As we approach the midterm elections in the US, policies and agendas are being debated and scrutinized, but there is one issue on which nearly everyone can agree—the richest nation in the world should have one of the lowest rates of child poverty—and now we know how to achieve that.
Child poverty is not only morally wrong in a wealthy country—it’s bad for everyone, not least the children who are unable to break out of the poverty trap because they can’t succeed at school when they’re tired, hungry, unhealthy, or don’t have anywhere to study. A significant percentage of those same children end up in the school-to-prison pipeline, costing taxpayers thousands of dollars every year. Decreasing child poverty has been shown to be the single most effective means of improving educational outcomes in many varied studies. The good news is that the share of children in poverty has been decreasing steadily for nearly the last 30 years, and now we know how to make it decrease much more rapidly.
A new analysis by Child Trends shows that child poverty fell by 59% between 1993 and 2019, and it fell across the board, in every state, and by about the same degree among children of all demographics—White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, living with one parent or two, or in immigrant households. Even the number of the most deprived children, those described as being in “deep poverty,” fell by over 50%.
The analysis concludes that several factors are responsible for this decline, including lower unemployment rates, increased participation in the labor force by single mothers, and increases in state minimum wages, but strengthening of the social safety net was by far the most significant reason for the decrease. The number of children protected from poverty by the social safety net more than tripled, from two million children in 1993 to 6.5 million children in 2019.
Gradual progress was being made, and then COVID-19 struck, offering us a make-or-break opportunity. Government bailouts and handouts were accepted as the only way to get through the pandemic-related closures, so it was easy to gain approval for a one-year increase to the enhanced child tax credit. That resulted in the share of children in poverty falling by nearly half in 2021. Just over 5% of children were in poverty last year, down from nearly 10% the year before, based on the Supplemental Poverty Measure, a broader measure developed by the Census Bureau that came into use in 2009.
The supplemental poverty rate for children was the lowest on record since the measure began. Without the enhanced child tax credit, the rate would have only fallen to 9.2%. Some 5.3 million people were lifted out of poverty because of the credit, and the total cost for the year was under $100 billion.
That may sound like a lot of money, but remember that the annual US defense budget is well over $700 billion, and this money can be spent on what is now a proven means of protecting the safety and future of millions of children.
The one-year upgrade to the enhanced child tax credit was not extended due to Democratic senator Joe Manchin’s insistence that recipients be required to work. However, there is some support for the measure among House Republicans, and new faces in Congress may be eager to add their support to such a winning policy.
The reality is that we know how to fight child poverty, we have a moral obligation to do it, and it makes economic sense, so ask your candidates if they support extension of the enhanced child tax credit while they still need your vote.
Washington State superintendent for education Chris Reykdal wants to expand dual language education programs in the state so that all school-aged children have access to them by 2040.
In August, Reykdal laid out a plan to increase the accessibility of dual language programs, starting with an investment of $18.9 million over the course of the next three years. This money will be used to increase the number of programs throughout the state while also expanding and supporting the workforce of educators that makes these programs run.
“The evidence is clear,” Reykdal said. “When young people become bilingual during the early grades, they have more cognitive flexibility and they perform better in school. As our global economy changes and our world becomes increasingly international, dual language education must become a core opportunity for our students.”
During this first phase of Reykdal’s initiative to make dual language education more accessible, the plan is to provide funding to go toward the training of biliterate educators. This will help to increase the number of teachers qualified to work in these programs. Additionally, the plan provides annual stipends to educators already working in these programs.
Currently, the state provides 112 different dual language education programs for around 35,000 children, the vast majority of whom learn English and Spanish. There are also programs for Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese, and five different Native American languages that are indigenous to the Pacific Northwest: Kalispel Salish, Lushootseed, Makah, Quileute, and Quilshootseed. These programs are concentrated in just 42 out of the state’s 322 school districts—Reykdal and supporters of his proposal hope that all school districts will one day be home to a dual language education program.
