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Bilingual Is My Superpower

Apr 04, 202541 min
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Episode description

In 2018, Producer Jeanne Montalvo reported on the choices her parents made when raising her in a bilingual household. Five years later, Jeanne’s two children both command the Spanish language. But the oldest, Martin, was 2.5 years old at the start of the pandemic and never learned English. This came with a series of challenges as he entered the school system in New York. One daycare even suggested Martin was on the spectrum. In this follow up episode, Latino USA takes a deep dive into bilingual education history as Jeanne looks for solidarity in the ghosts of New York City’s past.

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This episode originally aired in 2023.

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Transcript

Speaker 1

Dear Latino USA listener, President Donald Trump has signed an executive order making English the official language of the United States for the first time in almost two hundred and fifty years. The order says it quote recognizes and celebrates the long tradition of multi lingual American citizens who have learned English and passed it to their children for generations

to come. More than sixty million people in the United States speak a language other than English at home, which Spanish being that other language for over forty million residents of this country. At Latino USA, where I and many members of our staff speak Spanish at home, we celebrate bilingualism and we're proud to pass our mother language on to our children. Which is why, today, dear listener, we want to bring you a very fitting story that celebrates

the preservation of language and culture. Here's a story called bilingual Is My Superpower. It originally aired in twenty twenty three. I am in the studio with a very special guest who I haven't seen in.

Speaker 2

A long time.

Speaker 3

Hello, Hi, Maria.

Speaker 2

I'm Mardine. It's so good to see you.

Speaker 1

S see yose To Norie. Our very special guest is the son of our producer Gini.

Speaker 2

Montalvo say, let the t shirt, baby.

Speaker 1

I think I need to know what your t shirt says, because it's really cool.

Speaker 2

I'll read it for you. It says I'm bilingual. What's your superpower?

Speaker 3

I speak to languagees Spanish and English.

Speaker 1

It is kind of like a superpower, don't you think?

Speaker 4

Yes?

Speaker 1

And guess what I'm by lingual too, Bud. So it was back in twenty eighteen, Genie, that we did a podcast that really looked at bilingualism and your family.

Speaker 2

Yes, you would have heard my son babbling at the time. Martine was like seven months at that point. Last so cute.

Speaker 1

And we talked about you and your brother, and we talked about my kids, your kids, and we were talking about language. Right, what is our first language when we introduced another language? And so all right, here we are five years later and I'm having full blown conversations with your son in English and in Spanish. It's like adorable. Which language do you like better? English or Spanish?

Speaker 3

Spanish? Perro Quierro, I said, English is Spanish?

Speaker 2

Losos? I think that's great. And guess what you can't? Yes? And our decision. Last time you and I spoke, Maria was one hundred percent Spanish at home, and so Martin did, in fact, when in Spanish first, like me and your kids and so many others borget espano.

Speaker 3

Ismas bonito qu yota spico.

Speaker 1

So the good news is he got the Spanish since he was little, and that really is so fabulous. But what else has happened in these past several years?

Speaker 2

We moved out of Queens to the Burbs and Martin has a little sister, Syamrandi. Oh my god, I love that. So is she speaking Spanish too correct? Here? She is reading bluna? Oh? Yes, So we felt like this was a big parenting win. They got the Spanish check But plot twist from Martin. Something happened in March of twenty twenty, right the pandemic, Yeah, exactly. Never in our wildest dreams we have imagined that Martine would get stuck at home with us with nothing but a window to a street

in Queen's. Martin was in a Spanish immersion program at that time, so, along with zooms and FaceTime with the abuelos, for all he knew then at two and a half, the world operated in Spanish. And well, because of that, it meant Martin actually never learned English.

Speaker 1

From Futuro Media and pr X. It's Latino Usa. I'm marieno Hosa today. Bilingual is my superpower. GINI is going to pick up the story from here.

