Welcome to Cultural Connections Lab. I'm your host Dr. Kelly Forbes. We are here to talk with educational professionals around the world to impact and influence the education system as we focus on cultural connections and the education of multi-league, world diverse students.
We're excited to have you join us today. We sincerely hope that you enjoy the show.
Are you ready to take your school district to new heights? Introducing EDGE Skills, the leading software as a service platform for Title III and multilingual support and education. At EDGE Skills we understand the importance of equitable education and empowering multilingual learners to thrive in today's classrooms.
Our cutting edge technology provides school districts across the nation with the tools they need to enhance language acquisition, foster inclusivity, and improve academic outcomes. With seamless implementation and comprehensive support, EDGE Skills ensures a smooth transition for your district, empowering educators to provide targeted instruction and personalized support.
So why wait? Unlock the potential of your school district today with EDGE Skills. Visit our website at edgeskillsllc.com or call us now at 405-879-9898 to schedule a demo. EDGE Skills, transforming education, one student at a time.
Welcome to another episode of Cultural Connections Lab with your host, myself, Dr. Kelly Forbes. I am so excited to be with you all today, as well as with our awesome co-host and from the sponsoring organization of EDGE Skills, Dr. Jeffrey Taylor Trimble.
I am excited to be with a huge pioneer in the field of bilingual and multilingual education, here to introduce our guest, Dr. Joel Gomez. Dr. Joel Gomez is the President and Chief Executive Officer for the Center for Applied Linguistics.
He holds an EDD and Higher Education Administration from the George Washington University. He received his Master's in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas of Austin, where he also completed doctoral work in applied linguistics and foreign language education studies.
He received a BA in liberal arts with Spanish and history as a focus from the University of Texas at Austin. With a proven management style that empowers and motivates, Dr. Gomez brings a wide range of experience in research, policy and practice and equity, language and education to the Center for Applied Linguistics from his work in higher education, the private, for-profit sector, and public education.
Dr. Gomez joined Cal from the George Washington University, where he held a joint appointment as a faculty member and chair of the Department of Education Leadership, and where he was also served as Associate Dean for Research from the Graduate School of Education and Human Development.
Dr. Gomez's areas of expertise include bilingual and bicultural education, higher education, national online information centers, and federal funding of education, research, and development.
He has also worked at the international level as an evaluator and technical assistance provider in countries such as India, Pakistan, Macedonia, Dominican Republic, among others.
Before George Washington University, Dr. Gomez served as Vice President for Computer and Clearinghouse Operations in a small, for-profit business, as well as Project Director on sponsored projects.
As Vice President, he assisted in competing for and supporting a variety of information clearinghouse sponsored projects, including the National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education, among others.
Dr. Gomez began his career in education by teaching at the middle school and elementary grades. In this capacity, he taught first, second, and sixth grades in two school districts in South Texas.
Following his elementary school teaching experience, Dr. Gomez taught undergraduate courses in the Department of Romance Languages at Pan American University, where he taught beginning Spanish courses for Spanish speakers, along with courses in Peninsula and Latin American literature in Spanish Applied Linguistics.
Dr. Guel Gomez has served as President and Treasurer of the National Association of Bilingual Education and is a founding member of the Mexican and American Solidarity Foundation, a multi-million entity funded by the government of Mexico.
Following his time at Pan American University, Dr. Gomez worked at the Texas Education Service Center, where he led various efforts, including serving as Director of Federal Programs in Title I, Migrant Education, and Bilingual Education.
And related to these efforts, he also served as Regional Director for a National Spanish Curriculum Development Project, focusing on language arts, social studies, science, math, and the fine arts.
Also as a Director of a Tri-State Education Technical Assistance Center and Director for a National Assessment and Curriculum Project in Bilingual Education. It is truly an honor and a pleasure to have you with us. Thank you so much for being here.
Dr. Guel Gomez, bienvenido.
Sí, señor. Muchas gracias. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for inviting me and I look forward to having a good, robust, and fun conversation.
I'm really excited. It's been a little bit surreal, if I'm being completely honest with you, to be able to meet you. Having my master's degree in bilingual education and TESOL, as well as another master's degree in leadership and administration, bringing that to the forefront of that master's degree.
And then just most recently completing my dissertation focusing on the role of cultural proficiency and what that plays. And so, so much of the work that you have been pioneering and leading, of course, along with other researchers and educators in the field.
But truly from the Center for Applied Linguistics and you yourself and taking that into my work, what I've been doing, it's just incredible to get to meet someone that I just see as a role model in my life.
And it's funny because you've never known me and I feel like I've known you for so long, but I'm glad that I finally had the honor and privilege to meet you.
Well, thank you. And it's also a pleasure to meet you and to get to know more about you. And congratulations on your doctorate.
So you're very young, so you probably just finished. So can you just tell me what was your dissertation topic? I'd like to know what that is because it's a good start for a conversation.
Yeah, definitely. So for my research, I was really focused on the role that cultural proficiency plays in supporting and providing an equitable education for all students and what that really looks like.
And so a lot of my research, well, the framework that I used was from Lindsay and Lindsay looking at the conceptual framework for culturally proficient practices and identifying what barriers there might be.
Also, what guiding principles there are, unhealthy and healthy practices, and then those five standards and the elements of what that looks like to institute cultural proficiency and culturally proficient practices in the education sector and even beyond.
And what that looks like and just how we sometimes behave and also in sometimes in ways that we create policy and also in ways that that impacts our pedagogical practice, the inclusivity of our students, their languages, their cultures, and who they are and their identities.
Wow, well said.
Thank you.
That's awesome. So, so having said that, one of my interests is always starting out with parents, you know, parents, parents, let's just say a parent, a mother, a father, a parent is a student is a kid's first teacher, they learn from the parent they learn from typically the mother,
the father, the caregiver. So, and I think that that is so important in all of the work we do, whether it's educating kids who speak only one language or kids that speak several languages or bilingual.
So in your case in your study, what what would you say could be like, you know, a few takeaways for parents based on your findings. So if you were going to talk with parents, what, what would you tell them about the result of your dissertation study that that would help them with the education of their children.
