Translating in Class?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

MCPS teacher here, most times these kids are not literate in Spanish because they come from poor countries seeking a better life. Which means their families are barely literate and they often have had little to no formal education in their own language. Similar to poor minority children here who speak broken english due to their circumstances. The illegal immigrants coming here have no formal education, many times it’s generationally. It’s not the legal immigrants who are sucking up ESOL services because the legal ones usually have had enough formal education to go through the US legal process by-themselves or with a company. Many legal immigrants are white collar workers. Let’s not pretend that these children and their families are literate. OP, do something now, document everything and push the principal and teacher to change their practices. If not go up the email chain. MCPS will usually create a policy in the background for professional staff in the background, even if you think it’s rolling along slow.

[Anonymous]

Wow PP, first off you have no way of knowing my political affiliation. Second, it’s quite peremptory and graceless to call someone dumb because you don’t agree. It really shows your ignorance when you are unable to use real words. There’s no need to use words that require an asterisk. I really do feel for your limited vocabulary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow PP, first off you have no way of knowing my political affiliation. Second, it’s quite peremptory and graceless to call someone dumb because you don’t agree. It really shows your ignorance when you are unable to use real words. There’s no need to use words that require an asterisk. I really do feel for your limited vocabulary.

Your great grandparents would be ashamed of you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


Definitely agree, my great great grandparents came here from Europe not knowing any English. You know what they did? They made an effort and went to english speaking classes at the local church. They went to the library. What they didn’t do was demand that every document and company put out bilingual translations. This is beyond ridiculous and will turn this county into an extension of Mexico and South America.

I don't know about your great-great-grandparents personally, of course. But in general, it's a myth that everybody used to come here and learn English. See, for example, this abstract:

One myth about language and immigration in North America is that nineteenth-century immigrants typically became bilingual almost immediately after arriving, yet little systematic data has been presented for this view. We present quantitative and qualitative evidence about Germans in Wisconsin, where, into the twentieth century, many immigrants and their descendants remained monolingual, decades after immigration had ceased. Even those who claimed to speak English often had limited command. Quantitative data from the 1910 Census, augmented by qualitative evidence from newspapers, court records, literary texts, and other sources, suggest that Germans of various socioeconomic backgrounds often lacked English language skills. German continued to be the primary language in numerous Wisconsin communities, and some second- and third-generation descendants of immigrants were still monolingual as adults. Understanding this history can help inform contemporary debates about language and immigration and help dismantle the myth that successful immigrant groups of yesterday owed their prosperity to an immediate, voluntary shift to English.

You can read the full paper by going here : https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-speech/article/83/3/259/5820/GOOD-Old-Immigrants-of-Yesteryear-Who-Didn-t-Learn and then clicking on the pdf icon.

It's also a myth that people now come here and don't learn English. See here, for example, for Spanish-speakers: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/03/24/a-majority-of-english-speaking-hispanics-in-the-u-s-are-bilingual/ and here for a summary for immigrants from Asian countries:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/08/key-facts-about-asian-americans/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

MCPS teacher here, most times these kids are not literate in Spanish because they come from poor countries seeking a better life. Which means their families are barely literate and they often have had little to no formal education in their own language. Similar to poor minority children here who speak broken english due to their circumstances. The illegal immigrants coming here have no formal education, many times it’s generationally. It’s not the legal immigrants who are sucking up ESOL services because the legal ones usually have had enough formal education to go through the US legal process by-themselves or with a company. Many legal immigrants are white collar workers. Let’s not pretend that these children and their families are literate. OP, do something now, document everything and push the principal and teacher to change their practices. If not go up the email chain. MCPS will usually create a policy in the background for professional staff in the background, even if you think it’s rolling along slow.

I hope you're not an English teacher. Jesus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

MCPS teacher here, most times these kids are not literate in Spanish because they come from poor countries seeking a better life. Which means their families are barely literate and they often have had little to no formal education in their own language. Similar to poor minority children here who speak broken english due to their circumstances. The illegal immigrants coming here have no formal education, many times it’s generationally. It’s not the legal immigrants who are sucking up ESOL services because the legal ones usually have had enough formal education to go through the US legal process by-themselves or with a company. Many legal immigrants are white collar workers. Let’s not pretend that these children and their families are literate. OP, do something now, document everything and push the principal and teacher to change their practices. If not go up the email chain. MCPS will usually create a policy in the background for professional staff in the background, even if you think it’s rolling along slow.

I second this. Teachers absolutely have to try their best, and I'm hopeful this teacher is, but that does not mean translating lessons. All that does is slow down learning time for everyone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

MCPS teacher here, most times these kids are not literate in Spanish because they come from poor countries seeking a better life. Which means their families are barely literate and they often have had little to no formal education in their own language. Similar to poor minority children here who speak broken english due to their circumstances. The illegal immigrants coming here have no formal education, many times it’s generationally. It’s not the legal immigrants who are sucking up ESOL services because the legal ones usually have had enough formal education to go through the US legal process by-themselves or with a company. Many legal immigrants are white collar workers. Let’s not pretend that these children and their families are literate. OP, do something now, document everything and push the principal and teacher to change their practices. If not go up the email chain. MCPS will usually create a policy in the background for professional staff in the background, even if you think it’s rolling along slow.

Posting-in-bold-MCPS-teacher PP, I think it's particularly disturbing that you as a teacher characterize the language spoken by "poor minority children" (I'm assuming that you mean poor US-born black children?) as "broken English". It's not. "Broken English", charitably, is English spoken by a non-native speaker. But poor-US-born black children children are native English speakers. It's just that the version of English they speak isn't Standard American English.

