 OK, so we're ready for our next session. And today we have Dr. Flavia Belpoliti from Texas A&M Commerce. And I am very happy to introduce her today. Flavia Belpoliti is Assistant Professor of Spanish and Director of the Spanish Graduate Studies at the Department of Literature and Languages at Texas A&M University Commerce. Her research interests involve Spanish as a second language and Spanish as a heritage language, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, Spanish in the US, and discourse analysis. Her latest publications focus on curriculum design and project-based and service-learning implementations in heritage language courses. Her upcoming book, co-authored with Encarna Bermejo, focuses on writing development of Spanish heritage learners at the beginning level. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Flavia has been calling Texas home for about 15 years. So please help me in welcoming Flavia Belpoliti. Thank you, Joselli. Before we start, I would like to thank Joselli and the whole choral team because of the welcome and the facilities and the excellent food we are being enjoying. So thank you, guys. And my presentation today is going to be like a kind of a nexus between what Gabriela presented yesterday and their presenting in the next session. So in the past two years, two years and a half, I've become one of the mentors for future Spanish teachers and future bilingual teachers at university. So slowly I become very involved in curriculum design for teacher preparation. So my main focus here is talking about what it means to be a teacher of Spanish as a heritage language. And I think that it's going to work as a kind of connection between some of the concepts and ideas we've been discussing. And we have a lot of work to do, so please be prepared. The printout includes the first and the last activity. So I want everybody to really do it. So in case you didn't have your computer at hand, I wanted to have this as a printout. And also, at the end, you have a list of resources that I think it will also help to complete some of the material here. And then the other activities are in the folder that I think everybody has access already. So let me just open the document. And the document looks like this. So the first page is the one that you have printout. And the following ones are the one that you're going to complete in the computers when we have the moment for do that. Okay, so more or less the agenda. So you have an idea of what we're going to do. I divided the presentation in three parts. The first and the second part is kind of shorter. And after each section, we have an activity. So we have like 15 minutes of lecture and then the activity and discussion. And the first part is like talking about our context, our broad context with what's happening with Spanish in the US. First and second, what happened with heritage language education at this point in time. And I think that there have been so many changes in the past 20 years that it could be like a refresh of what's happening with the profession. And then the last part is going to be, what's happened with us as a teacher of Spanish as a heritage language. And I'm going to focus mainly in the core competencies. And we're going to follow up with what we mean to not sociolinguistic to talk about heritage languages. And then I have some results of an ongoing project. I'm conducting with Dr. Guilherme Setti and we're doing like a survey across the state. We have just some answers so far. But it gives an idea what's happening in the nation regarding our teachers. And finally, challenges. And I think that it's going to be interesting to see if the responses that we got are the same that you are facing now. So it's going to be interesting to see that. And at the end, my big idea for you is to create an action plan. And hopefully, in a year, we will meet again here and we'll discuss what happened with your action research plan. OK, let's start with the self-assessment. So in the first page that you have in the printout, this is the only individual activity you're going to do. So let's take five, six minutes. Hey, guys. Questions? Some question marks in the list? Yes. Uh-huh. Could you make a distinction between the macro approaches, social linguistics, and multiliteracies? Yes, and we'll see that in slide nine, I think. So we're going to talk about this. I mean, all the different topics that you see in this initial activity have to do with the presentation and the areas that we need to keep exploring. Of course, in two hours, we're going to cover whole models of pedagogy, but at least you'll have the ideas, main names. And with the resources, you can start thinking, OK, I think that this is something I'm interested in. I'm going to read more or hear more about it. So in an ideal world, you will have all the always column filled out. But I think that none of us is able to really cover all the different areas. But at least we know we need to think about those. So let's start just with a little bit of background on what's happening in the United States and what's happening with the Hispanic communities. Most, if not all, of our students are coming from here. So let's start with just demographics, very, very short graphics here. So first of all, the trend of the number of Hispanic people living in the United States and this data is quite new. It's from the American Community Survey from 2015 that by the census. And the census released the analysis less two years ago. So we're still hoping to get, of course, to 2020 and see the result of that census. But the trend is quite clear. It's really ascending. And even if you can say that there is a small change in the slope here between 2010 and 2016, still the number of Hispanic people in the United States keeps growing. And the second thing that I want you to consider is that that growth is also a growth for diversification. Our communities are becoming more diverse. Of course, Mexican and Mexican descent people represent 64%, but used to be more near to 75%. So there is a change here that is interesting. And then you have more people coming from Central and South America and being born from families that came from this area. Puerto Ricans. And it will be very interesting to see what's happening after the hurricane. You will see an increase overall in the United States of Puerto Rican people moving here. Then you have other Hispanic populations and Cubans just representing the 4%. So for our classes, that means that our communities probably is going to be not just Mexican dialects, but we'll have to be able to hear and understand dialects from all these different parts. More information about the Hispanic communities. This has to do with the use of the Spanish language. What's happening with this? This is a very nice chart that you will say this is impressive. Again, from the American Community Survey, there is a report that 40.5 million people speak Spanish at home, which makes the United States the second country after Mexico regarding raw numbers of speakers. So we see, OK, we have a lot of people sharing this language here. But what's happening here? And this is also a very nice chart from the Pew Research Center that even if we have these huge, raw numbers, 40 people ascending, the reality is that the proficiency in the language is decreasing. And this is a very interesting opposition because as proficiency in English rises, and you can see from 2002, 2013, the same people that are responding and showing that there is a descent in proficiency in Spanish. Meaning what? Meaning that by the next 10 years, we're going to have more students that are at the intermediate and basic level of Spanish as a heritage language. And this was being foretold by several researchers. Maria