Bilingual Education and Parent Involvement

Re “District Cites Study in Bid for Bilingual Education Waiver” and “Schools Get $4.8 Million to Boost Parent Involvement,” Oct. 2:

The purpose of bilingual education is to teach the children in a language that they understand so that they are able to grasp fundamental concepts (reading, adding, subtracting) while they begin the process of English learning, so that they can transition into English with their academic concepts in place. The idea of teaching children in a language that they understand speaks to two key factors that greatly affect children’s learning: self-esteem (i.e., thinking you are capable, which is hard to do if you do not understand what your teacher is saying) and parental participation (which is difficult to accomplish if the parents cannot read the homework assignment).

How do we boost parent participation if the parents’ power of communication is taken away from them?

MARILYN KESSLER

Encino

As a fully credentialed, experienced bilingual education teacher, I take great offense at the notion that bilingual teachers’ aides can provide the supplementary translations necessary in lieu of bilingual teachers.

Last year I rejected my first aide, who was unable to work the pre-algebra problems she was supposed to be helping the kids with. My second aide was much better, but still lacked sufficient mathematical foundation to be truly responsible for students’ math educations. This year I have a wonderful aide with a solid foundation in mathematics, though even the best aides do not command the authority nor have the experience running an entire class that the teacher has.

CAROL MAY

Los Angeles

“District Cites Study in Bid for Bilingual Education Waiver” describes the program Westminster School District is providing, having been given permission to not have a bilingual program. Westminster officials feel their program is succeeding, and your story concluded that its success would strengthen the initiative campaign of Ron Unz and Gloria Matta Tuchman for all-English instruction.

However, the story says that in Westminster, bilingual instructional aides help students, in their native language, to understand the subjects being taught. This is called primary language support, and it would be specifically prohibited under the Unz initiative. The initiative would prohibit any kind of special help for students, including ESL classes, beyond an arbitrary one-year period. The one-size-fits-all approach advocated by Unz would hurt, not help, schools in their efforts to help students learn English and achieve in school.

SARA FIELDS, President-Elect

California Teachers of English

to Speakers of Other Languages

Culver City