by Nayelis Guerrero
Nayelis is an undecided major living in Everett, Massachusetts. Nayelis was an English language learner when she first came to the United States, and her essay was inspired by this experience. She says that researching and writing this essay “made me realize the ways in which English language learners can better incorporate themselves socially.” Nayelis is also passionate about helping her community, serving both as a coordinator of a group of Hispanic women that want to jump-start their own businesses and as part of a coalition that works with police in her city to change policies around the police’s interaction with ICE.
English Language Learners in a classroom setting tend to feel marginalized as there is a language barrier between them and native English speakers. The United States is a country where multiple languages are spoken as people migrate here from all around the world. Children that immigrate from other countries often times do not speak English, and are placed in English as a Second Language programs to teach them English. These programs are also being established in other parts of the world where immigration is also growing, such as in Ireland. The problem is that when English language learners and native English speakers are put in the same classroom, the language barrier between them causes division among them. Therefore, the classroom environment is compromised. Separation among students in the classroom does not allow for a harmonious environment and contributes to ELL students feeling as if they do not belong. This hinders ELL students socially as they are not only driven away from participating in classrooms, but also from participating in other school activities. This is when multilingual justice should play a role in the classroom by educating students on where their peers come from and what type of culture they have. In order to continue to bring awareness to this issue, programs and strategies that successfully address the needs of ELL students in the classroom to also be able to succeed outside the classroom must be put in place.
The first step is to create unity among the students. Patrick Farren in “Addressing the Needs of English Language Learners in Mainstream Classes” suggests that to address the needs of ELL students, “recognition of mother tongues of students from diverse language backgrounds as a potential resource, and the promotion of inter-culturalism” is necessary (24). It is important that teachers are knowledgeable of student’s cultures and use their culture as a tool to embrace all of them. Through this recognition, teachers can lead students to acknowledge each other’s background and as a result sympathize with one another. There are projects for teachers to use to be able to get students to portray their culture in front of their peers. Projects like these, would allow for students to represent their country and introduce their culture to their class in order to educate them around diversity. As part of a project, students could choreograph a dance, sing a song, dress with traditional attire, prepare a trifold with information, and even cook a traditional dish. For example, Farren mentions that, “English language development for ELLs is founded on the value of social justice of which, according to the literature, there are three complementary aspects: distributive, participative (Cochran-Smith, 2009; North, 2008), and relational (Fraser, 2008)” (24). Said cultural day activity, falls under the relational aspect which “refers to recognition and respect for social and cultural difference (Cochran-Smith, 2009)” (24). Creating a cultural day does not function to teach ELL students English, but it does serve to make them feel less anxious among the other students in the classroom. Therefore, this activity builds comfort in the students by creating a connection among them. Doing this activity paves the way for the participative aspect of social justice in education.
The participative aspect of social justice in education is important when boosting student’s oral language skills. Farren describes the participative aspect as “concerns ‘with’ the capacity and opportunity to participate in making decisions, both at macro and micro levels (North, 2008)” (24). For example, when the teacher asks a question, all students should have the opportunity and ability to be able to answer. Some ELL students might not have the ability to answer a question. It is important to boost their oral language skills, as it expands their vocabulary. For this reason, Greenfader and Brouillette created a project called Teaching Artist Project, with the purpose of boosting oral language skills in ELL students through dramatization and movement. The project consists of a series of “structured arts activities [which] can offer rich opportunities for students to hone important early literacy skills” (Greenfader and Brouillette 173). These activities ask the students to be a part of the classroom through narrative discourse and dramatic narrative, which is when students are able to act out and use oral language skills to further their vocabulary. These skills are practiced when the class chooses a book to read while they act out the different parts and each have a role. Through these activities, ELL students are not only forced to participate in class, but also to use and practice vocabulary words. Therefore, this is an effective program for ELL students to have teacher-group and teacher-student connections. These activities allow for ELL students to be equally participants in class and feeling a sense of community with those around them. Therefore, closing the gap initially created by the language barrier that separated them from other students. To this, Farren suggests that, “promoting social justice in schools involves supporting English language learners (ELLs) and any other students with literacy difficulties” (22). This is exactly what the TAP project is doing through their lessons. It is important to recognize that ELL students’ needs must be addressed as they too are a part of the classroom. Therefore, more programs that involve activities such as these that targets oral language skills while implementing multilingual justice in the classroom, must be implemented.