Carrera was saying that, yes, that in the next 15 years, mostly our classes for heritage learners should focus in second and third generation of students. And that means that they're going to have a higher proficiency in English now that they have now, and a lower proficiency in Spanish. So we have to be prepared and start preparing for those students. OK, third chart. We're happening with our Hispanic students at the different educational levels. And again, this is overall national trends. I think that this is a very interesting and positive chart. We have more Hispanic students enrolled in public schools overall. And you can see the changes in this decade. So basically, we move up by six points. And we are basically the most advancing minority group. And this is another interesting fact. And I've been thinking about it. What is the meaning that there is a descent of white Anglo students in public schools? There is less enrollment? Or they're moving to private schools, probably. So I think that the end result is that, again, we're going to have more debates in our classes. So this data in this chart is quite positive. I'm very happy with this. And I hope that we can see this number increasing and more Hispanic students enroll in school, stay in school, and graduate. Because the next chart shows that the graduation rate is below the national average. So you can see here, very interesting, the overall 84% of students that begin schooling in the US graduate from high school. And we are above the other minorities, but still we are below the national level. So there's something to consider what's happening with this distance here and what's happening with our students, not only in our classes, but overall in their performance, academic performance. And I think that there being a relevant effort, and we need to continue with that, to increase this gap in attainment and achievement of graduation. So I think that all the data that is here shows a mixed landscape. So we have data that is very positive, data that is not positive, language is still there and is growing. The use of Spanish at the same time, proficiency of English seems to increase and impact proficiency in Spanish. So we have a complex system working here for our students. This was not going to be part of the presentation. When we start talking with Jocely about the topic and with Gabriela and José, but I think that we need to have a time and a space to discuss a little bit the issues that are currently happening regarding the Spanish language in the United States. So let's start with some clips. Hopefully it will work. That was the first. I asked if there are ideas because I can't hear, and I saw that you guys are speaking Spanish, because you're very unheard of up there. You guys? Is that why you named the data director? We have accents, you see. The Jews because they were purple, right? Rachel, purple, purple. Is there nothing to deal with that? No. The type that has to do with you guys speaking Spanish in the store? Spanish in the store. In the state or in the state. OK, sounds good. Can we have your name also? Yes, sir. Is that Agent O'Neill? So we just come here to the store to buy milk and eggs. And the border patrol, he just asked for ID because we have an accent, and we speak Spanish. And this is the sir. So Spanish as a threat is no new. But all the videos that we just saw from this year. We have an historical movement from a very early history, particularly with the American-Mexican war. Spanish was construct as a threat. But those idea that represents that there is one government, one flag, and one language that monolingual ideology still persists. I mean, after how many years? So we have contemporary expressions after the 70s, 80s, so after the civil rights movements at the rise of minorities as a part, a relevant part of the American experience. So from the 80s on, we have different movements. For instance, everybody is familiar with English-only movement, anti-immigration sentiments and policies that target speaking language other than English. And of course, stereotype-based attitudes and also actions because the videos we just saw are actually not just attitudes, those current actual actions against people that speak Spanish. So there is this complex situation of what to do if we see these circulating in the mass media, in the social media, and we have a student that speaks Spanish at home where their families maybe don't speak English at all. That happened with them. So I will have five minutes for you to discuss with someone else this question. What happened with our students? With this position of a society that considers Spanish a threat. Entonces, alguno de los grupos quiere compartir alguna idea, algún comentario. Pues yo sé que con este tema, we could spend the whole night talking. As far as what this means for us, we were saying that that's why it's so important in our classes to make them feel proud because they're getting a message everywhere else to not be proud of their language. And also that especially in places that don't have such a high Hispanic population, maybe this class is their only place where they feel comfortable and at home and safe. So that's kind of what we talked about. Un comentario. I was encouraged, though, out of all of those incidents that all of the Spanish speakers stood up for themselves. They didn't just sort of just apologize and walk away. They all sort of thought back and said, no, this is who I am and this is your problem, not mine. It is sad that even, and she was saying that even in this part of Texas, Central Texas, I've had students tell me that their teachers have told them not to speak Spanish in their classroom. And I remind my students that if you're talking when the teacher's talking, it doesn't matter what language you're speaking, don't do it. And they say, no, well, everybody was just hanging out and nobody weren't doing it. And I said, well, then that's a different thing. I'm not gonna call one of my coworkers a racist, but, and they're like, she's racist. I don't, you know, I wasn't in there. I don't know what she, you know, what the context was, but it does happen. And I believe them on some level that there are teachers that are telling them not to speak Spanish in the classroom. So it's really kind of sad. I had one of my colleagues. I was in the lunch line for the teacher's cafeteria and I had a relationship with one of the lunch ladies. Buenos dias, señora Flores. Como esta, we would always have a conversation when we'd ask each other about our families and everything. And this older teacher, I didn't know him very well, was right behind me. And he said, that's why they don't learn English because you insist on continuing to speak Spanish to them. And I turned to him and I said, excuse me, I am having a private conversation with this person. Would you mind? And I turned my back to him. Que me estaba diciendo señora y seguimos platicando. The next day I was back in the lunch line and she said, algunas personas tienen muchos títulos, pero no tienen educación, le dije, muy cierto, señora. So when we're just discussing, okay, our kids are not learning the accent marks and why they don't kind of conjugate the subjunctive. I think that is important, but if we're going to be heritage language teachers, this is, I think that this is more relevant and we need to keep the conversation going. So the activity that follows, if you can go please to page, I think on this page, two or three, has to do with this issue. So it will take like 15 minutes to complete because there are two parts, but please, and if you don't have a computer, you can share one of the documents and do it together, but I'm very interested in the responses to the second activity. So it will