In the shadow of the Mexican border: taking a radical stand.

We have a mission we believe in so much that we speak the same language and work toward the same goal It's not just about educating students. We don't want to waste anything that they bring with them. We want it to be an asset to them. The teaming here is very close. It's more than just professional. It's basically the vision and the mission that we value.

Abigail (two-way bilingual teacher) (1)

A bilingual and bicultural teacher confronts the challenges of an English-only school system at a very personal level. She is more than just a witness to the racist view inherent in the schooling of Mexicano/Latino students (2) that they are somehow culturally and intellectually deficient or inferior. She too is affected by the unfolding drama of the harsh socio-cultural context in which she lives and works and the larger antagonistic sociopolitical climate that surrounds her.

Her school is situated in the political hotbed of the Tijuana/San Diego border region where the blistering political rhetoric fans the flames of anti-bilingual education and anti-immigration sentiments. The most current example of this is the heated controversy over the Minutemen--U.S. citizens often described in the mainstream media as "protecting the border against illegal aliens and terrorists." Throughout California, such racist and discriminatory attitudes are being used to launch political careers.

Against this backdrop, the Latina bilingual teacher is confronted with the dilemma of either reinforcing recently mandated English-only legislation in California by teaching students in English at the expense of their native language and culture, or identifying with the students whose struggle to maintain their rich cultural heritage reflects her own. As others cross the physical border, she too crosses the heavily guarded linguistic border that retains English as the only language of power in public schools in a State where Anglos no longer represent the majority of the population. This teacher, like the nine others described in this research, dared to take a radical stand on the side of her students, challenging the racist assumptions about them, as well as the unequal and abusive relations of power that not only affect their emotional and intellectual growth, but also, as a bilingual educator, her own personal and professional development and well being.

In what follows, I describe how this group of dedicated teachers, in the face of English-only mandates, built a quality bilingual Two-way Immersion Program at their school, empowered each other through a shared educational vision and mission for Mexicano/ Latino students, and collaborated to ensure their students' success and their program's survival.

A HISTORY OF THE PROGRAM'S DEVELOPMENT

The teachers in this study work in a school district where over the last decade Mexicano/Latino enrollment has grown by 85%, yet the district's bilingual programs serve only about 7% of the Latino "minority" that make up the majority of students within the district (Latino Advisory Council, 2005). Their school, Cal Elementary; is 70% Latino and most English Language Learners (ELLs) are enrolled in Structured English Immersion (SEI), a program that was mandated for ELLs by Proposition 227 in 1998.

Awakened by the sunset of California's bilingual education law in 1987 and fueled by the anti-immigration legislation that passed in 1994--Proposition 187--English-only groups fought for legislation that would further weaken bilingual education, culminating in the Alpert-Firestone bill in 1997. This set the stage for Ron Unz, a businessman with political ambitions who campaigned for the anti-bilingual ballot initiative, Proposition 227.

Despite more than three decades of academic research in education which overwhelmingly demonstrates that ELLS who receive formal schooling in their native language academically outperform, in English, ELLs who receive instruction only in English (Slavin & Cheung, 2003; Thomas & Collier, 2002), the English-only ideology prevailed and Proposition 227 was passed into law.

Currently, the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 favors English-only approaches to achieve its central goal of raising test scores. Consequently, SEI has enjoyed increasing support and English-only educators at the local level are often the products of misguided and often malicious incentives to cling to this limited and limiting approach.

SIE programs are compensatory in nature, designed to "remediate linguistic deficiencies" through instruction in English. (3) This approach not only feeds off and into racist perceptions that Mexicano/Latino students are linguistically and culturally lacking, but it relies on the erroneous assumption that English language instruction is an essential prerequisite to academic instruction and success. However, unlike bilingual education programs that are able to teach grade-appropriate content in the native language, as a direct consequence of SEI's limited focus on second language acquisition and not on academics most of the students in these programs systematically fall behind their English-only peers in subject matter areas. (4)

After the passage of Proposition 227, bilingual education advocates high-lighted the laws waiver provision in which individual schools with 20 waivers for students at the same grade level were obligated to offer a bilingual program. Local bilingual advocates, including parents and teachers, shouldered the arduous task of informing and organizing their communities for waiver signatures in an attempt to keep bilingual education alive. This deeply polarized climate in public education unleashed a downpour of harsh racist rhetoric against Mexicano/Latino families in schools like Cal Elementary.

