Unmasking the Monolingual Bias

This is the second post in my “Disrupting the Monolingual Bias Series”. Click over to my blog to read up on all the posts but… only after you read this one.

My English Learners are SOOOOO Far Behind

A few years ago I was in an elementary school in Brooklyn to observe Zoraida (Z), an exemplary ESL teacher.  After one of our sessions I witnessed the following exchange with her 5th grade colleague, Susan (S):

S: [spotting Zoraida in the hallway, rushes over to her] ZorAYda! What do you think I should do for Hispanic Heritage Month? Trust me, I want to celebrate my ELLs’ culture and language [hesitates] but ya know…. They’re reading scores are so far behind.  Why focus on heritage when their English really needs all our efforts?

Z: [braces herself] Right, Susan you have 5th graders? And most of your ELLs are actually at intermediate and advanced levels. Have you considered doing literature circles using some Sandra Cisneros vignettes?

S: [Pulls out her phone and googles Sandra Cisneros] 

Z: Yeah, uh…. Literature circles you can use bilingual versions of her essays. I was just learning about translanguaging, this really great way to leverage your students’ home languages for literacy. Happy to help model some of what I’m learning…

S: [Looks up from her phone] Bingo! I found a picture book about hair, I think I’ll just do a read aloud and give them some coloring pages.  That's a better fit for my English Learners, like I said they're soooo far behind, I doubt they'd be able to read entire ESSAYS. [Face glowing] Thanks so much for your help ZoRAYda. I don’t know what this school would do without you! [Gives her a hug then darts off.]

Sound Familiar?

I remember this moment like it was yesterday…. and the way Susan so horribly botched the pronunciation of Zoraida’s beautiful Dominican name.  And the more I’ve played it out in my head, the more I continue to return to the factors in our educational system that conditioned Susan to think this way about English Learners and to ignore Zoraida’s thoughtful and culturally sustaining advice. Something in this equation isn’t working, and our nation’s English Language Learners are suffering the consequences.  Zoraida knows this.  Our nation’s language teachers know this.  I’m willing to bet you, dear reader, know this. 

This anecdote can best be understood as an example of the Monolingual Bias contaminating the way Susan thinks about her 5th grade ELLs. Put simply, the Monolingual Bias is a set of toxic ideologies within the educational system that promotes this singular narrative- English Learners must acquire academic English at all costs. This accelerated pressure to acquire English is done in the service of an obvious need for ELLs to assimilate to a US monoculture. Language is seen as either the barrier to entry or the golden key to unlocking the American Dream (Garcia et al., 2021).

A new tool to spot Deficit Thinking 

The constant narrative that bilingual learners are simply lacking is something I've encountered throughout my 20+ year career in bilingual education.  And deficit chatter does more than discourage our brilliant bilingual kiddos from thriving in their classrooms, it also leads to language teacher burnout. In the aftermath of the above exchange, I checked in with Zoraida to see how she felt.  This was her verbatim response:

“Lillian, the monolingual teachers always see my kids through a deficit lens. They're constantly talking about them being behind, not enough, and they don't believe they can rise to any kind of academic challenge. And anytime I attempt to advocate for their brilliance like, Yes they can read essays… they never trust me. Year after year I wonder if I'm even effecting change in this school, what's the point?”

The default mode in US schools is to promote urgent English acquisition as a means to assimilate non-Anglo, non-English speakers vis a vis academic English proficiency goals. It’s tricky because most parents of our ELLs also worship at the altar of English acquisition, and they are liable to trust whatever policy or curriculum promises English outcomes- whether or not they have the results to back it up. 

But assimilation is one of the hardest experiences to empathize with if you’ve never had to go through the pain of forsaking your culture and language yourself.

But assimilation is one of the hardest experiences to empathize with if you’ve never had to go through the pain of forsaking your culture and language yourself. In this story, Susan lacks a fundamental awareness of the collateral damage of assimilation. There has been some powerful research around the relationship between English acquisition and assimilation narratives (Julissa Arce’s book comes to mind). In the current sociopolitical context in which our sitting president is attempting to enshrine English as the law of the land….  You will find more Susans emboldened to deny, forsake and shame our ELLs and their parents on the basis of their limited English proficiency.

Where can you spot the bias? 

More like where can’t you spot the bias? 

On the basis of research for my forthcoming book, the bias shows up in mainstream curriculum, in standardized assessments, in data-based discussions, and during school board voting trends to dismantle funding for any non-English driven initiative. Speaking of which, curious about how the Monolingual Bias shows up in the Science of Reading movement that mandates our ELLs sit in skills-based, passive learning sessions? Yeah…. All of these instructional choices come at a deep cost to the full biliteracy and bicultural development of emergent bilinguals. What’s more, these efforts undermine more than 40 years of scholarship on best practices for bilingual academic development (Butilovsky, Escamilla & Hopewell, 2014, 2023; Cummins, 1981; Django & Alim, 2016; Flores & Rosa, 2015, 2022).

So now you know what the Monolingual Bias is, and you have some working knowledge of where it lurks in our mainstream educational system.  Come back for my next installment on the Disrupting the Monolingual Bias Series to learn about my Framework for Teacher Advocacy.

But first: I have a webinar!

I have an upcoming webinar about the Monolingual Bias. Spaces are limited so grab your spot today. The webinar is free, as my gift to you.