be like 15 minutes. Okay, are we done with these two questions? More or less? Yes, no? I think that it's very interesting the two options. What happens if we have students come into our class saying, I don't want to speak Spanish any longer after reading or listening to these materials? Or the other way around, you can use and you can convert those news into material to this casting class. And we're just with this group talking a little bit about that. And I think that this is an opportunity to start building up critical thinking and critical, which is the basis for critical pedagogy. To get this situation, not like something that is a problem that is happening, which it is, but bring into the class like a case study and an eyes and start discussing different factors that are showing there. So it's a way to start a discussion. More ideas on this? No, but you can convert this kind of material into discussion points for your heritage language class. Okay. Let's start with the second context that I would like to just talk a little bit about what's happening with heritage language education. I think that in the past 20 years, 15 years, the profession has come in of age. There has particularly a large, relevant, many others working on research in the past 20 years. So the profession didn't start in 2000s, but I think that from that date up, we have a very interesting body of research that show us what we know actually about what the heritage language is and what the heritage language learners are. I think that that's fundamental. And the other day we were talking about a little bit with a colleague. We know that and we have this understanding, but still there are many questions and many issues that we need to keep researching and trying in classrooms and then seeing if they're effective or not. So there have been advances in pedagogical approaches. There is I think a large differentiation from second language models and slowly we're building up on what they call an ecological pedagogy for heritage learners. Not only Spanish, but heritage learners at large. Of course we have many questions still ongoing and I think that there is a lack of long-term studies. That's something that we're missing. And there is some studies trying to prove how effective a method or an activity is, but there is still no clear answers to many questions. Like, okay, I want my students to learn and advance their vocabulary. What activities, what tasks are more adequate for that? What are effective? We know we have certain answers, but not like a complete answer. I say, okay, this is it. If you want to get the students to learn the substantive, do this in class and you're done. We don't have those answers yet, but I think that the field is growing on responding to these questions. So, let's start just reviewing goals. And probably you are familiar with the first four lines of text, which are the traditional or the classical goals that Guadalupe Valdez posted for the field. And in the past 15 years, the list has grown and you can see that there are two topics at the end that are more related with communities and cultural understanding and not just language. So, we're moving from very language-focused goals to more broad societal community-based goals. So, for instance, maintenance is one of the focus has been for a very long period of time. You know that language is shift after a third generation and people become just monolingual in the majority language. So, keeping the language working, it will be one of our goals. The second, and we're discussing this when we started with the guys here this morning, what is the mean of prestige variety, the general Spanish variety, against all these different dialects that we find in our classrooms. And one of the goals is that they are able to move from that first dialect that they already have, the home dialect, to a dialect that is recognized as more general. And I like the word general rather than standard or international, there are many labels, but I think that general Spanish meaning that everyone that speaks Spanish could understand you. That will be our goal for second language, second dialect acquisition. Third, we have expansion of the bilingual range. And I think that for us it's very important that we connect with people teaching ESL or TESOL classes. Bilingual means that they need to advance both languages, not only Spanish. And if we consider the data that is available now for the 2015 year regarding number of ESL students, there are about 4.9 million of students that are enrolled in English statistical language classes in elementary but also in high schools. And 77% are Hispanic students that speak Spanish at home. So English is the other language that they have to learn. So we cannot work isolated. We have to be able to communicate with whoever is teaching and working in English and see, okay, how are you managing reading strategies? How are you making your students be more aware of lexical decisions? And you can both collaborate to create plans, lesson plans that work for both languages. I didn't know this relevant and it's one of our goals. Transfer literacy skills, of course, meaning that if you learn, the basic is that if you learn to read and write in one language, you can transfer some of those strategies to the other language. There are some discussions on how the transfer happens. I think that there is still research needed in that area. But it seems very simple to work with someone to say, okay, if you can understand this in English and you're using these reading strategies to recognize, cognate, make inferences, you can start using that when you read in Spanish. But students have to be aware of those different strategies. So that's the part of the transfer process. Academies skills, not only are they learning Spanish, they're learning how to study and how to study math, how to study geography. So part of our work is to help students to create like a scholarship perspective on how to learn. And this, according to some others, is going to affect this achievement gap that we see with the Latino population. And these two last goals, and those are, of course, very broad, involve all heritage languages, has to do with attitudes and has to do with the work that we just did. If we're in a society where there is this push towards monolingualism, and that's the majority ideology work in the system, you have to be able to create an space where students can feel positively dedicated to their heritage language. Becoming proud, I didn't think someone used that word and think that this is a great word. I mean, you have to be proud that you are speaking Spanish or Chinese or Korean, whichever is your heritage language. And it has to do also with the context of the school. If you have people saying, you cannot speak Spanish in class because I say so and because we need to speak American, well, we need to have a conversation with that particular teacher at some point. And then at the end, the other big goal, and it has to do with the own learners perspectives, there have been several surveys regarding motivation, attitudes, and ideologies of heritage language learners, particularly in Spanish. And one of the main motives for starting to take heritage language classes, at least at college level, is because they want to become more close to their own culture. They want to know more, not just about El Quijote or, I don't know, Borges in Argentina, and it's great if they can read and understand Borges, but they feel that they want to connect with their communities and the cultural that is happening right now. So topics like historic development of the communities, Latino communities in the United States, topics like literature is written in Spanish and English in the United