Image from Manage Engine
XQ: What role can schools play in celebrating and preserving Hispanic/Latinx heritage?
- Incorporating Hispanic/Latinx history and culture into the curriculum (history, government/politics, literature, the arts)
- Supporting bilingual education
- Hosting culture events for the student body and families
- Funding and promoting Hispanic/Latinx extracurricular activities and groups
- Providing resources and services for immigrant students and families
Image from the StoryCorps Archive
American Federation of Teachers: What’s the deal with bilingual education?
- Researchers from Johns Hopkins University “studied data from Spanish-speaking students in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley” and “found that bilingual education can help promote bilingualism without significantly sacrificing English proficiency”
- Main reasons for opposition...
- People misconstrue language acquisition as a binary: you can be proficient in either your native language or another language
- Xenophobia: Nativist sentiments can contribute to a fear that learning another language would detract from the national identity