We have normalized bilingualism in some public schools in the United States, because people have pushed for the possibility of new listening subject … - Nelson Flores

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?

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.

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.