States, art, public art that is done here, that should be the first topic that students start to work with in a heritage classroom class. Okay, so yesterday with Gabriela was explaining the creation of the programs, and even if it's just one class, it has to be like a whole program, but it's just the class that you're designing, or even a lesson you're preparing for the class, I think that this should be your background. And of course we can uncover all goals at the same time, but when you are planning to say, okay, I want to really this year try to focus on literacy skills and how to transfer one side from the other, see how they can do in English and how we can use that to help with literacy in Spanish. Or you can say, okay, no, this year I'm going to focus on positive attitudes and start discussing these topics in class. So after these 20 years, I think that there is like a consensus. There is a building up of consensus in the discipline about the approaches, and these are not models that you can just go ahead and create an activity. I don't have like a direct activity that represents all these approaches, but each approaches give us different points of entrance into the different areas. It has to do with linguistics, but it has to do with attitudes, motivations, affective factors, social culture factors. And I think that each of these models brings something that we can really make use of in our classes. So for starters, critical pedagogy, and this has become 10 years ago, I will say, 15 years ago, one of the main areas of research and of work, particularly in programs at the university level. It has multiple others working in the model, but the idea is that you're working with languages from a perspective that tries to understand social hierarchies, power, and how power is used, and how we create with languages attitudes, valorations, stereotypes, and try to deconstruct those. And we're talking with Jocely, and there are activities already created by Claudia, right? Claudia Alguin. They are created and they're available here in course so we can check them out. So, Tita, you can implement in class that are built up in this perspective. Multiliteracies, and we have one of the experts here with us, basically the main idea behind this approach is to consider that we make sense in several modes, not only reading and writing. So every time a student face a video, a news, a picture, they are making meaning, they're creating meaning with that. And the idea of the multiliteracies is start to see how you read and write in an expansive way, meaning you are producing and you are using and you are reproducing and recreating material that exists. And there are several activities you can implement from just getting the students to know a place, take a couple of pictures and write about that place. And maybe upload it and share it with the class in Facebook. So the idea here is that there is not, and particularly if you think of our life today, I mean we cannot work only with this, the paper, reading and writing. We're doing many more things. You are looking at me, you are looking at the screen, you are seeing pictures, you are seeing images, the size of the words, everything has meaning. So the idea is to help these learners to develop competency in more than one way to make meaning and interpret meaning, of course. Macro approaches, that was the other questions since some of you were kind of wondering about this. Macro approaches come from second language acquisition models after the big shift from the methods area to the post methods area. And the idea is that we start to see language in a different way. You cannot just work with building blocks, phonemes, morphemes, words, syntax. We need to know where the subject is, we need to know the verbs, like separated entities. That was like the old model. But we start working from the top down, meaning you start from the discourse and go to analyze different areas and different ways of using the discourse. And macro approaches involves not just one model. Carrera mentions five, we can add or probably one or more two, but for instance, you're working with a genre based model and you want students to know different genre in Spanish and in English, you're working with a macro approach model. If you're working with discourse based, for instance, reading, literature or other type of texts, you're working with this model. Project based, who is working with project based models? One here, okay, great, we have three. Hopefully next year we'll have like a hundred hands because project based I think that is a fantastic way to move forward heritage languages. In our university, our classes heritage languages, they're all project based and they do different things. And the idea is that they are really the owners of that project and you are only scaffolding the activities and the final product normally is a multimedia product. It's not just a paper, it's really a presentation, a poster, a video that they share in YouTube. Another macro approach that is being discussed and being used has to do with experience or service learning and I move it down because I think that there are particular characteristics of this project that is related of course, but I mean it's kind of different. But macro approaches try to see the language and communication like a whole, from that whole we start working with different parts. And the idea of changing one word can modify a whole message and the other way around. So we try to work with that broad perspective. Social linguistics, well we have our presenters this morning and later on they will return. But basically the idea is that concept, basic concepts of social linguistics can be directly work in the classroom and from then you can start to analyze and get the students to analyze their own production, production from the communities and then other type of productions. And the framework, the concept that we discussed this morning like language in contact, dialects, variation are fundamental components of this perspective. And finally and this is happening every semester seems that there are more people working in these kind of projects. And I think that the future of profession will have this as an essential component of teaching a Spanish for Heritage Learners class is having students to interact directly with their communities or the community at large. So there are several projects in different institutions. For instance, Ana Roca was one of the first to start promoting this model with the Abuelos project. I don't know if you are familiar with it. What she did, she created a program where the students, college students had to go ahead and interview Abuelos, people from the community they were certain age and they have to basically through the semester record different interviews and at the end they have to create like a ethnographic history of that person. So these biographies become the central component for the whole class. And every time the students went to the different families nursing homes and interviewed these people, they came back with stories, new words, questions. So the whole class was based on this big project. And in one way, the student gained knowledge of, okay, the particular life of a particular person, but the person had the opportunity to share their experience, their experience. I think it is a great project to try to implement. Even when they're on families, I mean, in high school maybe you don't have access to a nursing home but each student can directly interview a grandparent, someone that still lives in Mexico and recreate that story. There are several projects with medical Spanish classes where a student basically collaborate with a health science professional, doctors, nurses, helping with