“Washington State has an opportunity to be a leader on this front by passing this year’s dual language budget request to ensure all school districts can offer quality dual language instruction by 2040,” said Roxana Norouzi, executive director of OneAmerica, a Washington-based organization advocating for the rights of immigrants and refugees. “Dual language [education] is a long-term investment in students to become bilingual and biliterate.” Andrew Warner
Indiana’s literacy rate is on the decline. Just a decade ago, students taking the state’s third-grade reading exam, IREAD-3, passed at a rate of 91.4%. This year, the pass rate was just about ten percentage points lower, at 81.6%.
As with other areas across the country, the COVID-19 pandemic spurred some of this decline—scores are about 6% lower than they were during the 2018–2019 school year. To combat the state’s shrinking literacy rate, Indiana governor Eric Holcomb announced in August that the state will be investing $111 million as part of an initiative to improve and further develop reading and literacy programs in Indiana schools.
“It couldn’t be a more timely response to the last couple years,” Holcomb said in his announcement of the investment. “I am just so exhilarated—quite frankly, excited—to see from kindergarten to fourth grade the impact this is going to have over just the next five years.” With the $111 million investment of state and philanthropic funds, Holcomb has his eyes set on attaining a 95% pass rate on the IREAD-3 by 2027.
To do this, the initiative will focus on teaching literacy with a more scientific approach—beginning in the coming school year, the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) will launch a pilot program to employ instructional coaches who specialize in the science of reading to support reading teachers at 54 different schools throughout the state.
By 2026, Holcomb’s administration hopes to expand the program to cover 60% of the state’s schools.
A little more than 20% of the $111 million in funding will go toward the development of higher education programs, to better prepare new reading teachers. To encourage reading teachers who are already working in the state’s education system to incorporate scientific principles into their teaching methods, the IDOE will provide teachers a stipend of $1,200 to undergo training in the science of reading. The state also plans to develop special support systems for students from marginalized backgrounds, who tend to score lower on IREAD-3 than their peers—this includes students of color, students with learning disabilities, and multilingual learners. Andrew Warner
Q: Tell us about yourself, your background and language history.
Rachelle: As a Black and Latina woman with Native American roots and an urban upbringing, I learned early on the injustices my people faced in acquiring access and opportunities for advancement. Language was a focal point in my life. On my mother’s side, my family spoke Spanish, English, and what we referred to as Spanglish, a combination of English and Spanish. On my father’s side, I came to learn that Black communities had their own dialects of the English language. While in elementary school, I was discouraged from bringing Spanglish or other ways of communicating I learned from my father’s side into the classroom, or even from using them during supervised play. None of my peers were encouraged to speak Spanish or any version of English that was not mainstreamed. I came to realize as a young girl that those who did not speak English the way it had been deemed correct were treated differently. When I entered middle school, I noticed my peers who spoke languages other than English were in different classes, and by high school, many of my peers who were not fluent in English were found in the corner of my general education classrooms, quietly sitting alone, not engaged in the content or by the teacher.
Q: Tell us about your career as an educator.
Rachelle: After beginning my teaching career, returning to serve communities that I grew up in, I found policies for multilingual learners (MLLs) had made some progress. However, they had not changed much in the quality of programming. Years later, I moved into leadership positions such as team lead and, soon after, coordinator. When the opportunity became available to provide resources for MLLs, programming still seemed mediocre and mainly consisted of assessment compliance with little to no progress monitoring in between students’ initial placements and their annual language assessments.
Q: How have those experiences contributed to your ability to coach other educators?
Rachelle: I help them by identifying the most marginalized students in need of support and supporting them to take the necessary steps to improve student outcomes. This focus has been the core of my career. Years ago, I saw MLLs at my school, where I taught and served as an administrator, in similar conditions as I had experienced as a student decades prior. It was apparent then, as it is apparent now, that language-acquisition programs need to be revolutionized to better serve students, using innovative methods that engage students in acquiring English while honoring their home languages and cultures.
Q: I couldn’t agree more! Yes to revolutionizing language programs. For instance, during the pandemic we saw a number of issues with distant, online, and virtual English language instruction. Have you seen good examples of technology that supports English language acquisition?
