Host/Gianna: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Real Stories Behind Language Policing in Schools! I am your host Gianna Wayar and I am very excited to speak on some very important topics with you today. To start off, I want all of you to close your eyes and take a second to imagine yourself as a young student in high school who has just moved to the United States from South America, and your first language is Spanish. Imagine walking into your first class, nerves taking over your thoughts as they always do on the first day. You walk in and of course, being the new kid, you get a few looks and whispers, but you take a seat and wait for the teacher to begin. The teacher begins speaking and your heart drops. You can barely grasp what she is saying as you only know Spanish. You feel your heart drop as you hear her say your name. Do I speak? Do I nod? Am I in trouble? All of the thoughts race through your mind. Now we switch to a child who doesn't speak “proper English”. You are sitting in class waiting to share your great idea with the class and the teacher finally calls on you. You share the amazing answer that you have been working on all of the class, but you frown when your teacher goes to cut you off. “Yes but ain't isn't a word”, they say and you feel as if all of your answers were tainted by a singular word. Now open your eyes. Think about how these two students feel. Why are they feeling negative feelings in the classroom because of who they are and how they express themselves? That is our topic for today. I would like to introduce my guests Ashley, Kavita, and Gabby to speak on this topic with me. Hello everyone!

Guests: (All say hello).

Host/Gianna: Thank you for joining me! To start, I just want everyone to introduce themselves. Ashley, tell us a bit about yourself.

Ashley: Hi guys! I’m Ashley, I’m a 19-year-old college student from Westbury, Long Island, and I’m of Norwegian and German descent! I’m currently a history major and would love to be a high school history teacher in the future!
Host/Gianna: Great, Kavita?

Kavita: Hi everyone! My name is Kavita and I am a 20-year-old student at Adelphi University from South Ozone Park, Queens, NY. My parents are of Indo-Caribbean descent and so I always felt like an outcast at school, so I am more than delighted to be here. I feel like far too often educators seem to neglect their student’s concerns of uncomfort and embarrassment. I think this is a great topic to discuss!

Host/Gianna: Awesome! Gabby?

Gabby: Hi everyone! Thank you all for tuning in with us. Well I'm 19 years old and I'm from Rockaway queens new york. Im puertorican and cuban and asi que hablop espanol. I'm currently an English major at Adelphi and in the future I'm hoping to get my degree to teach high school students.

Host/Gianna: Great! A little about me: like I said my name is Gianna and I'm a 20-year-old college student from East Rockaway which is a small town on Long Island. I am also of Italian and Argentine descent. Well, enough about me, let's get into our conversation! So, if you couldn't tell by the little introduction activity, we are going to be talking about language policing and the experiences of those affected or exposed to it. I feel like the best way to spread awareness about this topic is to hear your experiences. Have any of you had experiences with language policing?
Ashley: So, the one language that I am fluent in is English, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t experienced this. So, my mom’s an English teacher and when I was younger she would really micromanage my word choices when I was speaking to her, especially if I messed up grammar or a word voice. If I said things like “like” and “ummm” and took long pauses and would use filler words, she would be on top of me and be like “You can’t say that, that's not right, you can’t do that.” And then in school this would happen too. It was like teachers would correct words that students were using and there was a lot of correcting when students were speaking in front of the class. This is genuinely just negative, a lot of it is like if you are correcting a student in front of the class, it can be embarrassing in itself, so it’s like... why would you do that? And especially if you are commenting on someone's grammar, it’s like maybe someone doesn’t realize, or like doesn’t understand that's not “proper English,” but it still shouldn’t be something that embarrasses them in front of the class. And there have been a lot of instances at my job now where some of my other coworkers would correct people when they are ordering, or not pronouncing a word right for like their drink, and they would finish what they were ordering for them. Like if they were taking a long time to speak, so then they would jump in and talk over them, and even for simple mispronunciations they would correct them. I think it’s just a lot of people need to realize that language policing is all around us, and I feel like a lot of us subconsciously do it because we are not aware of what language policing is. So I feel like it needs to be taught more, especially to people in high school, or like in college, that language policing can really discourage students from really wanting to speak up and speak their minds, especially in a classroom setting where they may feel like they are being judged for that they are saying and if they are not speaking like “proper English.” But there really is no proper English. We shouldn't be judging people based on how they speak, and everything like that. And so, teachers should understand the severity of language policing and exactly what it entails for a student.

Kavita: I remember being in elementary school, and having a white history teacher. By no means am I trying to victimize “white” people, nor do I condone racism or prejudice. I just want to bring up this experience that left a strong presence over me. For one, I noticed that she always treated me differently from my peers. Whenever I raised my hand, she ignored me. Whenever I had something to say, she belittled me. And, whenever I had to use the restroom, she’d throw a fit. And, to this day, I just don’t understand why people go into education with such a close-minded mindset or leave kids feeling discouraged. This was not the only experience I had, but it was one that left within me feeling a strong presence of anxiety when it came to class participation. To this day, I try to overcome that fear, and I hope I will one day get it out of my system entirely.