You know, I love that you asked that question. It's, it's definitely recognizing the assets that you bring the symptom knowledge that you bring, ensuring that I think the very first recommendation would be to just make sure that you are solid and understanding and who you are and proud of that
and that you allow yourself to celebrate that, because I feel like oftentimes that we can be put into different silos or we can be othered or we can be whatever that group is, whenever the reality is, is that we, we all are bringing assets to the table.
The beginning of this country was non English speaking in, you know, monolithic and in any way and so there's a whole diversity there that has really transformed and changed in the field of education.
So for parents, it would be to, and to just ensure in yourself and in your child that you are your child's first teacher.
You are bringing a wealth of knowledge and understanding and background and culture and tradition and like I said identity to that table which is going to help your student, your child, learn more than just language and more than just content but also about life.
My, my main direction I think would be trying to help leaders in the educational sector to come to an understanding to be able to try to not just understand but really go beyond that and conceptualize this and how do we create,
not just advocacy but allyship and interconnected cultural awareness responsiveness just connectivity overall in a way that benefits all of us, we're always better through our diversity, then we are not.
So, Dr. Gomez if I might interject and ask you to highlight just based on the limited experience and background I have with you I know you have a really amazing story about your family, and so you're asking about family if you don't mind touching on impact your
parents and specifically telling us about your grandmother and the impact that she had on you and your life growing up.
Sure. Like, like, like Kelly and I have been discussing children learn the first lessons from from the parents and caregivers and and the entire family in their community.
So they come to school already like with at least five years worth of of knowledge accumulation. And so the important thing is to have educators in providing formal education opportunities for these kids to have an open mind about what the kids are bringing just
as you're saying, except that they do have a lot to that already intersects with what happens in school.
So, so for example, you know Taylor asked me about, you know, my grandmother, well sure. My family typically mobile my family has been in what is now the United States, since the late 1600s around you know 1690 1700 in in the southwest for example
in what is now the, you know, the southwest depends where you're what your point of view is for you.
And, and so one of the things that I that occurred while I was growing up is I spent a lot of time with my grandmother because, you know, from the kind of like the World War Two era, and my father was in the armed forces and I was kind of like a World War Two baby, and I spent a lot of time with my grandmother.
So I learned a lot from her. There was a bunch of knowledge that you were talking about. And one of the things that occurred was that my grandmother would would, you know, I would beg her to tell me folktales every night.
Now back then, as my children's don't understand, like my grown up kids don't understand there was no network TV. There was a matter of fact no TV.
And where I'm from, there was no network radio either. And as a matter of fact, maybe there wasn't even electricity. And there was no, you know, running water either so it was, you know, it was, you know, even though I was born in this century but I was living kind of like in, in a previous century.
And so I would beg my grandmother to tell me a folktale, you know, in English we might say a fairy tale but there's a little bit of difference between a fairy tale and a folktale.
So every, every evening I would say hey, tell me a story. No, son, I'm very tired. No, you know, tell me a story. No, I'm very tired. But anyhow, I would always prevail and she would tell me.
So, so there were there were a large number, there was a large body of folktales she had access to the wonderful thing is that that again there was no, there were only battery powered big boxes that had a power that had an antenna in the roof for radios and they made those funny noises
before you could get a station. So it wasn't like my, my grandmother had learned the folktales by listening to folk, soap operas. There was no soap operas back then.
There was no radio stories either. So, where did you get those folktales? And well she learned them from one generation to another generation to another generation.
And, and the phenomena of folktales is worldwide. They exist all over. And of course in English we have Andersons for folktales for example. So I learned a lot.
And what was some of the, what was one of the important things? Well it wasn't that just they were entertaining.
They, they, they, they, the folktales encounter allowed me to engage with a mentor, an adult I trusted.
And it wasn't just entertaining. It was focusing my attention. It kept my, it disciplined my ability to, to listen. My ability to, to pay attention to themes, to characters, to character development.
There was all kinds of literary imagination. So one of the stories talked about, they say llanos de cristal y torres de marfil.
Just think about that, Kelly. Llanos, donde vive el príncipe? En el palacio, en los llanos de cristal y torres de marfil.
Wow, just think about that. You know, and you're two, two, three, four, five, and you're listening to your grandmother talk about this place that she's never seen that she can't explain what it is.
Llanos de cristal. Que es, abuela, que son los llanos de cristal? Hijo, pues no se, pero me imagino que ha de ser como algo de cristal.
Y torres de marfil, were they very tall? And how were they made out of marfil?
And so you learn all this, you imagine, just like you're saying, Taylor, you imagine all these things. So I come to school with all this knowledge.
And after one reporting period, I'm 30 out of 30.
I was ranked 30 academically out of 30 because I went to a private parochial school that was only taught in English. And so there was no room made or there was no opportunity for me to express what I knew at all.
And so that's kind of like one of the experiences that the experience that you're talking about, the body of knowledge, the community body of knowledge at the kids being school.
But the story doesn't end there.
I went on and majored, as you were saying, in Spanish and then did masters in Latin American studies and then went on and did doctoral work in applied linguistics in Spanish and English and language education.
And so in one of my one of my one of my classes, I was taking a Spanish class graduate course in all of the works of Cervantes except Quijote, you know, because Cervantes wrote a lot of not a lot, but he had several novels.
Yeah, right. And so one one of the one of the one of the novels that Cervantes novel that he wrote was Pedro de Urdemales, Pedro de Urdemales, Pedro full of trickery.
Yeah. And wow, I know that that was one of my folk tales that my grandmother recounted when I was growing up. I knew Pedro de Urdemales from from from my mother, my grandmother's lap.
And here I am learning about Pedro Urdemales in college and Cervantes in a graduate course at the University of Texas, one of the better universities.
I can't deny that.
Another shout out to you, Austin.
So you can see, you know, how how that what kids bring to school can be so important that it's great to have a formal school system be receptive and accepting of what kids and encouraging of what kids can contribute when they come to school.
