thanx Mike. I meet with Luis tomorrow...I'll ask him about this connection...also, the odd thing with my particular pilot study is that the participant is (a) my daughter, and (b) anglo, middle class, first language English. Yet, she had the same door slammed when prop 203 was passed. the oppressive environment created for all the children in the so-called structured english immersion (SEI) classroom inhibited her use of Spanish to help with her English reading/writing. Consequently, the teacher recommended that she be removed altogether from the Spanish language classroom because her english was suffering. I didn't comply. but my daughter rated this her worst year in school - at least half the time, the part of the day spent in the SEI classroom. I wish I could have had access to the children whose first language was spanish (many were from mexico) and the one whose first language was Russian (apparently the teacher spoke Russian to him while not speaking Spanish to th!
e other
children as needed). that's another issue!!
But, I draw the inference from this pilot that if my own daughter felt oppressed then likely the other children who had not 'mastered' (for lack of a better word) english yet, must have felt far worse. without a parent who felt comfortable telling the school 'no!', i do not know what happened with them. I cannot prove this inference in this instance, but so far i do not think it unfair to imply.
I'll keep you posted and thank you for the encouragement...i feel excited about doing this kind of research and hope that i can reach the place where i feel i have a better command of the field...Karen
Mike Cole <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu> wrote:
Hurray!!! There is more to the story, Karen. I am sure that Esteban
(el lurker superior de XMCA!) and Luis would be glad to tell you about
fascinating next steps that might help guide you. I think this was
among the most important studies of the INSTITUTIONAL causes of failure
of ESL kids ever done. The only way to get it the respect it deserves is
to picket it up, add your own experience and power to it, and hit the
oppressive reality of ESL kids' and their teachers' institutionally
created problems over the head with it. And the more publically you do it,.
the better for all.
Estaban? Are you there to help?
mike
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Aug 01 2003 - 01:00:08 PDT