translation, interpretation, that type of activity which is more complex. Other projects work with older students working with younger students for instance in a after school book club and they're reading Spanish and the older student in high school or college creates some questions and activity for the kids and the kids start to learn some words and discuss certain ideas. And there is a very nice project, I think this by Petrov, that she involved the parents as well. So you have the small kids, their parents and the high schooler as a guide for the reading club. So there are several ideas and I think that slowly this is becoming part of the authentic classroom. Okay, so hopefully for the first activity this is more clear, the different approaches that we're been using for teaching heritage languages. And again, you don't have to know all of them or you don't need to start working with everything just implementing one of the possible activities to be great. Okay, let's do the third activity. This activity has to do with goals. Let's see if someone has a goal for this year upcoming year, did you find your goal? Yes, no? Yeah? Me, I'm very interested. Bueno, español mejor. Okay. Muy interesante, el propósito que yo tengo con mis clases de hispanohablantes es precisamente desarrollarles el sentido de orgullo de su herencia y del idioma. Y yo veo que si nosotros desarrollamos empezamos eso como primero por consecuencia se van a venir los demás. Si, el alumno va a estar más dispuesto a mantener su idioma, va a estar más dispuesto a hacer, como se dice, percibir las diferencias culturales, apreciarlas, recibirlas, verdad, y transferir, verdad, sus conocimientos académicos del inglés al español, va a ver como que esa actitud de ser positivo va a ser fácil para él. Y si no tienen las actitudes académicas, bueno, ese es el segundo, o sea, para mí el segundo nivel sería porque tomo en cuenta que como en secundaria tenemos mucho estudiante que viene con un nivel académico muy bajo, más bajo tenemos que desarrollar esos niveles académicos, tenemos que elevarlos. Entonces, el que viene de, el que ha estado aquí en Estados Unidos estudiando normalmente sus habilidades académicas van a ser buenas, van a ser bien, pero muchos que hablan muy bien en español van a venir muy bajos en lectura, en escritura, pero si ellos se sienten muchos llegan y tratan de, oh, tengo que aprender el inglés para sobrevivir aquí en Estados Unidos. Pero cuando tú les enseñas a que se sientan orgullosos del idioma, sí, están más abiertos a desarrollar el español y inconscientemente ellos van a desarrollar las habilidades académicas en inglés también. Y muchas veces se necesita el apoyo de otros, otros, de nuevo, o sea, ninguno de nosotros puede trabajar solo. Entonces de pronto, quien sea que esté en las clases ingles, quien sea que sea mentor de los estudiantes, trabajar con esto a través de las lenguas, usando las dos lenguas. More ideas or your goal for next year? I was just going to say, I think my goal is a little bit different just in talking to people, so I can only do one class next year and so I looked at all of the students we had and I wanted them to be as similar in their level as possible, so I picked only students that have recently arrived and who have had interrupted schooling. So they need a lot of help with their literacy skills, but the maintenance of heritage language, I mean, that'll be important, but that's not my number one because that's all they got. So I don't know, I was just curious, is anybody else also teaching primarily immigrant students in your, okay. It's very different, I mean, it is very different. It's a different challenge, I think. So my goals would just be very different is what I was going to say, but I think that the literacy skills and all of that will still be- Your priority. Yeah, we'll be up there. And again, I mean, all of these goals are kind of interrelated. They're not just isolated, but normally we try to focus on one and do different things, trying to promote and achieve that goal and the others are connected and probably they will follow after, hopefully. Any other comment or, you know? Okay, so let's move to the third part because we are close to lunchtime. I think that is also relevant. So I would like to start with two quotes from this year. This year has been very particular for me. I've been collecting data from very diverse and different places, but both are from one is from March. The other is from May. And I think, okay, of course, this is a very small rural school and people just had two, three positions at the same time. And the person was hired actually to be the football, yeah, the coach of the football. For the girls, but also because he spoke Spanish, he was given all the Spanish classes from one to three AP. Okay, so those are the people that are teaching our students. And then I hear, we were talking and I hear this is also second quote and is what kind of representation is working here? Okay, that you have to be from Mexico or from Mexican descent in order to be a teacher of heritage learners. So very different quotes, but give us some information about who are we, who are the people that are in charge of these students. So what I'm going to show you now is partial data of the research I'm doing now with a colleague. So not everything is finished it up. Hopefully next year we'll have all the data completed, but I wanted to know exactly what are the people in front of these classes, what they need to know and how can we from the universities and from the research area help with. So core competences and in here I'm going to be kind of in disagreement with Jose Esteban because I think that we are not going to be love of, of course I mean, but sociolinguistic, this is not working, but sociolinguistic is a fundamental core competence if you're going to teach heritage learners. You have to know, you have to know sociolinguistic concepts and sociolinguistic data and the information that we can get from the research. And that means knowing about core concepts when the one that we're discussing this morning and you can keep adding more as you read and as you go to workshops. You have to be familiar with processes of language variation with the different dialects that the Spanish has and you know, we have 24 countries, how many regions, how many dialects. None of us can be an expert, but at least if you have a student that you know he's coming from Uruguay, okay just do a little bit of research, check some words. Welcome him with the expression that represent that country. And it's a way to start to involve and recognize the variation that you will have in your class because our classes are, by definition, very, very diverse. You have to know a little bit about attitudes and ideology theory because it's the only way to start understanding, analyzing, and then fighting back as the cases that we saw before. And then you have to know somewhat what's happening with Spanish in the US because we have several varieties working and there are changes constantly. And I think that the work that is being done by the Observatorio, the Ligito Cervante in Harvard, one of the main projects is creating a dictionary of Spanish in the US. That will be an excellent tool because you will have like a full dictionary, curated, ready to use, and you can just revise the words and say, oh okay, these words are from our community, these words maybe are spoken in Chicago or in Los Angeles or in Nova Shore. The other three areas have to do with first with your learners and your communities and it takes a while but you have to become to understand who your students are and doesn't mean that you know their profiles, the history of the community, where they're coming from, it's very different, there are