Correct me if I'm wrong. Your grandmother was not formally educated. Is that correct?
Yeah, of course. My grandmother never had the opportunity to to attend public education at all.
So I remember you saying she's like one of the smartest people.
Oh, yeah. She was a matriarch.
She she she was not living in Spanish and she couldn't read in Spanish and she couldn't read in English.
And, you know, she even didn't do math very well or, you know, she didn't have the concept of like addition, multiplication, etc.
So once once I got a little bit of education, I got uppity. You know, I know more than your grandma.
So I would say so grandma, how do you know if all the chickens are in the chicken coop?
If you can't count them and you say, oh muchacho grosero.
She said, you think you know a lot.
You know, of course I know the chickens are.
How can I not know if the chickens are in the chicken coop?
I said, you know, the one with the red crest, the one with a broken beak, the one with the with a white wing, the one with a red leg, of course.
She says, so you use classification skills.
And that in itself is so important because when we come to school, it's kind of like we narrowed down the body of knowledge that we're taught.
So the only way to do math is to count one, two, three.
So I've never tried to count anything that's moving, you know, like chickens or dogs or cats or people.
And you say one, two, three, four, five. Oh, no. Did I count that already? One, two, three. Did I count that one, two, three?
I don't know. There's too many things. I can't really count them. I really don't know.
This is an estimate. But if you're using classification skills, you blink, you take a picture and you can see what's there and what's not there.
A skill elementary principle of need.
Going back to your questions to Kelly, you know, I think we still today have many parents who come to us with limited formal education.
How do you suggest with your experience with your grandmother that schools engage parents that unfortunately, to your point,
sometimes people look down on and think they don't know things when they really do. So how do schools get families with limited formal education involved in the system?
Right. Well, I think I think that we can explore several avenues.
You know, that was I forgot who was interviewing Homan. And so I thought I was interviewing Kelly.
I was starting to think it's turning into. So I was going to ask Kelly as a principal, what what what, you know, you had experience in dealing with parents.
And so based on like I was going to ask you, based on your on your dissertation study, what would you recommend to two principles about how to basically open open that metaphorical door
for parents to really be included and be inclusive within the formal education process?
And so, Taylor, I don't know if there's any silver bullet for that. I can recount also that after my experience in the parochial school, I moved on to my neighborhood school.
And it was mostly mostly a kid from the community and it was very community oriented.
The school was very community. In other words, the school was almost like a community center.
So if somebody was celebrating a wedding anniversary, they would go in and have their party, their dance, whatever in in the school setting.
And and there were all these rules that you have to sign all these papers and all that paperwork that you got to do now.
So so the school was the center for community life. So we needed uniforms for basketball.
All the parents, the grandparents, the cousins, Madrinos, Padrinas, the Madrinas, the Padrinos would all come together and have a tamalada. They would they would make tamales and then they would sell and then they would raise money for the uniforms.
So so there was a lot of of the activities going on between the community and the school. It wasn't like the school is for formal education processes that are going to be evaluated through standardized tests.
And the community is a place that incubates the kids and sends them to school, you know, and there are two separate places.
So so the idea of of trying to still make the the school setting a little bit more welcoming to to make making making the school a part of the light of the community life.
And even in saying that, I realize how that could be difficult because now, so, for example, we have a school district here that that can span from the middle of where the school is, can go 50 miles in each direction.
And there's other schools that that almost cover the entire state. So how do you how do you develop a community spirit?
And and so so those are some of the challenges. But, you know, there are solutions out there that are kind of interesting that we don't talk very much about.
You know, I kind of like the since I grew up in that environment where where my grandmother was very much accepted in school, teachers and school personnel would go out and say, I don't know, Paulita,
I like to see you, come on, let's have some coffee and, you know, and embrace and chat and how's the family?
And, you know, of course, we don't have sometimes those kind of opportunities in school right now because everything is very scripted and everything is very formal and there's no time and there's all kinds of things that need to be done.
I like the idea of exploring how what the benefit is of community based schools, you know, where where, you know, we accept society is very diverse.
We accept maybe maybe parents don't have the flexibility, the freedom, the economic means to do what my grandmother could, which was just to spend time in schools.
Maybe the parents need to be working, they need to be work during the day, they need to be working at night. So so how do we develop?
How do we encourage? How do we develop that feeling, that ownership, that partnership? I think it needs to have that partnership.
And how do we do that? Well, you know, there's I'm not an expert in community based schools. I know very little about it.
But what I've read is that it sounds like awesome in that they're kind of built to accommodate society as it is, not as it should be, not as it was.
And so you develop a school where a community school where maybe parents, kids can come in as early as six thirty in the morning.
Maybe kids can stay at the community school till nine o'clock at night. And this is not an ideal that I'm talking about.
There are schools that are that are out like that. And within your school, you have combined services, you combine health, you combine health activities, recreation activities, academic activities.
You have a library, you have maybe social workers that can help with can work with kids.
You have opportunities for kids to participate in extracurricular activities with mentors.
You go beyond just, you know, you try to provide job opportunities for the community as paraprofessionals that are part of the community that know the families, know the kids.
So that might be something that that might help, because right now it's still, you know, we haven't gotten away from from the what we talk about many times, which is the assembly line process.
You know, Kelly, you go to Kelly for this thing, you go to Taylor for something else, you go to for something else and every time you go to each person, you get stamped, stamped, stamped, stamped, stamped.
And it's it's it's all very process, but there's no sense of community. There's no empathy.
There's no ownership. It's just a process and and outcomes at the end of the year. And and we see where that's gotten us.
We're not we're not doing well. I mean, you know, all I have to do is, you know, if we got on a plane every day and we didn't know whether and the pilot was like our education system or the airline was run like our education system.
You know, you might not know whether you're going to land or not. You know that that that wouldn't be allowed.
And and so the tragic thing is that when kids go to school and we don't behave like it's high stakes for them, not for the teacher, not for the school district, not for the state, but it's high stakes for the student that if they don't have a positive learning experience.
In partnership with the community and the school that that's it. You know, the plane wrecked.
