The Least of These: Finding Genius on the Margins of the Education Experience

As I was working through the prerequisite classes that I needed to complete before I could enter the Teaching Credential program, one of the tasks the professor of my Second-Language Acquisition class assigned was to interview two students who were classified “EL” by their school site. With questions in hand, I met two students who fit the bill in their remedial senior English and walked with them to the school library. However, before we left their classroom, I took note of the activities in which my interviewees and their classmates were engaging. They were to read quietly an assigned selection from a European Literature anthology and answer its corresponding comprehension questions.
When we arrived at the library, I started plowing through my questions. Both students were originally born in Mexico and had come across the border with their respective families just a few years back. Both spoke Spanish at home, and they were the strongest English speakers in their families as their parents did not speak a modicum of English. Then, our conversation shifted to their experiences in their high school classes. I asked them what they were reading in their English class, and the girl responded, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” I asked them what they thought of it. “It’s okay, but I would rather read poetry that has something to do with me,” the boy answered. I asked what he meant by that. “Octavio Paz has always moved me,” the girl declared, “Also, Garcia Lorca has a powerful voice.” And for the next thirty minutes, I was treated to an in-depth literary discussion of Latinx poets led by two students who were classified as remedial by their school site because their first language was not English.
It became quite evident to me that the level of literary sophistication exhibited by these two students was ignored by a system that looks down upon/marginalizes non-native English speakers. When this happens, schools are ignoring the inherent intellectual deftness that comes from what Orellana et. al (2003) calls “para-phrasing.” Schools need to strive to capitalize on the skillfulness that comes from this language-brokering. Moreover, Stephen Krashen (1981) had advocated for non-native English speakers to continue to be instructed in their native language in core classes as students will gain mastery in those subjects at a higher rate as well as acquire English as well.
As a teacher of students who are non-native English speakers, the onus is on me to encourage students to engage with my course of study in their first language. I also need to be discerning when it comes to choosing materials to connect with my students personally (i.e. less dead white guys and more Latinx writers-maybe even written in their original tongue). Overall, I need to treat my students’ ability to para-phrase as an extraordinary ability in terms of their intellectual development and not an academic hindrance.

Works Cited
Krashen, S. D. (1981). Second language acquisition and second language learning. University of Southern California.