I’m Just a Spanish Teacher!

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38 thoughts on “I’m Just a Spanish Teacher!”

  1. I have been listening to a book from my library called So you want to talk about Race. It has some powerful questions to ask the reader about where they are in the process and some valuable insights in how to go about it and think from a perspective outside their own. I am finding it not on interesting but introspective.

    How about that Supreme Court? Who would have thunk they would do their job in that case. Score one for Mvskokes.

  2. Jake Firestine

    In my view, the social inequity is not so much with what we are doing or even with what cops are doing. It’s that some students have a more solid family unit than others. It begins there. These problems can’t be changed from without (via legislation); but rather from within (our homes).

    “If you want to bring happiness to the whole world, go home and love your family.”

    “It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. Bring love into your home, for this is where our love for each other must start.”

    -Mother Teresa.

    1. You hit it on the head Jake! We can rack our brain for what to do in our classrooms, but we forget that all we need to do is love the students. Trying to think up an artificial lesson or unit on race, or raising awareness (which saves no lives and accomplishes nothing) is just that, artificial. Kids see through that and it is not authentic. What IS real is the love you speak and do in your own home and carried over to the classroom. You simply cannot change the backgrounds of these students.
      Morgan Freeman said it well when asked what we can do to stem the tide of racism in this country. He said, “STOP talking about it.” Denzel Washington echoed what you said Jake. It all starts in the home. Without loving parents, and especially, a father (mothers are important, please don’t misunderstand), kids are left with no man in their life to teach love and respect. The kid ends up failing, not because s/he is black, but because s/he had nobody to show him/her the way. The single biggest social issue facing our society is one that nobody is talking about in here… and that is kids growing up in FATHERLESS homes. It’s the single biggest determining factor in the success/failure a kid has in the future, and it’s not even close. Can’t blame race for that one. I see there is a “Racism” tag on this blog, but not one for “Fatherlessness.” I think that is the real issue here.
      As teachers we love and respect our students, that’s it!! We don’t have to add tag lines like, “No matter if you’re….” We love our students. Period. Let’s get back to good CI teaching now please:)

  3. “The kid ends up failing, not because s/he is black, but because s/he had nobody to show him/her the way. The single biggest social issue facing our society is one that nobody is talking about in here… and that is kids growing up in FATHERLESS homes. ”

    Couldn’t agree more. All the social change we’re seeing right now will do nothing to tackle the REAL issue, which you bring up. Often we hear of “privileged” groups. The most “privileged” group is that which comes from a loving family, with a mom and a dad.

    1. I’ve heard that prior to the rise of the welfare state black families had a higher nuclear family rate than white families.

      Welfare can act as an incentive for broken families. I’m the child of a single mother (note: I’m Australian so the context is slightly different) and when my mother got pregnant at 15 my grandmother’s advice was “the government will support you as a single mother” rather than anything to do with trying to make a relationship work with my father.

      That isn’t to say abolishing welfare is the answer, that’d clearly create a whole new set of problems. But I think we need to find a way to target it such that it doesn’t lead to irresponsibility.

      1. Jake Firestine

        I’ve heard the same. It also encourages irresponsibility among men. This is letting the guy off scot-free when he’s as responsible for that child as the mother is. It’s extremely sad that a man can just walk away while the woman is stuck to fend for herself, but there is no pressure on the men to step up and take care of those kids who so desperately need them.

        No doubt, this is a complex issue, but we’ve jettisoned the traditional family structure for something amorphous and self-defined which sees children as the real victims.

  4. There are many women who would choose not to raise their children thru goverment assistance. However, because we as women make far less than men for the same job, we understand the vital need government programs can play in putting food on the table and getting us and our children into education programs and housing. None of it is necessarily the cream of the crop because we are sharing the support dollars with millions of others. But it is something. And something can help if you have a mind to break the poverty chains of oppression. Health care alone is almost a full time job navigating it via the phone or the internet. And health care and children go hand in hand.