They're not going to have the opportunities that other kids have. So so so anyhow, so those kind of things are in related.
So the question is, you know, what would you what would I recommend in terms of how does how to address the partnership between family and schools?
So that's one I know I probably can talk a lot about it, but but just one thing, though. So suppose you don't have a community school. What do you do?
I mean, what do you really do? Well, you know, there's things like, you know, we have community reps that help create relationships with community.
Maybe we need more of them. Maybe maybe we need we need maybe we can have a community school, but maybe the school districts need to change their bus route and schedule.
What's going on to the community? Right. Exactly.
You've done a lot of that in some of your schools, haven't you?
Totally kind of going out and meeting them where they are. Yeah. Yeah.
Trying to for sure. There's so much to unpack there. And I love this. I love this conversation because I it's personal to me in the aspect whenever you're talking about your your experiences with your grandmother, for example, or your your your mother, your family.
My grandparents are my best friends in the entire world. They're currently 90 years old. Both of them September 91 from my grandfather in December 91 from my grandmother.
I'm just so thankful to still be learning from them and having my my two best friends with me. Yeah. So I can definitely relate to that feeling of hearing a folk tale or or the fairy tale even are just the stories of the past and what that what that did for me and what that meant for me.
I also consider that my grandmother used to always talk to her grandmother and say their prayers in German and read the Bible in German.
And, and as my grandmother, who I affect I was tongue tied when I was younger and so I said a granny it was Kiki and so the grandpa was Papa so Kiki and Papa.
And Kiki therefore will tell me these stories about how she would always be able to talk to her grandmother in German, which whenever you're speaking your your first language typically there's a different emotional connection to that as well so then that's a whole different layer to what
this feeling is apart from just the communication side that is oral written whatever communication but also thinking about what does that feel like whenever you have that emotional connection.
Well the education system because it was only in English therefore took away that part. Yeah. And so then she lost the ability to have those conversations in German with her grandmother.
Right.
That connects so much to what I feel like is missing and the understanding of what we could be doing in our education system as well, because there is not just the communication side but that emotional side right.
So, understanding and assuming that we do have students that are coming with these funds of knowledge and all of these great experiences, and going back to the question that was that was posed.
There is no silver bullet and it's like you said but the number one thing that I could consider is that I have to recognize that I don't know anything.
And socrates said all I know is that I know nothing. And the more that you start to learn more, the more you start to recognize how much you just don't know, which is the great, the great journey of continuous learning and just being open right.
And it takes the, the leader in a school has to be willing to say, a, all right, I'm going to go ahead and get through accreditation process and policies and do what we're supposed to do, etc. But that's not the point of school.
That's a very managerial side right so I want to come into this as a servant leader. I also want to come at this wherever I listen and I learned from you, where I, where I sit back and I do this with you, not for you.
I don't have to fix anyone or do anything. We have a game to play, and we're going to win at that game we got standards to teach. Sure, we can do that the school is way more than just that, because every single person that you're educating is someone's baby, someone's child
is a small human that is coming in, just like you did 30 out of 30 you said but yet you were already on a college level with with abstract works from donkey.
And so, considering that you also have to think about what does that look like especially whenever you have some schools that can be community schools and you have other schools that are going to be so huge that it's not necessary like that.
What does, and I've been I'm not an expert in this either but in my research and reading and I consider the role of collective impact in our education system but also beyond.
So, two things to consider with this one.
One is that in the preschool districts the people that work in the district don't necessarily live in the district, whenever all the students that go to that school live in the district right so there's automatically one disconnect.
Then on the other side if we're doing just school like you had mentioned before this factory model of it. Right.
And then an example of an educator and a leader in a school district that has been in for two years and then gone, but never everyone else is still there. Yeah. So, who are the leaders in the community who stay on our in that community and how are they involved in such
a way in this relationship reciprocated, where it doesn't matter if I am necessarily here or not because we still have that collective impact as a whole within our community, because we have identified leaders that that don't go anywhere.
This is their life this is their family, but it's going to be the reality is that you're going to have someone who's going to grow in education, get this position and that position and then this district on the other side of the country calls them and they go.
And I applaud them in doing so and helping and spreading their knowledge as well. Yeah. But what does that mean of what you left. Are you taking everything with you.
Or do you already have it set up where you do have that collective impact. But I think that the main thing. And really what I learned a lot from my research I mean overall is, is, it's really, it's listening, of course, but it has to start with me.
I have to be open minded. I have to be willing. I have to be able to listen and I have to have that desire to truly be of service, as opposed to be someone who just appoints an assignment a standard, a faculty meeting, or whatever else that that is and looks like.
And we, the conversation centers around kind of articulation between parents, families and school.
And, and, and literally one of my findings.
And going, expanding that concentric circle beyond that. There's a total siloing of schools and community. Okay, so I'm not talking about parents now.
What about the mayor?
What about the city council?
What about the civic organizations? What about the Chamber of Commerce?
What about the businesses? They all have a stake in education.
Nada.
Nothing, you know.
And so why, why, why don't we not silo these institutions. They are part of the community. They are part of the education process. They are stakeholders.
Well schools are producing them specifically.
But I have to say kind of cynically, but maybe sometimes we don't want to hear from the community.
Yeah, it's keeping away.
There are moments.
There are moments, right. But, but in an ideal world I think, I think that there needs to be, you know, kind of communication means between schools like superintendent and I grew up in a community where,
where the savvy superintendents were part of the civic organization. I call them civic organizations. You know, the Kiwanis Club, you know, for example, and the Rotary Club.
And, and so the successful superintendents were very savvy. They went out and they were members of these organizations.
They went out and participated in social events with them and some of them even learned how to play golf and went out and played golf with them, you know.
And I think that those, those are some of the things that we need to humanize education and accept it. It's a community wide effort.
It's not just the school board and it's not just the superintendent and the principals. So how do we, how do we do that? And should we just, you know, things don't happen if you don't allocate time and money to them.