Speaker 2

Is normal. My husband at n Esto and I have always spoken Spanish to each other. He immigrated from Peru in two thousand and nine, and I'm the child of Dominican parents, so we just knew we would speak Spanish to our kids. But nothing could have prepared us for what our decision would mean amongst a pandemic and lockdown. And We're not the only ones. So many children that were forced to stay home for the past three years

were impacted by the loss of in person instruction. Kids who were making progress and programs for English Language learners as it's called in New York were now suddenly thrust into virtual learning, back with their home language with little to no support. In our case, moving to the urbs with a newborn and a three year old brought its own challenges, but in twenty twenty one, we decided it

was time to get Mutting out of the house. He needed to socialize with other children, and at this point he was three and a half, so kindergarten was on the horizon. I personally never intended for Muchding to need bilingual education or any English support. I was more prepared for the day I would have to force him to keep speaking Spanish. It was very important to me, a child of immigrants with a bilingual upbringing, that he learned

English before kindergarten. I went through the public school system in the South. I didn't take any tests, I didn't have bilingual education, but I knew English by the time I got to kindergarten because of where we lived. So I just wanted him to be solid before he got there. So we did what people have been doing for decades. We put him in daycare in English. Two weeks after starting full time, we got called to a meeting. You guys, educators have The director began to share their concern Medding

repeats with the staff. Says, and we don't see that in his age, he's acting out, he's hitting people, and that he hums. Though that's my husband at NISTO incredibly surprised that humming is an issue because we're both musicians and that for my being at least the humming seemed to be a product of that. But the humming in conjunction with the other behavior, the pushing, the hitting, the repetition. The staff was suggesting that maybe he was on the spectrum all the time.

Speaker 5

We'll do as well as pictorum.

Speaker 2

Matting has always had issues with change. He takes longer to adapt to things. In this case, we moved, he had a new sister, and he's in a new daycare where he doesn't speak the language. We had explicitly told this daycare when we first approached the school that Martin did not speak English. They assured us that they were equipped to handle bilingual children. And look, we would be

naive to say that Matting is perfect. He can be a handful, but we knew in our hearts Martin wasn't on the spectrum because before the pandemic he had been in a Spanish immersion school and did fine. At the same time, we've never been opposed to having our son evaluated. We were in constant communication with our pediatricians, but things pediatrician and queens even told us he'd been receiving calls like this almost weekly because of the return to in

person care. He said, imagine, it's like you dropped your kid in a daycare in China, it's like that drastic of a change. He's been home for an entire year. He does not know how to socialize. He's not seen another kid at his age for an entire year. None of the other kids were bilingual, and honestly, no two toddlers are going to react the same way to things. So the daycare solution was to put us on a behavioral plan, which was a plan to put specific techniques

in place and monitor progress. Yet they didn't give us time to show progress because we were traveling for the bulk of the time frame. Even though they knew that, they said they could no longer work with us after a certain date. In essence, they wanted a three year old to show progress in one week. We knew this wouldn't work. Thus it just became clear they didn't want

to help him and they didn't want us there. We still had a full year and a half before we entered the public school system, which at that point I believed had systems in place to help him. But what were we supposed to do until then? When my thing was born, I didn't know that this journey would be so hard, But as I've found with many parenting decisions. It would require a lot of introspection. Am I doing the right thing for my child? Is this happening because

he can't speak English? Is my decision going to affect him negatively? Is there actually something wrong with him and maybe two languages are holding him back? And so I at least left the meeting feeling defeated, stressed, and worried about what was next. I couldn't believe this was twenty twenty one and we were still in multicultural New York. This wasn't supposed to happen here. New York is supposed to be different. So I started to look for answers

for me. That meant looking through history. And it all started when I heard an episode of The Bowery Boys podcast on the New Yorrekan migration.

Speaker 6

Ominously, the New York State Chamber of Commerce took aim at Puerto Rican children, commissioning intelligence tests, then determining that Puerto Rican children were sub normal and would quote deteriorate standards already so seriously impaired by mass immigration of the lowest levels of populations of many nations unquote.