    In this country before the invasion women were in charge. They were responsible for the life of the community as they bore the children, processed the field and game, supp.died the clothing and goods. Their councils made decisions about when and if to push for new territory or retaliate for retribution on another tribe or group. They whispered their decisions to their men in the safety of their beds. The men councileded and took action.

    African women were the same I was told. They had a clan system, they were tribal, and they were responsible for their prodigeny. Together indigenous and African women understood each other well. That is why there are black Indians whether tribes claim them or not.

    Here is what our Elders say about matrilineal societies. “You always know who your mother is. The father well . . .”

    I am grateful I stayed married to my children’s father as long as I did. We needed two incomes to raise them. And when I left that marriage 19 years later, I could support them on my own. It was tough! There was no child support on his part and I wouldn’t take him to jail because my son would not forgive me.

    The stories for why children are raised without mothers or fathers in the home are many. In the classroom we cannot replace a loving supportive family. We can only with our students help build a supportive place of love and openheartedness for that 1 hour each day. Bless those students who willingly allow us to love them and bless the ones who teach us how to give love freely even when rejected by them. We all become better humans in the process and that is what Earth School is all about.

  5. Jake Firestine

    The stories are indeed sad, but we must always hold up the ideal, that, I think, we can all agree on. Children do best in a loving home with a mom and a dad. This is why all our social institutions (schools, social agencies, police, etc.) are dealing with so many issues because this idea is not held up as such. I said some time last year on this blog that I didn’t think schools were prepared to deal with the level of hurt that students are bringing with them. These are deep wounds. Wounds that affect how they integrate and relate. Foundational wounds. While we can’t do anything huge about it because, as you said, we only have an hour, and sometimes it’s a hellish hour, outside our time at school we just need to pour into our families with love and ensure that our kids don’t suffer the same fate.

    1. First- context. In Australia, where I’m from, welfare is pretty easy to obtain unconditionally and the amount is relatively generous. You can survive on the amount received. I grew up poor, with a single mother working part time, in social housing in neighbourhoods where most people were on welfare. I encountered many people with an “entitlement” mentality of “it’s my money” with no sense of the fact that their income was funded by other people’s taxes. I also have encountered a lot of people receiving unemployment benefits who are more interested in trying to find loopholes to maximise their benefits then to actually get a job. They’d rather “free money” than money they work for. As a result Australia has some families now on their 4th generation of unemployment benefits. Drug and alcohol dependency flow on from that.

      I think easily accessible welfare can also lead to the break down of the family, as others have said. Mothers know the government will help them survive so there is less pressure on fathers to stick around and be responsible. Prior to welfare we also had churches at the center of communities and as bases for social aid.

      I’m not religious, so I don’t want a return to churches. But I do think we need something more local and neighbourhood based. Social pressure to do the responsible thing. If welfare came directly from people you know, for example, I think there would be far more incentive to spend it wisely.

  6. In Native communities government welfare is only really helpful to those who have good support systems. There has been a very real and alarming breakdown in family and tradition for many generations. The breakdown of the teachings of what being a responsible human being whether through teaching traditional sustainability within the intergenerational family or through churches and intact families is huge.

    What our larger population uses now is the media they consume to establish what being human is about. And where the government sees they can teach is the schools. But we know those canned teachings are flawed.

    1. “The breakdown of the teachings of what being a responsible human being whether through teaching traditional sustainability within the intergenerational family or through churches and intact families is huge.”

      Well said. There is a vast abyss between this generation and say, my grandparents’ generation. This, in my view, has led to ungratefulness and an attitude of entitlement rather than respect and admiration for the sacrifices of our country men and women who came before them to give them what they have. This, I think, is also linked to the protests and the random destruction of monuments and religious statues which is very sad. Most of these protesters appear to be young, and the ones doing the destruction do not have a balanced historical view of these people (George Washington?? Come on! Abraham Lincoln?? Really?? The Virgin Mary?? Where’d that come from?). The schools, their parents, and the government have failed these kids who are now angry young adults who know not what they do.

  7. Jake I would not jump to the schools first. I believe angry children come from families who often do not get support from either families who themselves are in crisis which makes schools a safer place to act out in or families who are not involved in their children’s lives.