Maybe we, just like we have a parent liaison, maybe we need to have a community liaison. And maybe we need to encourage members from the banking community, the real estate community, the grocery stores,
the chamber of commerce to come to school once in a while, you know, not, not just you're not going to door when you need $50 for a donation.
And not just for the assembly. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Right. So I think that those are some of the things that would probably work.
And, you know, we're not talking just about the individual diverse, you know, members of a diverse community. This would work basically for all kids. Yeah.
And we will be right back.
Are you ready to take your K through 12 multilingual programs to new heights? Look no further than the experts at Kelly B's Consulting.
We're not just consultants, we're partners in education with a passion for empowering students and enriching your classrooms.
At Kelly B's Consulting, we understand the unique cultural and linguistic needs of your diverse student population.
Our team of experienced educators will work alongside you, tailoring strategies that transform your multilingual programs.
Don't miss out on this opportunity. Visit www.kellyb'sconsultingllc.com today to learn more and schedule your consultation.
Kelly B's Consulting, shaping the future of K through 12 multilingual education across the nation.
Your success is our commitment. Contact us now and let's start building a brighter tomorrow together.
And now back to the show.
I do have a question for both of you guys. I think maybe switches conversation a little bit away from community and family.
You, Kelly, talked about your grandmother and great great great grandmother speaking German in the family.
You know, growing up in the United States going to school, I was not exposed to language to any major extent other than, you know, having to take a language class in high school.
And then spent so much time traveling, had wonderful opportunity to volunteer in multiple countries, but really struck in India with my time six months in India.
On the side of the road, buying a banana, the guy would speak five languages, you know, and that really started made me question why, why are we so English only monolingual focused here in the United States?
So my question is based on both of your experiences and some of your experience internationally. Dr. Guman is what have you learned about language acquisition of multiple languages that can be applied here within the United States?
How can we do a better job? How can schools do a better job of recognizing the importance of bilingualism, multilingualism, and kind of with the mission of one of main mission center applied linguistics promoting dual language education.
What can schools do to help support that goal even if they might not have, you know, there are a lot of rural schools that don't necessarily have great mix of diverse languages that to draw upon.
What can schools do here in the United States to do a better job of promoting important goal of being bilingual and multilingual?
Learning is not just an academic activity.
It's a social political activity also.
And therefore, schools, school values are reflection of society's values and political values. And of course, political and social values kind of interplay, you know, they play with one another, you know.
Politics are part of your society, you know. And I think that we got to demonstrate value for what we do in school.
If there's a value, if there's a stated value, an accepted value, a desired value, a rewarded value, then this is America.
If there's a reward, if there's a rewarded value, and I'll give you an example of a rewarded value, the seal of biliberacy. That's a rewarded value.
Parents know that it's very difficult getting into the University of Oklahoma.
And more difficult, University of Texas. You probably looked at it as an accepted trait.
If their child has in their transcripts that they have the seal of biliberacy, they may have a better chance of being admitted into William & Mary here in Virginia, for example, or the University of Virginia, or Harvard, or wherever.
So I think that placing a value, a reward on a skill, a knowledge, a substance of knowledge, can help us get there.
But if there's not a value that's a rewardable value, then it's probably very, we will continue to be doing what we're doing right now.
And I think that right now, maybe 20% of kids in public schools are in world language classes. And that's pretty pathetic.
In the other side of the ocean, it can be as high as 90%. And so we cannot demonstrate a need, we got to demonstrate a value.
And it's happening with dual language programs. One of the issues we face with dual language programs is that many times the parents of the English speaker in a dual language program are stronger advocates of dual language programs
than the parents of the kid that doesn't have English as a home language. So what I'm saying, Taylor, is that what do we do? I think we need to work on providing more value.
So for example, if we start giving credit to kids that come to school with a language other than English and make it easy for them to take a test and be given credit for it, maybe that's creating a value.
Maybe having an honor given in the elementary grades. So I'm not even going into what we can do to have universities prepare teachers to be better at teaching world languages.
And I'm not going into state policies. I'm not going into the actual school district themselves. I think we invest a lot in world language education in this country.
Whenever I say, whenever I talk about how we invest in world language, people many times disagree with me. They're all, we don't spend that much on world language. I said, sure, we do.
First of all, states typically have either have one person or one person who's a world language, a state world language person. I know there's some.
Some of them are world language, dual language, and ESL. But at the state level, there's already funding for a state person. There's funding for teachers.
So how many school districts are in this country? I don't know. I forget the number. Maybe what, 10,000 or add another zero to it.
And if you have. Yeah. Yeah. There are 13,000 public school districts. So 13,000. And you say there's there's at least maybe 10 teachers in per school average could be more depending on the size.
So there's 13,000 times 10. That's 130,000. Well, that's 13 school districts. So, sure. Yeah. That's teachers. That's 130,000 teachers.
And think how much salary and benefits that you pay and think of all of the books that you have to buy.
We're spending close to a billion or more on world language, but we're not getting the results. So we need to just maybe catch up with where we are contemporarily with having digital resources for world language education.
Look at how we're teaching world languages. We don't need to go to Salamanca.
Taylor to learn Spanish.
Maybe we just need to become more familiar with our own neighborhoods and value that community by having our kids visit that part of your community and have home visits with those parents and reward those fans.
So, so again, if the solution were easy, we wouldn't have a problem right now. But but it really hasn't become better in the past. You know, 10 years, 20 years.
I just read this week that a university in West Virginia is canceling all of their world language programs.
They know, not sure which university, but I won't say which university, but but but there's a university with the gist is, hey, we just don't don't don't don't have the funding and we, we want to be more focused with the resources we have and concentrate in areas that we feel have a higher priority than
than were language and mystic. So, so there needs to have a lot of a lot of conversations and in the early community, the early discussion on communities to extend beyond the school district, I think that we need to involve the entire community at the national level
at determining what priorities are, because there are surveys that show that companies are going begging for folks that are bilingual to work with them.
Absolutely. And also paying a higher premium to work with them. I mean, my daughter's an example. She's bilingual Spanish in English and, you know, she was smart enough to develop those skills at the university level.