Multilingual justice could be defined as a universal right for a person to be respected and accepted when speaking or writing in a different language in a community. ESL students often do not receive this justice as they are marginalized not only in the classrooms but also in schools at large. According to Rance-Roney from “Creating Intentional Communities to Support English Language Learners in the Classroom,” in a “climate of rigorous accountability, English language learners are often seen as liabilities and not as resources in the daily life of a school” (18). This statement demonstrates the ways English Language Learners are perceived in classrooms. They are left out of the community that is the classroom. Rance-Roney describes two ELL students and the way “in the first few weeks, Tu and Phan remained together but alone, sitting by themselves in the corner of the cafeteria, walking together silently in the halls, and talking sometimes to me in class, but never to the non-ELL classmates sitting around them” (18).
I also went through a situation such as the one Tu and Phan went through when I arrived in the United States. Similar to them, I did not have friends outside of the ELL kids and never got to know someone that was not part of the ELL program. For the first few months, I was only put in classes with other ELL students. Halfway through the year, I was moved to classrooms where there were mostly non-ELL students. Throughout this time, I was alone and did not blend in with the non-ELL kids as they had barely seen me before, and I did not speak the same level of English that they did. Experiences such as the ones Tu, Phan and I had must not continue. Classrooms must be reinvented to form part of a community in which all students feel welcome and are not seen as “liabilities” (Roney 18). This is the reason why Rance-Roney as a teacher “recognized that I needed to take steps not only to support my English language learners in their English acquisition but also to invest all the students in creating a classroom culture that encouraged shared experiences and construction of knowledge that legitimized all class members” (19). It is important that teachers that have English language learners in their classrooms recognize that community must be built into the classrooms as communities will close the gap created when English language learners are ignored rather than embraced. ELL students must be used as a resource of culture and diversity in the classrooms. This is what Rance-Roney is referring to when she had a realization that change needed to be made. Creating an intentional community in the classroom would benefit English language learners by providing them with opportunities to become more interactive and develop their oral language skills by building relationships with native English speakers. Therefore, building multilingual justice into the communities created in the classroom and beyond, as students will also carry this lesson with them, outside the classroom.
There are ways in which English language learners can be included in classroom dynamics along with the native English speakers without marginalizing English language learners. Classroom dynamics will lead to community building in the classroom and acknowledgement of the capabilities that English language learners have when they become part of the classroom. An example of how this could be done is through a “Culture Share Club” as suggested by Rance-Roney (20). The Culture Share Club would consist of a group of student volunteers that would talk and write journals saying what they were learning from each other. As part of this club students were given the choice to work in collaborative groups or individually. Rance-Roney says that, “as the year went on more students wanted to work together instead of by themselves on projects assigned as part of the club” (20). Being part of this club would introduced social skills to English language learners and cause them to become more confident over time. The Culture Share Club would also bring recognition and awareness to native English speakers of how English language learners struggle making friends due to the language barrier. The formation of this club represents a way in which multilingual justice can be implemented and developed in a way that makes students think of this issue both inside and outside the classroom.
In conclusion, English language learners must be taken into consideration when they are put in classrooms with native English speakers as they tend to become marginalized due to the language barrier. Implementation of programs such as the art activities from the TAP program and the Culture Share Club support the programs already put in place to teach English to English language learners in schools. These programs address the social aspect of being part of a class such as being able to participate, as well as bond and make connections with each other. Learning English goes beyond being able to read, write, or speak the language; it is necessary that while in the process of learning the language, students are able to feel like they are part of the classroom and school where they are enrolled. They are as much a part of the classroom as the native English speaker students and they should, therefore, be treated as such.
Works Cited
Farren, Patrick. “Addressing Needs of English Language Learners in Mainstream Classes: Lessons for Teacher Education in Ireland.” The Irish Journal of Education / Iris Eireannach an Oideachais, vol. 41, 2016, pp. 21–38.
Greenfader, Christa Mulker and Liane Brouillette. “Boosting Language Skills of English Learners Through Dramatization and Movement.” The Reading Teacher, vol. 67, no. 3, 2013, pp. 171–180.
Rance-Roney, Judith. “Creating Intentional Communities to Support English Language Learners in the Classroom.” The English Journal, vol. 97, no. 5, 2008, pp. 17–22.