    What seems to be missing in all of this upheaval is a clear path forward to defining what the real issues are and how to resolve tbem, that is the angry undercurrent here.

    Youth just have a lot of pent up energy to expell and those statues represent the systems they feel are not listening. They want other people to get angry and do something.

  8. Jake Firestine

    I meant them in no particular order. The breakdown of the nuclear family unit is the primary issue, I agree. Let’s be real though about these young people though. They’re acting like children. Delayed adolescence is a thing among college students and young adults. Peaceful protest is fine, but these are temper tantrums on an adult scale. My 2 year old throws a tantrum. It’s harmless and cute. A 25 year old throws one and people get hurt, property damaged, etc. Not only that but acting out of emotion is not the way we should be handling all this, and there’s no justification for what they’re doing. They also fail the test of history with the damage they’re doing, which is a failure of our schools.

    As I said in my previous comment, what does setting a statue of the Virgin Mary on fire have to do with their cause? Or driving your car into a FL church and trying to set it on fire while people are still on fire? Or spray painting the Lincoln Memorial? Again, do they know/care about history? Doing violence and indiscriminately destroying property (some of which is minority owned businesses) is the wrong way to getting your voice heard. When a child yells at his parents who are conversing to get their attention (my daily life), we teach them that one doesn’t get people’s attention that way. I dare to say that is a pretty universal concept, but that is precisely what many of the protesters are doing.

  9. I scanned through this thread and have to speak up about a few things.

    1) That there is an unspoken root cause of poverty among African Americans and that is the fatherless homes. Jake, I’m afraid you are deflecting from the issues of systemic racism. If you really want a quick solution to racial oppression in our country, then look towards providing employment for these African American men. It’s easy to say, hard to do. Try reading “The New Jim Crow” or “The End of Poverty” but many, many scholars will agree that employment is the first step. When fathers have jobs and are treated like men instead of mongrels and judged for not having skills when they were never given the opportunity to acquire skills in the first place, then they will serve their families better.

    While it saddens me to bear witness to these views of placing blame on the oppressed for the oppression they suffer, I feel the need to call it out. That’s what’s happening here, Jake and Shem. Kate, I’m so grateful that you are dialoguing with them here. Your stories are where we find the truth. I suggest that Jake and Shem seek to hear more from people of color and their stories to better understand the intergenerational oppression and systemic racism that has plagued our white psyche for centuries.

    1. The only ethnic minority in my classes of 48 students is me.

      White people aren’t as discriminated against as others in Japan, but I still had to have my current apartment contract put in my wife’s name because “no foreigners”. I don’t especially mind, but the idea that western countries are filled with implicit racism when most other countries are filled with explicit racism is…

      As for placing blame- I’d like to differentiate that from placing responsibility. I agree that employment is a key to self-empowerment and self-esteem. And there may be barriers to employment for some people. But there are also people capable of taking responsibility that don’t. I don’t think it should all be placed on the individuals, but I don’t think it should all be placed on society, either. It’s both.

      1. …there are also people capable of taking responsibility that don’t. I don’t think it should all be placed on the individuals, but I don’t think it should all be placed on society, either. It’s both….

        Could you elaborate on this? Aren’t societies composed of individuals? Can’t they work together in a way that they have a common goal of inclusion and sharing of the American pie so that people of different skin colors end up helping instead of hurting each other?

        We here in our country don’t have a good track record on that. Just now in our history, however, we can see that silence perpetuates the problem and so this kind of dialogue has at least opened up a door that before George Floyd not too many people even knew existed. That’s where we are now, just starting a dialogue that we needed to start hundreds of years ago.

        Really? Some people, some of us Americans, were at one point only 2/3 of a person?
        We may need to talk about the mentality that created that kind of thinking in our society – it’s pretty sick. How do we address this, and more to the point, how do we do it not by marching in streets when the real work is to fix things in our professions, working locally in what we do everyday, while thinking globally?

        Doesn’t that make sense? Initiate an urgent dialogue and keep it open and have it occur in every single profession and DO SOMETHING not in the street but in our PROFESSIONS. We can’t change much in the streets – only point to problems – but we can solve them in our professions as long as we have courage to keep talking with open heart about this long-ignored thinking in our country that has caused so much pain and heartache in so many. I say we fix our PROFESSIONS.