just migrants that are arriving now, or there are four generations that their families have been here for a very long while. You need to know about their motivations and it's very easy to run the first few days of classes, you can run a survey, why are you in this class, why are you planning to learn, what would you like to see and try to understand what motivates them to be that is not just, okay, I have to be in this class. And then again, be familiar and be updated with the cultural, political, historical issues of living in the US, I mean. Thank you. On that note, I just wanna say that that's so important. Myself as a teacher going on my sixth year teaching Spanish now, I first year teaching AP classes. And for those AP students, I'm like, oh, they're in AP, I'm not gonna, I didn't do the survey with them. And it's amazing how what classroom management I had with all the classes, because they were like, oh, she knows about me, there was a rapport. And with my AP students, I'm like, oh, I know why y'all are here, you wanna take the test, you're in Spanish, therefore, ya saben el español, vamos a hablar español. Buenas tardes, saludé a todos, nada de que, porque los están tomando, que quieren hacer, nada de eso. And it changed the classroom. It really, really, and it was an eye-opener for me to realize that and to assume that, oh, ya saben, ya están aquí, todos quieren hablar y todos son hispanohablantes, y ya, let's go. Y no les di esa, and so when I did it second semester, because I could see it, I could feel it. Ya una vez que lo hice en el segundo semestre, ya hay maestra que clase tan divertida, and they were willing to share it because it showed that I care. So it's not just a, you know, we get born as teachers in the routine of like, warm-ups in those ice breakers, in the beginning of the year, Ikela ice breaker, because they do it in every class, right? And so I was like, oh, my prep is, no, ya, ya, ya, I'm done with that, you know, that was just me being human too, but it mattered, it mattered, and if anything, it mattered more to them, porque querían esa conexión conmigo, querían saber que yo quería saber de ellos. So that to me was just like a huge eye-opener for just as an individual, as a teacher, because we do, we go like every day and not catch on that part, because we look at it differently, I guess, and so I just wanted, that's a very important point that we can't forget, because I saw it, it matters. It really matters, it really matters. And I think that we, I mean, I think that that's fundamental, know your learners, but also know the communities, and for instance, how many of you have DACA students? Most of us, if not all. And I know that, I mean, we cannot use the class like a political context and start doing great discussion on these, but we cannot be like, okay, it's not happening, and try to navigate without having that, and sometimes students are not responding because they are absolutely afraid, and what's happening at their homes, we don't know, but somewhat you have to create a group of people in your institution, and in the university we have different resources, but depending on where you are, you will find that maybe it's another teacher, maybe it's your principal, and have spaces to discuss these issues and give them the opportunity to talk. So we have to be aware of what's happening in the context of our, not only the students, but their communities. Then of course, language pedagogy, that's another fundamental competence for us, and in there we need to, of course, have some understanding of how the different processes of language occurs in our minds regarding first language, second language, heritage language acquisition, because the three processes work kind of together with heritage learners. You have to be able to do error analysis and needs analysis very fast in the first days of class, so you can really change your curriculum according with these students, this particular group of the students need, so that's something that you have to learn how to do. We just discussed five seconds of new pedagogy perspective, you can become more familiar, reading more, accessing the data that we're offering, and there are many resources now, and the back of the printout handout you will find a big list, so you have where to start. And then the other topic, there is a publication from 2016 that found based on a Cal survey that 90% of heritage learners are in Spanish as a second language class, meaning that all of us will have heritage learners in our second language classes, at least for middle school and high school. That means that we're going to be mixed as classes, so we need to know how to work with this kind of context of the students. I think that it's fundamental to create an environment where heritage learners and second language learners can collaborate, because both parts, both groups are afraid of each other normally. So you have to create the conditions so they can work together and start building up different skills according to what they need. And finally, and I think that this is like the perfect place, so I'm very, very thankful to Coral for affording us this time, this space. We need to keep reflecting in our own experiences, our own background, being able to, okay, I can do this already, I can be perfect in so linguistic, but I still need to work more in differentiation, or think, okay, my community, how can we reach more? Can I do something for the community that implies that my learners will be more welcome in my institution? And I think that that's something that slowly has become part of the profession, our outside role. And Jennifer Lehman in Oregon in a presentation two years ago said that if you're going to be a teacher of heritage language learners, you have to become an advocacy as well. And that meaning start to work outside the classroom. So I think that all these different points are relevant and you can again kind of decide the goal for yourself for next year based on this. I want to know more about this, I want to try this and keep growing in the profession. So very fast, our data, so we have an idea, who are we? So far we have only 115 participants. The field is mostly females, 75%. They have different levels of teaching experience and you can see that the division of them is like 30%, they're beginning to teach, they're gaining experience. 43% have like a middle ground and only 17% have like a large experience teaching, teaching Spanish and Spanish for heritage learners. Regarding degrees, we have that, most of them are MA, which is fantastic. I think another group is just MBA, I think that those are the ones that need more professional development across their teaching lives. There's a small group of doctoral professionals. The third, the fourth line is interesting because just a few of those educational plans, BAs, MA's have a specific training for teaching heritage languages. So that's something that most programs are missing and we need to start at the university level to reconsider how we're training our future teachers. 