Extended Comments - “Aria” by Richard Rodriguez

The Teaching Billinguals episodes 1,2, and 5 along with Aria by Richard Rodriguez discuss the importance of speaking different languages in a classroom. It would not only help students better communticate to other people by being bilingual, but also improve students', whose first language is not english, learning experiences by showing that we are making an effort to give them comfort and understanding them. Teacher must learn how to include these student into their lessons rather than excluding them and forcing them to convert to only English in the classroom. While reading Matt Belleavoine's blog post I have to appreciate him for using current examples and agree that bilingual students do bring valueable insite towards different cultures with students who have grown up in the same environment for most of their lives. Although it can be challenging to teachers who are not fluent in the bilingual students' native language, there are ways to incorperate it while teaching by simply asking the students the translation like in Matt's example. This makes the students and teachers work together along with feeling united. Students will also be more engaged in not only learning different languages and course material, but having a safe and comfortable environment to express themselves in.

Comments: Learning a different language is difficult with the differences in tone of voice and other anomolies. Breaking the language barrier also takes time and practice outside of a school classroom. Ensuring that all students feel connected and are learning about eachother instead of being a burden is a major hurdle teachers have to over come. There should not be a "public" and "private" language, but instead an acceptance and celebration of multilingual students for both educators and students. Hyperlink