        The fact seems to that no one in the CI movement is talking about George Floyd in terms of what we can do to make changes in our profession. Other professions, pro sports, etc. are dialoguing. Why aren’t we?

        1. Hi everyone just want to share some feelings about our work. I’ve reflected a lot about the joys of the star sequence and class created stories during this off time. These little stories bring us back to community. They bring us back to humanity. They strip away all the abstract ideas that have made language learning “difficult” over the years. In doing that they reveal our true equality. The fact that we are the same in our abilities and emotional capacity and potential. They favor and encourage playfulness and open mindedness. That’s what we’re truly up against here isn’t it? As the captain of the ship we can weave in empathy. We can ask questions that prompt introspection. This may seem like a very small thing to some.

          1. Thanks Craig. It’s always good to read Big Picture stuff. Keeps things in perspective. Glad you are using the Star.

            You said:

            these little stories bring … favor and encourage playfulness and open mindedness. That’s what we’re truly up against here isn’t it?….

            Yes, it’s EXACTLY what we’re up against. But we have the upper hand. I’ve been working a lot with the Star lately with Zoom teachers and each day I learn more.

            Do you remember when you started extolling the virtues of the Star soon after the Lake Elsinor training – what was that, four years ago? And each year we have all gotten better and better at it.

            It’s such a happy thing, and to read what you’ve written above makes me so happy. We’re on the straight and narrow in our teaching and that is a good thing.

          2. Ben are you sharing your zoom meetings? Where can I read about what works and what doesn’t work virtually?

          3. Craig –

            At the risk of sounding overly confident, I am pretty sure that the current Zoom group has solved the problem of online language instruction. And there is no need to go the high energy route you described in your other comment:

            …Spanish teachers (don’t know about others) try to make their high energy the catalyst for in class learning ….

            It’s that we’ve been looking in the wrong places to meet the online WL teaching crisis.

            The right place to look to solve the online problem is in Vygotsky. Emotions, inclusion, community, the adult speaking to the child as per the transactional analysis posts I wrote here long ago, they have to be there as factors, heavy factors, if the online piece is going to work.

            Wedding Vygotsky and Krashen, which I have done in the Star, has produced the above-mentioned Zoom classes – there are about 20 core Zoom teachers in that group – that reveal to all of us – we all agree – that, as I see it now and I don’t say this with any hyperbole whatsoever, solves the problem of online language instruction. I have never seen a group of teachers so psyched and ready to start the year, most of them anyway.

            But I can’t share the videos of that Zoom group now bc I currently have 80 hours of video that needs to be gone through, edited, etc. and every week I get 7-8 hours of more video. But when it’s all done, the vids supporting the book, it will work like no book can ever work alone.

            The book, which I am sending you today via email, needs those videos for people to see how it all works, but I just have to get them edited first. Actually you might not need the videos as much as others, since you were in Lake Elsinore, and have since made the method your own. When those videos are done in a few months (at the earliest), make sure I send you them and then you will see how they make the Cat. A book come alive.

            (The Zoom group happens to have a truly wonderful artist and I can see even more deeply how a Cat. A class w/o a good artists is be so necessary to make this approach work. But I think you’ve already figured that out.)

        2. If people have a bad home life they are more likely to act out and commit acts of violent crime. That doesn’t excuse their crimes, although it does make them more understandable. We should be working to solve the problem of people with bad home lives, sure. But we should also be holding those that commit acts of violent crime to account. There are people who don’t commit such acts that prove it is not predestined. You have a choice.

          My mother was a single mother at 16 years old. I grew up in social housing. Statistics would have me struggling to graduate high school, let alone going to university. Yet, I went to a top Australian university thanks to the efforts of my mum, my grandma and myself.

          In western countries I truly believe that anyone can do anything. The road is harder, sometimes much harder, for some than others. I think it would be ignorant to say race plays no role whatsoever in how hard the road is, but I think class plays a bigger role. I’ve seen similar struggles in ethnically homogeneous Japan where I live.

