i'll teach you English if you teach me Spanish

The culturally competent teacher is aware of the diverse cultural groups represented in his or her classroom, investigates the sociocultural factors that influence student learning, and is able to integrate this knowledge into his or her teaching.
Throughout my many weeks at The Little Zoo* and after attending the Promising Practices workshop regarding the schooling of English Language Learners (ELLs) in America, I feel like I have a better understanding of this Cultural Competency Teaching Area. In his workshop, facilitated by graduate students in the ESL program, Professor Ramirez pointed out that students from other countries or other cultures may not only speak a different language, but they may have a completely different learning style than those whose parents have gone to school in the United States. The two classrooms that I worked with at The Little Zoo were both ESL classrooms, in which most of the students came from a Spanish-speaking background. It was miraculous to hear these students, barely able to say more than a few words in English when prompted by the teacher, yelling excitedly to tell their friends a story across the hall in fluent Spanish when we were supposed to be working on our rhyming skills.

Growing up in a Croatian household, we didn't speak a lot of English. My parents had just moved to the country a few years before I was born, and neither of them had had enough time to try and learn the language while getting their lives going here. They had basic vocabulary down, but neither of them felt comfortable enough to speak fluently. I have heard so often growing up that my parents were lucky I never needed any help with homework, or that I never asked them to read my papers and correct them. I simply knew that it wasn't an option, and I learned to become independent in regards to my schoolwork at a very young age. I see some of this in the kids that I tutor. At first, they were very shy, and just looked at each other every time I asked a question to see if they could all come up with the same answer by telepathy. One day we were sitting outside and one of them, we'll call him Chicken*, just kept shrugging his shoulders every time I asked him what the beginning sound of a word was. One of the aides from another classroom was photocopying something in the hallway, and she simply looked at him, raised her eyebrows, and said in crisp Spanish, "You know the answer. Tell her." Without hesitation, the beginning sound came out of his mouth. I was shocked. And at the same time, I had a realization - why shouldn't I be able to use the Spanish I had learned in high school, however limited it may be, to help these kids with their English reading skills. Names popped into my head, and I could hear some of the discussions we had had in class about Delpit and Goldenberg replaying in my mind.

I thought of Lisa Delpit's argument that students shouldn't have to shed their culture and language at the door of an English classroom. Instead, the teacher should be able to understand this multicultural difference, and use it to everyone's advantage. Doing a little bit of research never hurt anybody, and six-year olds can actually teach you a lot more than you think they can. Goldenberg mentioned in his article that if students knew how to read in their first language, reading in English would be even easier. Some of these students, to my shock, knew how to read in Spanish. Professor Ramirez, in his presentation, showed us that students, ELLs and English speaking students, want to learn if they sense that you, as a teacher, believe that they can learn and are willing to help them. In many other countries, the teacher is seen as the sole provider of a child's education. The parent is not to blame if the child is not up to par on their reading or math skills and may have to stay back. A lot of American families don't feel this way; instead, they go over the child's homework with them and provide support. It's not that a parent from a different country doesn't care about their child if they don't help them with their homework - it's just the way that they were brought up, and the way that they see education.

The next time I went to The Little Zoo, I introduced a new aspect to our activity. Sometimes, when showing a picture of something, I would say it in Spanish, and ask for the beginning sound of the word in Spanish. The kids were so impressed that I was even acknowledging this other part of their lives. "Oh, Miss Tina, YOU SPEAK-A SPANISH?!" It became a part of any game that we played, sometimes we would use it to help them associate beginning sounds with letters, and other times it was just for fun, and they would teach me new words in Spanish every week. I saw even more excitement on their faces each time I walked into the classroom to get them, and it made me realize that an advantage that I would have as a teacher of my students in the future is that I care. I know what it's like to grow up in a house where no one can help you with your homework, so you don't even ask. I know what that feeling of pride is like when you get your first "test" back in second or third grade and you can go home and put it on the fridge, knowing you did it all on your own. Yes, a small advantage might be that I took three years of Spanish in high school, but that wouldn't even matter if I didn't want it to matter. Regardless of what culture my students come from in the future, I want to learn all about it: the language, the customs, the families. I want to be that teacher that makes her students excited to come to her classroom not only because they want to learn, but because they see my desire to learn as well.