Bilingual Parent Participation in a Divided School Community

Julia Menard-Warwick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429000089
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This volume theorizes parent participation in a bilingual school community in California, unpacking broader issues around language ideologies, language and power, and parent collaboration in diverse educational contexts. Highlighting data from a two-year ethnographic study of the school community, the book grounds this discussion in theories of discourse and bilingualism, with a focus on translanguaging and translingual practice. The volume points to a range of challenges and questions posed by the parents' efforts to unite as a single school community, including linguistic inequality, cultural divides, and differing implicit beliefs on language. The book documents these efforts as a means to demonstrate the ways in which monolingual practices are reinforced in these settings, despite best efforts, but also as a point of departure to discuss implications and a way forward for parent collaboration in bilingual school communities more generally. Offering a nuanced portrait of the impact of parent collaboration in bilingual school communities, this volume will be of particular interest to graduate students and scholars in language education, applied linguistics, bilingualism, and sociolinguistics.

1 A School That Looks Like California

Policy and Historical Context

In March 2015, Dr Winchester, the superintendent of the Farmington school district, came to a meeting of the English Learner Advisory Committee (ELAC) at Live Oak Elementary. The meeting was held in the school’s Family Resource Center (FRC), set up with tables and chairs facing the whiteboard. In attendance were perhaps 25 parents, mostly immigrants from Mexico, along with a few teachers and school staff.

Dr Winchester had come to talk to ELAC due to a new California law, the Local Control Accountability Program (LCAP), designed to award school districts increased funding if they could demonstrate that they involved low-income parents and the parents of English learners in budgetary decision-making (Warren & Carrillo, 2015). The ELAC members had become aware of their new political power: they were there to hear Dr Winchester, and to offer their opinions. Most spoke little English. He spoke no Spanish. He was accompanied by his assistant superintendent, Dr Thompson, who also spoke no Spanish. A bilingual staff member, Ms Medina, provided interpretation throughout the meeting.

I want to begin this chapter about the historical and policy context of my research by pointing out the unusual nature of this encounter. In the 2014–2015 school year, Farmington school district served 8600 students in nine elementary schools (grades K–6), three junior high schools (grades 7–9), and one senior high school (grades 10–12), as well as in several alternative schools. The district was governed by a schoolboard, consisting of five elected officials, who in turn had appointed the superintendent to serve as chief administrator of the district. Attending parent meetings was not usually his job. Moreover, the ELAC parents were predominantly non-US citizens, and thus non-voters; they tended to be working class in a largely middle-class town; they had far less formal education than the average Farmington parent; and they spoke a language in which no schoolboard member or district superintendent could communicate.

However, in 2015 the changing policy context had impelled Dr Winchester to attend this meeting with the ELAC parents, and they were determined to ensure that he understood the needs at Live Oak. For example, they wanted more funding for bilingual paraeducators to work with children still learning English. These needs were explained forcefully in the early part of the meeting by Andrea, that year’s ELAC president, and one of the most proficient bilingual parents at the school. On his part, Dr Winchester emphasized his desire to promote “equity” through the LCAP process.

In the middle of the meeting, while the assistant superintendent was still speaking, an older parent, Bernarda, interrupted him. In my field notes for the evening, I wrote, “Bernarda asks long fast question. I am struck by Ms Medina’s unwillingness or inability to interrupt her in the interests of a better interpretation.” In the transcript, I notice that another parent, Loreto, was the one who finally suggested to Bernarda that she stop and let Ms Medina interpret.

In so doing, the first thing Ms Medina explained was that Bernarda had a sixth-grade daughter who was about to get reclassified (Hill, 2012; Hill, Weston, & Hayes, 2014). That is, her daughter was just about to be certified as “Fully English Proficient” (FEP), no longer classified as an “English learner” (EL). The assistant superintendent responded “Congratulations!” However, almost everyone in the meeting, aside from the two superintendents, knew that Bernarda’s daughter had been at Live Oak since kindergarten; that she had experienced more difficulty in learning English than many of her classmates; and finally that her mother feared she would not be reclassified in time to take a full load of academic coursework in junior high school.

No one responded to the assistant superintendent’s good wishes. Ms Medina continued interpreting Bernarda’s lengthy comments: if more paraeducators were to be hired, the district should make sure they are well trained. As the interpreter paused, Bernarda resumed speaking (Audiorecorded Observation, 10 March 2015):

Bernarda:

Y cómo el superintendente y él dice, hay que mirar claro, hay que ser todo claro, ¿verdad? Pues, y yo como madre le digo que … que haga las cosas claras ¿verdad? (And as the superintendent and he [assistant superintendent] said, it’s necessary to look at things clearly, it’s necessary that everything be clear, right? As a mother, I tell you to … to make things clear, right?)

Ms Medina began to interpret for her again, but Bernarda interrupted after a few words, saying, “No queremos palabras, queremos hechos.” She stopped there, and Ms Medina said, “That we want actions, not words.”

“So do we,” said Dr Winchester, and laughed. Speaking for him, Ms Medina told Bernarda, “Dice que ellos también quieren (he says that they do too).”

In the rest of this chapter, I will detail the context in which this encounter between Dr Winchester, superintendent of Farmington schools, and Bernarda, Mexican immigrant mother, can be understood.

Analyzing Discourses and Ideologies

As Blommaert writes, instances of language use are “influenced by the structure of the world system … including the relationships between different societies” (2005, p. 15). Immigration from Mexico to the United States is part of a larger global pattern, in which people from poorer nations seek new opportunities across borders. The resulting association between Spanish and impoverished job seekers cannot help but affect the relative power of the language in California.