    2. Glad you are speaking up as well.

      Historically, protests in the street are what this country was founded on by those that came here for a better life free from tyranny in regards to religion and personal property. And proceeded to act like overseers and terriorists to the ones who had rightful claim to the land by having generations of ancestors buried here.

      I do agree with Jake that some of the acts of protest have been outrageous. The first recorded incident in Fl. of burning down a church happened 25 miles from here in the 1700’s. Members of our tribal community (which had previously been a peace town) were angry that their families and way of life were being threatened. The young warriors (ones with lots of energy and emotion but not much experience with dimplomacy) took branches of pine and threw them and launched them inside a newly built fort called Negro Fort where the whites with their slaves had withdrawn. I think the name tells you whose hands built the fort. As the church caught fire and people tried to throw their babies over the pallisaides, our young men speared the babies.

      Our Elders were horrified. Retribution from the whites was fierce and devastating. But the saddest was the retribution from the Mvskoge Confederacy. We were punished by having to cot a war post that would stand on our ceremonial grounds, we could no longer sit in the Council House as voting members, and we would no longer be considered a town of peace and refuge. We would bear that punishment for 10 generations. When we cut the war post each spring and place it on the grounds between the women’s arbors and the young men’s arbor I am reminded of the incident. Every Harvest when we close our ceremonial grounds for the winter season we recite this story.

      No, destroying churches and homes and .gives has a long history in my land.

      I believe the nuclear family does not serve us well as humans. When parents do not take responsibility a child needs to be surrounded by relatives who can step in and help the family. But we have pretty well destroyed the intergenerational family support system in our modern white cultural.

      We need to teach interdependence skills as well as independent skills. We need to value what we can achieve together as well as celebrate individual achivements.

      1. I think I misspoke when I said “nuclear family”. Nuclear family, technically, excludes living with grandparents, uncles, aunts and so on. Living in Japan there are very few nuclear families in the countryside, but that doesn’t mean there’s a bunch of single parents, it means there are houses with 10 people from 3 generations all living together.

        I meant to speak in favor of intact families, whether nuclear or not. Fractured families cause harm to children.

          1. Often. Selfish parents caring more about their own interests than the interests of their children.

            My grandmother fell in love with a man other than her husband and couldn’t face being married anymore. So she ran out and left her kids behind. She’s been trying to make amends since, but that still caused irreparable harm to my mum, aunts and uncle. Then when my mum got pregnant with me at 15, rather than advise my mother to make things work with my father, she recommended relying on government handouts.

            No-one in my extended family encouraged people on the verge of fracturing from staying together. It’s not always the best decision to stay together, especially if there is an abusive person involved. But we should be doing more for stable families; there should be a cultural understanding that leaving is the last resort once kids are involved. The data is in and it’s pretty much as clear as any of the data on language acquisition.

      2. Jake Firestine

        I don’t understand, Kate. While your story is interesting, I don’t see what you’re trying to accomplish with it. Are you highlighting that “kids will be kids” and have always done rash things grounded in their passions? I doubt such a claim would see disagreement. Or are you just trying to share a different point of view? Fair enough.

        “I believe the nuclear family does not serve us well as humans. When parents do not take responsibility a child needs to be surrounded by relatives who can step in and help the family. ”

        I disagree with the first sentence here. Kids need their mom and dad. Sure, if they fail, it’d be ideal that someone would step in, but ideally, the parents would take primary responsibility over them as a matter of justice. I’ve seen what you’re talking about happen in my school. I’ve got a surprising number of students being raised by their grandparents. It’s heroic on the g-parents’ parts because they’re older and nearing retirement age while raising their son/daughter’s teenager. I do believe that this happens more often than you think.

        “But we have pretty well destroyed the intergenerational family support system in our modern white cultural.”

        This is offensive and ridiculous. You’re saying white people destroyed the intergenerational family structure. How can you prove this? Which white people? Those of the time of founding of our country? All white people across generations including me?
        If you’re going to go the race route, be specific instead of generalizing.

