Most teachers of English language learners are not fluently bilingual,
and many don't receive formal professional development in teaching
emergent bilingual students.
Thus, they aren't always adequately prepared to meet the challenges of
working with this growing demographic of K-12 students in US classrooms.
So teachers' greatest resources, argues Steven Alvarez, are the students
themselves, with both a facility in their home language and ties to
their home communities. After-school programs focused on English
learners, Alvarez suggests, offer a way for parents, teachers, and
volunteers to come together to navigate school systems and the English
language, share stories, and work to develop facility in reading and
writing across languages.
Community Literacies en Confianza: Learning from Bilingual After-School
Programs directly addresses teachers who are learning about emergent
bilingual students. Alvarez offers ideas for approaching, engaging, and
partnering with students' communities to design culturally sustaining
pedagogies that productively use the literacy abilities students bring
to schools. Drawing on the NCTE Position Paper on the Role of English
Teachers in Educating English Language Learners (ELLs), Alvarez
highlights the importance of building mutual trust, or confianza,
between students, schools, and communities, both inside and outside of
the classroom. Our students have as much to teach us as we have to teach
them, as long as we're open to their experiences and stories as we learn
and grow together.
