Translating in Class?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am just curious. Do all countries do this? Tax their citizens to teach illegal and legal immigrants their native language for free in school during school hours? Is there a form of ESOL in other countries to teach the immigrants a second language while their citizens only learn one language like ours? Honestly curious.

French person here. France does this, as well as Germany and the UK, and I suppose most developed countries. They all limit migration at the border, though, in an effort to keep costs lower, avoid political crises and attempt to better integrate different cultures. The last of which has failed in France and Germany, BTW.

In the olden days there was noblesse oblige, the fact that wealthier people were expected to support the poor. The same applies to nations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Honestly OP, you have every reason to complain. That child’s time should not be taken up to be a translator for the teacher, your child’s time shouldn’t be spent in school going slower because of one kid, additionally if your child is not in a langaguge immersion class it’s a problem. I would email my concerns to the teacher and principal. The teacher can use other methods without slowing down class lessons for example: using picture vocabulary for the new student, referring the child for ESOL screening, use of manipulative or incorporating more hands on components in her lesson, use sentence stems to help the child, modifying that particular student’s work to make it a simpler version of what everyone else is doing. I’m a teacher and would be horrified if my colleague wasted the entire classes’s time to try to be bilingual without any formal training. This allows the pace of the class to go slower, all for one kid, that is why there is an ESOL teacher. Those teachers can slow things down. Finally, unfortunately, until the county deals with it’s illegal immigration problem this is what you can expect to happen from a small segment of teachers. The kid is obviously in school to learn English, so the teacher should be speaking in English but adapting lessons that make it easier to understand with pictures or fewer words.

OP may be doing everything you suggest, and there is zero chance this child isn't ALSO receiving ESOL services. But ESOL in 2018 isn't like ESOL when we were kids. The English Language Learners aren't segregated in a self-contained classroom away from everyone else. They are mainstreamed to the degree possible, which is better for them and better for society as a whole.

I'd also point out, as others have done, that OP is taking the word of a 10 year old about how much time is spent translating. It is also Week One of school. Maybe simmer down and wait a sec to see how this plays out?

Kids have the right to an appropriate education in a mainstream environment. That includes kids with special needs and kids who are learning English. OP's child isn't going to be harmed by the presence of an English language learner in their classroom, even if OP is so sheltered that it hasn't happened before now.

Obviously Op’s ten year old is competent enough to know that her education is being impacted in a major way. I’d expect my child to complain so that I can advocate or get together a group of parents to advocate. Additionally someone mentioned ESOL today is not the same as yesteryear, I am aware of that but SOL has changed from having those students in a separate room to the general ed room due to lack of funding. The powers that touted its better to mainstream those kids even though they speak a lick of English and then they backed it up with faux research to skew data in their favor. This is all about the dollars since many states around the country can’t afford the number of teachers to the ratio of ESOL learners it’s absorbing. In no other country, do they expect to teach you a second language in school for FREE along with so many additional resources that are FREE in the community.

+1

It is one thing to help a child at lunch or with a question here or there. But the fact so many think stopping every paragraph for a full class translation done by one other child, is the right compassionate way to run a classroom? I would be complaining. Those parents can teach their kid and get her some help. Until then, tough. She doesn’t understand. The class shouldn’t be a ping pong of 2 languages to appease 1 person.

This sounds like a teacher who is new to having a newcomer in their classroom. She'll realize quickly that this method isn't sustainable. The ESOL teachers are incredibly busy in the first few weeks of school doing entry testing. Regular ESOL services will start shortly. In my school the ESOL teachers provide the classroom teachers with resources that the newcomers can be working on independently, and I try to type directions into Google translate before the lesson so the student can read them first and have some comprehension of what's going on. When it's way too language based I have them work on some of the resources the ESOL teacher has provided. There's a ton of great resources that can be accessed on the Chromebook, and I also am provided with a binder of paper/pencil activities that I can provide the student.

That being said, you and your daughter should try having some compassion. I can assure you that it's much harder for this child (and yes, we're talking about a child here no matter where she was born) and your child will be fine even if she has to listen to translation for a few days. Like I said, this won't last long because it's an unsustainable model. 5th graders do tend to take a little longer to pick up the language than say a Kindergartener, but they are often more motivated to do so due to social reasons and to avoid stigma similar to what we're reading about here, especially if they're in a school where few other children look like them or can identify with their needs. Try reframing this as a learning experience and a taste of the real world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am just curious. Do all countries do this? Tax their citizens to teach illegal and legal immigrants their native language for free in school during school hours? Is there a form of ESOL in other countries to teach the immigrants a second language while their citizens only learn one language like ours? Honestly curious.

French person here. France does this, as well as Germany and the UK, and I suppose most developed countries. They all limit migration at the border, though, in an effort to keep costs lower, avoid political crises and attempt to better integrate different cultures. The last of which has failed in France and Germany, BTW.

In the olden days there was noblesse oblige, the fact that wealthier people were expected to support the poor. The same applies to nations.

Can you post the links of these programs. I was told the UK does not have any such programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My daughter just told me that her 5th grade class has a new child that only speaks Spanish. There is another child in the class that is kinda bilingual. The teacher is using google translator to talk to her directly and she says after a few sentences when speaking to the whole class, she pauses so the other bilingual girl can translate to her the same few sentences, and then this continues every few sentences. Does this truly happen in other schools? Who just sends a 5th grader into a school, that doesn't know any English? Does the teacher have to continue this bilingual lessons. It must eat up so much time.