    3. Jake Firestine

      Sean, I’m not deflecting. I disagree with systemic racism entirely. Plus, which system are we talking about? All of them? Don’t more minorities work in those systems now more than ever? What does that mean for the notion that systemic racism is a thing? I don’t buy this “New Jim Crow” narrative, and I think it’s harmful. I’ve never seen good evidence that our country is racist. It is vaguely defined and hard to pin down. I’ve never had anyone successfully prove it to me.

      I am not looking for a quick solution. I am merely stating my opinion. I think the idea that our country is racist by nature is patently absurd. When I hear it, I can’t help but comment because I don’t believe it’s true, and in today’s world, I don’t think being quiet about that is a good idea. It’s sad that someone doesn’t have the skills to get a job. I don’t know of anyone treated like a “mongrel” because they’re black and have no skills. However, there are many amazing stories of people (black, white, brown, etc.) who have worked their butts off to get where they are, starting from humble beginnings.

      1. I wouldn’t rule out individual cases of black men being treated like “mongrels”. I wouldn’t even rule out that a lot of those cases existed.

        However, definitionally, for a country to be systemically racist, I’d expect those cases to be socially sanctioned, rather than condemned by the media and legal system.

        In the past, almost every people was racist, or tribalist or nationalist. Europe was very racist. Until even very recently America was a racist country, too. Those systems of racism have been abolished, for the better. The legacy of those systems can remain in the individuals affected by them. But I think the only way forward is to oppose racism in all its forms and hope the kinks that exist due to historic injustices continue working themselves out over time.

        I don’t believe highlighting those justices and highlighting differences between races is a productive way forward. It only serves to deepen the divisions between people of different backgrounds.

        I live in racially homogeneous Japan, but I do have a few students whose surnames are obviously Chinese or Korean. I don’t think my class would be served by me pointing out “you’re going to have a harder time getting a job because of your surname”, even if that is statistically likely.

        1. Jake Firestine

          True. They probably do exist and have existed. However, I don’t believe that should be our default position. I think we’re over that hump. Our black brothers and sisters have the same constitutional protections that we all have. The Civil Rights movement won! Sure, there are still problems that we must address post-Civil Rights era, but the main problem isn’t race anymore.

          1. Jack you are right the main problem we face is how do we take action to mitigate the facts that though we say everyone has equal protection we as a larger society do not act in a way that those who have suffered due to race,sex and class are treated equally. STILL!

            How can we build trust in our classrooms? Do we notice our own actions when we call on students? What do we do to make sure every student is reached? It can’t just go on that we cast our words of wisdom out and if the student doesn’t scoop them up it is their own fault, we were treating everyone the same. We have all observed some students who have learned the social game of progressing well and those who have railed against the machine. And then there are the invisible who work at just staying under the radar.

            The question we each have to answer is how do I as an individual behave to help all for the greater good? And how do I determine what is the greater good? In the end we are all responsible for our own actions.

  10. The book that pulled the wool from my eyes is White Fragility by Robin Diangelo. There is so much to absorb there! I could see myself studying this issue in schools for the rest of my life, so compelling is it to put on my big boy pants and look the issue straight in the eye instead of what I did for most of my career, thinking that somehow the racial piece in my language classrooms over the years was somehow normal. It wasn’t, it’s not, and it needs to change. My goal is to provide curricular materials that at least attempt to level the playing field, working locally but thinking globally.

  11. I also recommend “White Fragility” by Robin Diangelo. We can’t say that racism, oppression, inequity, intergenerational trauma and family situations are not related. And how we support and educate all of our students has a role – we can’t do much about family situations but we can take actions in our classrooms and educate ourselves regarding the rest of it. My goal this year is to incorporate more discussion around anti-racism and incorporate images and stories that involve more diversity. I had students who barely come to school during optional classes this spring just because they wanted to talk about George Floyd – and I am in Canada!

  12. …my goal this year is to incorporate more discussion around anti-racism and incorporate images and stories that involve more diversity….

    The best way to get those discussions going is to create characters using individually created images. Cards and one word images don’t pack the punch that ICIs do – it’s not even close.

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