The following transcript was generated using automated transcription software for the accessibility and convenience of our audience. While we strive for accuracy, the automated process may introduce errors, omissions, or misinterpretations. This transcript is intended as a helpful companion to the original audio and should not be considered a verbatim record. For the most accurate representation, please refer to the audio recording.
Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. When we hear that someone is bilingual, we might think: how wonderful to have that skill, to be able to converse in more than one language. And of course it is a skill, but for many adolescents in our state where English is their second language, there are unique challenges, and often their teachers aren't equipped to provide the kind of education that sets them up for success. Today on the show, you'll hear from the dean of the College of Education at Portland State University about a new way to educate prospective teachers on how best to find connections with bilingual students. Then, in the last part of the show, we'll hear from one of our reporters about the huge budget cuts proposed at the University of Oregon and potential impacts going forward. Dr. Maneka Brooks is dean of the College of Education at Portland State University. Professor, it's great to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.
Dr. Maneka Brooks: Thank you for having me.
Dunne: Let's talk about your focus on creating equitable learning environments for bilingual adolescents. What does that mean, and how do you do it?
Brooks: So, oftentimes when we think of education, people like to focus on young children, but my focus is very much on adolescents and young adults who are still part of our K-12 school system. I think bilingual adolescents are often overlooked because they get lumped broadly into discussions of children learning English. People focus on younger kids and fail to recognize the diversity of bilingual adolescents. Sometimes people think of them as recent immigrants who are new to the English language, but actually the majority of bilingual adolescents in our U.S. schools were raised in the United States and have been speaking English for much of their lives, yet English is not their only language.
Dunne: Given the state of our education system right now, are these students left behind because assumptions are made that they should be able to understand curriculum and teaching? Or is it simply that teachers don't have the tools necessary to offer them a better education experience?
Brooks: I think it's complex. The first thing I always like to share with people is: take a moment and think to yourself, how do I know when somebody knows English? For most of us, when you're talking to someone who only knows English, you think they can speak and they can listen, and that's fine. If a monolingual English speaker doesn't read or write very well, we never say they don't know English. We say they struggle with literacy. When it comes to bilingual students in schools, in order to be considered proficient in English, they have to pass tests in reading, writing, listening and speaking. So you could have a student who speaks English on a daily basis, even with family members, and if they're not passing those tests in English reading and writing, they're still considered English learners. That same standard doesn't apply to monolingual English-speaking students. If you only speak English and you don't pass tests of reading or writing, people say: let's address this literacy issue. This particular population is often referred to as long-term English learners. I don't prefer that term, but it does reflect that they've been in the English learner classification for a while. What's missing from the discussion is this: just because someone is bilingual and struggling with reading and writing, or not being successful in school, doesn't mean it's necessarily about their bilingualism. There could be a lot of factors at play, and only honing in on the English focus could cause us to miss other things affecting students' lives. The needs of recent immigrants who may have had a traumatic arrival in the United States are different from someone who has been here since kindergarten, and also different from someone who was highly educated in their home country and is moving to the United States because of a parent's new job. The first thing I try to do when working with educators is ask: who are we actually talking about? Let's understand their complex identities.
Dunne: I see your focus on equity and inclusion in the classroom. That is a politically charged phrase right now. A few years ago it was less so, but from the White House on down there is now something close to a war against elements of DEI, including equity and inclusion. How do you navigate that?
Brooks: For me, I don't focus so much on the words. I really try to highlight actions and outcomes. I've had the opportunity to work, live and teach in a lot of different contexts, from California to Texas, and now as an administrator in Oregon. When I talk to people, I think people can get distracted by words like equity or inclusion. Someone can say those words and not be very inclusive at all, and someone can never say them and demonstrate deeply inclusive behavior. What I really like to focus on are outcomes. Are outcomes equitable? Are they what they should be? Are we seeing differences in outcomes, and how do we explain those differences? Are we attributing them to individual failures, or are we acknowledging systemic causes and asking how we can address those underlying systemic causes? I tend to move away from focusing on the words and ask instead: how do our actions work to create a more equitable society, one where we can all do our best and all achieve? I read a book several years ago called 'School House Activists.' It was about Black American teachers during the civil rights movement who were criticized in some historical literature for not being more visibly revolutionary. A lot of what they did, the author refers to as clandestine activism. They were in the trenches doing the work with students, and that work still helped move the overall mission of the civil rights movement forward. I like to think that we don't all show up in the same ways, but the work we do is still really important.
Dunne: Your book, "Transforming Literacy Education for Long-Term English Learners." How do we do that in our education system? How do we transform?
Brooks: One thing for me is having our teachers, counselors, principals and paraprofessionals develop a better understanding of bilingualism. We tend to use phrases like native English speaker or native speaker of a language. If you really dig deeply into what that means: if someone has been hearing two languages since they were born, which language are they a native speaker of? Research literature describes native speaker status as a fact of how you were born, but when you think about language learning, what really counts is how you use your languages. Someone could have grown up in a household where everyone speaks Japanese, and then spend their entire childhood predominantly in English. As an educator, what does it really give you to know that Japanese was spoken in the home when that person was a baby? It doesn't offer you much. But if you talk to the person and say, tell me about your languages, tell me how you use them, that gives you space to understand where they're coming from. Instead of saying, 'This person was born in this country, and therefore they speak this language,' try to get to the details of your students' actual experiences and build your teaching practices from what students are actually doing, learning and how they use languages.
Dunne: Especially in a big city like Portland, so many languages are spoken in schools. Large cities have a rich quilt of different languages. How does that improve the education system for everybody? And, as you mentioned, you've worked in California, Texas and Oregon. What are the benefits of just being around so many different languages in a public high school, or at a public university like Portland State?
