Project Update

So far, my investigations have given me a while new insight into bilingual education in the United States, as well as the unique problems faced by urban schools with a large number of immigrant or first-generation American students. I admit, that entering my research I knew very little about bilingual education, beyond the existence of ESL and its attempts to integrate new students into English-speaking classrooms.

My initial readings have taught me much about the history of bilingual education, from the Education Act of 1968 (and its subsequent amendments in the 1970s), as well as the important Supreme Court case Lau v. Nichols in 1974, in which Chinese-speaking, American-born students argued that they were not being given an equitable education because of their inability to speak English.

It has since become clear to me that there are a seemingly infinitesimal number of different types of bilingual education programs in effect in the United States, some that focus entirely on transition from the native language to English, before dropping the students into the mainstream classroom. Others see maintenance as a priority, allowing the students to retain their native language through dual-language education. More still, focus on transition but hope to encourage a positive attitude towards the students’ native language and culture.

Gaining the opportunity to interview a supervisor of the bilingual education program at an urban New Jersey school with a large Latino population, it became obvious that my project would become very much a case study of that school’s program. Its primary purpose was transition but with a focus on culture maintenance, so I would have to use other types of bilingual education to compare and contrast with that of this school.

The interview proved incredibly enlightening as to how this individual program worked, with almost 20% of the teachers working within it, aiding almost 400 students – one fifth of the student population. The problems faced by the school are those we see facing so many urban schools: students who have to work jobs outside of school to get by; parents who are missing or also engaged in work so that they are not able to help their children no matter how much they want to; younger siblings to look after school; an inability to relate to the very “middle class” format of tests because of their background (I was reminded of the video shown about the young child starting school in Camden and how his own experiences of poverty made it hard to relate to the idea of three meals a day).

Coupled with this are the unique problems caused by a lack of language proficiency, coming from a very different educational background or, perhaps, having no prior education at all. Similarly the problems faced by the (unknown) number of students who are not in the country legally and who, no matter how successful they may become in high school, cannot get funding for college and are, therefore, left with so much potential that can remain unfulfilled.

Yet, I found a program that was able to reach out to these students. During the interview, several students came into the office to speak with the supervisor – some who had left the program the previous year, yet had retained a close link to those who ran it. These are people who care about the students and want to do everything they can to help them succeed no matter what problems they face.

As I begin to pull all of my data together into the final project, I get a sense that I will have gone from little or no understanding of bilingual education in the United States, to a deeper appreciation of how it has come into existence and continues to work for students of all backgrounds and in different schools.