Struggling to keep bilingual education alive, the district coordinator in charge of programs for ELLs, herself a proponent of bilingual education, strategically made the case that bilingual Two-way Immersion could cater to the English-speaking as well as the Spanish-speaking communities in the district, because it makes the mastery of high levels of academic reading and writing in both languages (i.e., biliteracy) an explicit goal for both English and Spanish speaking students educated together in the same program. (5)

Cal Elementary's principal Montes introduced SEI in the fall of 1999, but she also retained bilingual education at the school by introducing Two-way Immersion. It was a politically risky move as it angered the school's English-only teacher majority, among other powerful constituencies, but some administrators, like principal Montes, who experientially understood the virtues of bilingual education, were willing to take the risk.

With no substantive proactive support from the rest of the administration, faculty; or staff, the two-way teachers were left to prove the effectiveness of the program on their own in a school that was hostile to Spanish language instruction. Not surprisingly, the two-way program floundered at first. Not only were the teachers provided no training for the development and implementation of the program but they were also under-prepared for the task: of the four original two-way teachers, only one was Latino, three were marginally proficient in Spanish, and none of them had a solid working knowledge of the two-way model. By the 2001-2002 school year, one two-way teacher had quit, one was noticeably distant, two others were actively crying out for help, and the newest member of the team expressed feeling "bewildered".

In the fall of 2001, principal Montes hired Abigail to teach SEI, with the understanding that she would teach in the two-way program the following year. Abigail had a great deal of experience teaching with a two-way approach and had helped develop a successful Two-way Immersion Program in another part of the state. She also had "political clarity":

   Teachers working toward political
   clarity understand that they can
   either maintain the status quo, or
   they can work to transform the
   sociocultural reality at the classroom
   and school level so that the
   culture at this micro-level does not
   reflect macro-level inequalities,
   such as asymmetrical power relations
   that relegate certain cultural
   groups to a subordinate status
   (Bartolome, 1994: 178).

Abigail's clarity was born out of her own experiences as a Latina, as the first-generation in her family to live in the United States, as a native Spanish speaker who had learned English, and as an experienced and educated bilingual teacher with deep insight about the power of the two-way model. In short, Abigail came to Cal Elementary with a vision of what a two-way approach could do to vastly improve Mexicano/Latino students' educational experiences.

Abigail realized that Cal's two-way program would have to be rebuilt from the ground up. She knew that it would be a tremendous task for which there would be virtually no administrative support and one that would require the collaboration of other bilingual teachers; but she saw it as an opportunity, one that she couldn't refuse became she fully understood what was at stake for the Mexicano/Latino students. If the Two-way Program failed, Cal Elementary would reject native language instruction and resort to exclusively using Structured English Immersion.

In the spring of 2002, just before the end of the school year, principal Montes hired Bella and Alicia to replace two of the original group of teachers who had left. Both were Latinas and experienced bilingual teachers proficient in Spanish. Bella also had some experience teaching in a two-way program.

Meeting together throughout the summer at each other's homes, Abigail, Bella, and Alicia started building in the fall of 2002 the framework for a quality two-way program for Cal Elementary. At that point, the two-way model included K-2 students, but the three bilingual teachers were especially concerned with kindergarten as the incoming children filling these seats would be the first group to move through the school system's renovated two-way program and their success would be essential to proving the effectiveness of this model.

Through their own personal and professional experiences, together with their knowledge of educational theory and research, they knew that these bilingual programs would be successful because they develop high levels of literacy in the first and the second language, they create contexts that tap and build on students' native language and culture, they have a rigorous academic focus, and they work to eradicate the disempowerment and abuse that linguistic-minority students are often subjected to in public schools (Freire & Macedo, 1987; Genesee, Lindholm-Leary, Saunders & Christian, 2005; Slavin & Cheung, 2003; Thomas & Collier, 2002).

From the outset, the two-way teachers understood that achieving their goal of a quality two-way program would depend on the results of their own collaborative work around program design, curriculum development, teacher professional development, and program assessment, as well as their ability to strategically hold off educators who advocated an English-only ideology regardless of its debilitating influence on the academic achievement and personal development of linguistic-minority students.

The Mexicano/Latino families and students were well aware of the low status of SEI classes, as well as teacher complaints that these kids were "behind" from the first day that they entered kindergarten, that they were deficient in the linguistic and cultural knowledge needed to succeed in school, and that they were the source of the school's problems. The bilingual teachers fought these perceptions by highlighting the beauty and value of the Mexicano/Latino culture and the Spanish language, and by sharing these resources with the native English speakers in the two-way classes. They deflected and absorbed the mistreatment of their English-only colleagues--for example, the harsh stares, the complaints about Spanish so that the negativity wouldn't affect their students. The bilingual teachers were convinced that their program would soon provide evidence of its effectiveness.