And as a result, she got a good job with the State Department and as a result of that, she was able to get a very fantastic job also with with Amazon. And so bilingualism pays.
It does. Yeah, I always say I've never been to a job interview and they said, you know, we'd love to hire you, but you're bilingual.
That's never, that's never ever happened. No, I think that, you know, I heard someone say one time this was years ago, I was at a conference and it's always stuck with me but there was a gentleman who was from China and he said that in the United States, it's the hardest place to teach
English as an additional language. And, and you think for a minute, why would that be? Whenever you consider like you were saying on the other side of the ocean, people are learning multiple languages therefore have a closer relationship and connection to the benefits
of being multilingual and even language acquisition and things of that nature versus the United States and kind of considering the fact of the impact of the English as a language that is economically benefiting the United States based on relationship with even other countries
so whenever that becomes a very dominant language, then that kind of takes over, unfortunately, and so you were talking about putting value on it. I think that like, on one, again on one side there's that value that, I guess society has deemed that English is going to be that mode of communication
because it breaks the economy right without understanding about. There are so many other languages that could still be utilized but it made sense to me why it would be so difficult here and not as difficult in, in other countries, but then that value right and so what about, so the value that
we've been talking about has been extrinsic up to this point the civil by literacy, you're going to get a scholarship, you might get more money in your job, etc. But what about that intrinsic motivation. And so whenever I was learning Spanish, for example, I was, I was 15 years old, I had an amazing
teacher and you're at Atkins, and I just fell in love with her and I thought that she was an awesome teacher, and I thought I really like this content. And then through that though what ended up happening is that I wanted to know more people, I wanted to know more culture I wanted to
know more things and that was my intrinsic motivation wanting to be able to learn a language to be able because I knew that I needed to know that language to be able to to know these other cultures and traditions and other people in a way that I wanted to know no one was telling me I didn't
know anyone else in my family speak Spanish. I'm the only one so it was something that was very just personal for for me, and that process. Yeah, I think the intrinsic part is, is, is at the heart of education.
The National Academy of Sciences has a study called how people learn. And, and the report focuses on motivation, and it focuses on it talks on it touches on it focuses on but it focuses on a lot of stuff, but it does talk about motivation, it talks about
intrinsic motivation talks about intrinsic motivation, and how to develop what it looks like, and how, how important it is in education, and and how it also talks about the function of knowledge accepting what students can contribute, providing students
choice in how they, they, they approach a course in a project and assignment. So intrinsic motivation is is very much a part of that contributes to to higher academic achievement and, and it is not happening, but.
So, so that's that's kind of like that part.
I attended a session once there read an article or a TED talk you know one of those things.
And, and the question centered around. Why is the US more competitive. What makes the US more competitive than other countries, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, England, what makes the US more competitive.
And so people were saying, you know, it's, you know, ability, because we have more scientists, because we have more engineers, because, you know, we have all the all the great science infrastructure.
And the answer was no. What makes the US more competitive. It's, it's an ability, it's, it's the ability of the education system to focus on producing creative people.
And so, you know, we think of other countries that have a national form of education that's a little bit more template it than it is in the United States, a methodology of pedagogy that is that that is more template it this is the way you do things.
It's more hierarchical the teacher knows the students don't. It's more rote it's more memorization it's, you need to know this before you, you can graduate.
And so the sad thing is that this country is moving away from producing from focusing on creativity in the schools and moving in the direction of what the other countries are doing. And that's, that involves languages also, you know.
And intrinsically, you know, I learned this from my grandmother, I love, I have a love for literature, for the literary arts, because folktales are an oral expression of literary arts, just again just think the Cervantes experience, Pedro de Urdemales, you know.
I feel sad. I feel sad. Sometimes I really feel sad and frustrated that I can't share with my monolingual English speakers.
But the joy that's out there to get from reading the works of South American poetesses, for example, Guadalajara Varguero, for example, and there's several Nobel Prize winners in literature in South America.
And, you know, Nobel Prize winners, no one knows about them, you know. And their stuff is enjoyable. It's just like, I think it was Juana de Varguero who wrote a poem called The Fig Tree.
And the fig tree is, oh my gosh, it is just so, oh geez, so great. So the storyline for the fig tree is that there's a finca, a farm, and it's owned by a woman. And the woman strolls down through her orchard, her trees, you know, peach trees, apple trees, and the fig tree.
And she comes to the fig tree and looks at the fig tree, and she contemplates and she says to the fig tree, you know, of all of the trees in my orchard, you're the most beautiful and the one that produces the best fruit.
And then the breeze comes by and asks the fig tree, so how was your day? She said, oh, it was great. You know, the owner of the farm came by and said that I am the most beautiful tree in her orchard, you know.
And think about what it means to, you know, the idea of diversity and equity and all kinds of stuff. And my monolingual English speaking friends can't read that.
It's terrible. I think both of your examples are bringing up points that's important to remember when it comes to people of your intellects versus the masses. So you guys had your own intrinsic motivation and interests that propelled you to learn the things that you've learned.
You're learning Spanish, whereas I think I am more intrinsically motivated by situational necessity. So you know, I don't know that you know, I failed Spanish in high school.
I didn't really care that much about it. The only thing I cared about, I remember reading in my Spanish textbook about the Pan American Highway, going all the way from the United States down to Panama.
I'm an inventor. I was like, I want to travel that highway. And so I hitchhiked later on, all the way from Oklahoma to Panama and back. And that's where I learned my Spanish and it was the necessity I needed to communicate.
And so I don't know how we do this, but I consider myself more like the masses. We're not going to find a lot of people like you guys that are just intrinsically motivated to learn this stuff.
How do we create, and I don't know what the answer is, how do we create that intrinsic necessity? I had to learn it. How do we push people out into experiences that are not all that comfortable where they have to learn language?
Because we know it's important. We know it's valuable. But so many of us, like myself, won't learn it unless they're forced to learn it. How do we create those situations where students have to learn it?
Well, yeah, like I said, if we had the answer to that, we wouldn't have the problem we have now. But again, let's develop content-based second language arts curriculum.
