later on, Saturday night, we had a Mexican Dance.  This was a blast.  As tradition dictates, my siblings, their spouses, my wife and I all gathered prior to the dance and drank heavily.  The original point of the gathering was to save money by drinking at home before the dance.  One of our family's many  Mexican-like qualities of being cheap. Sorta like bringing your own snacks into a movie theater.  On a side note, I have to mention this:  In an earlier post, "What were they thinking" I blogged about a Mexican monstrosity known as Botas Picaduras.  Guess what!  There was a guy at the dance wearing them!  This fad has spread quicker to Montana than Tiajuanan Herpes! 

Then on Sunday, was the big gathering.  A Menudo/Posole brunch at my cousin Mary's house.  Yes Menudo, the soup made from cow stomach and hominy, that every Mexican pretends they love, but secretly loathes. And here, I really got to see my family's diversity. 

First, as you could probably assume by the fact that I am both Mexican AND Catholic, I have a huge family.  Immediately there are 7 siblings with spouses and kids, etc.  Dad, Mexican (American Born, but Mexican for sure).  Mom white.  Me, mixed (but you already knew that).  I have two adopted sisters.  One fully Mexican.  The other, Mexican, Black, American Indian. Wife and Sisters-in-Law are white.  Brothers-in-Law, both Mexican (the real kind, born there and everything). On top of that, throw in 20 or so nieces and nephews, and we are quite the crew. So that's my immediate family. 

Here are some of my immediate family, before the dance

Then things get colorful. 
Within my extended family, as mentioned above we have some very successful, educated members.  And we also have some who never finished high school.  We have some Teachers and Nurses, as well as some Welders and Welfare Moms.  We have the preppy pink polo-shirted white cousins, and the cholo prison tattooed, "don't f-with-me" cousins.  We have the red-neck Uncle who, though he's Mexican, wears a "Welcome to America, Now Speak English" t-shirt, as well as the deported paisa brother-in-law who couldn't be there because of *a-hem* border issues.  We have alcoholics, drug addicts (both recovering and embracing) as well as workaholics and work-a-phobics.  We have the Pro-lifers (my aunt was wearing a "What if Mary had an Abortion" t-shirt)as well as the Pro-choicers (my cousin works the Planned Parenthood booth at the fair).  We have the sanctified as well as the sanctimonious. All were gathered to celebrate our our roots as Contreraz's. 

It was great to see and talk with family I either only see once or twice a year or rarely if ever.  With some family members, it was like I had seen them just yesterday.  Others, it was great to catch up and find out where life had taken them in the months and years since I had seen them last.

A lot of family weren't able to make it of varying circumstances.  Some too poor. Some too tired. Some too lazy.  Some serving our country in the military.  Some too apathetic.  But they too represent the many facets of the Contreraz family.  It was pretty amazing seeing all these different people, coming from the same ancestry coming together and sharing the love our parents, grandparents and great grandparents had for us all, and taught us all. 

Now, I'm not going to be all "utopian" about this.  Our family has had its falling-outs and fights.  We have family members who would rather not talk to each other let alone see each other.  But that is what makes my huge family so great. With so many options you can find someone who you can connect with, get along with and laugh with.  And to be honest, even for the family members who aren't close,  we can still manage to get along. To tolerate each other.  To love each other.  Why? Because we were taught to.  Our parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins all invested time and modeled for for the younger generations  how to act.  We have a bond that opens the doors of diversity within our own family:  Contreraz spirit. 
Given the climate of our country, I sometimes wish I could bottle it up and sell it to the rest of America.  But until I can figure out how to do this, I will simply just model the behaviors and beliefs towards diversity and respecting others that I learned from my family to those I teach and work with.  Then they too will see how I indeed am Contreraz, and I am indeed what America not only is but should be.



Two more things: 1.  Its been a couple of weeks since I have blogged, and for anyone who has checked to see if I had blogged, I apologize if I disappointed.  I am back to my regular Sunday schedule for blogging.
2.  I have almost had over 2,000 hits on my blog so far, so for that I thank you! As always I encourage you to leave messages or comments regarding my posts.