Rachelle: Yes, I have observed a number of exemplary instructional practices using technology in English language programs. Assuring that instruction offers practice and application that includes all language domains can be challenging at first but soon becomes the expectation. It starts by thinking about instruction in innovative and unconventional ways—not simply using technology for the sake of using technology.
Q: How do you encourage educators you coach to think creatively about their language programs?
Rachelle: Educators I have coached, and colleagues across the nation with limited funding, have created progress-monitoring structures with goal setting alongside their students. They have learned how to engage students in a meaningful way in order to best support them. Students who previously lacked understanding of their language classification, and thus its meaning, now had clarity on their language-acquisition levels. They equally had agency in creating a road map for advancement and/or to become redesignated—and finally to have potential to graduate high school, college, and career ready, including with a Seal of Biliteracy.
Q: That sounds like you help them to use various data points, is that correct?
Rachelle: Yes, formal and informal data must be collected, analyzed, and prioritized. Student demographic data, student goal setting, annual English language proficiency scores, graduation rates, attendance, and school climate survey results are some of the data that I coach school leaders around. All of these pieces must be brought to the table as part of our coaching conversations. We also include stakeholders as part of our storytelling in an effort to be transparent. We have to ask and seek answers to questions that can tell us what the data means, what the data includes and does not include, and most importantly, whether the data tells the story that we expect it to. If not, what will we do about it?
Q: Nice! I’m sure stakeholders appreciate understanding these data stories. What recommendations do you have for the field?
Rachelle: As we see an increase in multilingual learners in school systems across the nation, we must get to know our students and the cultures they come from in order to better meet their needs. While many schools have an English learner plan, and it appears to meet the basic requirements on paper, it doesn’t mean that it is advancing English language acquisition. Furthermore, there is no one-size-fits-all program model, so this is why we must listen to learn from the students directly. I propose a call to action for all educators and school leaders to think innovatively about the linguistic diversity of the multilingual learners they are tasked to serve. We need all educators to understand that students who are learning English as a new language deserve a quality education across all content areas, one that is comparable to that of their native-English-speaking peers. I ask school leaders to reimagine how they support the teachers who serve these students and employ school and district leaders to make high-quality language-acquisition programming a priority in their schools and districts.
For two decades, Rachelle Nelson has been involved in education reform to create innovative pathways to equitable conditions for Black and Brown communities. Rachelle has served as a community engagement champion with a focus on elevating underrepresented voices. She has experience as a general and special education teacher, director of student support services, principal, leadership coach, and chief academic officer.
The number of Canadians who mainly speak a language other than English or French at home grew to 4.6 million (13% of the population)—a record high—in 2021, according to new census data released by Statistics Canada. About 25% of Canadians also reported having at least one first language other than English or French.
The increase is largely due to a rise in the number of Canadians who report speaking South Asian languages, including Hindi and Punjabi. Seven in ten Canadians whose first language is neither English nor French said they also speak an official language at home. More Canadians are also able to speak more than one language, according to the census data. The number of people who reported being able to hold a conversation in more than one language rose from 39% in 2016 to just over 41% in 2021.
Just under one-third of Canadians reported being fully bilingual, and 7% said they were trilingual. The percentage of full bilinguals able to speak languages other than English and French also increased.
“It’s not only bilingualism in French–English. It’s all types of bilingualism,” said Éric Caron-Malenfant, assistant director of the Centre for Demography at Statistics Canada, during a news conference.
French Decline Despite an increase in the number of Canadians claiming French as their first official language, the number of French speakers as a percentage of the overall population continued to decline in 2021.
According to Statistics Canada, the proportion of French speakers among Canadians has steadily declined since 1971, when 27% reported French as their first official language. That number fell to just over 21% in 2021, while 75% reported English as their first official language, about the same as the last census.
“Both numbers are increasing, people with French and English as their first official language spoken,” Caron-Malenfant said. “But not at the same pace.”
