Valley Junction, Iowa - January 17, 1942

My father's favorite family story is the one he tells about the day I was born. It was January 1942, and the coldest winter in memory. A Canadian blizzard had blown into Iowa shortly after New Year's Day and stayed. It was so cold that the frozen milk bottles had cream standing two inches above the bottle with the caps perched on top. It had snowed for a week without stopping, and the drifts against the house were so high that from inside of the house only a small strip of daylight was visible along the tops of the windows. All business had halted-there was no public transportation, the schools were closed, and the trains had stopped running.
The coal burning stove that heated our house had been hot for so long that its skin had turned bright orange, and was almost transparent. Sparks that flew off the coal as it burned were visible through the skin. The water pump was frozen and my father did not want to prime it every day with hot water, so he melted snow for household use. He said it always surprised him to see what a small amount of water came from a bucketful of snow.
My father had just bought two hundred baby chicks at the feed store that he planned to raise for eating. The feed store had to sell them cheap, or go into the egg business, because no one wanted to buy baby chicks in such poor weather. He could not keep them in the chicken coop so he had built a small enclosure for them behind the wood burning, cast iron stove in the kitchen. He was sorry he had bought them because they kept jumping over the walls of the pen he had built and they were running all over the house and making a big mess.
My mother went into labor about ten o'clock at night and my father decided to go for the doctor because he did not want to take her out. He knew that he would not be able to drive his 1936 Ford to the doctor's house, so he built up the fire and set out walking. He had to force the door open because of the weight of the snow against it, and tunnel his way out with the coal shovel to reach the driveway. The car and the coal shed were completely covered, and only large objects like trees and houses stood above the snow.
He walked more than a mile to Doctor Sternagel's house in snow that was waist deep. He woke the doctor and his wife, and while the doctor got dressed he sat in the kitchen and drank coffee. He and the doctor walked back to the house, down Maple Street, across the tracks, and followed a path that was a shortcut to our house, which lay at the end of South Fourth where the woods began. They were both exhausted from walking through the snow when they got back at one in the morning. They had to dig their way back into the house with their hands because the snow had covered the shovel and they could not find it in the dark.
When they finally entered the house, the doctor went to tend to my mother while my father boiled snow water to make coffee. My mother was in labor for about seven hours, and my father and the doctor sat in the kitchen talking about fishing and hunting and the war. The doctor was really surprised to see the chickens in the house, and he and my father sat making jokes about my mother being in labor so long that they could have fried chicken while they waited. They drank coffee all night, and about seven thirty the next morning I was born. Doctor Sternagel refused to accept his fee for the delivery because my father had just enlisted in the Marine Corp. and was leaving for basic training in three weeks Together, they walked back to the doctor's house.

The Power of Culture: Teaching Across Language Difference, Zeynep F. Beykont, Ed.

The Connection Between Language, Culture, Social Justice, and Education

In classrooms across the country, but particularly in states that have the linguistic diversity of Texas, Massachusetts and California, teachers face the challenge of teaching students whose cultural and linguistic backgrounds are different from theirs. The effectiveness of the instruction received by these groups is impacted by a number of factors.

The diversity among the groups that teachers encounter in their classrooms is obscured by demographic terms that lump students into broad groups. Because of the diversity among these student populations themselves, second language learners vary in the academic support that they need to acquire the academic language that will facilitate their success in school. Some of the ways that these diverse groups vary include age at time of entry into the educational system, level of English fluency, and academic background.

Another problem for diverse students is the educational system itself which is designed for a homogeneous, middle class, white, native speaking population. School policies and school cultures do not support diversity and therefore there is an absence of the pedagogical supports that second language learners need which results in their inability to master the language or the academic content of the instruction that they receive.

There is also a very strong conservative and anti-immigrant political climate whose goal is to institutionalize the cultural, linguistic, and economic power and privileges that are currently enjoyed by middle class English speakers. The English Only movement is a prime example of this political movement. One effect of the English Only Movement has been to eliminate programs that seek to provide the linguistic and educational support needed by diverse student populations.

Laws such as Proposition 203 in Arizona and Proposition 227 in California limit the services that second language learners receive to one year of sheltered immersion with varying requirements for ELD, SDAIE, and ESL reading, writing, listening, speaking, and grammar along with content based instruction in English. This makes the mainstream teachers responsible for using educational approaches and methods that were formerly the responsibility of language specialists. The effect of these programs on second language learners is that they find themselves pushed into mainstream classes for which neither they nor the teachers are ready at a time when there is a strong standards and accountability movement.

It is unreasonable to expect that second language learners will succeed without the support they need from an educational system and culture that is designed for a homogeneous English speaking student population and a teacher training model that does not prepare teachers to teach them.

Also unreasonable is the expectation that language minority students will do well on high stakes, standardized tests. It is nothing less than penalizing the students for the system’s failure to educate them. Results that show progress in this area, particularly in California and Texas, are no more than smoke and mirrors. The scores referred to are a result of excluding various categories of low achieving students from taking the tests. In Texas, if all statistics are considered, thirty percent of all students and forty percent of minority students do not graduate from high school. So reports on the percentage of high school students passing the high school exit exams or the scores of elementary grade students on the SAT 9 or the TAAS in California and Texas conceal an attempt to influence average test scores by changing student grade promotion and placement procedures to exclude low achieving students from taking the tests.

