Productive Struggle – Pushing Our Emergent Bilinguals to Succeed

I once knew a principal who spoke a lot to her staff about being a “warm demander,” a term described by Zaretta Hammond (2014) to describe how to teach low-income and multilingual students.  The principal talked so much about it that her teachers used to tell me repeatedly how that was the motto at their school.  Yet, as I spoke about teaching students at grade level, the same teachers said that their students, being mostly multilinguals – some of whom had already exited programs for emergent bilinguals – could never handle it.  In fact, when I spoke to the students, we found that teachers had told students that they would never be able to go to college.  One teacher, who disagreed with the idea that low-income students could not succeed, lamented that when she did try to push her most advanced students to reach above grade level, the same principal who advocated for teachers to be “warm demanders” chided her that she was pushing her kids too hard.

Clearly, there was confusion as to what being a “warm demander” meant by both the majority of teachers and the principal. 

To be fair, these teachers focused more on “warmth” than “demand.”  They built relationships with most of the students and their families.  They worried about the trauma that their kids had gone through (even when the kids were not traumatized). They worried that their students spoke another language and that learning English or gasp, a third language, would be too much for them.  And in their often mistaken interpretations of warmth, they forgot the “demander” part.

A “warm demander” is one who builds kids up and helps them develop a growth mindset so that they know that even if they fail one day, they can get up and reach the stars the next.  It’s the teacher who expects them to succeed in spite of their circumstances and gives them the tools to do so. It’s the teacher who sees school as a workout for the brain.

When teachers do not give students grade-level material, students realize that their teachers do not believe in them, and in turn, they cease to believe in themselves.  We have to push our kids to maximize their potential, to break the glass ceiling – not create a ceiling lower than the one society already places.

But how do we do that if students are still struggling to learn English?  Or if they are from poor neighborhoods where parents are working too many jobs to have daily interactions with their children, let alone support homework?  

Let’s start off admitting that a teacher’s job is not easy… especially when teaching low-income, multilingual students. There are real obstacles we must conquer such as years of poor teaching, academic gaps due to migration or the pandemic, and parents who have to work multiple jobs.  But while acknowledging the difficulty, the reality is that when students are already behind, either due to language or content proficiency, by not exposing them to grade-level content, we never give them the chance to catch up.

Therefore, it is important that we give our students scaffolds and support to access grade-level material.  This may involve sample problems on their math worksheets that they can use to guide them through the subsequent work.  It may include pre teaching challenging vocabulary.  Teachers may consider chunking text or embedding visuals into the lesson.  Teachers may choose to preview the lesson with an easier text or inquiry-based assignment before giving them grade-level material to tackle.

I often do an entire 45-minute lesson with teachers in my home language, Tamil, where I do not speak a single word of English. I use a variety of scaffolds and supports.  Teachers are always surprised as to how much content they end up learning and how many Tamil words they know at the end of the lesson due to the supports I provide throughout the lesson. We then discuss the supports and how and when they were used. Teachers leave convinced that it can be done… because it can.

But simultaneously, I remind them and now my readers, that the support given needs to match students’ abilities.  One of the 7 Sides of Multilingual Education™ is struggle – that is productive struggle.  Just as biceps cannot grow without increasing the weights they must lift, the brain does not grow unless it is challenged.  The scaffolds and supports placed must be just enough that students have to stretch themselves to be successful.  Then, your job is to provide the “warmth” to remind them that they can do it, so that they do not give up easily, while allowing them to grapple with the language and content without you giving them the answers.  And then, as students’ language and content proficiency grow, those scaffolds must be slowly removed.

So let’s push our multilingual students to maximize their potential by reminding ourselves to become “warm demanders” by demanding from our students the best.

Author: Aradhana Mudambi

Dr. Aradhana Mudambi is the founder and Chief Advocate for Students at Language and Equity Education Solutions LLC, a consulting firm that supports schools and school districts to build and improve their multilingual programming, especially their Dual Language Education programs. Through Language and Equity, she provides professional development, consulting, and coaching. For the past few years, Dr. Mudambi has run her popular blog, Social Justice and Education. She has taught several courses such as Intercultural Communications, TESOL Methods, and Assessments for Bilingual Students at Eastern Connecticut State University. Furthermore, she serves as the Director of Multilingual Education at Framingham Public Schools in Massachusetts where she oversees Dual Language programs in Spanish and Portuguese. Additionally, she worked as the Director of Bilingual Education at Windham Public Schools, not only overseeing and restructuring Windham’s Two-Way Dual Language program, Compañeros, but also founding and building Dos Ríos, New England’s first One-Way Dual Language program. Dr. Mudambi has served as a building leader, a Dual Language teacher, an ESOL teacher, and a Spanish teacher. She has worked in India, Mexico, France, England, and The United States. You can reach Dr. Mudambi at arm977@mail.harvard.edu.