What Is Translanguaging and How Is It Used in the Classroom? by Ileana Najarro

Frankly, I always felt that language in the traditional bilingual language classroom was too stiff, creating distinct lanes for English and Spanish despite a real complexity of language often referred to as "Tex-Mex" that teachers looked down on when I was growing up. I imagine that many people still do. 

Not so in the world of bilingual education, with CUNY Graduate Center Professor Dr. Ofelia Garcia and her students like Dr. Nelson Flores and others.

When I think of the concept of translanguaging, the word, "freedom," pops immediately into my head. This piece by Ileana Najarro in Edweek affirms that view.

-Angela Valenzuela

What Is Translanguaging and How Is It Used in the Classroom?

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By Ileana Najarro — July 13, 2023 | Edweek

For years, research into the best instructional approaches for students identified as English learners has pointed to the concept of translanguaging.

Identified by bilingual education researcher Ofelia García, it’s both a skill set and a total shift in the way language is thought of, used, and taught in K-12 classrooms where multiple languages are honored and addressed, even as English remains the dominant language of instruction, said Marybelle Marrero-Colon, the associate director of professional development for the Center for Applied Linguistics.

Researchers are looking into how it can be applied to formal assessments, such as state standardized tests on which English learners might struggle to demonstrate their academic proficiency because they are tested in an unfamiliar language.

Here’s a look at what translanguaging means in the context of classroom instruction and how all educators, including monolingual English-speaking teachers, can cultivate spaces for translanguaging to occur.

What is the definition of translanguaging?

Translanguaging is the ability to move fluidly between languages and a pedagogical approach to teaching in which teachers support this ability.

In translanguaging, students are able to think in multiple languages simultaneously and use their home language as a vehicle to learn academic English.

A student could be reading an article about the solar system in English, but in their brain, they are also thinking and making connections in Spanish. They might annotate in Spanish or first write down reading comprehension responses in Spanish and then figure out how to provide the responses in English, said Marrero-Colon.

It’s all about encouraging students to access their full linguistic repertoires, said Emily Phillips Galloway, an assistant professor at the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University.

Translanguaging is also multimodal. More research is underway, for instance, on hearing impaired translanguaging by students who are part of families with American sign language, Spanish sign language, and signs families create for themselves, said Maria Cieslak, the professional development content manager at the Center for Applied Linguistics.

How is translanguaging used in the classroom?

Teachers can engage in a variety of activities that deliberately encourage translanguaging, ranging from providing vocabulary in multiple languages to collaborative translation opportunities. The goal is to get students translanguaging as a practice that can be leveraged toward supporting literacy outcomes and engagement, as well as other academic endeavors.

For example, two students could be assigned to solve a word problem, and one might be stuck on a word in English. The two students can then use an equivalent word in their home language to make sense of what the word problem is asking of them, Phillips Galloway said.

Or in group activities, students can be prompted to share with the rest of the class how something taught in English would make sense in Spanish by highlighting similar and different grammatical structures between the two languages, Marrero-Colon said.

“When you translate, you don’t have to do it word for word. You’re really trying to capture the feeling of that text,” Marrero-Colon said.

Once teachers start doing these activities, research has found that students who have not spoken before start speaking and students who were not as engaged in text-comprehension activities suddenly are, she added. That’s occurring because they are being encouraged to use their home language in class to think about language use overall.

How is translanguaging different from translation?

Translanguaging extends beyond translation to something where students gain an understanding of how language functions and works.

Although translation activities are a way to engage in translanguaging, it’s not word-for-word translation. It’s about a student using the words and thoughts they have in their home language to make sense of English and then be able to respond in English, said Kia Johnson, the director of PreK–12 language and literacy at the Center for Applied Linguistics.

Translanguaging requires students to think about language components such as the placement of adjectives, what cognates are in various languages, and more in multiple languages at once, Phillips Galloway said.

Does translanguaging require bilingual teachers?

Teachers don’t have to speak the home languages of students to help them engage in translanguaging.

It does require teachers to be comfortable being a learner themselves as students teach them what they know about their own language. Some teachers may fear that students may engage in off-task behavior in languages the teachers don’t understand, but research has found that in such cases, teachers are still able to register what is going on and get students back on task, Phillips Galloway said.

