Aria...Affects/Process of Teaching Bilingual Children

          Reading this piece reemphasized the points Delpit and Johnson made about perspective. Teachers and white people in general need to see situations they encounter from the other person’s point of view. For example, the narrator stressed how she just wanted the teacher to address her in Spanish in order to relate to her culturally. While this seems unlikely, the teacher could have done other things to make the student feel comfortable, such as playing an educational game from a cultural context. The main point the narrator made was the teacher’s apparent lack of care in tending to the students need, which made it even more difficult for the narrator since she was unfamiliar with American customs anyway.
          The narrator’s way of labeling language as either public or private shows how children perceive difficulties. They tend to be observant of differences, as shown  by the narrator’s interpretation of English at school being spoken for a purpose. Though it is not common referring to English and Spanish like this, the way people usually act toward speaking a different language proves it to be true. Foreign languages tend to be private, between the people who only understand them. Such is true with English. If someone who does not understand it overhears it, then the English is private to the Spanish speaking individual.  

          After reading this article, I realized it must be truly difficult to be expected to understand and comprehend a language while just learning it. Sometimes people wonder why children are quiet. Sometimes it is because at home they are not spoken to, as shown with the narrator, whose father seldom spoke in the house.

          The point where the nuns visit the narrator’s home and speak with the parents connects to Delpit’s article. In this story, the narrator says how his parents were eager to listen to the nuns since it would benefit their children. Such is true in Delpit’s article, where black parents urged teachers to show their children how to learn white values so they too could succeed in society. Parents just want their children to grow outside their culture in order to work with various types of people.

          Still, learning about different cultural values, such as Spanish to English language, is a psychologically difficult situation for a child. For example, the narrator recounts how he felt disappointed when he came into the kitchen and his parents stopped speaking Spanish and spoke English to him instead. To a child, it seems like their comfort zones as well as familiar family values are being torn away. Therefore, it is important for the parents and teachers to emphasize that the child is learning—being taught, not trying the change or take away cultural values, such as the family language. Children like familiarity. So, at first it may be difficult, yet with gradual assurance children realize they are just learning more, not being separated from their culture.

 

Having  a lesson that includes Spanish is effective to help children understand English while also making the children feel welcome.