If you're interested, here is a good piece you could read that addresses the issue from both a linguistic and a teaching perspective:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/the-code-switcher/554099/

If you're not interested, of course, then you're not interested.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

MCPS teacher here, most times these kids are not literate in Spanish because they come from poor countries seeking a better life. Which means their families are barely literate and they often have had little to no formal education in their own language. Similar to poor minority children here who speak broken english due to their circumstances. The illegal immigrants coming here have no formal education, many times it’s generationally. It’s not the legal immigrants who are sucking up ESOL services because the legal ones usually have had enough formal education to go through the US legal process by-themselves or with a company. Many legal immigrants are white collar workers. Let’s not pretend that these children and their families are literate.[b] OP, do something now, document everything and push the principal and teacher to change their practices. If not go up the email chain. MCPS will usually create a policy in the background for professional staff in the background, even if you think it’s rolling along slow.[/b]

I'm the other MCPS teacher who posted on this thread. Are you kidding with this? What kind of policy are you saying MCPS will create? That sentence doesn't even make sense. Do you teach students who come from other countries? How do you treat them? With the contempt you clearly show you have for them in this post? You want parents to "do something now, document everything and push the principal and teacher to change their practices?" I agree that the current practice isn't sustainable which is why it will stop soon. The teacher clearly doesn't know what else to do and needs to collaborate with the ESOL teacher. It's the first week of school. Give it time.

Where do you work? I'd never want my kid to have you as a teacher and I would never want to work with you. Since you're so quick to escalate such a non issue based on clear contempt for a child and where they came from, I'm sure you're a great role model for kids. I have a serious pit in my stomach knowing there are people like you out there teaching our kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

NP. They call it EAL there, not ESOL. Go on the website of pretty much any London primary school and you'll find reference to it somewhere. It's mentioned in every Ofsted report. Among others:

Bousfield Primary School: http://www.bousfieldprimaryschool.co.uk/curriculum/sen-eal
John Betts Primary School: http://www.johnbetts.lbhf.sch.uk/inclusion/
Belmont Primary School: http://www.belmontprimaryschool.org.uk/Pupils-with-English-as-an-additional-language/

These are all top-rated state primaries that people get into bidding wars to be in catchment for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’d be more concerned about kids with behavior issues in the classroom. That takes much more teacher time and attention and impacts the other kids in the class in a far more negative way than a kid who is learning English.

100% this.

[Anonymous]

DS attends NY Public in a beautiful coastal town that is considered affluent. That being said, nearly half of the 900+ kids are Hispanic. In MS, there were translators in any given classroom for ESL students. HS is also integrated but no translators in any classes. Students who are recently in the country or did not reach fluency by HS, have ESL classes on par with the same curriculum. All students can take honors or AP or IB. I was hoping the translators in MS would help DS achieve more fluency in Spanish. It’s his worst subject. Half of his friends are Spanish and are taking French or Latin. They struggle with helping DS with HW because they’ve been here a while as fluent English speaking students. Taught very differently and his friends find his work and tests difficult. Oh well! Diversity is a good thing if the school is offering advanced levels of teaching for all kids. This school does a very good job. Valedictorian this year was Hispanic boy, 1st gen that was accepted to 4 Ivies. They’re a competitive group of kids with little to no racial divide.

[Anonymous]

My dyslexic kid needs more of a teacher's time then many other kids. He needs the teacher to scribe for him, make sure he read the directions correctly, needs more support all around to get things done. He deserves it and so does a child who does not speak English regardless of why.

[Anonymous]

ESOL teacher here. In nine years of teaching, I've only come across two students older than nine years old who were illiterate. One of them ended up with an IEP and the other had stopped going to school in first grade because the teachers mocked their native language. I would venture that some of the students parents are illiterate in their own language because they often call to ask about the forms I send home in Spanish. Many of my students' parents speak Spanish as their second language since there are many dialects in Central and South America.

[Anonymous]

I watched an English speaking American kid turn my child's first grade classroom in to chaos most days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

MCPS teacher here, most times these kids are not literate in Spanish because they come from poor countries seeking a better life. Which means their families are barely literate and they often have had little to no formal education in their own language. Similar to poor minority children here who speak broken english due to their circumstances. The illegal immigrants coming here have no formal education, many times it’s generationally. It’s not the legal immigrants who are sucking up ESOL services because the legal ones usually have had enough formal education to go through the US legal process by-themselves or with a company. Many legal immigrants are white collar workers. Let’s not pretend that these children and their families are literate.[b] OP, do something now, document everything and push the principal and teacher to change their practices. If not go up the email chain. MCPS will usually create a policy in the background for professional staff in the background, even if you think it’s rolling along slow.[/b]

I'm the other MCPS teacher who posted on this thread. Are you kidding with this? What kind of policy are you saying MCPS will create? That sentence doesn't even make sense. Do you teach students who come from other countries? How do you treat them? With the contempt you clearly show you have for them in this post? You want parents to "do something now, document everything and push the principal and teacher to change their practices?" I agree that the current practice isn't sustainable which is why it will stop soon. The teacher clearly doesn't know what else to do and needs to collaborate with the ESOL teacher. It's the first week of school. Give it time.

Where do you work? I'd never want my kid to have you as a teacher and I would never want to work with you. Since you're so quick to escalate such a non issue based on clear contempt for a child and where they came from, I'm sure you're a great role model for kids. I have a serious pit in my stomach knowing there are people like you out there teaching our kids.

Thank you for this. I would not want the other teacher PP teaching my kids either. If you can't have compassion for all children, then you have no business teaching any children.