For a few moments of Mary Jo Montenegro's presentation I was vividly reminded of the years I taught 3rd grade Bilingual at Lorenzo de Zavala elementary school in Dallas. Proficiency or fluency in a language is critical for being able to use that language to think, and yet the goal of the ESL/bilingual program there was to exit them out. Cincinnati is struggling with a similar situation: we know it takes years of instruction to develop the needed proficiency, but pushing the student through the process in fewer years (was it three?) was a frustration for Ms. Montenegro and my teacher colleagues in the class.
I have a t-shirt that I love to wear during World Languages Week at my school. The theme is "Create a friendship, Learn a language" and it lists hundreds (or maybe thousands-- I've never counted) of languages. I ask my students how many can they name. When Ms. Montenegro named the 7 most spoken languages of Cincinnati's LEP or ELL students, I'm embarrassed to admit that I had not heard of 4 of them.
I am impressed with Ms. Montenegro's passionate advocacy for her students; CPS is lucky to have her.
I definitely felt small in my world of English and Spanish as she mentioned the 70 some languages spoken in just the Cincinnati Public School system. It really gets you thinking about what all these ELL students must be faced with every day at school.
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