The share of predominantly French speakers in Québec fell to 77% in 2021 from 79% in 2016. The number of Québecers who reported English as their first official language topped one million for the first time.
Outside of Québec, the number of those who say French is their only official language declined in every province except British Columbia.
Cree, Inuktitut Prominent Statistics Canada says 189,000 people reported their first language to be Indigenous, with most of those saying they speak an Indigenous language regularly.
The report says Inuktitut and Cree are being spoken by roughly 27,000 people each, making them the most commonly used Indigenous languages.
Even more Canadians—243,000—reported being able to hold a conversation in an Indigenous language. Statistics Canada claims that indicates they’re being learned as second languages.
Other Language Highlights • The number of English–French bilingual Canadians remained steady at 18%, with a rise in Québec offset by a decline in the rest of Canada.
• There was a decline in the number of Canadians who spoke European languages such as Italian, Polish, and Greek.
• Outside of English and French, Mandarin and Punjabi are the most commonly spoken languages.
• Nunavut has the highest rate of bilingualism at 68%. The majority of those are fluent in English and Inuktitut.
• Québec has the highest trilingual population rate at 12%. In Montréal, one in five reported being able to speak three languages fluently.
• Nearly 50,000 Canadians reported knowing a sign language, with more than half that number—just under 28,000—saying they use sign language regularly at home.
Mandarin Overtakes Cantonese in Toronto Mandarin has overtaken Cantonese as the second-most common first language in Toronto, after English. “I’ve been watching over the years, the slow increase,” said Toronto author and historian Arlene Chan, who has written several books on the history of Chinese people in Toronto. “Through each census I could see the number of Mandarin speakers coming up,” she told CBC News. Numbers for Toronto’s Census Metropolitan Area (CMA)—a vast geographic zone— reflect changing immigration patterns. Of the area’s nearly 6.2 million inhabitants, almost 280,000, or 4.5%, consider Mandarin to be their mother tongue, while Cantonese trails closely at 4.3%.
Algerian president Abdelmadjid Tebboune has announced that the former French colony and overseas territory will start teaching English in elementary schools later this year.
“French is a spoil of war, but English is an international language,” he said.
Algeria gained independence from France in 1962 after an eight-year war that continues to complicate relations between the two countries. Arabic and Tamazight, which is spoken by the Amazigh or Berber minority, are the country’s official languages. The continued institutional use of French is a sensitive topic.
In a television interview, President Tebboune said he was responding to growing demands from academics and undergraduates who say that English should be offered as a subject earlier as it is the language of instruction at university for those studying medicine and engineering.
Under the current curriculum, English is offered at high school to students from the age of 14, while pupils start French when they are nine years old.
A similar initiative was launched in the early 1990s for parents to be given the right to choose between French and English for their children at middle school, but it caused outrage in France and a pro-French lobby within the Algerian government called for the scheme to be dropped, resulting in the firing of the education minister.
Novakid, one of Europe’s leading online English platforms for children, increased its presence in the Asia-Pacific region and conducted 2.8 million lessons in the first half of 2022. During the same period, Novakid strengthened its position in 49 markets. The company’s current client portfolio in Europe accounts for 70% of its total client portfolio, with Romania as a new growth market in Europe.
The Middle East and North Africa account for 14% of the portfolio (2% increase since the end of 2021). The Asia-Pacific countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, and South Korea) now represent almost 16%. The client base in the region has grown twice over compared to the beginning of the year. The most significant results are demonstrated in South Korea (34%) and Japan (78%). According to an in-house white paper, the Novakid Magic Academy, which forms part of the Novakid Game World, has proven its effectiveness with regard to the learning outcomes of young students: the average learning performance rate is 12% higher after a minimum of four months of lessons, resulting in a 39% better learning performance for students enrolled in the Level I Novakid Magic Academy ESL course.
