This is Who We Are

"Teaching Multilingual Children" - Virginia Collier (hyperlinks)

          While reading this article, I couldn't help but think that if children used a mix of English and Spanish (or whatever their first language is) in the classroom, it would hinder the learning process.  I thought that "code-switching", as Collier explained, would only bring forward the child's weakness and provide an easy way out for them to use the language they are most comfortable with.  For example, if they were trying to explain something in English and couldn't find the proper word they could just use the Spanish word rather than figuring out the word they needed in English.  This, for me, would result in the child having a gap where the word would never be understood in English.
          I decided, however, to do a little research because Collier was starting to convince me otherwise, but I wanted a second opinion as well.  I found an article from NBC that helped me to see things more clearly.  Before the learning process is even explained, the article presents the fact, "in 2008, less than a third of the students scored at or above proficient on the state English language arts test", and that in the most recent school year the scores "more than doubled to 62 percent".  These results were nothing to sneeze at, and instantly caught my attention.  The technique at this particular school is to teach students in Spanish for 90% of the day until they reach the 3rd grade level.  After that, they are taught more in English than in Spanish.  Another important part of the learning process, is that the class size is lower than 20 students, allowing for more one-on-one and small group time.  This article really helped me to understand the points that Collier was making in her article.
         Following the rule that Collier set forth, these teachers, "do not forbid students from code-switching in the classroom", which allows the students to understand both languages better.  Since the students start out with the language they are most comfortable, and are slowly introduced to the language they are learning, it helps them to relate the words of both languages and become proficient in both languages.  It also helps the students to be less overwhelmed than if they were just forced to learn English (not in the ESL sense, but in an ordinary classroom).
          These articles allowed me to understand the benefit of having a bilingual teacher to guide students into learning both languages.  But at the same time, not all ESL students speak Spanish.  There are many other languages in the world.  While it is great to have a teacher that can speak two languages fluently, there is also the underlying fact that a teacher can not learn every language, or teach a classroom full of students with different languages.  This process works best because the students all speak dialects of the same language, but this would be harder to use in a classroom if there were different languages.