14% indicated they have zero preparation for teaching heritage languages. Regarding the languages, this is very curious, you have that 56% indicated that Spanish is their first language, 31%, the second language. There is a small group, 7%, that indicate that it's their third language, but only 6% selected that their heritage language was Spanish. What is the meaning of this? That we need to promote education career with our own students, particularly at the high school level because they will be the perfect professionals. So that's something that we need to slowly start to talk with some of them and say, have you thought of teaching Spanish as a career, maybe bring brochures from universities that are close by, colleges, and promoting the educational paths as a possible field for them to go in. Where are they teaching? Well, there are middle school and high school, most of them, 34% of the college level, 17% of the elementary, and then other, and I think that with this question, they were answering, thinking of just heritage language classes, but I think that most of people are working with Spanish, they will have heritage learners in their classes, regardless of the level of the class. What curricula, what are they using to teach? Mostly, they are relying on Actful, and I think that Actful does a very good job for second language teaching and learning, but if you consider the goals of Actful, the five C's that everybody knows, and you consider the goals that we just saw, there is a big difference, and the competences that you need as a Spanish, as a second language teacher, is not the same that you would need to be a successful heritage learner teacher, so Actful is still very heavy in the field, and there are things that we can use from them, but the goals and the perspectives are different, and you have to be aware of that. And there is just 18% of the respondents that were using specific heritage language curricula in their classes. Again, mixed classes are the norm, 90% teaches mixed courses, half of them consider that they have enough preparation to work with heritage languages, but 38% almost have, say, maybe or directly not, so we need more professional developments and continue working on this. And we found that most teachers would like to receive development in areas that have to do with traditional skills, and grammar and lexis, vocabulary learning, but there are less interest or maybe less information regarding the new perspectives, like the use of trans-language in the classroom, socio-political topics that we can bring as a critical pedagogy proposals, social linguistics, teaching with technology, multilateracies, so the new perspective that universities are proposing are not still going down into the mainstream models, and we need to work on that. Trans-language means that you are using code switching in the class for teaching and for learning. And this old division that, okay, if we speak only Spanish here, and we speak only English here, and it seems like you are divided in half, in the brain it doesn't work like that. We have access to the two or three systems depending on our competences all the time, and they're online all the time. That's the newest research at the neurological level, so meaning that you are using the resources that you have available at the time that you're performing. So I'm going to, when we're talking about this earlier, I will switch, for instance, even if I'm trying to keep in Spanish, I will switch if I had to talk about theoretical topics because all the things I'm doing at this point are in English, so there are times that it's like, okay, I'm saying it in English, and I should seek the word in Spanish and use it, but it's faster. So I have to deal with how we manage available resources. And it's something that Ophelia Garcia's been reading for a period of time. I think her first article was 2002, and there is a book in 2008 from her that is a work with that, but you can look it up and there are information. And an activity that I saw, I said, okay, this is very smart. At an elementary school, they have migrant children that spoke Spanish, have some reading skills, and they have a group that were heritage learners, they were more proficient in English, and in the class, it was like a third, fourth grade. They had to read a book in English. So the teacher did this, and this is a perfect example of translation. She assigned the kids that were able to read in English to read the book at home and do summaries in Spanish. They revised the summaries in class, and then the other kids, the one that were coming from Spanish speaking countries, read the summaries and together, sitting the students with the high proficient in English, high proficient in Spanish, they discussed topics related to the story. And at the end, each group of each pair has to share many ideas that they hold about the characters, et cetera, et cetera. So she used the use of English that this group has, like in a strong language skill, to help the other group, and then together debate on the topics. And that's a trans-language. You're using all the available resources in your class to get meaning. At the end is what matters when the students were able to get the meaning of the story. Okay, and challenges. And this is, I think, our last slide, for almost just some time. And those are some of the comments that we gather. But you can see here, it was a multiple option, they could select as many challenges as they like from a very long list. But we found that, I mean, the most common are the fact that we have diverse levels, diverse levels of proficiency, diverse type of students. And that's an important, important challenge. Lack of materials came in the third place, so we're talking about the need to keep working as a group, as a colleague, creating, developing, trying, improving materials that we can use in the classes. Lack of curriculum, I think that relates to the use of Actful as a main way to get a curriculum organized. That's something that the profession has still to kind of help with that. Time, well, time, I think that is a challenge for everything, for all of us. I think that the next one has to do with those teachers that are second language learners of Spanish and all of a sudden, they're sitting or facing students, they're not even speaker or teacher learners. And they feel that their skills in Spanish are not up to date and there are some conflict there. Students' low motivation, again, has to do with the goals, with attitudes and what bring the students to the class. Lack of institutional support, there were some answers there and then the lack of clear standards for heritage classes. And here, I fell for the second person because I understand what it means that you have so many students and trying to get materials training support can be exhausting. I think that we all share this experience. And then the motivation, the first one, the background and the last one. So there were some of the common regarding challenges. So finally, our last activity. So you have in your digital handout the list of challenges that I would like to know if you share the same experiences of these teachers or you have a very different perspective. And we know that all share these particular issues across the state. And I'm very interested in seeing if you have other challenges to add to our list. So the final activity for you is to work with someone and find a way to overcome that challenge. And let's take five minutes. We're almost out of time. We don't have much time left, but this will be your homework for next year. So next year I'm going to collect it. You have an action plan and in a perfect situation you have more time and maybe you feel like doing this over lunch really fantastic was kind of create your own based on your goals and the thing that we talk about today create like an action plan for next year. This is what I want to accomplish and develop like a small step by step plan and maybe share it with someone else and receive and give feedback. That would be an ideal activity to do, but I hope that we do it at home and keep thinking about the topics that we discussed today. And of course many, many thanks. And okay, I think that lunch is ready and if you need to contact me, I'd be happy to get my email. You mentioned that you find it's beneficial to use materials with students that exist in English and Spanish. Was I hearing you correctly? Like Cajas de Cartón, La Casa