Samantha Perez

California State University Dominguez Hills

TED 407

20 March 2019
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Through personal experiences in my K-12 education as well as in my higher education I

have become adamant about allowing and encouraging multilingualism in all aspects of my

future classroom. I have recognized that through banning native languages, whether it is

intentional or not, it effects students in their academic and social experience of school. Some

benefits of promoting multilingualism, in my future classroom, will allow students to have

access to material that they are familiar with, practice their home language, and not conform to

the dominate language and material presented in many school curriculums.

My earliest memory of understanding what it was to be bilingual was in my kitchen. I

was in 5th grade. My mom was brushing my hair before heading out to school. I began to read an

article, that was written in Spanish, off of a newspaper. My mom was in shock! She asked how I

read the article. I remember looking at her thinking what do you mean how did I do that? Was I

not supposed to? I have spoken Spanish my whole life. I then went to school and asked some

friends if they were able to read in Spanish almost all of them said no. I was never taught how to

read in Spanish or went to a bilingual school. Speaking Spanish is a part of me I did not have to

learn or practice it.

I grew up in a dominant Latino community, if I were to use Spanglish, speak in Spanish

then switch to English it was completely understood. If I had to translate for my grandmother

after school or on the phone it was a job that many of my friends took on. My parents were born

in Mexico but grew up in the United States. I vividly remember them speaking to me in both

English and Spanish. I was exposed to both languages equally in the languages spoken at home,

through music, and in friendships. This exposure changed when I went to school in a different

city.
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I moved to the city of Lakewood when I was in 5th grade. It was a 10 to 12-minute drive

from my hometown, off of Lakewood Blvd., but was completely different. My school was

different, the students were different, and I felt completely out of place. This move was

traumatic, and it slowly erased a part of me. For the longest I did not speak Spanish in my new

schools. I only spoke Spanish when visiting my grandparents. I was not exposed to small, but

important, parts of my days such as my grandpa hugging and kissing me on the cheek saying

“Esos ojos mios” as he walked in the door from work. I no longer heard my grandmother sighing

“Samantha Catalina de Cena” when I would ask hundreds of questions while she was cooking.

My favorite part of my youth was getting home from school and watching my grandma get

dinner and the house in order while she played the AM radio. It played my favorite artist Vicente

Fernandez, Javier Solis, and Juan Gabriel. I would sing with her and do my homework or help

with the babies to the sound of music throughout the house. Leaving that environment

completely was very challenging. After moving I was not really exposed to any music or spoken

to in Spanish as much.

Then there were small events in my middle school that made me feel as if I was wrong

for speaking Spanish. Apparently making small notes in Spanish was not allowed and it was so

wrong that it caused my teacher to humiliate me in front of my classmates. I made a simple note

in algebra class it went something along the lines “dos por tres” and I remember something along

the lines using “dividido”. My grandmother did as much homework with my cousins, sister and I

before our parents picked us up to go home. That is how I learned to do math. It was never an

issue to use Spanish to do classwork until 6th grade at my new school. My teacher was going

down each row to stamp our homework in our spiral notebooks and of course out of everything

possible she pointed out a couple of words in Spanish. She picked up my notebook and said, “I
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don’t remember writing in Spanish on the projector”, “where is this from”, “if you do not

understand what I am saying we need to find you help”. The point is the whole class was

listening to what she was saying. I recognized that what she did was wrong. Grosjean (2016),

says that allowing students to write and speak with whatever resources they have and not wait

until they have the “legitimate” ones to develop a voice affects students. In my case I was

humiliated because she took it out of proportion. It was as if she told all my teachers because

they all had something to say that day. I was perfectly fine as far as grade level. All I did was

make a note in Spanish.

I use this event in my life to reflect the differences in my schools. I remember being in

elementary school in my hometown and my teachers asking us, their students, for help in

translating for parents or when one of our Spanish speaking classmates needed help. Grosjean

(2016) says this is translanguaging. Translanguaging in the classroom functions well when the

children and the teacher share the same minority language (Grosjean, 2016). Although my

teacher was obviously not Mexicana or Latina she tried to learn our language and recognize

small sayings or words and that made me feel comfortable. There was a time, in 4th grade, when

we had a new classmate that came from Mexico. Our teacher asked him to introduce himself and

we were all so excited to translate to him and for her. We were talking over each other and

asking him all sorts of questions. She asked us how to say “last name” in Spanish and we all

froze for a second. We did not know. Until a classmate yelled out ¡apellido! It was a sense of

community. We, our language and culture, belonged at our school. Our teachers understood.

It is events like these in my life that make me very honored to speak and conserve my

first language. Until this day I question why there was such a difference in the two communities I

attended school in. I question how and why my teachers had different views on allowing
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bilingualism in their classrooms. Being bilingual has never affected me. It did not slow me down

as a student, it did not affect my employment status, or affect being able to communicate with

people who speak other languages. For a second it made me think I was not as important as

speaking English. Garcia and Kleifgen (2010), says that banning the native languages of students

teaches them to devalue it and puts the English language in a sole position of legitimacy. I can

recognize times where I have been a huge help in my different workplaces because I was able to

communicate in Spanish. The feeling of being bilingual and helping someone out because of it is

such a powerful feeling. It makes me feel stronger and proud.

For this reason, I am adamant about promoting multilingualism in my classroom. My

experiences in my education encourage me to allow students to use their languages in any aspect

of their education. I would love to use creatively use multilingualism methods that can be used in

their coursework and my classroom environment. I want them to feel the same sense of

community I felt in my elementary school. This goes for the way I manage my classroom, being

creative with curriculum, communication with parents, and the culture that is built into the

school.