Speaker 2

What struck me was that these children were given tests in a language they could barely speak, and because they didn't perform well on the tests, they were labeled subnormal. Here I was, nearly a century later, being told there was something wrong with our child simply because of a language barrier, and he was on the verge of being

kicked out because of it. The study and its ripple effects I learned thereafter became my security blanket, and so I continued deeper into Spanish speaking New York and bilingual education history, hoping that somewhere in that history was the answer to how to properly teach your kiddle language.

Speaker 7

My parents came from Puerto Rico, going into the nineteen thirties. They married in nineteen thirty five, and I was born the year after.

Speaker 2

Virginia Sanchez Corole is Professor Emerita at the Department of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College, Virginia entered the school system a couple of years after the study was published.

Speaker 7

We all spoke Spanish. The school was the place where you were suddenly introduced to English.

Speaker 2

There was validation. Even almost one hundred years ago, people were dropping their kids in school to learn English. So we had done nothing wrong as parents back then and today these communities easily thrived and functioned fully in Spanish. If you know a bit about the history of New York's you'll know that the city has been home to waves of immigration from all over the globe, German, Irish, Italian,

Eastern European, you name it. They all passed through Ellis Island, and in the late nineteen twenties, through the Great Depression, the city also received Spanish speaking residents, namely from Puerto Rico. So receiving people who speak different languages is nothing new for the city, and yet at the same time, psychological tests were accepted tools for improving the educational process.

Speaker 7

IQ tests were geared too an American ideal, and for kids that were coming from different parts of the world, they did not recognize elements of American culture that might appear on the test.

Speaker 2

The tests were biased because you could score incorrectly on a question for something you may have never seen in your life, and you may also not even speak the language.

Speaker 7

You have to look at the atmosphere and the ambiance which these people are operating. You have to factor that into whatever tests are being given to students and schools.

Speaker 5

Intelligence tests have been used in very negative ways against groups of people.

Speaker 2

Doctor Ada Nevades Latore is Associate professor and Chair of the Curriculum and Teaching Division at Fortum's Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on multi lingual education to.

Speaker 5

Keep them oppressed, to deny opportunities to grow and to develop, and to really enact the promise of being individuals that can contribute to this society.

Speaker 2

The US enacted a law to limit immigration in those early decades, but Puerto Ricans were US citizens, and so this country was going to find another way to make their case for limiting entry to this group of people, like this study that caught my attention on the Bowery Boys podcast. Nineteen thirty five, a Special Committee on Immigration and Naturalization published its reaction and results to a study

done on Puerto Rican children from the previous year. It gave IQ test to over two hundred children at one specific school in Spanish Harlem. The researchers intended to give a non verbal test since they knew language would be a factor, but for some one hundred children, they use the verbal test because it was allegedly more accurate.

Speaker 5

Any verbal tests or even non verbal tests given to non speakers of the language of a test becomes a language test, not an intelligence test. If students do not understand what's being asked for them to answer, then you're not testing intelligence. What you're testing is language proficiency, because before they can do the task, they have to understand the language.

Speaker 2

The IQ tests were an appendix and a larger study dealing with immigration control. The committee in the nineteen thirties was looking to prove that Puerto Rico was not sending its best, they were bringing crime. It reminded me a bit of the rhetoric we've been hearing today. I started to zoom out a bit and reflect on what all this meant. These tests, like I said, were designed to

set the students up for failure. As a parent, it's disappointing to hear that whatever agenda these people had, they decided the best way to make their case was through children, children who want to learn and grow. And never did anything to these people except exist exist in Spanish. Despite the obvious issues with the study itself, the final blanket statement was that these Spanish speaking students were inferior, they were below their uspers, and they should not be allowed

entry to the United States. And like we heard earlier, they don't want them to quote to tear or eight standards already impaired by mass immigration. Here's Virginia again.

Speaker 7

The adjustment issues became prominent in the school system because the school system had to find a way to deal with this influx of new students.

Speaker 2

When Virginia entered the school system in the early forties, there was no bilingual education. Then we knew we had to assimilate.