The verb “seek” implies that Mexicans like Bernarda choose to cross borders, but Blommaert emphasizes that choices are unequal in global society and that “people are not becoming more free by becoming more mobile” (2005, p. 18). Certainly immigrants in the United States today are not free to use the languages they know best in all contexts of work or education; instead, immigrant families are forced to make decisions about language maintenance and language learning from the limited set of options provided within this historical moment.

“Language use” for Blommaert is synonymous with Discourse, the title of his book; while discourses in the plural refer to common ways of using language to discuss particular topics. The words “English learner (EL),” “Fully English Proficient” (FEP), and “reclassification,” which I defined in explaining Bernarda’s comments, are drawn from a bureaucratic discourse about immigrant children’s place in the California education system. In his comments, Dr Winchester used the word “equity” to position himself within a different educational discourse.

As many authors have pointed out, a speaker’s use of discourses within an interaction constructs an identity for that speaker (Fairclough, 1992; Norton, 2000). On this occasion, Dr Winchester was attempting to present himself as a progressive educator who sincerely cares about academic achievement for diverse children. But as Blommaert (2005) reminds us, identities require recognition. A speaker, like Dr Winchester, may claim an identity, only to be assigned a different identity by his interlocutor (Blackledge & Pavlenko, 2001). In this interaction, Bernarda’s comments position the superintendent as untrustworthy official, whose words cannot be believed unless they are matched with actions.

This discursive conflict suggests an additional reason why Judith Butler begins her 2011 video, cited in the introduction, by clarifying the difference between a performed identity (as somehow inauthentic) and a performative identity (one that is brought into being through action). Indeed, the encounter between Dr Winchester and Bernarda exemplifies how this distinction is not merely theoretical. Language may in fact be a form of action (Austin, 1962). However, Dr Winchester’s use of progressive educational discourses was not sufficient to establish a trustworthy identity for him at the ELAC meeting. The use of discourses is one kind of action, but it is not always enough action to bring desired identities into being when faced with skeptical interlocutors.

As Blommaert emphasizes, the use of discourses is a historical process. However, the interaction between Bernarda and Dr Winchester additionally illustrates the not-uncommon disconnect between discourses and ideologies. I use this latter term to refer to beliefs linked to power relations between social groups (Fairclough, 1992; van Dijk, 1998). Ideologies may be realized as discourses but may also be enacted in practice, never explicitly spoken, and seen as “common sense.” When Bernarda expressed a preference for hechos (deeds) over palabras (words), she was communicating to Dr Winchester that she wanted to see how his ideologies were revealed in practice. In rejecting his discourse, she is setting up what can be called a counterdiscourse (Norton, 2000).

Here I will point out that whenever I highlight specific linguistic features of the interaction between these two individuals, the Spanish-speaking mother and the English-speaking superintendent, I have moved beyond using the term discourse as a theoretical concept (Blommaert, 2005) and begun to engage in discourse analysis. As Jaworski and Coupland explain, this sociolinguistic methodology closely examines “language use relative to social, political and cultural formations … shaping social order, and shaping individuals’ interaction with society” (1999, p. 3). That is, discourses can either challenge or maintain the status quo within specific historical contexts (Blommaert, 2005). To understand these processes within particular interactions, such as the encounter between Bernarda and Dr Winchester, it is useful to scrutinize the linguistic resources—specific words, intonation patterns, pronouns, sentence structures—which speakers are using to constitute identities, relationships, and knowledge (Fairclough, 1992). Above, the superintendent has used the word equity to claim an identity, and to build a relationship of trust with the ELAC parents. Bernarda is rejecting his claim. Other vocabulary I have referenced, for example, Fully English Proficient, is used by educators to construct knowledge about immigrant children.

As you read this book, keep in mind that I have selected the data I present to you through a systematic process of thematic coding (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998). The main themes that can be seen in the audiorecorded interaction above are LCAP and reclassification. Because a central goal of this chapter is to present the policy context for my research, I chose these data to illustrate these themes. Indeed, throughout the process of writing this book, my discourse analysis and thematic analysis were closely connected: because discourses build on thematic content, they can be initially identified through coding data for relevant themes.

However, the encounter between Dr Winchester and Bernarda, interpreted by Ms Medina, cannot simply be analyzed linguistically, by noting key terms that each are using. As Blommaert reminds us, “We need to conceive of all instances of language use as intrinsically historical, that is as bearers of both immediate conditions of use and perduring conditions of use” (2005, p. 18). Their discourse needs to be situated in history.

Linguistic Contact and Conflict

A standard introduction to the last 200 years in California, entitled The Elusive Eden, describes state history as follows: “Persistent inequality, attempts by groups to subordinate others, and intergroup tension, … have been major themes” (Rice, Bullough, & Orsi, 2002, p. 7).

As Blommaert would thus predict, inequality, attempts to subordinate, and intergroup tension are major themes of this book. However, this is true of many global contexts. In order to elucidate the particular way that racism is sustained in California, HoSang’s research (2009) details the history of ballot initiatives in the state, which allow voters to make policy without involving the legislature...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 A School That Looks Like California: Policy and Historical Context
• 2 Bilingual Education and Translingual Practice
• Interlude: Parents Who Cross Community Boundaries
• Acknowledgments: Gracias a Dios
• References
• Appendix 1: Transcription Conventions
• Appendix 2: Participants
• Appendix 3: Interview Protocols
• Index