The two-way teachers understood that crossing the heavily guarded linguistic border at their school would only be possible if they did so in solidarity. They met together after school as well as on the weekends, making use of any spare moment that they could find to hammer out their vision of an instructional design that would facilitate high levels of academic achievement and biliteracy for all of their students; and better overall social relations among faculty, staff and classmates. They wanted their English-speaking students to experience the advantages of the program as well, knowing that after 4 to 7 years two-way students typically outperform in all academic areas in English their English-only peers schooled monolingually (Lindholm-Leary & Borsato, 2001; Thomas & Collier, 2002).

Their developing program would house two classes per grade level and rotate languages of instruction on a weekly basis, teaching one week in Spanish and the next in English. The children in the primary grades, kindergarten through second, would receive all language arts instruction in their native language in order to build strong native language literacy skills that would transfer to their second language experience. The students would be immersed in their second language, depending on whether it was Spanish week or English week, during math, science, and social studies. In third grade, students would begin receiving language arts instruction in their second language, progressively increasing this time on task until everyone is instructed in all areas in the language of the week.

That first year (2002-2003), these educators worked together to make decisions about the allocation of time for Spanish and English instruction, to discuss the benefits and risks of their proposals, and to test their decisions within their instructional settings in order to maintain what worked well. By the end of the year, these three bilingual teachers had designed a detailed instructional model for kindergarten through fifth grade. This schematic helped them see where they were going with the program and enabled them in dearly articulate how they were going to get there.

The following school year, persuaded by the bilingual teachers' clear articulation of their program's goals and logic, and demonstration of its progress, the new principal decided to continue with the two-way approach at Cal Elementary. With some experience with bilingual education behind him, principal Brown stated publicly that he was open to the bilingual program only if it could show evidence of improved test scores for the ELL students it served. Giving it a chance to do so, he hired three more Latina bilingual educators to teach in the program. Although principal Brown did not actively oversee program development, he responded to Abigail and Bella's persistent articulation of program needs and related requests. The bilingual teachers never knew when he would grant a request, but they persisted in actively pursuing resources and support nonetheless.

Remarkably, the bilingual teachers created their own professional development. As new teachers came into the program, Abigail, Bella, and Alicia trained and supported them, ensuring that they fully understood the political climate that they were working in, the two-way model, and how to effectively implement it. They supported each other by developing a "spine" which consisted of one-experienced teacher at each grade level who fully understood the instructional approach and who could support her less experienced colleagues. During the 2004-2005 school year, Alicia, Iris, Bella, and Abigail played this critical role of preparing and supporting new teachers at their respective grade levels. The two-way teachers regularly worked with teachers, providing "little islands of support" to help not only with day-to-day curriculum and instruction issues but also in dealing with the negativity they often felt from the English-only teachers who frequently complained that the two-way teachers were using too much Spanish and that they were dragging the whole school down by insisting on using bilingual instruction. The intense pressure to use more English simply inspired the two-way teachers to meet together regularly in a study group format. They worked diligently to reinforce their own theoretical and empirical understanding of their pedagogical approach by reading together articles explaining bilingual practices. In this way they were able to build group confidence in the fact that they were developing a program built on quality theory and research, and to strengthen their resolve to continue to develop the best possible bicultural and biliteracy instructional practices. This included the use of cooperative learning to generate meaningful cultural exchange and healthy student interaction and relations, and strategic instruction that encourages students to take ownership of their own learning and helps them to identify and engage the very social and political realities that shape their lives.

By working together across grade levels, the two-way teachers engaged in "vertical teaming". Vertical teaming is a collaborative process where teachers make explicit curricular and instructional connections that provide consistency and scaffolding for students advancing from one grade level to the next. In this larger team, these educators were better able to analyze their own practices and their students' performance in order to measure the effectiveness of their program. They were also better equipped to circle protectively around their students to deflect anything that threatened the richly nurturing dual language environment in which they were growing and blossoming. These bilingual teachers saw themselves within the vertical team as "el camino para nuestros estudiantes" (the path for our students). They articulated a deep sense of connection and commitment to the children that they are guiding along this "camino" (path), believing that together they were creating the "best program for our children" by celebrating the very cultural and linguistic resources that the English-only program deplored.