Speaker 7

It was kind of a hidden way of telling you that the language and the culture that you were born into and that the language as you spoke was inferior. You had to get rid of it. That was the only way that you were going to succeed.

Speaker 2

The kids who couldn't assimilate, or didn't test well on the IQ test, or simply didn't do well in the classroom because of language.

Speaker 7

Teachers began to recommend that these kids who had a language issue would be put into remediation classes.

Speaker 2

Virginia told me remediation classes for what we would consider special education today. While special education classes were a needed resource for many children, it also became a funnel point for children deemed problematic or simply those who needed better English instruction, and the teacher suggested it because it was easier because it was the only thing they knew to do. Doctor Latore, again, they do.

Speaker 5

Not understand acquisition of a language other than English. They take hold of the first thing or the explanation that is closest to them, rather than continue to investigate.

Speaker 2

And so we've arrived at this idea that instead of considering language or why a child may be having difficulty, we jump to the conclusion that a child needs special education, rather than try to meet this child where they are and dig to find out what is the issue at hand. This sadly starts to sound familiar with what we were going through with Martin. He wasn't like this before, you know, and then he didn't have him until he started coming here.

So I don't really know what to tell you. Our original daycare called us on the Monday after our meeting to pick up Martin because they couldn't take care of him that day. We don't know what we talk from about. After it became clear that they were not a good fit for us, we decided to pull Martin from the program. Here we are the day after Arnesta and I went in and gave the director a piece of our mind. Instead of this being a devastating moment, we were confident.

We had spoken to his doctors and educational psychologists. The consensus was, in fact, that Martin was acting out because he couldn't communicate with the other children, and this behavior was how he communicated. It wasn't right, but he didn't know otherwise. We knew that Martin's behavior wasn't a reflection of his ability to learn or his intelligence. Intelligence isn't based on the ability to speak English. Kind of like Sophia Ergara said in Modern Family.

Speaker 1

You know how frustrating it is to have to translate everything in my head before I say it?

Speaker 2

Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish? Deciding to pull Martin from his daycare was still scary, but it was the only option for us. We no longer felt comfortable taking our son there, But here we were. We still needed childcare and Martin still needed to learn English. Was there a light at the end of the tunnel for us and the kids? In my history? Lesson? Coming up on that?

Speaker 1

You know us say, how does New York's history help Genie navigate the school system? As Martine embraces English as a new language, stay with us not Bayes, Hey, We're back, and Before the Break, producer Genie Montalbo explained the unexpected challenges her son Martine faced as a Spanish speaking child entering school in New York City. To better navigate the system, Genie went on a trip through history and was surprised by what she found.

Speaker 2

She's going to pick up the story from here. I don't know about the rest of you bilingual folks, but for me, it's very weird to speak Spanish or English to specific people. Why I can't speak English to my husband and I can't speak Spanish to my brother, and so the same thing now happens with my kids. It's weird for me to speak in anything but Spanish to them and English.

Speaker 3

No perun school is in English, lacasa is.

Speaker 2

So it was no surprise to me the day that I sat down to try to help Martin with his homework that he had some strong feelings.

Speaker 8

No an englis simbri alo espanol aki.

Speaker 2

He's become mega ultraspecific about when and where we speak either language, almost like the one parent, one language technique to teach your child the language. Martin now associates Spanish with home and English with school. He's even at the extreme that he won't let us watch movies in English. I grew up on English language content. You couldn't change the language on your streaming device. I have had to

rewatch every single movie and Disney movie in Spanish. All I want to do is seeing Tomorrow from Annie Mamma Ryana Yera, but I've had to relearn it all in Spanish. This process has been hard for me as well, because at some point in my life the English took over and became more dominant. I actively chose Spanish on a daily basis. Anyone who's flipped languages knows this can be exhausting, but I do it because I want to keep my own fluency and because I want my kids to be solid.