Brooks: What I find really beautiful about multiple languages is that with each language there's a new way of experiencing the world. As an educational linguist, what always brings me great joy is learning words in a particular language that don't exist in another, because it allows you to describe a feeling or a sentiment that perhaps doesn't exist in the language you're accustomed to. Learning a word like that allows me to understand a new way of being and to connect better with someone from a different background. Also, when I think about multilingualism and bilingualism, it really has a way of bringing people together. People, particularly those in the Judeo-Christian tradition, sometimes think of the Tower of Babel as the story of how language causes separation rather than connection, but I think we can use language as a way to bring people together: what can I learn from someone else, how can I learn a different way of communicating, how do I bring people in? That's the beauty of bilingualism and multilingualism. As an educational linguist, I think most people don't realize that throughout the world, bilingualism and multilingualism are normal. Most people in the world are bilingual or multilingual. Monolingualism is actually uncommon, but in the United States we tend to see monolingualism as the norm. Understanding that bilingualism is normal allows people to orient toward: how do we teach students, how do we engage in community in a different way? It's not saying, 'You speak something different, you're outside of me.' It's asking, 'How can we be together?'
Dunne: There at Portland State University, in the work you've done teaching people who want to become educators, how do you shift the paradigm so they're better equipped to both teach and understand their bilingual adolescent students?
Brooks: I'm really proud of our programs at Portland State. Our elementary programs include one with an ESL licensure component and another that is a bilingual teacher pathway, and our third is special education. What I love about all of our elementary-level programs is that they're designed with multilingualism built into the core. When you finish our general elementary program, you'll be certified to teach students who are speakers of languages other than English. It's not just an add-on. It's integrated into the program. Our bilingual teacher pathway is especially exciting because it serves people who speak multiple languages: not just Spanish, but Korean, Vietnamese and others. Speakers of different languages are educated together in that program to work in dual-language schools. And our secondary program, for middle school and high school teachers, is also now incorporating that certification to teach students who are learning English as a second language. I'm proud to be part of a college where, from the youngest kids to the oldest, we're ensuring teachers are prepared to serve those students.
Dunne: My last question for you may be a bit philosophical. For those of us, like myself, who are monolingual, what are the benefits of being able to speak multiple languages? The physical benefits, the mental benefits, the social benefits. What are we missing by being so homogeneous with language here in the States?
Brooks: My first, somewhat funny, answer would be: some good gossip.
Dunne: I like that!
Brooks: I'm always a fan of people not realizing I speak a certain language and sharing information they think I'm not privy to, but I could be a part of the conversation whether they realize it or not. There's also an explosion of media that you can access. I've started watching K-dramas, Korean dramas, and funny enough, sometimes they don't have English translations, only Spanish ones, so I'll watch them dubbed in Spanish. There's a whole realm of creativity that I otherwise wouldn't have access to. Learning multiple languages really gives you the opportunity to learn new ways of being and connect with people who might otherwise seem outside of your world. There are also, of course, well-documented cognitive benefits to bilingualism and multilingualism, including the kind of linguistic flexibility that comes with it. One other thing I'd love to share: there are a lot of myths that adults or seniors can't learn a language, but we can learn languages at any age. It is true that accent acquisition becomes a bit more difficult as you get older, because you haven't spent your life making certain sounds, but overall, age is not a limit on language learning.
Dunne: She is Dr. Maneka Brooks, dean of the College of Education at Portland State University. This is a fascinating topic. Thank you so much for joining us.
Brooks: Thank you for having me.
Dunne: The University of Oregon needs to cut $65 million from its budget, and KLCC's Nathan Wilk has the latest. Nathan Wilk, glad you could join us in the studio. Thanks for coming in.
Nathan Wilk: Thanks so much for having me, Michael.
Dunne: You produced a story about some pretty significant budget cuts at the University of Oregon. Tell us what's happening.
Wilk: President Carl Scholz, in a message to the University of Oregon community, said the UO will need to cut $65 million from its annual budget. He spoke about how they could look for shorter-term revenue solutions, but that if they don't want to keep cutting year after year, there will have to be some sizable reductions.
Dunne: Did he explain why the University of Oregon is in such a hole?
Wilk: Previously the University of Oregon had to cut nearly $30 million last year due to similar budgetary issues. As enrollment data comes through and students submit deposits, President Scholz says they're now expecting fewer out-of-state first-year students, which is a very significant source of revenue for the university and has in the past subsidized in-state students who pay less. That reduction, which he attributes to demographic shifts and competition with other universities, is causing the University of Oregon to have less money in its general fund to work with.
Dunne: I would imagine a lot of people are unhappy with this. You talked to union representation for classified employees. What did they say?
Wilk: I talked with Jennifer Smith, president of the classified employees union at UO. She expressed a strong desire to be involved in the upcoming process. One criticism of last year's budget cuts from some union members and leaders, as well as student groups, was that a lot of it took place over the summer, so there wasn't much input. Smith said that she and the employees she represents know where there is fat to be cut and where there could be more efficiencies at the University of Oregon. She also took aim, as many union leaders have, at some of the larger salaries that high-level administrative positions command. She called for an inclusive, communicative and transparent process to make these cuts do the least damage possible to the student experience at UO.
Dunne: What's the timing of this? How will it roll out?
Wilk: President Scholz said that final decisions would not be made during the summer, possibly related to some of the past criticisms I mentioned. He said updates would be coming throughout the year, starting around mid-summer, about how the process is going.
Dunne: We'll look forward to more coverage on this. Nathan Wilk, KLCC reporter. Thank you so much for coming in.
Wilk: Thank you, Michael.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow on the show: our community has a real lack of athletic facilities, especially indoor ones that can be used in wintertime, and Travel Lane County wants to change that. Their CEO joins me tomorrow. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
