Belief in Students
Art: “Warm Demander II” by Jeena Ann Kidambi
As the school year starts to ramp up, it is important to remind ourselves how important teachers and administrators are – especially teachers and administrators of multilingual learners. Teachers and administrators are not just important as facilitators of knowledge but also as shapers of students’ self esteem. As an educator, your words and actions influence how students view themselves. If you believe that your students can accomplish their dreams, they likely will. If you believe they cannot, they too will believe the same, and that has the potential of staying with them for the rest of their lives.
A little more than a year ago, I had a conversation with a middle school student, a former emergent bilingual student with exceptional grades. The child had expressed to her teacher her desire to attend Harvard University. A few of her classmates joined in, excited at the prospect. The teacher quickly told them that children like them could not hope to reach such lofty goals and that even on the off chance that they did attain acceptance, they would not be able to afford it. (Ivy Leagues actually have pretty hefty scholarships for low income students.) The students were obviously deflated by these comments.
Ivy League admissions are competitive and nobody knows if these students would eventually receive acceptance, or even if they would change their minds about entering such prestigious universities a few years down the line. However, crushing their dreams because of assumed economic status is tantamount to telling them that their teacher, someone who should be their greatest cheerleader, did not have faith in their abilities. It is equal to telling them not to work hard because their goals could never be attainable regardless of effort.
The lack of belief in students usually does not manifest itself so overtly. Our decisions and actions are the ones that often tell students if we do or do not believe in them. When our classes are dominated by teaching discrete phonics and grammar skills and when our instruction fails to demand higher order thinking skills, we communicate that we do not believe in them. When we over-scaffold for students rather than letting them struggle on their own, we demonstrate that we do not believe in them. When we do not expose our students to grade-level work, we demonstrate that we do not believe in them and that they too, might as well give up.
And administrators – when we allow this to happen, we also demonstrate that we do not believe in our students.
On the other hand, when you challenge your students with a Goldilocks-level of challenge by having them work within their proximal zone of development, you demonstrate that you believe in your students’ ability to grow. When you present grade-level text, appropriately text-engineered with headings, visuals, and cognates, you demonstrate that you believe your students can grapple with challenges. And when you slowly remove those scaffolds and increase the rigor, you demonstrate to your students that they can do anything they set their minds to do.
With the right words and actions, we can support our students to be the creators of their own destiny (whether that destiny involves someday opening a business, going to trade school, attending a prestigious university, or running for president) because they know their teachers were behind them all the way.
If you would like help learning how to text engineer, provide scaffolds, or otherwise work within multilingual students’ zones of proximal development, please contact me at arm977@mail.harvard.edu or go to my website at languageandequity.com.
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.