Like I said, I'm preparing myself for that day they say to me, I don't want to speak Spanish because I'm sure that day will come, and if it does, it's okay. But until then this will all be good for me and us. But things vocabulary in Spanish is often better than mine. That day we were at the kitchen table. He told me English was only for school, so I asked him how he was going to learn to read.

Speaker 8

In las cuela, No aki solo no ipa ig cordita solon in ascueila.

Speaker 2

Mom and dad and sister, we're not allowed to speak English at home, and I guess that's how we'll operate until we decide otherwise. I had a lot of mom guilt surrounding dropping my thing into the deep end of the pool. It made everything that was going on in the daycare worse because on some level it felt like we had chosen that for him, and that's why he was having a hard time. My only consolation was that a century of people I was learning about had done

exactly that, and they were all functioning adults. It made me feel less alone in this journey. But how did we get there? What happened after that infamous study In the thirties, I thought English was taught separately, like some of the transitional bilingual ED classes today. That model was something I learned was used a lot in the fifties and the sixties. The thinking was if you taught Spanish speaking students English first, then you could move them into the classroom. Doctor Latore, Again.

Speaker 5

When you do that, students are not learning about science, mass social studies.

Speaker 2

How again are we acquiring language when you separate it from classroom content. Even the language you use at home is different when you use it at school, kind of like how Martin compartmentalized language spoken at home versus school. And so in the past, when those kids returned to the classroom because now they supposedly knew English, they.

Speaker 5

Were quiet again. Why because they had not learned in that language classroom.

Speaker 2

And because the teachers weren't actually trained in how language develops.

Speaker 5

Many teachers saw, but wait a second. This child knows English because he can communicate perfectly with me, but he cannot learn math. He's behind in science, he cannot write a composition in English language arts. So therefore there must be something wrong with their brain.

Speaker 2

Even kids who speak one language can have issues in the classroom. Academic language is tough. I lost one of the top spots in the spelling Bee in fourth grade because of the word desecrete. Who uses that in a sentence every day?

Speaker 5

Just because they were thrown into an English speaking classroom, that doesn't mean that on their own, those students were being supported to learn English.

Speaker 2

And we know for a fact that many of.

Speaker 5

Those students decided to leave school. These students were intelligent and say, wait a second, I'm wasting my time in a classroom that number one, I do not understand. Number two, the teacher doesn't seem to care about me to spend time to learn who I am, where I come from, and what my learning needs are. Why am in here if I can be out there supporting my family with a job.

Speaker 2

This was all happening at a time when the Puerto Rican population in New York City had increased by twelve times, with the press claiming these students allegedly continue to overcrowd and that their delinquents who are deteriorating the public school system. In certain outlets, it was labeled the Puerto Rican problem Virginia.

Speaker 7

Again, this idea of a Puerto Rican problem took into account the fact that kids were scoring poorly on school exams, but there were no resources to help.

Speaker 2

But during this decade, when the tensions with Puerto Ricans in the city were at its height, is where I start to see some changes in advocacy start to pop up. The Board of Education felt it was time to assess what was in place. Since there wasn't a proper way to test intelligence in non English speakers, so schools couldn't create or improve programs, and so they started something called the Puerto Rican Study in nineteen fifty three. It was

a major investigation. The study developed techniques, teaching materials, detailed adding positions. Even the language used in this study is vastly different from the rhetoric that was being spread in the media. Here's a quote from the director of the study, doctor J. K. Morrison, read by our senior production manager, Mike Sargent. We see them not.

Speaker 9

As problems, not as statistics, but as tiny individuals, each in his own way, working towards adjustment in a culture new and strange.

Speaker 2

Here it was the bones of bilingual education mapped out. When the study was released in nineteen fifty nine. It cost one million dollars in the nineteen fifties, that's like twelve million today. Surely this all led to the basis of what we have today. Except all this work never really went anywhere. And I knew that because the New York Board of Education would be sued by a Puerto

Rican youth organization in the seventies. The funny thing when you learn about history is you know how it ends, no matter how many times you watch Titanic in my case, thirteen the ship will always sink. So when I eventually went to the municipal building downtown to review all these materials, I was a little shocked. How do you spend so much money on developing something to help a group of

people and then don't put it into practice? And the answer to that brings us back to understanding our surroundings so called Puerto Rican problem, to quote the study's next steps. A study, however, good never solves problems. At best, it finds solutions that will work. To put the proposals into effective operation in all schools is a major undertaking the problem.