See how it's going a week later.
If it's still such a time sink of teacher time, I'd demand a different homeroom. Hopefully the school and teacher find a solution for the illiterate 10 yo.
Unfortunately this is not uncommon the first month of school in MCPS. There are many situations of this in several schools with unregistered kids showing up, needing placing and ESOL and FARM and even health services.
Thankfully we are a wealthy, welcoming county and can provide.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:that sucks.

spanish girl needs to be sent home with a note: Don't come to school until you know English. like they did in the 1950s.

So we should have thousands of students roaming the streets all day while their parents are at work? That sounds like a good plan. I'm sure they will pick up English quickly that way.

LOL PP I'm pretty sure the person you're quoting was using sarcasm to make a point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter just told me that her 5th grade class has a new child that only speaks Spanish. There is another child in the class that is kinda bilingual. The teacher is using google translator to talk to her directly and she says after a few sentences when speaking to the whole class, she pauses so the other bilingual girl can translate to her the same few sentences, and then this continues every few sentences. Does this truly happen in other schools? Who just sends a 5th grader into a school, that doesn't know any English? Does the teacher have to continue this bilingual lessons. It must eat up so much time.

See how it's going a week later.
If it's still such a time sink of teacher time, I'd demand a different homeroom. Hopefully the school and teacher find a solution for the illiterate 10 yo.
Unfortunately this is not uncommon the first month of school in MCPS. There are many situations of this in several schools with unregistered kids showing up, needing placing and ESOL and FARM and even health services.
Thankfully we are a wealthy, welcoming county and can provide.

Illiterate? Because she doesn’t know English yet? By that logic anyone who doesn’t know more than one language should be considered illiterate. Do you even know what that word means? I’m fluent in English and French. By your definition you’d be considered illiterate if you only know one language. Don’t use words you don’t actually understand. I know English can be tricky but there are things called dictionaries.

[Anonymous]

Exactly. The ESOL teacher will test her in English and most likely test her 1st language literacy too. By 5th grade, this student is mostly likely literate in Spanish barring extreme circumstances. BTW- There is no official language of the U.S.

[Anonymous]

if said child has never consistently be in school in any country, like many central american illegal immigrants are, yes, they are illiterate.
I speak fluent Spanish and Portuguese; the spanish I most often hear at places in mont co is not grammatically correct nor using a literate vocab. lots of slang as well.

[Anonymous]

According to PARCC and MAP proficiency scores half of our ES and MS students are indeed, illiterate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:if said child has never consistently be in school in any country, like many central american illegal immigrants are, yes, they are illiterate.
I speak fluent Spanish and Portuguese; the spanish I most often hear at places in mont co is not grammatically correct nor using a literate vocab. lots of slang as well.

In other words, it's the normal colloquial spoken Spanish in the countries the people originally come from.

[Anonymous]

NP - My Latino nanny has said it's pretty bad Spanish when were all around the Wheaton costco area together. Not a dialect or colloquial, just uneducated.

But I'm sure PP will come up with yet another excuse and avoid the real issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP - My Latino nanny has said it's pretty bad Spanish when were all around the Wheaton costco area together. Not a dialect or colloquial, just uneducated.

But I'm sure PP will come up with yet another excuse and avoid the real issue.

Is OP's daughter fluent in Spanish and here to tell us what flavor of dialect the child in her class is using?

If not, this is a moot point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP - My Latino nanny has said it's pretty bad Spanish when were all around the Wheaton costco area together. Not a dialect or colloquial, just uneducated.

But I'm sure PP will come up with yet another excuse and avoid the real issue.

"uneducated" is a derogatory term for colloquial and/or dialects. If you think about stereotypically "uneducated" ways of speaking English, they are colloquial to the community in which they are spoken, and sometimes also rise to the level of a "dialect." The truly gramatically incorrect/"bad" Spanish is more likely to be spoken by kids who have lived here for a long time and are actually English dominant but are speaking Spanish with their families because the older generation is Spanish dominant. My HS Spanish teacher (in the 1990s) would joke with a particular student when he would go to visit his family in Miami and tell him "don't come back here speaking that Miami spanglish. We speak Spanish in this classroom." The more English dominant, the more likely to have "bad" Spanish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP - My Latino nanny has said it's pretty bad Spanish when were all around the Wheaton costco area together. Not a dialect or colloquial, just uneducated.

But I'm sure PP will come up with yet another excuse and avoid the real issue.

Sure. And if you went to the [somewhere where people mainly speak English] Costco, what you'd hear is: a lot of informal English, with slang, and not the kind of vocabulary you'd expect in formal writing. Would you conclude from this that everybody is illiterate? I wouldn't.

[Anonymous]

OH my. OP, your little cupcake will be just fine. Instead of teaching her to welcome this girl and help her navigate the school where she not only doesn't know anyone but can't talk to anyone either, you are teaching her to hate the new student.

I came to this country when I was 16 and didn't speak English at all. I ended up finishing college with a 3.9 GPA. Shame on you OP.