As the two-way program grew, the vertical team grew in size and strength. Every year presented new challenges and the two-way teachers actively analyzed incoming mandates and policies to see how they affected their program. One of their main concerns was protecting the integrity of their approach so that their students, especially those that had been participating since kindergarten, would experience the consistency and quality of a well designed program. In order to prove its effectiveness, they needed to ensure that students stayed in the program. This issue became critical when the district redrew its school attendance boundaries [2004-2005]. The program risked suffering a huge loss with a large percentage of two-way students being forced to attend a different school. The two-way teachers worked together to impress upon their administrators the nearly fatal blow this would deal their program, and to rally parental support to help find a way to make an exception to the school boundary limits. Principal Brown, with evidence in hand that ELLs in the two-way program were outperforming ELLs in the school's English-only SEI program, took up the concern with district administrators. After much debate, the school board approved the exception allowing the two-way students at Cal Elementary to remain in the program. The bilingual teachers saw this as a tremendous victory and felt that for the first time the virtues of their program were being recognized.

DERAILING UNWARRANTED ATTACKS AGAINST BILINGUAL EDUCATION

The two-way teachers' vertical teaming enabled them to keep abreast of the issues that continuously surfaced during the first years of the program that threatened to derail its effective implementation. These educators were well aware that the success of their students would provide the much needed proof of their program's effectiveness--ample evidence to argue for its continuation in the face of unwarranted attacks. Student success would also surely mitigate the negativity of those well-intentioned mainstream teachers who, because of their lack of understanding and experience, viewed bilingual education unfavorably.

The on-going efforts of the vertical team to anticipate and trouble-shoot problems as they arose began to pay off as they saw their kids outperforming students within the English-only SEI Program, both on standardized tests such as the California's annual STAR testing and also on informal assessments such as running records, writing samples, and end-of-unit tests. The first group of children to go through the two-way program, who had entered kindergarten in the fall of 2002, started showing high performance levels in reading and writing after one and a half years; some as early as first grade. The Mexicano/Latino students, who had the advantage of having language arts taught in Spanish until third grade, outperformed their SEI peers who were instructed solely in English. Bella explained that the SEI students were so focused on decoding and translating that they missed the higher level "cognitive skills and strategies" which her two-way students developed and effectively used.

In addition, the two-way teachers noticed that many of their students by first grade demonstrated spontaneous bilingualism--spontaneously talking and reading in their second language. One parent of a Spanish-speaking child in the two-way program expressed amazement after witnessing the transfer of Spanish literacy skills to English when her first grader, who had received all her language arts instruction in Spanish, selected an English literature book Give a Mouse a Cookie, and read the entire text in English without a problem.

They also noticed that the Mexicano/Latino students in the two-way program exuded a sense of confidence and had gained important social skills, such as "being more vocal" and being more assertive in expressing their thoughts and needs. The two-way students also demonstrated bicultural skills. For example, they "move in and out of diverse groups easily" and have a "high tolerance for differences". Witnessing these academic, linguistic, affective, and social transformations renewed in these bilingual educators the necessary courage to continue their work and to bring more children into the program.

The bilingual teachers also witnessed an additional transformation, which they referred to as "a slow evolution of the school's view of the two-way program". Initially, their approach was viewed by much of the school's staff with disdain, and at times outright hostility. However, as the mainstream educators became aware of the academic gains the program was making in comparison to SEI, and in comparison to their own mainstream program, much of the negativity began to melt. In fact, some English-only teachers started to perceive the two-way teachers as resources rather than contributors to the school's problems with the low academic performance. Eva and Abigail shared that a number of English-only teachers have actually asked them for advice on how to work with Spanish-dominant children in their English-only classrooms.

The realization that the two-way program was a successful and established part of Cal Elementary was reinforced when in the 2004-2005 school year, the district assistant superintendent, the district coordinator of ELL programs, and several principals did a walkthrough as they recognized that this exemplary model could provide important lessons on how to work effectively with ELLs in their own schools. In addition, cultural events that showcase the Mexicano/Latino student's work in the two-way program have become part of the larger school calendar.

REFLECTIONS

It's important to note that not all schools have the demographics necessary to develop two-way programs, and such programs are by no means the main avenue of resistance to English-only legislation in the states of California, Arizona, and Massachusetts. However, for progressive educators who do have the conditions necessary for developing these programs, they can, even within current constraints, provide a cognitively demanding, humanizing, culturally responsive environment that linguistic-minority students, all students for that matter, not only deserve, but should come to expect in any democratic society.

For schools that can't offer two-way programs, they can still provide some form of native language instruction and support. However, this support should not simply be the responsibility of teachers themselves like the ones in this study who nurtured the program to fruition without the cooperation of many of their colleagues and without additional pay. They in fact accomplished what school systems should have already institutionalized. It is an embarrassment that this group of teachers, and others like them, has had to work virtually on their own to do a job that ultimately is the district's responsibility.