You know, you just don't go in so that this entire year we're going to learn Pohor Empada and the present tense. Who in the world spends one year speaking in the present tense, for example?
I know that's an exaggeration. I'm not delidling world language teachers. But our narrative about society hasn't kept up with the demographics.
In Texas, only about 27% of the kids are white English speakers. Think about that.
Yeah, let that sink in.
And that's according to the state records, you know. But if we think about it in society, the Dallas Cowboys, the University of Texas, John Wayne Cowboys, Austin, Texas, you know.
But that narrative hasn't kept up with the demographics. And so when we try to teach a world language, like it's still 1940 or 1950, and we're not dealing with the real demographics, then we're out of sync.
And so that's what I'm saying. How about if we develop, you know, second language arts curriculum that's content-based so that you're not learning about bullfights, you know, and piñatas, you know.
That you're aligning the content in your world language in science and math and social studies with your courses in social science and content so that then one reinforces the other.
And I've lived, I've had that experience. When I was in Texas that many years ago, there was a very enlightened director for bilingual ed that aligned, that had aligned the standards at the state level, the English language arts standards with the Spanish language arts standards, for example, with the content standards.
And they were aligned, and it was wonderful. It could be done. But we really don't have those kind of efforts that are going on right now.
I think that that needs to be an effort that goes on right now, because going back to the point that you were talking about is that you had situational need for learning a language, acquiring language.
There was some intrinsic motivation on our end, maybe over here. But I also think about just having recently, back in June, having participated in the National Convening for English Learner Civil Rights, and hearing somebody that was from, and I may misspeak, but I'm 99% sure I'm not from Oregon, saying that in Oregon that they're changing even their requirements for their language arts assessment that can be in any language, I guess, within a group of languages that are available to them.
But the point is, is that they can take their language arts assessment in that language because they're assessing the standard and not the English language, which I think is a great step in the direction of going back to what you had mentioned that I also experienced, and I'm supporting schools and developing and implementing
dual language programs, is that sometimes you do have the native English speaking families promoting it more than the native Spanish, Mandarin, French, etc. speaking families. And I think a lot of that comes back to, one, there are requirements that are already set in English only, which therefore makes the population that is speaking a language other than English worry that I'm not going to have success for my child.
So therefore, let's, you know, leave our heritage, our culture and our language, so we can have success here whenever that's a fault of the education system that needs to be and can be corrected, right?
But then you also have, and I was talking just yesterday with Dr. Jose Viana about this, working in school districts, and it's very rare to ever find cabinet level leadership that is reflective of language and of culture and of tradition of those being served in the schools.
And I feel like if there were,
there's just a great opportunity for the education system to have leadership that looks and sounds like those being served and can have this type of more broader open minded way of thinking to be culturally proficient, the best that they can to listen and to learn and to also create avenues where assessments
don't have to be in one language or the other because we want that whole child to come. And if we could be more aware of what those barriers are and break those down, I think it would therefore lead into answering, not the silver bullet again, but lead into answering your question of how do we make it more accessible for all students?
Well, if we can get rid of the limitations of English only, imagine the world and the wealth of knowledge that could be learned and acquired through language, culture, and content that goes way beyond the borders of just this country itself and even beyond our neighborhoods.
Yep. So, so again, the siloing, the siloing of languages, for example, English, Spanish, Chinese, the further siloing of languages, American English, British English, standardized,
standardized, Calarion Spanish, Argentine Spanish, we speak the real Spanish, you don't speak the real Spanish, British English is better than American English, and we create silos, but we don't focus on the Venn diagram, on the intersects.
Kids come to school without any academic formal knowledge, Joel Gomez's grandmother did speak English and didn't speak, you know, we have to, the kid is five years old and we have to start from scratch.
So we focus on all your academic language.
We have to start from scratch.
Joel Gomez knew how to explain just from dealing with her grandmother and so does every kid that doesn't speak English that goes to school.
And every kid that goes to school already know English speakers also, they know how to explain, they know how to describe, they know how to narrate, they know how to evaluate, they know how to persuade.
Every two year old knows how to persuade, you know, no I don't want that, it's mine, you know.
No, I don't want yogurt, I want cereal, you know.
I mean, kids come to school with language abilities like narration.
Let me tell you what I did with Johnny at, you know, in recess today or what better than I did, you know, that's narration, let me tell you what I did, you know.
Let me tell you how to do it, you know, let me tell you what I want.
Educators say we have to start from scratch because they don't know academic language. What in the world is description, narration, evaluation, explanation skills, you know, and why don't we build on them and why do we think that we have to start that again when kids already know that in English and are trying to learn Spanish.
Yeah, very limited view. When you're talking about reminds me of my oldest daughter had to take WIDA language proficiency exam or mother's Farsi speaker.
And so she goes to school, kindergarten has to take the WIDA test and they ask her to they tell her the story and ask her to explain what happened and she said, that story is boring, I'm going to tell you a better story. And she told a whole separate story but they gave her a bad score because it wasn't on topic.
Right. Yeah, yeah, right, right. So that's those are some of the things that unfortunately are happens when we're dealing with, with, with, you know, language instruction or even instructing kids in a dual language program.
We just neglect the fact that what we call academic English really is just part of language communication skills that people learn outside of school also, you know, like I said, multiple languages, multiple languages, you know, persuasion, you know, oh, kids know.
So how do we, how do we tap into that body of knowledge and focus it on it on in a topic dealing with with social studies in the map with democracy, for example, talk about democracy, talk about civil rights, because we, we, you know, we, we, the kid can already already has that capacity just
let them know that they have it and tap into it. In the, in the last, in the last podcast, there was a great conversation that we also had and I mentioned this and I just want to mention it again, because I feel like it really relates to what we're talking about the best level of education that I ever received
from my students. Whenever I taught as a newcomer teacher, I'm 60, eighth grade, seven countries, eight languages represented and our producer, Mike Overhaul, we always joke because I always feel like I have to bring them up in every episode, but they just come up because I remember that very first class and those students and how much they taught me.