Segregation still ruled the schools. When I looked at the bigger picture, the surroundings, the way the Puerto Rican children were taught, and the study, it all started to make sense, especially as I learned how changes were and are implemented within the school system. One is money to implement the new materials, the other is proper staffing to teach it. There needs to be assessments to keep the schools honest, and finally, the parents they we need to be involved.

If any of those pieces aren't working, then the system won't work. And this still goes for today, I found myself feeling naive and saddened to finally understand that as long as the structural racism and oppression of a people exist, that will permeate into the school system. Because the answer to why that study wasn't fully put into place is because of how the vast majority of the city treated

a specific group of people. Whoever makes the call decides how money and programs are implemented or if they're even used at all, kind of like what's happening across the country in Florida and Texas. The people in charge decide they don't want African American studies and diversity, equity and inclusion programs, so they ban them because of their own agenda. But in New York, to me anyway, it always felt like this multicultural bubble. We never expected to deal with

someone questioning our bilingualism here. So once I fully understood why the study was wasn't put into place, I wanted to know how we got from the study to a lawsuit and how that affected the schools because we do have bilingual education today, and right around the Civil rights movement, things start to pick up the pace. Here's Virginia Sanchez Corol again.

Speaker 7

Puerto Rican and Black students begin to take over the colleges, asking for courses, not asking, demanding what was their right to courses about their experience? They wanted to see themselves in the curriculum.

Speaker 2

One woman in particular really took the fight for education equality and cultural preservation to a new level, Doctor Antonio Panoja. Here she is speaking in a documentary from two thousand and eight.

Speaker 4

We started to learn from the youth what was happening to them in the schools.

Speaker 2

Doctor Pantoja was a Puerto Rican organizer and activist who arrived in New York City in nineteen forty four. She created Aspeeda in the early sixties, which in Spanish means to aspire. Aspeeda was formed as a place for Puerto Rican kids to receive support outside of the classroom. The organization still exists today for all people coming from a Latine background. Doctor Pantoha believed that because of the language barrier, the children were not learning anything and they would leave school.

Speaker 4

There's a lot that says that they will take you to jail if you don't take your children to school.

Speaker 2

Like we've been hearing, the dropout rate had been a problem for decades, and it was due in part to failed support from the public school system. That's turning your own.

Speaker 4

Okay, if there's a lot of that says that I have to take my children to school, then I can accuse you as an institution where I have brought my children and you don't teach them.

Speaker 2

Doctor Pantoja brought the problem to the newly founded Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund, and in nineteen seventy two they did in fact sue the state in what's known as Aspeeda versus Board of Education. The New York Board of Education settled and created what's called a consent decree, meaning the schools would have to provide special language assistance to children who did not speak English. This lawsuit was one of many in the nineteen seventies around the country that

led to national legislation. It did in fact lead to change and built the foundation of what we know today is bilingual education. As I went farther and farther down the rabbit hole, I often wondered, what does Puerto Rico have to do with my Dominican American southern upbringing and my now Domini and Mary Peruvian children sharing a common language? Meant Puerto Ricans were fighting for all the Spanish speakers in the state because New York would eventually receive Dominican

immigrants people from Mexico, Central and South America. After English, Spanish is the most common language spoken in this region, and the people who fought for bilingual education created a ripple effect that is bigger than Spanish speakers. Virginia shares the time she gave a talk.

Speaker 7

This guy in the back of the auditorium, tall, very tall, blonde, raises his hand to make a comment, and he says, well, bilingual education was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I'm thinking, I know he was Latino. He says, when I came from Russia, if I had not had bilingual program to get into I would not be doing the things that I'm doing today.

