For my challenge of multilingual families and the home / school language divide I chose to interview two colleagues who have experience with working with multilingual families. Ms. Roberta is a home visitor who goes into families homes once a week. I thought her perspective on building relationships with multilingual families and bridging the communication barriers she faces would give a nice perspective. Ms. Britnye is a classroom teacher who is also a parent whose children are being raised bilingual. Her husband is from Honduras and Ms. Britnye is learning Spanish as well. I thought her perspective as a classroom teacher as well as a parent would contribute greatly to my challenge.
While both of my interviewees are bilingual I have struggled with the thought that their perspective may be different than an educator who is not bilingual. Is this challenge different for a monolingual educator? While Ms. Britnye is still learning Spanish and she herself does not feel she is bilingual, I have seen her hold basic conversations with families and believe her to be fluent in Spanish more than she may believe.
In the area that my interviewees work there has been an increase of Burmese families, so this may address my above concern since neither is familiar with Burmese.
So far the interview process has been relaxed and I find myself very comfortable with choosing questions and expanding on them to clarify points. Both of the educators that I contacted above were excited that I was working on this project and have asked that I share any insights I have gained as it may help them with working with families from diverse cultures.
In my conversations with both educators I have found that they both believe that while they have built wonderful relationships with their families and believe that their program is also doing a wonderful job they still feel that their is a major home/school language divide. Does this home / school language divide impact the quality of services that these families receive compared to the quality of services that the English speaking families receive?
There are several questions still to answer and I look forward to completing this project.
The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity ~ George Orwell
While both of my interviewees are bilingual I have struggled with the thought that their perspective may be different than an educator who is not bilingual. Is this challenge different for a monolingual educator? While Ms. Britnye is still learning Spanish and she herself does not feel she is bilingual, I have seen her hold basic conversations with families and believe her to be fluent in Spanish more than she may believe.
In the area that my interviewees work there has been an increase of Burmese families, so this may address my above concern since neither is familiar with Burmese.
So far the interview process has been relaxed and I find myself very comfortable with choosing questions and expanding on them to clarify points. Both of the educators that I contacted above were excited that I was working on this project and have asked that I share any insights I have gained as it may help them with working with families from diverse cultures.
In my conversations with both educators I have found that they both believe that while they have built wonderful relationships with their families and believe that their program is also doing a wonderful job they still feel that their is a major home/school language divide. Does this home / school language divide impact the quality of services that these families receive compared to the quality of services that the English speaking families receive?
There are several questions still to answer and I look forward to completing this project.
The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity ~ George Orwell
