Nelson Flores Quotes

you can trace these discourses, they’re consistent throughout history, of putting the onus on racialized communities to undo their own oppression by modifying their behaviors, rather than undoing the structures that actually are the primary challenges that they confront.

I think what language socialization research helps us, then, to think about is, if we’re starting from the perspective that all children are socialized into complex language practices, and there, there isn’t an inherent hierarchy in terms of the complexity, then how do we incorporate the language practices of all children into the classroom? How do we stop framing certain language practices as deficient and in need of remediation? and I think that that’s a more productive beginning of a conversation, and I think there are lots of different ways you can answer that, right?

If you’re writing a story, for example, about something that you did with your grandmother speaks Spanish, you, as the author, can decide to use Spanish as dialogue in that text, right? So you’re, you can bring some of those home language practices into your writing, and that you should do that.

We have normalized bilingualism in some public schools in the United States, because people have pushed for the possibility of new listening subject positions in these institutions. So we have to keep thinking about what do we want teachers to be able to do, and how can we transform the institutions to allow them to be able to do that.

oftentimes, in our work with teachers, we tend to frame the issue as, “We need to raise the consciousness of teachers,” and we kind of frame it as an individual thing, but the issue that we look at in this article – and I say “we” ’cause two of my doctoral students wrote it with me – are the ways that broader sociopolitical processes impact what is possible in the classroom, and what we, we call what institutional listening subject positions teachers aren’t able to have it. so, the school that we look at is a bilingual school, so we look at the ways that bilingualism is completely normalized in the school. But we think of that not solely as great teachers – and they are great teachers, but because of the history of political struggle that has allowed for these spaces to emerge. And so, it’s a combination of teachers who are onboard, and the possibility of this space emerging, through political struggle.

we have to keep engaging in political struggle, knowing that many of the changes that we’re advocating for may not benefit us or our children, but maybe will benefit our grandchildren or our great-grandchildren. Or our descendants, if we’re not having children.

schools should be socializing students to new language practices; the question is how they should be doing that, right? And, and from my perspective, the way they should be doing that is building on the knowledge that the children already have. Now, anyone who’s taken an education course, ever, knows that the first basic thing that you learn in pedagogy 101 is, if you want students to learn new content, you have to connect it to their prior knowledge, right? That’s the first thing you learn. So, why do we think language is any different? Um, if you want students to learn new language practices, you have to connect it to language practices they’re already familiar with, right? And once you do that, they’re much more able to then retain it, remember it, feel like it’s part of who they are, and not feel like it’s this thing that’s completely removed from who they are as people and who they understand themselves to be.

I know that the way that standards are implemented are sometimes problematic, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with giving teachers some standards in terms of what students are expected to do at their grade level, right? Like, that’s a good thing to give teachers. but teachers who are instructing in languages other than English, oftentimes, don’t have even that to start with. And so, they’re kind of building things from scratch and constantly reinventing the wheel. and so I think that is something that could happen from a policy perspective.

which spaces are these linguistic tokens policed, and what histories are being cited in those spaces? And how it’s really not just about individual teachers; it’s really this broader sociohistorical process that has allowed for this emergence of policing to begin with. And so, it connects to the point I was making, before, where we conclude, there, that any efforts at raising the consciousness of teachers has to also be situated within broader political struggles, that then can allow teachers to inhabit new listening subject positions, right?

bilingual authors have more tools, perhaps than monolingual authors. Or perhaps not, because monolingual authors maybe have different dialects, right? But, but that we all, as authors should be strategically deploying all of our communicative repertoires, um, in order to create our voice as authors. which is very different than saying, “Make everyone talk like a white person,” right?

Mayor Pete (Buttigieg), people are like, “Wow! He speaks like a gazillion languages. Isn’t he so smart?” And I’m like, “Well, actually, you could go to many places in the world where people speak those gazillion languages, right, and they’re not positioned as smart in the same way.

it is part of a much longer history where the language practices of racialized communities, of low-income communities, have always been framed through a deficit lens. Now, if we even go back to the early years of European colonialism, we can see raciolinguistic ideologies being used to dehumanize indigenous communities. Where people would describe the language practices of indigenous peoples as, um, almost animalistic, as a form of dehumanization. Now, nowadays, people wouldn’t say things like, “People are speaking like animals,” or at least most people wouldn’t say that. Um, but the underlying logic of there’s something somehow deficient about the language practices of racialized communities has remained consistent since the early days of European colonialism. And so, it’s not surprising that the 30 million word gap is so seductive, because it reinforces all of these ideologies that people have been socialized into accepting, for multiple generations.

schools may like people to memorize vocabulary lists, but that’s a different argument, right? If, if what you’re saying is that these are the types of decontextualized language practices that they’re expected to be successful with in school, then that’s a different conversation. Because then I would argue, well, why are we using these decontextualized language practices in school, when we know that in the real-world that’s not how people actually use language. Maybe the problem isn’t that these particular students haven’t mastered a particular list of decontextualized vocabulary words. But rather, the fact that schools have decontextualized language from the practices in which they’re engaged in. Um, and I think that may be part of, – that would be a more interesting conversation, for me, than to look at these decontextualized vocabulary words.

the idea that more is inherently better isn’t universal and isn’t necessarily true. But of course, we actually use language to engage in social practices with other people. So we’re not just listing vocabulary words [laughs] when we’re talking to other people. We’re engaging in dynamics that we’ve been socialized into, that we’ve gradually become familiar with as we become more socialized into those practices. Um, and so, to decontextualize language in that way, I think, really shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what the function of language is, which is to communicate, which is to engage in practice. It’s not to memorize vocabulary lists.

we need a fundamental transformation of the institutions that children are in, right? and I think that that change isn’t going to happen overnight, and that change happens over generations. And some of that has happened, right? Like, looking, as someone who has studied the history of bilingual education, in, in the United States, um, the fact that there are some children, in Philadelphia and in other cities, who are able to be in classrooms where Spanish is not only acknowledged but used as part of instruction. And that allows new immigrant children to come in and seamlessly become incorporated into the classroom, that was a fundamental transformation of that institution, that happened over generations, right?