IXL Learning has acquired Curiosity Media, the creator of innovative language learning platforms that empower people to more effectively communicate in Spanish and English. The acquisition of Curiosity Media includes its flagship products SpanishDict, inglés.com, and Fluencia, which collectively help more than 100 million people each year grow their languages skills through vibrant and interactive learning resources. SpanishDict debuted in 1999 and is now the world’s top destination for Spanish language learners, reaching more than 100 million people annually. The platform provides users with a comprehensive set of tools to learn Spanish, including millions of free dictionary entries, verb conjugations, example sentences, vocabulary quizzes, interactive lessons, and more. Inglés.com helps learners develop English language skills online. The platform combines the most popular features of SpanishDict, including comprehensive language practice, native-speaker videos, and in-depth translations, to create a customized learning experience for the tens of millions of Spanish speakers who are learning English each year. Fluencia, Curiosity Media’s personalized learning app, uses adaptive technology and the latest neuroscience research to optimize how people learn Spanish. The platform’s interactive exercises, step-by-step instructions, and personalized feedback encourage users to build language skills while learning at their own pace.
As we move further into the millennium, many national and local educational systems are considering how best to meet the changing needs and demands they face, especially in developing countries. Arising from those reflections is an increased interest in teachers and teacher training because teachers are uniquely positioned to implement any changes with children and youth. In this context is the Dominican Republic (DR), a developing country situated in the Caribbean, sharing its island with Haiti. Rich in cultural diversity and natural resources, the DR has a population of just under eleven million. Santo Domingo is its capital and largest city, as well as the largest metropolitan area in the Caribbean by population, hosting more than 36% of the 3.5 million national public school student population. The official language is Spanish, and English is taught as a foreign language to more than 1.3 million public school students. Dominican Republic TESOL (DR-TESOL) is officially advocating for the approval of the Law of English as a Second Language and the continuity of the situated English teacher training strategy in over 500 public schools all around the country.
Understanding who teachers are and how they see themselves becomes increasingly important as educators, policymakers, and communities consider what they want their educational systems to accomplish. This seems especially important now, when many teacher training programs, such as those in the DR, are facing major reforms and restructuring. Educational research and literature often recognize that teacher identity is a key factor that influences teachers’ sense of purpose, self-efficacy, motivation, commitment, job satisfaction, and effectiveness (Cummins, 2021; Wernicke, Hansen, and Schroedler, 2021). Intertwined with teacher preparation are the students’ learning outcomes. In this case, history will begin to be made in the DR, because this will allow students to become bilingual citizens with skills to excel in the workplace and with greater capability to interact with a larger portion of the world’s people.
Current State of Bilingual Education The educational system in the DR is regulated and administered by the Ministry of Education. Education is a right for all children and youth. However, bilingual education is limited. Even though teaching English in school has been mandatory since 1961, English language learning in school has never been a priority for the local authorities. English teachers complain that the subject is regarded as a façade and considered by many as merely a gesture in the school curriculum. Consequently, for the last 60 years, all Dominican public school students have been destined for monolingualism, in contrast to the small number of students from middle- and high-income families who are the only ones afforded an international, bilingual school.
This is considered by DR-TESOL as the biggest factor in educational injustice and inequality in the country. This is why, in 2014, DR-TESOL started the movement for a bilingual republic. English teachers in Dominican public schools have demonstrated for years their commitment to their professional development and their willingness to give all their time and knowledge to improve student learning outcomes. If educators really want better learning results, the first thing they need is an objective and scientifically valid vision of a strong bilingual educational program, which they have recently adopted with the implementation of a situated professional development strategy for learning English as a foreign language, put in place for over 300,000 public school students nationwide.
This strategy involves over 1,000 English teachers in both primary and secondary school and is funded by the National Teacher Training Institute of the Dominican Ministry of Education (INAFOCAM). This strategy is defined as a situated, wholistic, and simultaneous approach that involves daily class observation and needs analysis, the implementation of a reflective teaching approach for public school English classes, the provision of learning and teaching materials, and continuing education programs on language teacher supervision, language skills development, and pedagogic training. Since this strategy was originally piloted, designed, and proposed by local educators, DR-TESOL argues that this proves that teachers and students are not the problem of Dominican education but the solution, contrary to what some local groups claim.