en la Cayamango. There are so many possible resources. Right, it's, Actful encourages the use of authentic resources, you know, with L2 students and how much more with our heritage students, right? Like I feel that authentic materials should be- The only materials to use. Should be the only materials and one of my struggles and hangups with actually those two examples, I just said Cajas de Cartón and the house on Mango Street, their versions in Spanish is the translation can sometimes be really awkward and weird and whatnot. Like I started House on Mango Street in Spanish just for my own reading and I couldn't continue it because the translation was so awkward. And so actually one of the things, one of the questions I wanted to bring to this conference is what authentic novels are some of you reading in your class? Authentic, you know, written in Spanish for Spanish speaking audience that can be used for high school heritage learners and whatnot. And so, but I thought that that, so I was kind of surprised to hear that and I think we should constantly seek to put authentic resources in front of the rest of you. No, of course. I mean, I think- Avoid translated works. No, and I'm thinking of your question on Mango Street that of course is written in English but experience is our student experiences. Yeah, absolutely. So I will do the following. I will just divide the novel or part of the novel and get the students to do the translation in Spanish. And you will have like authentic resources that is your students' version of the novel and you're working with English authentic material. And also there are several others that are working. We're incorporating some of the general ideas but of course we're at college level use of the Spanish and code switching. So there are many, many different resources. And there is a website in the Library of the Congress. I'm going to look it up. I don't have it here with a list of Hispanic others that you can look for. So more ideas on this, please. Somebody's reading or using bilingual production from Latino others. To answer your, give you an idea of a novel. It's very big, Octavio Paz, El Mexicano. I mean, the first chapter only talks about self-identity, como se identifica el Mexicano es por Octavio Paz. Y es un ensayo de él grandísimo, it's a novel, it's a book, but es un ensayo básicamente de qué es ese el Mexicano, qué se celebra. Y tiene habla de la identificación de ser esa persona. Y yo a leerlo dije, sí es eso yo, y dije, yo voy a darles por lo menos tres, cuatro páginas de libro que me gustaron mucho y lo copié. I'm not supposed to, this is for educational purposes. Our sins, our sins. And I said, los días que lo leyeran, y dijeron, quién es él, quién es esta persona. Y dije, ah, es uno de sus estudiantes, es uno de sus compañeros que escribió esto. And they were looking around trying to figure out who did it. Y les dije, pero no hoy, lo hizo años atrás. Y se llama Octavio Paz. And so had that's how I introduced the author, and then they were like, oh wow, ya hay más maestra, autores mexicanos o juanos. And so you gain their interest. But he's a good one that I say by him. It's a novel. I would like to plug one author. I don't get much opportunity to use these kind of books in my classes. I use them more at home. But it's looking at the literature that is written for young adolescent. We don't always have to read adult level, college level, to have a really nice story. And I came across a woman named Panoma Muña. She's from Madrid. And she has a series of, not a series, but several books that are written for different age groups, like upper elementary, junior, and high school. So they fit into that young adolescent literature. But Paloma Muña, and the stories are wonderful. Some of them are really heavy in dialogue. So even though it's written, you can still get a feel for Spanish youth exchange. So M-U-I-N-Y-A, Muña. Paloma Muña. M-U-I-N-Y-A. And Art de Público Press normally edits bilingual books. And they have a very nice collection for children books. And you can just search. And then we can't ignore it. Dailan Kifki. You have to read that. With a map. OK, I think. Sorry, I have a couple of suggestions for things that I have used with my students. For example, I like Garisoto. That is the baseball. So these are all short stories. Garisoto. That's the name of the. I've also used the ones by Julia Alvarez, La Tía Lola. La Tía Lola viene de visita, La Tía Lola regresa. They are both in English and Spanish. And those are very nice because you look at the differences in generations. So it's a story of this woman who is Dominican. And it comes to the US to live with her kids. It's especially good for people on the East Coast. And then it's how the kids are growing up in the United States and how there are generational differences. And you see that throughout the whole story. And then how it's a question of finding a balance between who they are, the kids, and then the mother. And then here comes someone from La Tía Lola from the Dominican Republic. And then how things progress from. That's the whole story. And then there's a lot of the bilingual poems too. I use a lot of Gustavo Bericir Mat. His bilingual poems are wonderful. I have to do with identity too. Also, there's a great anthology of Latino literature that was published a couple of years ago. But this guy, I don't remember. I don't like him. What is his? Stavans. Yeah, I don't like him, but the anthology is very good. And then, of course, there are translations. But you can always use them in English, Junot Diaz, and the new book by Junot Diaz has two versions. Lola and then also, it's for kids, but it's wonderful. I'm going to use it in my class. It's a mixed class writing class that I was telling you about. So there are tons of options out there. And there's a lot of going on here in Texas. There are a lot of wonderful things. There's one that is called an anthology. What is the name of that anthology? I can see that. I think it's something in Texas. But anyways, I can share this information I put in the folder for you guys. Thinking about a lot of the statements where you want to turn this into project learning or service learning, something that my colleague at Indiana University and I do is we have a program called Translate for Toddlers because we wanted to bring the trans language into the classroom, and she's in French. So we partnered with Better World Books and a bunch of donation centers. And we are given children's books in English, which we then take into our classrooms. And we talk about the problems of translation, literary translation, what is the American Translation Association. And we have a lot of mixed classes with a lot of skilled heritage learners. And we translate the books to Spanish or French right into the book. And then they are gifted to have, we handle 22 counties of migrant workers. So they're gifted into the school programs. But the discussion goes on to find out that many of the heritage learners did not read children's books. They did not have these. And so now we're giving them to the community so that children that need them will have bilingual books because bilingual books are expensive. So we have an entire translation program that then does the service learning that way. Yeah, perfect, yeah. Gracias. OK, so thank you so much, Flavia. And lunch was supposed to be 12 to 1. So we're going to have a shorter lunch because we don't want to stay till 6 tonight. So if you are not finished eating, feel free to bring your lunch in here. And we can try to get started just a little after 1. Thank you, everyone. And we can keep the conversation going later. There will be a question and answer session at the very end. So save your questions if you still have more.