Biased Practice and Consequences
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Anti-Racist Practice and Significances
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Assimilation happens when students work to eliminate any traces of their race or culture and instead adopt that of the dominant culture, in this case, Whiteness. The consequence of this is that students come to understand diversity as an issue that must be overcome in order to fit into American society.
Students may abandon their home culture and language in favor of White American culture and Standard English. This can cause problems of identity, family conflict, and loss of home language skills.
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Giving students agency within a classroom helps them to be active participants in their education. Allowing students to co-create, design, and research for the curriculum allows students to be involved and to offer their expertise in different areas. Giving agency to ML students lets them know that their language and cultures are valued in the school community and celebrated. This promotes a strong sense of identity, both linguistically and culturally.
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Lack of differentiation and scaffolding occurs when students are required to complete the same work and take the same standardized tests as their NS peers without being given appropriate support or scaffolded instruction.
Multilingual students are failed by teachers at a disproportionate rate as many assessments that claim to measure content knowledge are really measures of English language ability, which is inherently racist.15
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Differentiation, scaffolding and appropriate support for ML students allows students to receive instruction in content that is comprehensible to them upon which they can build linguistic and content-specific knowledge. It creates an environment where students can feel successful and comfortable, which will improve confidence in language ability.
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A colorblind mentality is when educators adopt and promote the idea that race is not an issue and that all students are the same. They usually do this with good intentions, but the consequences do not match the intent.
Students see themselves as compared to their White peers and their cultural, racial, and linguistic differences are not validated or even acknowledged. This can cause students to feel as though they need to abandon those non-White aspects of themselves to fit this colorblind mentality.
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Instead of “not seeing race”, teachers can use linguistic and cultural practices of students to create curriculum and drive instruction. By not only recognizing, but using, the aspects of identity that make multilingual, immigrant and refugee students who they are, students will be invested in learning and feel as though their identity is valued within their classroom. This will create a positive and welcoming environment where students will learn better.
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Many teachers adopt multiculturalism in lieu of promoting equity or anti-racist teaching. Again, there may not be malicious intent; however, when only certain aspects of a student’s racial or cultural background are discussed, it does not address issues of race, language and the effects on identity. Usually, educators focus their multicultural teaching around the positive and performative aspects of different cultures, like holidays, foods, music, and art. They might also designate a period of time to study another culture, for example, Black History Month, Indigenous People’s Day, etc.
The issue with this approach is that diversity is highlighted in comparison to the dominant White culture. Therefore, multilingual students might feel as though only certain aspects of their culture will be accepted or that they are being “othered” because aspects of their culture are seen in comparison against the White-dominant “norm”.
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In her rubric for redesigning teacher preparation courses to be transformative, Mae Chaplin suggests using materials that represent “otherness” as it relates to systems of oppression and to present multiculturalism as a way to enact social change. She explains that educators can use multiculturalism to be transformative by analyzing the content they are teaching, the texts they are reading and the work they are assigning in a lens that allows students to think critically about social problems and develop ways to solve them. Instead of shying away from issues of race, Chaplin advocates for addressing them head-on to see how systems of oppression, nationalism and the media can work to promote xenophobic beliefs.16
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In some cases, teachers will not allow students to speak their native languages at school. When students are penalized for speaking their native language it sends a message that their language is wrong and not valued within the academic setting. Students might not be able to communicate in English and will therefore face anxiety related to communication if they are never allowed to use their native language.
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Students who are able to communicate, read and write in their home language are more likely to be successful students of the English language. Many studies have proven that proficiency in home language contributes to overall academic success.
Teachers who adopt a “both/and”, instead of “either/or” mentality, when it comes to ML students will allow students to communicate, read and write in their home language while at school. Students will see that they can use both (sometimes more) languages in school and at home. They do not need to see home and school standards and language as separate entities and consequently feel as though they do not belong in either space. Teachers should see being ML as the asset that it is and allow it to happen freely in their classrooms.
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Leaving family members out of their child’s education because they may not know English proficiently and/or only communicating in times of discipline sends a message that the family is not valued or are unable to provide for their child’s academic needs. It eliminates the potential for important cultural connections and engagement which can help ML students be more successful in the classroom.
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“Funds of knowledge” is a concept presented by Moll, Amanti, Neff, and Gonzalez in which educators communicate with families and learn about their culture and home life in order to “select curriculum activities that promote the participation of students in learning, even making them the experts in some situations”.17
Developing strong family engagement helps students to see that their whole self is valued, not just the person they are at school. It helps students to understand that their race, language, culture, and backgrounds are valued and do not need to change in order to fit into the dominant, White culture. Seeing family members as supporters, co-teachers, and collaborators will help create a strong school community.
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In the United States, the majority of ML teachers are White and speak Standard English. According to work by Ruecker and Ives, Whiteness has been constructed as a property of native English teachers.18 White, NS teachers are seen as the ideal candidate to educate students on the English language. However, teacher education research studies have “identified the linguistic and cultural distance between White teachers and their diverse students as one of the main factors for the low academic achievement and high dropout rates of immigrant students”. 19
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Ideally, hiring practices in the United States would change to reflect the diversity of English language speakers. Representation of how different English language speakers can look and sound would help students to not feel as though they are aspiring to “Whiteness”.
White, NS teachers need to make sure that they recognize their privilege and explicitly point out the systemic racism that permeates the study of the English language. They should make sure that they do not present themselves as the goal, and instead work to empower students and celebrate the fact that they are multilingual.
Having teachers or other staff members who can speak other languages is beneficial especially to Newcomer students and their families. It can help make the transition into school less stressful. It also allows students the opportunity to demonstrate content knowledge without having to rely on English language skills to present what they know and understand. It also creates a contact person for family members who might have questions or concerns but does not have the English language ability to express them presently.
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Unfortunately, due to lack of training, many teachers hold low expectations of ML students. This is especially the case in newly arrived immigrant and refugee students who are at the most basic levels of English. Many teachers see these students as incapable of participating in the classroom setting therefore expectations of what these particular students are able to accomplish are kept at a bare minimum.
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ML students should be held to standards that fit with their ability level, and not their English language ability. Teachers can have high expectations of ML students, especially when the materials, instruction, and assessments are differentiated and scaffolded to ensure that ML students can exhibit content knowledge without the barrier of being proficient in English.
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