Bilingual Education In The State Of Texas

The structure of bilingual education programs differs depending on the school, but generally, they are either transitional or maintenance. Maintenance programs provide instruction in both languages to preserve a heritage language by giving proficiency in both languages to the students. Transitional programs eventually transition from both languages to English-only instruction. If one were to enter an English+Spanish program, one would have classes in both English and Spanish, with roughly equal distribution of both. If it were a transition program, the proportion of English would increase until it was English only.

That is why Filemon Lopez, who is part of the Benito Juarez Civic Association states that they are working hard to teach the Mixtecs their rights, about the importance of health, housing but overall of education. Even in the Madera school district, the importance of education is being advocated for, for teachers such as Carmen Hernandez states that it is important that both children like adults learn both Spanish and English, so that they can later be able to function in an English speaking society, but also so that they can keep their language and their pride in their background. Such as in the lecture about linguistic anthropology lecture that we went over in class, where it was explained that for the most part once English was learned that native languages were used less and less then forgotten, for only a subset of the population usually those who are older are the only ones who maintain the language going until they are gone. That is why Carmen emphasizes the importance of providing bilingual classes for Mixtec adults and children. So that in the future as Apuleyo Guzman states, that he hopes to learn more English so that he can get a better job so that e can get a better job, so that he can better provided for his family and his village, yet also still has his culture, his language and his ties to

(pg.80) Acknowledging and embracing a student’s racial or ethnic background is important, but it is just a piece of the educational puzzle. Effective teachers must be culturally responsive, with fine-tuned classroom management skills, and high expectations for all their students. It is crucial for an effective

When I was younger I was enrolled into Bilingual classes since preschool which cost me dearly. While taking these classes I had trouble learning English and Spanish words at the same time. I struggled through elementary school because I was not used to focusing primarily on English which affected my grades. While it is true that colleges look for students who know more than one language, the problem with that requirement is that students who focus on two languages at once are more likely to fail their classes because they do not have their full attention directed towards the English language and they don’t pay attention to that factor. Colleges do not see the risk of being a bilingual student.

This is occurring in a school district that is located on the “wrong” (east) side of El Paso and serves a student population that is 88.1 percent Hispanic and 73.4 percent economically disadvantaged. Dual language has helped liberate its students from the grim statistical reality that half of the Hispanic students in Texas will become dropouts: Ysleta boasts a graduation rate of 84 percent, well above both the Dallas and Houston school districts. A pioneer in dual language, Del Valle in 2005 graduated the first class to begin the program in elementary school. Instead of leaving Spanish behind for all-English classes, students were taught core subjects like algebra and world history in both Spanish and English. - See more at:

Being bilingual can be both useful or irritating, having the ability to communicate and understand several languages or being raised to be an interpreter for your parents. As you become more exposed to a variety of languages you can often observe how society treats certain languages. Martin Espada is a lawyer and poet who defends Spanish speakers in America, makes it clear about the role of language in his essay, “The New Bathroom Policy at English High School.” He asserts that the importance of language is created from cultural identity. When Espada shared what he learned about maintaining and defending Spanish he proceeded to say, “Defending the right of all Latinos to use the tongue of their history and identity creates in me passion for Spanish itself.”

The parent’s perspective towards bilingual education was like the student’s opinions because both individuals felt immersion classrooms benefit the students and the parents. The father of Jason was proud his son was the first in his family to read, write, and speak in English. Jason’s father knew his son would have many career opportunities by learning English at school. Learning the English academic language was not the only proud language Jason’s father encouraged for Jason to learn but also the Spanish language as well. Jason’s father only speaks Spanish so if his son was to lose his home language, a language barrier would form between father and son.

One in five United States residents speaks a foreign language. Try to do the math of this and it gives you roughly sixty-one million people in the United States that speak a foreign language. Being bilingual helps you in many different ways. It helps with your first language. It helps you communicate with others in ways that you were not capable of doing before and helps with your self-confidence.

The ability to speak or write two languages well is called bilingualism. In terms of schooling, bilingualism has two somewhat different meanings. In a country like the United States where English is the national language, bilingualism, and hence bilingual education, means teaching English to those who were raised using other native languages. The purpose of such education is to assimilate these people into the mainstream of the nation 's economy and culture. On the other hand, there are nations such as Belgium, Canada, and Switzerland that have two or more national languages.

The more language knowledge significantly helps towards your career as you know. Bilinguals have the privilege of get their information from a wider variety of resources. Also, it has great educational benefit to kids. Many studies suggest that bilingual children tend to have a higher concentration and are better at working through distraction while doing their school work. Research has shown that bilinguals score higher on average on tests involving creative thinking or problem solving.

As Gay (2010) states, although cultural diversity is seen as a positive and valuable in theory, it is often seen as a threat and tried to be eliminated in real life; and because of this reason teachers mostly deal with aspects of cultural diversity that won’t cause trouble for them. However, I believe that if a person chooses to be a teacher he / she has to have some responsibility to the society to be genuinely sensitive about these issues and has to act to promote acceptance of cultural diversity both in the society and in the education area.

Bilingual education programs are not only dual-language programs designed to provide an equal education to students learning English in the USA. The true definition of a Bilingual education program is the presence of any two languages in an instructional program.

IDEA lists three ways of being culturally skilled in the classroom. This includes the teacher being culturally alert in the class to connect the gap of learning about other ethnicities, learning to communicate to students in unwritten and non-vocal styles, and know the different views of the cultures, for example, skin-to skin contact, no communication, the clothing of the student, and simple gestures. This is important in my eyes because my school alone is very diverse, and I had my share of teachers that did not respect a certain students religion or culture. This upset me and made me want to learn more about different cultures and religions. It also leads me to want to work harder to become more culturally aware, and diverse for my future students and willing to do what I can to break down barriers that may be created by students of different cultures or religions.

Being bilingual has got many advantages. It has been debated that bilingualism has multiple advantages such as cognitive, cultural, academic benefits as well. Cognitive benefit reveals that being bilingual help to facilitate human brain. People who are bilingual have two language systems which are working simultaneously. These systems don’t create hindrance in individual’s performance and ensure brain’s functioning of both cognitive aspects (Bialystok, 1999).

Education and bilingualism can not totally interpret the meaning of bilingual education. There are many aspects that demand a multidisciplinary comprehending of bilingual education. The use of bilingual education can be use outside of the classroom. There are fields of bilingual education can be used in philosophy, history, economics, and, notably, politics as well as language planning. For example, bilingual helps to assimilate native and migratory minorities, which is a means of language planning.