Speaker 9

And that was like, that's right.

Speaker 7

Bilingual education doesn't only mean Spanish English. It's now a tool for learning and bringing children into school systems that we never had before.

Speaker 2

Currently, New York States public schools boast a population of over two hundred and sixty thousand students who speak over two hundred languages. From the web, it says all teachers must be skilled in how to support English language learners as they acquire content knowledge while also progressing towards English language proficiency. But in early education, you the parent should always be on the lookout because the teaching requirements are different.

While your toddler's teacher may be good at taking care of a three year old, they may not be trained in working with bilingual children. And well, we've all heard how that can go. In fall of twenty twenty two, Matting finally entered the public school system. He was assessed for a language. Leading up to that, because we filled out a form that said we had another home language, I.

Speaker 3

Get a lot of things, I get a talk test.

Speaker 2

Marting was placed in NL or English has a new language because he tested as transitioning or in the middle, which gives him one hundred and eighty minutes per week of support. Bilingual education works in a variety of ways in New York State today, and because we're not in a dual language district, Mutting was assigned an NL teacher who comes into the classroom and along with the classroom teacher,

they work as code teachers. Matting has now been in a classroom environment that has really supported his English language development for only about a year.

Speaker 3

Now I really know how to speak to you of them, and who.

Speaker 2

Helped you with that? The teacher, mister m Yeah, the school year just ended. When we started our journey into public schools, Mudding's NL teacher told us that we have to continue the home language. He said, quote the better Mutting spoke Spanish, the better he would speak English. All of the stress that I had felt for the past year slowly started to melt away. Knew he was in

a place that was going to support him. I now know that it was easier for someone to say that there was something wrong with him than to really assess why he was acting that way. And he did improve immensely once we moved him to a new program with love, care and dedication from both educators and us. Mating is not going to be the same as any other child, and we knew that, and so we fought for him.

This is cliche, but children are actually like sponges. Through this journey, I've learned you have to see the promise in every child. Kids will learn Intelligence exists in many different forms. It's not just one construct. Frederick Douglass said, power concedes nothing without a demand as parents, we have to individually advocate for our own kids. That's the only

piece of the puzzle we have control over. We know them better than anyone because as we've seen, until the world is more accepting of everyone, there is still work to be done, and if you aren't comfortable in English, there is support. Schools and the city have resources. Bi Lingual education as it stands today exists because people throughout history fought for it. To them, I say, go ask yes, you know, and you know what? And all of this

questioning how Martine is making out after the pandemic. My two year old is in daycare in English now. I didn't even realize that she's speaking English in school on Spanish at home.

Speaker 5

Wash my hands.

Speaker 2

Yes, because I only hear her speak Spanish. It never occurred to me how quickly she would start code switching. Like my brother said when I reported on this in twenty eighteen, ling is one of the best gifts you can pass on to your child. There's more places to visit, books, to read, movies, to see more of the world to absorb. Generations of us have done it like my parents did with me, and my husband and I are succeeding with our own kids.

Speaker 1

Bilingualism really is a superpower. This episode was produced by Gini Montalbo. It was edited by Mark Vagan. It was mixed by Stephanie Lebau and Julia Caruso. The Latino USA team also includes Roxanna guire, Felicia Dominguez, Fernando Chavari, Jessica Ellis, Victoria Strada, Dominiquin Estrosa, Renaldo Leos Junior, Luis Luna Marta Martinez, JJ Crubin, Tasha Sandoval and Nancy Trujillo, Beenille, Ramidez, Marlon Bishop, Maria Garcia and myself are co executive producers and I'm

your host, Marino Rossa. Join us again on our next episode. In the meantime, look for us on all of our social media. I'll see you on Instagram. Evyes, Ciao.

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Latino USA is made possible in part by the Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide, the John Dee and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Heis and Simon's Foundation, unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities. More at hsfoundation dot org.

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Mon No Messy Up

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