And so I feel like overall if we would take more time to learn from our students because we as the adults, sure we we have our experiences our backgrounds and we, you know, our knowledge that we're trying to, you know, help and support and serve, etc.
But if you really want to know, listen to your students, listen, listen to them learn, learn about them, and I want to do a quick shout out because this was in my dissertation from the Center for Applied Linguistics is an article by Beatriz Arias.
And that just came out and it's titled turning toward asset based pedagogies. And so listeners if you want to read a great article I recommend you looking that up again again it's turning toward asset based pedagogies by Beatriz Arias, and it, it really does speak to what we're talking about
right now. And there's there's more even beyond that because that could be a dissertation itself, but I just really want to highlight the importance again of learning from our students, and the more that we can take our own knowledge, right, and do a little, you know, flip
and reverse on this and take our background knowledge and assume that the student is now the teacher imagine how much more we could learn, and how much more that would embrace communities and families and cultures and traditions and identities.
Yeah, totally. Yep, asset based education and, and that's very central to one of the topics that we deal with in in the US in educating kids that have a language other than English at home, and the idea of giving them the ability to speak a second language,
and striving towards native language ability.
Well, you know, the idea of a native language, you know, if Taylor's home language is English that's your native language because it's inherent in the word native.
I can never I can never join you in your growing up experiences. Taylor is an English speaker because, you know, my, my ability to speak in English is connected to my historical existence.
I grew up with certain experiences that relate to English and Spanish. You grew up with historical experiences dealing with mostly monolingual experiences.
So, when I describe something when I express something. It's going to tap, not into my full linguistic repertoire as we say now, but it's going to tap into my full life experiences repertoire right and and some so native English speakers may say, Oh, that's a funny way of expressing
that. I never thought of that, you know, and so therefore, it makes me a non native English speaker and that's bad because you're almost a native English speaker but you know there's something a little bit different still, you know,
we create too many standards yours, but you'll never be too native English speakers.
We're both native English speakers and we speak very differently. So, so, so, so, you know, this is one of my topics, you know, that I'll just speak about Spanish speakers in this country.
So we get it from both sides.
Almost a native English speaker what oh you only spoke up, you grew up speaking only Spanish. Oh, you're almost that's very good. You're almost a native speaker of English.
I go to Mexico City or I go to Buenos Aires or Quito.
And your Spanish is really good.
You say yours. I studied Spanish at the graduate level it's doctoral level but but it's not that that fight you know you're a little bit different.
It's in Spanish that was gringos.
So, so, so the fact is the shout out for me is that we value English and we value Spanish.
But we hardly ever tell a kid. It's so fantastic to be bilingual.
It's a superpower. It's a superpower. Yes, exactly. But we hardly ever value the bilingual part we value the monolingual part.
You speak good English, you speak excellent Spanish.
But, but we don't say you're you're you're the Venn diagram. You connect one language body of knowledge and culture with another.
You're the translator, you're the articulator, you're you're the part that the that that creates new things, fusion food, fusion literature that creates new things for the future.
And, and, and, and we don't have a great equivalent of WIDA for bilingualism.
Maybe, you know, see the by literacy gets us there.
And we don't have, you know, we so we give a kid to grade for for for their, their world language scores for English.
But, but it's important to realize and for teachers and educators and parents to realize that heck being bilingual gives us tremendous advantages because I can bridge both worlds, and I can come up with stuff that you can't think of as a monolingual.
Absolutely. Yeah, 1000%. And then even forms different ways of thinking. Right.
And so it's so terrible for for my Spanish speaking colleagues from other countries to come and say, you know, your your your Spanish is not the goods and it's even worse when when there's programs in high school that says, we don't want to have Spanish speakers, because their
Spanish is not, you know, okay, and it, it interferes with kids that are trying to learn good Spanish, formal Spanish.
Yeah. So those are those are things also that that that, you know, if kids wake up in the morning wanting to go to school that can make a kid not want to go to school.
Exactly. If anyone's listening and you are bilingual multilingual, you do have a superpower and embrace it and lead into it and share it and accept it and love it and and educators need to accept it and embrace it also exactly reward it.
Yeah.
Because that's that's that's that's the way it is.
Dr Gomez, I feel like I could really sit here all day in chat with you and I just want to say thank you so much for the time that you have spent with us and for sharing so many wonderful topics and really good points of view with all of us today is there anything
that you would like to leave us with. Well, I had a list of about 15 things we could talk about, we got to talk about two things.
We'll have to be doing part two and three and four. I would love to invite you for a part two.
Maybe next time I will assume the role of a rock on tour.
And tell you one of my folk tales. Yeah, and and and and leave you hanging by saying like I've done in some workshops.
So we're getting to the end of this folk tale.
So, if I hadn't kept my Spanish, you wouldn't know what happened to Lisa.
Did Lisa find the prince did that Lisa did the prince drink the chocolate that was made by the different suitors that were going to marry him.
What happened? What happened? Did they live happily ever after?
If I hadn't continue with my Spanish ability, you would know and I'm not going to tell you. Tell me, tell me, tell me.
That's right. That's what makes all the good TV shows to keep on having one series after another.
I keep wanting to come back for more. Just promise you'll tell us next time about Louisa.
I will tell you about Lisa. Yes. Yeah. Well, in all honesty and with all due respect, I'm so thankful that I was able to to even learn more from you today
and just gather insight from you. And so thank you. Thank you so much for for for this conversation.
Thank you for all of your service in the field of education, bilingual and multilingual education.
And so I just wish you all the best. And again, thank you for helping educate myself as well as all of the listeners and sharing these connections to culture and talking about how important all of this truly, truly is.
Also a big thank you to co-host Dr. Jeffrey Taylor Trimble. So glad that you were with us today. And also to our producer, Mike Overholt.
Listeners, thank you so much. I hope that you have a fantastic rest of your day and thank you for making some cultural connections with us.
We love you and talk to you soon. Adios. Adios.
Thank you for joining us today. Don't forget to like, follow and subscribe. Adios.
Thank you.