I think educators can prevent making students feel uncomfortable or insecure about their language abilities through valuing cultural diversity and leveraging background knowledge on different cultures. In New York, we are all surrounded by various cultures and peoples from different ethnicities. I think it is so important to embrace diversity and make everyone feel accepted. But, the only way we can make way to acceptance and embracement of others is through educating ourselves!

Gabby: Yeah, I totally agree with what everyone has said. So, picking up off of what Ashley said earlier, people should know that language policing can happen to everyone. Even if it hasn’t happened to you, I'm sure you've been a witness to it happen to someone else even if you are unaware it was an act of language policing.
Growing up in a city like Brooklyn, I've been exposed to plenty of cultures, races, languages and just diversity as a whole. I think as new yorkers, we’ve adapted to language barriers and learned to be more welcoming individuals. But still, growing up, language policing was very popular in the education system.
As a kid, I went to two different elementary schools, one in Coney Island Brooklyn and one in sunset park brooklyn. To give some insight, sunset is an extremely hispanic populated area. It's So Hispanic that going down the streets, you heard Spanish before you heard English and I promise after a week, you’d leave knowing some. Coney Island on the other hand has a higher population of the African American, Asian, and Russian communities. So My experiences were very different in these schools. In my first school in Coney Island, everything was in english. Even though we had students who spoke Russian or Chinese in our classes, the lessons were taught in English and there was rarely any addition of other languages. It was clear that these kids were struggling sometimes. They were less likely to raise their hands in class, speak to the other kids, or even do their homework. so I was friends with this boy named Edmund who happened to be Chinese and he primarily spoke mandarin. The teacher would go around to collect our work and I'd always look down to see his paper filled with attempts to answer questions, backwards letters, or just empty spaces. so i would just give him the answers to the homework so he wouldn't get in trouble. But looking back now, this is an example of language policing. The teachers would see these kids struggle during class but still enforce the strict usage of english. They would criticize them for pronouncing words wrong or misspelling things and embarrass them in front of class. They wouldn't make an attempt to make translated homeworks, practice with them, or provide them help. The strict use of English alienated students like Edmund who were not proficient and were not allowed to learn in a way that would be beneficial to them. However, when I went to school in sunset park, the experience was extremely different. The school catered lessons in Spanish and English. They had staff members who were fluent in Spanish and whose jobs were to assist students in their English language learning. Teachers were required to actively integrate Spanish in their lessons and know enough to communicate with the students. They never criticized mispronunciations and were careful to not offend students or give them a sense of inferiority. My school did a great job in being inclusive and I think it has to do with the community around them, you know. They had no choice but to cater to the hispanic population around them but in result, the school provided a perfect environment where students could learn and not experience language policing. Honestly, it wasn’t until this very assignment that I realized this was an example of language policing. Growing up, you think schools are just doing their job. You think it's normal to correct students to improve their learning and make lessons in English so that they can have more practice. But it's language policing. To alienate these students is not beneficial and there are many other ways to give them practice without making them feel that one language is the only way to learn or succeed.

So going forward I think it's just important to be more aware and as a future educator, I'm going to apply what I've experienced to ensure language policing is something I don't participate in.

Gianna: Wow, so interesting to hear these different perspectives! I know growing up that I never really fell victim to language policing, but, recently I have experienced a weird form of it that attacks my New York accent. One day I started speaking to someone from out of state and they started to make fun of my accent when I said words like “coffee” or “water” and was treating me like a novelty because he wasn't from New York and he was pretty entertained by my accent. He tried to tell me how to say certain things the “right way” and it just started to get to a point where it felt more like he was mocking me, more laughing at me than laughing with me. I just let it go because I can take 45 minutes of poking fun, but for people who experience this on a daily, it must be exhausting! I was worn out after 45 minutes of it, let alone every day. On the flip side, I also notice sometimes when people have parents who do not speak English well, their children will speak for them a lot because they fear that maybe the other person won't be able to understand their parents or the parents feel embarrassed to ask questions. This breaks my heart that people think they are secluded due to their language barrier as I would do my best to assist them in any way when I'm working. I think it is just deeply rooted within them as they have faced such adversity in that area because sometimes people aren't so willing to listen. Sometimes when I get them one on one, they open up and you can really see the relief when I give them the time of day to help them or assist them in any way with their questions and also have patience when there is a language barrier. I hope to translate this into my future classroom where I hope that my students feel safe enough to express themselves to me and their classmates no matter what. That's how students feel confident about school! Without providing that safe space and confidence, we are failing our students.

So, that is all the time we have for today. Ashley, Kavita, and Gabby: thank you for joining today and sharing your experience with language policing and I hope our viewers learned a thing or two from these stories. If this episode teaches you anything, it is to be kind no matter what, it makes a difference!