Regardless of the obstacles they faced, the Latina bilingual teachers in this study have been very successful in building a quality two-way program not only because they have a dear understanding of their program's goals and rationale but also because they have political and ideological clarity about what is needed to change the compensatory and remedial models used to educate Mexicano/Latino students. Having, in many cases, been educated in the same system, these teachers are well acquainted with the oppressive forces that marginalize Mexicano/Latino students. These women share much in common both on a personal level, as bilingual and bicultural individuals of Latino backgrounds, and on a professional level, as skillful educators well versed in using Spanish and English as languages of instruction. Abigail explained that their solidarity with one another and with their students, and their parents and communities, arises out of their own experiences as bilingual and bicultural individuals. As she stated in the opening quote, the teachers believe that they have a "mission" that connects them to their students and to each other, giving them "the same language" to talk with each other about accomplishing their goals. They fed that every cultural and linguistic resource the students possess "should not be wasted", and by working together as a team and sharing the same vision for these students, they feel that they are confronting the unequal power relations at their school by creating with their program a more just playing field where Mexicano/Latino students can succeed.

To use the words of Paulo Freire (1995), these teachers are "nourished by a critical spirit" and are increasingly committed to transforming the sociopolitical realities they face in the school where they teach (19). As one of them expressed it, alluding to the historical, disproportionate, and pervasive academic underachievement of Mexicano/ Latino students and the harsh cultural climate that they endure on a daily basis,

"We want it to be different for our students." By affirming their shared hopes of effecting positive educational and social change, they have been chipping away at the oppressive forces that surround and deeply affect the young people that they work with, and in doing so they are taking a radical stand in the shadow of the border.

WORKS CITED

Bartolome, Lilia. "Beyond the Methods Fetish: Toward a Humanizing Pedagogy." Harvard Educational Review. 64(2): 173-194, 1994.

Bartolome, Lilia & Balderrama, Maria. "The Need for Educators with Political and Ideological Clarity." In: Reyes, Maria, de la Luz & John Halcon (Eds.) The Best for Our Children: Critical Perspectives on Literacy for Latino Students. New York: Teachers College Press, 2001.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1995.

Freire, Paulo & Macedo, Donaldo. Literacy: Reading the Word and the World. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey, 1987.

Genesee, Fred, Lindholm-Leary, Kathryn, Saunders, Wayne & Christian, Donna. "English Language Learners in U.S. Schools: An Overview of Research Findings." Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk. 10 (4): 363-385, 2005.

Latino Advisory Council San Diego County Office of Education. Latino Summit X. Educational Achievement Report. San Diego Count, CA: Board of Education, 2005.

Lindholm-Leary, Kathryn & Borsato, Gracida. Impact of Two-way Bilingual Elementary Programs on Students'Attitudes toward School and College. Santa Cruz, CA: Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence, 2001.

Slavin, Robert E. & Cheung, Alan.Effective Reading Programs for English Language Learners: A Best-Evidence

Synthesis. Report No. 66. Washington, DC: Center for Research and Education of Students Placed at Risk, Johns Hopkins University, 2003.

Thomas, Wayne P. & Collier, Virginia P. A National Study of School Effectiveness for Language Minority Students' Long Term Academic Achievement. Santa Cruz, CA: Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence, 2002.

NOTES

(1.) All of the names and places used throughout this text are pseudonyms.

(2.) Mexicano/Latino is used to describe the Spanish-speaking students at Cal Elementary as it acknowledges that most of them have Mexican ancestry. It also acknowledges those Latino students at the school who have other Latin American origins. Mexicano is utilized instead of the more common Mexican American because a significant number of the Latino students are first-generation or immigrant Mexicanos (Bartolome & Balderrama, 2001).

(3.) By law (the Supreme Court 1974 Lau vs. Nichols decision), public schools cannotforce any student into an academic instructional setting without making instructional modifications to provide ways for the student to comprehend the instruction.

(4.) SEI lessons have different objectives from those of the regular English-only classroom. In teaching English, SEI lesson objectives do not aim to teach academic concepts. Forexample, an SEI lesson using curricular materials on the states of matter would focuson teaching English vocabulary such as "ice melts", "rain falls", and "waterevaporates" rather than teaching science, such as the role of heat in causingchanges in the states of matter.

(5.) The approach is "two-way" because students from both linguistic groups are learningeach others' languages and cultures in an academically rigorous setting. Students areimmersed in their second language, without translation, for part of their instruction. This works according to an instructional model which maps out exactly when eachlanguage is used. Two-way instruction always uses a variety of specialized techniquesand strategies to help students understand while learning in a second language.