Benefits of Bilingual Education Our world today presents global needs, changes, and interdependencies we have with one another. Information and communication technologies enable people from various cultures to communicate and connect with each other. Indirectly, digital technology may be used to translate text from one language to another, but errors in translation certainly occur. The most important skill in communicating with others is being able to do so in their native language. Promoting bilingualism in the 21st century is a responsibility of educational institutions.
Language continues to be the bridge that unites people from all walks of life. Music is often celebrated as an art for sharing, on a global platform, the sentiments of a culture, including the struggles of a community. Therefore, presenting our children with the love of language in their early developmental years is a gift to foster a society that is empathetic, intuitive, and full of critical thinkers.
Research states that bilingualism is positively linked to improved student performance. Bilingual students often pursue higher education and become much more comfortable integrating with multiple communities (Cummins, 2021; Rodríguez, Carrasquillo, and Lee, 2014). The benefits of bilingual education extend much further. Neuroscientists have also studied the implications of proficiency in bilingual education and have presented evidence to state that active use of two or more languages helps protect the brain against cognitive decline and age-related dementia.
The commitment of every educational institution is to prepare their students to become contributors to society. As advocates for children, we are to ensure that all schools provide the children with an equitable education. Bilingual education is equitable education, and highly beneficial to students.
Promoting Bilingual Education: Massive Communication Effort For many people, the goal of becoming a bilingual country is not a new idea. Eight years ago, a group of educators in the Dominican Republic established DR-TESOL, a national association of professionals and aspiring professionals whose main goal is to develop quality teaching and learning of English in the Dominican public schools through professional development, research, and advocacy. Since 2014, DR-TESOL has maintained a massive communication campaign through TV, radio, newspapers, and social media in an effort to raise public awareness about the need to guarantee the learning of English in public schools and to advocate for educational justice and improvement.
In a study conducted by Professional Training Systems, 90% of Dominican students are highly interested and motivated to learn English as a second language, 85% have positive attitudes toward learning English, and 95% believe that learning English is very important and a highly transferable academic skill (Valdez, 2013). Accordingly, DR-TESOL maintains that in order to deliver effective and equitable instruction in public school English programs, the educational system at all levels must address the curriculum, instructional methodology, teacher preparation and support systems, student proficiency levels, and school system policies and context.
For successful implementation, the government must also allocate financial resources to guarantee the continuity of efforts like this and the dissemination of research and information about bilingual education. Both advocacy and research are important to propel the learning of English as a foreign language to all school-age children and youth throughout the country.
The study by Professional Training Systems referenced above also reveals that the discontinuity of well-established programs like this and the absence of research to sustain the implementation of learning programs have traditionally been the main causes of stagnation in monolingualism, which Dominican public school students have suffered for the last six decades.
Laws and Policies Concerning Bilingual Education For the last two years, DR-TESOL has demanded that Congress approve the proposed Law of English as a Second Language, which was submitted to the Congressional Commission of Education in 2020.
The Law of English as a Second Language is an effort to guarantee the implementation and continuity of a comprehensive and well-developed English language learning policy framework.
DR-TESOL maintains that a strong legal foundation to guarantee the right to learning English is essential in order to overcome the traditional political barriers faced by teachers and students in trying to improve English proficiency levels in public schools.
According to DR-TESOL, empirical research shows that having English as an official subject of the school curriculum has not proven sufficient in 60 years; rather, implementing a legally sustained, national strategy for the improvement of English language learning is required. This law aspires to guarantee that more than 2.3 million children and youth have access to quality English language learning in all public schools, from fourth to twelfth grade, and that thousands of local teachers be internationally certified in teaching English as a second or foreign language.
Enhancing Bilingual Education: DR-TESOL Convention The Eighth Annual International Convention of Dominican Republic TESOL was an event of great impact and inspiration for teachers of English in the country. Over 1,000 teachers of English as a foreign language from all over the country attended the convention. In the opening plenary, Dr. Socorro Herrera, professor and director of the Center for Intercultural and Multilingual Advocacy (CIMA) of Kansas State University, discussed the theme of the development of bilingualism as an asset important for Dominican public education. She addressed the tensions and boundaries that limit us, colleagues, and students in seeing bilingualism as an asset.