The two primary problems related to the achievement of second language learners are the lack of qualified teachers and policy changes that have exacerbated the problems. This is where it is particularly important to understand the politics of education. There is an increasing achievement gap between native English speakers and second language learners after second grade. Policies need to be put in place to select and train teachers who have a desire and interest in working with language minority students. It does not serve American society as a whole to continue demanding more of second language learners without changing the conditions that have caused language minority student failure.

Mainstream teachers have to make an informed, genuine effort to teach second language learners the academic language, academic skills, and academic culture that they need to succeed in school. These abilities are not developed by merely exposing students to them; they must be taught. The teaching of language must become a part of instruction in content areas along with instruction in strategies and skills. Second language learners will feel more confident if they are taught the information that they will be tested on, and teachers will feel more confident and be more competent if they are given the training they need to meet the needs of the diverse students whose number in their classrooms will only increase.

Teachers will not only need to learn strategies to teach the linguistically different but also learn how to socialize these students to the academic culture of the school in a way that shows that they and their culture are valued. This is another point about the politics of teacher training and academic policies. A teaching force that is mostly white, middle class, and monolingual English needs to be prepared to teach students who are not only linguistically and culturally different but whose culture has a low status in the power structure of the society at large. Teachers, through introspection and training, must face the possibility that they have their own biases and prejudices about linguistically and culturally different groups. These biases and prejudices may be related to stereotypes of certain ethnic, racial or low income groups that categorize them as culturally or intellectually inferior. Another form of bias is the unquestioning acceptance of the dominant culture as superior.

If we can overcome the stumbling blocks in our culture, our educational system, and in ourselves, we will have that just society which is the ideal that our country is founded on.

A Paradigm Change in Education

Different Students - A Different Approach

English Language Learners and speakers of non-standard English dialects are struggling in our schools. I am proposing a change in the educational paradigm:

From a literature-based early childhood education/developmental model to an information-based, Second Language Acquisition Model Utilizing the Concepts of Top-Down, Bottom-up Processing and offering a New Perspective on Mainstreaming and Homogeneity

This approach is indifferent to many issues that are currently thought important in classroom dynamics, such as diversity; be it ethnic, cultural, linguistic, racial, or religious. There may be special concerns and concessions with regard to religious differences such as Muslims leaving early or not attending classes on Friday, but no dogma. However, I do think it will support the growth and development of student awareness to a degree that brings about cohesion, allows them to enter the wider society, and learn language and content at the same time. I am also proposing that this approach will work with any age group or group with disparate characteristics which is why I consider non-native speakers, English speakers of a nonstandard dialect, and those who are speech impaired to be homogeneous. I would love to claim that it will work with the hearing impaired, and I do, but I do not have any experience in this area.

It is not a new idea to use school as a way to assimilate, but I do not presume that everyone wants to be me, so assimilation to academic culture is all that matters. The content of instruction is necessarily information because it is not culturally saturated like a literature-based, top-down curriculum that almost guarantees a minimum of language and, therefore, content learning. Academic culture is a culture whose patterns of interaction and the meaning that is attached to them become the basis for an independently functioning environment.

America is a nation of Immigrants once again and we need to ensure a well educated generation capable of assuming the responsibilities of citizenship in our great nation. I consider this nothing less than a patriotic endeavor. I am not suggesting that we do away with any of the disciplines, but that we train teachers to teach the language a student needs to survive in an American academic culture without reference to culturally saturated disciplines such as literature study.

The approach is transformative and communicative with elements of counseling-learning, suggestopedia, and audiolingualism. The bottom up focus is on what I call imposing structure on discourse and text while developing oral language which includes training in auditory discrimination and articulation as well as longer discourse structures.

The method is based on a perspective cognitive, linguistic, and developmental-the mind learns to focus, the brain is trained, and then it is ready to guide social interaction and learning. Physiological issues such as eye movement and short term memory development are important as part of a bottom up approach. The academic content for any discipline is used as the database for studying language, and the initial instruction of each concept will be dealt with as language while that content is being accommodated and assimilated. At a later stage in the studying process, the content will be dealt with as content (reading/writing/speaking).

The design is bottom up and highly differentiated for the language instruction and top down and individual for the direct content instruction. Kinesthetics are important in training articulation; the rationale for which is that speakers learning English need to make severe adjustments in their speech mechanisms in order to accurately pronounce English sounds. The monitor (Krashen) will be highly trained and students will be taught how to focus on and monitor the monitor at specific times in the learning process and in expressive activities. Affect (Cummins) is strictly controlled by the culture of academics that permeates the physical location and all social interaction and nurtures through tender-loving-care built on a foundation of tough love.

Students will learn about every aspect of American life and culture that applies to their academic experience. Students personal educational goals are considered part of the curriculum, as is going to the financial aid office or the student union or having Mom help with the homework. The climate is equitable academic and is treated as an entity with its own time, space, and density.