She also said that teachers who work in states with laws requiring English-only instruction can and should still allow students to use other languages in the classroom to help them access academic content.

The key, Marrero-Colon said, is flexibility. For instance, a student may need to write an essay in English. They can instead start with building a PowerPoint primarily of images that convey a story or meaning. The teacher can then use the PowerPoint to help students come up with words and phrases, then move to sentences and paragraphs, and so on.

Does translanguaging just benefit English learners?

All students can benefit from a classroom welcoming of translanguaging because few use academic English at home, regardless of their home language.

For instance, Black students may be fluent in African American Vernacular English and can use translanguaging activities to engage in academic classroom English, Johnson said.

An example of English-only translanguaging is asking students to turn William Shakespeare’s sonnets into modern pop songs, because it is a use of language in different registers, or levels of formality, Phillips Galloway said.

Students are also more interested in acquiring more languages after hearing their peers use their home languages, which helps them succeed in an increasingly global society, she added.

Would translanguaging hinder a student’s ability to acquire English?

The more opportunities students have to use language, whether that’s English or not, breeds more language use, which is then associated with language learning.

“I think the mistake that we often make is that we don’t help students to make the connections between the linguistic resources that they bring in languages other than English,” Phillips Galloway said. “And in the course of doing that, we take a whole set of resources that could be used for comprehending texts as they read in English, or learn to write text in English, we take those resources off the table.”

More research has found that allowing students to participate in translanguaging helps English learners eventually outperform their monolingual peers because they become more flexible in thinking about and using language in academic contexts, Marrero-Colon said.

How can schools overall better encourage translanguaging?

Improved curriculum, professional development, and mindsets around the value of home languages can all help schools to encourage translanguaging and support students in the process.

Phillips Galloway is working with colleagues on a curriculum that better guides teachers in translanguaging activities since not all curricular materials recognize the concept.

Researchers at the Center for Applied Linguistics, including Cieslak, also work on professional development and policy discussions that help educators and policymakers alike understand how English learners bring with them linguistic assets that should be nurtured for overall academic success.

“It’s about understanding cultural identity, and my language is part of my identity,” Cieslak said. “And I’m going to naturally translanguage, whether you tell me I can or cannot.”

 

Friends:

I can't read enough stories like these that are so heart-warming. These young people are getting lessons of a lifetime that will carry them through the rest of their lives in a positive way. This is what actual school should already be, but the good stuff—like what we do at Academia Cuauhtli here in Austin, Texas—can only really happen outside of school in after-school, or extended day programs. Some teachers and schools notwithstanding, the general absence of such opportunities for our youth to really sink their teeth into engaging readings that mirror their experiences were already precious few even before the so-called "culture wars" took hold.

There's always a lot of silly hand-wringing about literacy and the ostensible difficulties of getting "these children" to read yet there is really no mystery here. Reading empowering texts—in this case, on the Black experience, make children feel empowered and as suggested herein, "tricks" youth into becoming high achieving. Knowing this is what has motivated many a literacy expert and those of us in the Ethnic Studies movement to set up after-school programs if possibilities within the school are few or limited. At their best, these are grassroots efforts started in living rooms, cultural centers, or other community spaces accessible to parents and youth.

Hats off to Georgetown University professor Sabrina Nero and University of Buffalo LaGarrett King for their contributions to this life-saving curriculum. We should talk someday soon as Academia Cuauhtli is also akin to a Freedom School that we know is making a big difference in the lives of our children, their families, and the teachers themselves. Check out our brand new Academia Cuauhtli Youtube channel, a work in progress, so that you can view our Aztech Kidz Code graduation ceremony from last Saturday. It's a Summer coding camp in Spanish with low-income youth in Austin, Texas, where they learn how to write code, create games, monetize their games combined with danza Mexica (Aztec) ceremony. It's cool to learn how youth evolve and develop in just three weeks of camp and how so much of this hinges on their relationships to the staff and teachers the run the program.

To deny this in the public school arena, as the current culture war agenda seeks to do, is to cut off the oxygen to youth and excellent teaching like this that the right decries, not because it's "woke," but because they do not want to empower our children or communities. After all, empowered youth and communities have a voice and they vote, too.