The DR-TESOL conference engaged the teachers in attendance with an abundance of topics:
Playing with language: Bilingualism and social life;
The qualities of an exceptional language teacher;
Translanguaging: Tips to leverage students’ linguistic resources;
Teaching English as a foreign language using universal design for learning principles;
Critical thinking for bilingual classrooms;
Language teacher supervision;
Activating conversational competence;
Engaging reluctant learners;
The bilingual advantage;
Academic success of English learners;
The secret to encouraging beginning English learners; and
You have more influence than you think.
Dr. Ayanna Cooper, consultant and advocate for culturally and linguistically diverse learners, provided the closing plenary. Dr. Cooper focused on the need to know for making informed decisions within your own educational settings.
Conclusion Education is presented as a multifaceted phenomenon of global scope, which follows very different trajectories in each national context. In this sense, the Dominican Republic is a case that distinguishes a movement of a very different nature, putting forth a new law to guarantee the learning of English as the second language in all public schools.
This work is a reflection upon a shared humanity, focusing on the role of critical innovation, which calls for stepping outside our habits of seeing and doing and moving toward transformation of perspectives and systems for all learners.
We propose that the Dominican Republic Ministry of Education continue to support the implementation of the national situated English teacher training strategy in schools all around the country, focusing on the development of educational programs to raise the level of language proficiency and pedagogical skills for all teachers; review the national English curriculum through a process of national consensus and consultation; maintain a system of support and follow-up to the development and performance of this English program, at a regional and district level; and establish new policies for language learning and teaching in the Dominican Republic.
We offer those proposals because, as a nation, we cannot afford any more inconsistency and discontinuity.
Teaching English as a foreign language in the Dominican Republic is poised to contribute knowledge to cross-cultural dynamics of classroom settings in K–12 public schools; development and implementation of appropriate curricula; and provision of effective teaching strategies for fostering literacy development and the acquisition of competence in two languages.
The proposed initiative offers new perspectives on challenges, strengths, and growth to educating and graduating bilingual public school students.
References Cummins, J. (2021). Rethinking the Education of Multilingual Learners. Multilingual Matters. Rodríguez, D., Carrasquillo, A., and Lee, S. (2014). The Bilingual Advantage: Promoting Academic Development and Biliteracy through Native Language in the Classroom. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Valdez, J. (2013). “Why English Is Not Learned in Dominican Public Schools.” Professional Training Systems. Wernicke, H. S., Hansen, A., and Schroedler, T. (Eds.). (2021). Preparing Teachers to work with Multilingual Learners. Multilingual Matters.
Juan Valdez is director of Professional Development Systems, executive director of the Education Observatory, and president of Dominican Republic TESOL. Diane Rodríguez is professor and associate dean at the Graduate School of Education, Fordham University. Elisa Alvarez is New York State associate commissioner of the Office of Bilingual Education and World Languages.
Looking for interactive content for a classroom during Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month? The Latinx Kidlit Book Festival (LKBF) will be streaming live on October 13–14, 2022.
The LKBF is a free virtual book festival that aims to connect Latinx authors and illustrators with readers and educators in classrooms around the globe. Since its inception in 2020, the festival continues to foster a love of story and literacy and to increase empathy and conversation among educators, students, and book lovers while uplifting the voices of Latinx kidlit book creators. The LKBF offers a combination of educational materials and virtual content including panels, craft sessions, and illustrator draw-offs with best-selling and award-winning Latinx authors and illustrators. Selected content will also be available in Spanish, useful for world language, ELL, and bilingual classrooms. The sessions are geared toward all schools, educators, and students pre-K–12, not just those identifying as Latinx. Educators and students are encouraged to submit questions in advance for a chance to win a free set of books for their school. Teachers may also participate in professional development sessions; attendance certificates will be made available. www.LatinxKidlitBookFestival.com
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