"I'm here today because I stand on the shoulders of giants who came before me, and I'm here today because the admissions committee took a chance and let in a Latino highschool dropout and gave me a chance to become a doctor."
- US Surgeon General Richard Carmona, UCSF School of Medicine, Class of 1979
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As a participant in the UT Outreach Program for the College of Natural Sciences, I would go to two elementary schools every Wednesday of the Spring 2006 semester to teach a science lesson to two fourth grade classes. I would teach one fourth grade class at Winn Elementary and another at Pecan Springs Elementary School. The fourth grade class that I taught at Winn Elementary happened to be a Spanish bilingual class, while the class I taught at Pecan Springs was not. Thus, I tried to make sociological observations this past semester about the different learning styles of both classrooms in order to perform a mini-assessment of the significance of bilingual education. The first time that I went to teach science lessons, I spoke in English to both classes. I noticed that my 4th grade students at Pecan Springs picked up the lesson quite readily and they did well on the quiz that I gave them at the end of class. However, my students at Winn Elementary (bilingual class) did not fair so well. I initially tried to teach the bilingual class in English because my teaching partner did not speak Spanish. However, after grading the bilingual class’ quizzes after the first lesson, it was clear that they were not picking up the information. Furthermore, the children were very reserved and quite in class (much too quite for a 4th grade class!) With my other class at Pecan Springs, I had so many eager volunteers to speak that I had to tell them to put their hands down and that I would call on them. However, my bilingual students were very shy and did not want to participate in class on the first day. Thus, the language barrier was keeping them from being the best students that they could be.
After this first lesson my teaching partner and I decided that the best thing to do would be for me to teach the bilingual children the lesson in Spanish. By simply switching the language of instruction the entire dynamics of the classroom changed. Sure enough, now the children were as eager to participate as my other class at Pecan Springs. The children became alive and were full of curiosity and anxious to learn the principles of the experiments every week. Not only were they more active in class, but their end-of-class quiz grades improved drastically. One thing that I thought was interesting was that the quizzes were always given in English, yet I would teach them the lesson in Spanish. Because they still achieved outstanding quiz grades, this illustrated to me that after the initial “learning” period, the children were easily able to switch languages to answer questions. At least their scores were a lot higher when they were taught in Spanish than when they were taught in English. In other words, as long as my students were taught in their dominant language (Spanish), then they were able to grasp the concepts and dominate the principles at a high enough level in order to switch over and confidently answer questions about the material in English.
Overall, my experience teaching both classes amazed me at the difference the language of instruction can make. Taking bilingual education away from our students would be wrong. Furthermore, I think all students should be enrolled in bilingual education. In today’s society with increasing globalization, knowing more than one language is almost necessary. Bilingual education should be praised as a pathway for molding our young students of today into effective, bilingual citizens that will be able to represent our nation internationally. For example, one current problem in the United States is the lack of Spanish speaking doctors. The problem is so bad that many doctors are recruited from Latin America to come work in the United States to serve and take care of the Spanish speaking population. Such costly efforts are not necessary! Instead, the government should support and fund bilingual education. In this way our country can prepare for the future and serving all of its citizens effectively. By securing bilingual education, our government would be ensuring that each student, no matter what language one spoke, would receive an excellent education that prepared him/her well for a productive and successful future and a life of continual learning. Indeed, the motto of Winn Elementary School rings loud and clear for bilingual education for it, “empower(s) all students to achieve excellence every day.”
- Natalie Cerda, University of Texas at Austin, College of Natural Sciences, Class of 2007