You can't take the politics out of education. Politics are simply about power. However, there is a difference between having power over, instead of having power with, the latter of which should be our guiding principle in a democracy. What we can and should do as communities is to create after-school or extended day programs like these where our youth can still acquire the rich texts and  precious knowledge that they have long been denied. 

We need these escuelitas everywhere!

-Angela Valenzuela

 

This After-School Program Is Improving Students’ Reading, One Black History Book at a Time

—Education Week
By Kaylee Domzalski & Lauren Santucci — July 14, 2023

As states across the country consider and pass laws that limit instruction on race and gender, it’s become increasingly challenging for educators to know how to teach topics like racism, sexism, and systemic inequality. In Waterloo, Iowa, a daily after-school program seeks to improve the literacy rates of the Waterloo Community School District’s Black and low-income students one history lesson at a time.

Waterloo, located two hours northeast of Des Moines, has some of the starkest differences in student achievement in the state. According to data from the Iowa State Board of Education, the Waterloo district has a large achievement gap between its Black and white students, as well as a long history of segregation that persists today. In 2020, the financial news site 24/7 Wall Street named Waterloo the fifth worst city for Black Americans. Black students make up 26 percent of the district’s students and, according to data from ProPublica, are on average 2.2 grades behind their white peers.

The 1619 Freedom School was borne out of the pandemic. Co-founders Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of the 1619 Project, a New York Times endeavor focused on slavery and its connections with U.S. history, and Sheritta Stokes, a 5th grade teacher in the district, saw that students were struggling to read during their Zoom classes when schools went virtual in 2020. They launched the program in the fall of 2021 and recently completed their second year.

The 1619 Freedom School is independently funded, and the 1619 Project isn’t part of the program’s curriculum. The curriculum was developed by Sabrina Nero, an associate teaching professor at Georgetown University, and LaGarrett King, an associate professor at the University of Buffalo.

The program is entirely tuition-free and provides students with 30 books to take home to encourage them to read on their own. The curriculum is centered around Black history and is meant to help students see themselves in the lessons and therefore spark their interest and desire to read. In one unit, students read about notable Black children in history, such as Audrey Faye Hendricks, who at 9 years old was the youngest person to be arrested during the civil rights movement. Studies have shown when students are reflected in their lessons it improves their engagement and academic outcomes. It’s a concept reflected in culturally responsive teaching practices and emphasized throughout the 1619 Freedom School curriculum.

“We teach about the positive aspects and contributions of African Americans and we do that because if you’re working with kids and they’re reading about people who look like them, who have done spectacular things in the world, it’s a self-motivation,” Stokes said.

“Maybe I can do that. Maybe even though I’m struggling with reading, I just want to learn about this person, so I’m going to read this book… And before I know it my test scores and my reading scores are higher than they were and I didn’t even notice that it happened.”

The literacy program has had early success with its students. In its first year, the program went from three of its students reading at grade level to 11, Stokes said. And Stokes hopes that the program will continue to grow and help Waterloo students. This fall, it’ll partner with the Waterloo Community School District for help identifying students who would benefit from the Freedom School program. Stokes said the district will also provide the program with test scores and other student data to help those students grow.

“We’re making sure that the generations of children coming from Waterloo schools … have an opportunity to come after school to get their test scores up so they can go out in the world and be successful,” Stokes said. “You couldn’t ask for anything better as a teacher.”

Kaylee Domzalski
Video Producer, Education Week
Kaylee Domzalski is a video producer for Education Week, telling meaningful stories that impact the field.
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Lauren Santucci
Video Producer
As a video producer, Lauren Santucci produces, films, and edits meaningful, human-interest digital video and works closely with Education Week editors and reporters. Prior to joining Education Week in 2022, she produced videos for Al Jazeera, FRONTLINE PBS, and The Texas Tribune. She has a master’s degree in visual journalism from Ohio University and a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Faculty Members Stella Flores, Denisa Gándara and Angela Valenzuela Ranked as Influencers in Educational Practice and Policy

Friends:

Rick Hess Straight Up (RHSU) annually publishes in Edweek rankings of top influencers in education (see 2023 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence: Top 10 Lists). Congrats to all 200 scholars that made the list, and particularly to my fellow colleagues in the College of Education at UT, namely, Dr. Stella Flores and Dr. Denisa Gándara for making it to the list. 

My sense is that most of us aren't actually trying to make "the list," but rather that we're all working hard trying to influence positive change at multiple levels, meaning, local, school district, city, state, and national levels. Thanks to the RHSU team for doing the hard work of generating this annual list and thanks to the College of Education at UT-Austin for posting this notice. Getting acknowledged in this way is affirming, especially considering just how hard we all work.

-Angela Valenzuela

Faculty Members Stella Flores, Denisa Gándara and Angela Valenzuela Ranked as Influencers in Educational Practice and Policy

By Kendall Payne

Jan. 5, 2023

The College of Education congratulates Department of Educational Leadership and Policy faculty members Stella Flores, Denisa Gándara and Angela Valenzuela for being named to the 2023 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Ranking list.

Each year, 200 university-based scholars make the list and are scored in nine publicly available metrics including their Google scholar score, book points, highest Amazon ranking, syllabus points, education press mentions, web mentions, newspaper mentions, congressional record mentions and Twitter score. According to RHSU, these rankings reflect, in roughly equal parts, the influence of a scholar’s academic scholarship and their influence on public debate as reflected in old and new media.

Stella Flores is an associate professor and examines the effects of state and federal policies on college access and completion outcomes for low-income and underrepresented populations including immigrant and English learner students. 

Denisa Gándara is an assistant professor and examines the development of higher education policy decisions and the effects of these decisions on students who have been excluded from and underserved in higher education. An additional line of research she explores is how various approaches to funding colleges and universities might promote or hinder social equity.

Angela Valenzuela is a professor and specializes in urban education from a sociological and multicultural perspective, with a focus on minority youth in schools, particularly at the K-12 level. 

David Yeager, associate professor in the Department of Psychology in the College of Liberal Arts, was also named to this year’s list. 

 

Plunging Graduation Rates Signal Long Recovery | Sarah D. Sparks — Aug. 29, 2022

As a consequence of the pandemic, many students are facing difficulties earning sufficient credits and good grades sufficient enough to graduate. This is a helpful read on what different states are doing. 

I'm not sure how I feel about a 13th year of schooling since this could feel like a demotion for high school students. Volumes of research on grade retention should give us pause, especially since it coalesces around the best option of not retaining youth, but rather promoting them with resources. How about a stipend to attend a local community college and make that, in effect, their thirteenth year.

One could argue that this would encourage some students not to graduate so that they can get financial support to go to college, so this could get counter-balanced with other proposals incentivizing high school graduation.

How about, for example, allowing students to graduate early should they choose coupled with stipends for early graduates? The mix of options as covered in this piece opens up a rethinking of high school in imaginative ways.

For example, the idea of states moving more toward mastery- as opposed to seat-time based credit sounds promising for the long-term goal of academic recovery. 

Student portfolios and "allowing students to get credit for multiple content areas from the same course" as Ohio is currently pursuing is innovative and makes sense. Here's a link to the state law that goes into effect in January, 2023: https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-3313.603

One can certainly bet that Ohio's approach will feel more fair with students as opposed to any new ways our policy makers might devise to retain youth in grade. 

What needs to factor in the mix is that the pandemic didn't shut down students brains and they learned tons, like we all did, about the world, life, and their place in it. Many of us are already looking back and realizing just how much we learned about ourselves, our families, and values in the process. Acquiring a sense of what really matters, albeit frequently mediated through trauma, is nevertheless extraordinarily valuable. They just didn't quite learn all that schools taught. But they did learn. These were perhaps the most valuable, important lessons of their lives and that should count for something.

What the authors describe at the moment as a "long recovery" to dramatically lower graduation rates arguably holds possibility for constructive systemic change in the long run. All is not lost. We can and should be hopeful even as we collectively work to enact positive systemic change that works for teachers and teacher's work, as well.

-Angela Valenzuela

Plunging Graduation Rates Signal Long Recovery

By Sarah D. Sparks — August 29, 2022 | EdWeek

Marcia Oliveira, left, and her son Angelo, 18, talk with a graduation advocate in Charleston, S.C., about how to 

schedule credit-recovery classes around the new restaurant job Angelo had to pick up during the pandemic to 

help his family. Henry Taylor for Education Week

The last few years have presented a “perfect tornado of reasons” for 

students to leave high school, and states and school districts are starting 

to see the fallout. At least 31 states saw declining graduation rates for the 

class of 2021 overall, more than twice as many as in the previous year.

Low-income students and those with disabilities have been the hardest hit, with year-to-year declines for low-income students in 33 states and for students with disabilities in 22 states—more than twice as many as for the class of 2020, according to an analysis of state data by the EdWeek Research Center. The ongoing pandemic disruptions are rolling back years—and in some cases, a decade—of states’ progress in boosting graduation rates for students of color.

(A nationwide graduation rate total is not yet available. Though states are required to report disaggregated graduation rates to the federal government every year, many are behind, and full national data are not expected until next year. Not every state provided Education Week with data for all student groups in every year.)

Remote learning and repeated outbreaks and quarantines have led more students to miss school and fall behind in classes, while increased family illnesses and economic instability have given older students more reasons to leave school and start work early, according to Terri Martinez-McGraw, the co-director of the National Center for School Engagement, which studies and works with schools to prevent students from dropping out. At the same time, overwhelmed teachers and school staff have had less time and energy to track down students who are slipping through the cracks.

In the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years, “kids have had a much longer time to be absent, fail classes and lose credits, have behavior problems,” said Robert Balfanz, the director of the Everyone Graduates Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. “High schools tend to be pretty mechanical [in response]: You fail a class, you don’t get credits; you don’t have enough credits, you don’t get a diploma. So we are seeing the first downward trends in graduation rates in 15 years in 2021, and there’s a good chance that continues … because we know kids just still aren’t back.”

Graduation Rates Sink for Second Year, Especially for Vulnerable Groups

Graduation rate declines have accelerated in many states as the pandemic continued. An analysis of state data by the EdWeek Research Center finds 31 states saw drops in graduation rates for the class of 2021, compared to 14 for the class of 2020. 

At-a-glance: Public School Graduation Changes Between 2019 and 2021

Hover over bars to reveal data for each state.

Graduation Changes for Vulnerable Student Groups

The number of states that saw declining graduation rates for students with disabilities and low-income students more than doubled from 2020 to 2021. 

States losing hard-won ground on diplomas

Graduation-rate progress held steady for the class of 2020, whose members had mostly completed their requirements by the time the pandemic began to shutter schools in March 2020. States and districts also offered broad flexibility to students in meeting credit hours and seat time, course and testing requirements, and other graduation requirements.

The graduation flexibility states provided in 2020 “held students harmless” for academic disruptions, but they also may have given educators a false sense of security with regard to high school students’ progress, Balfanz said. State flexibility was intended to be temporary, but students in the subsequent high school classes became more disengaged, not less.

“In Arizona, we’ve lost 10 years of attainment; there’s been such a huge slide,” said Stephanie Parra, the executive director of ALL in Education, an Arizona nonprofit that works with districts to improve graduation rates. “We are going into the third school year still navigating a pandemic, and now we do have clear data that schools are struggling and our students are definitely going to need a lot of support to bring them back.”

The Grand Canyon state saw the biggest graduation declines in the nation. It graduated only 75.7 percent of its students on time in 2020-21, less than it has at any time since the state began calculating four-year cohort data in 2011. The decline has hit students of color particularly hard; graduation rates have dropped 5 percentage points for Black students, 4 percentage points for Hispanic students and nearly 6 percent for Native American students since 2018-19. The state board of education also has found rising student mobility among schools since the pandemic.

Across states that provided data, Asian students were the only group for which fewer states saw declines in graduation rates in 2021 than in 2020. In the same time, graduation rates have declined for Native American, Latino, and white students in the majority of states, and for Black students in 24 states.

How Have Graduation Rates Changed in 

Your State?

More states saw drops in graduation rates for students of every race except Asian students in 2021 compared to 2020, according to an analysis of state data by the EdWeek Research Center. Below, see a breakdown of which states and demographic groups lost the most students. 

At-a-glance: State Graduation Changes, by Race