Reactions from a NYC bilingual special education teacher A response to: Peggy Hickman and Shernaz B. Garcia’s “Elementary principal leadership for equitable learning environments for diverse Latina/o students”

Abstract

I have taught at two public schools New York City, both with a large Hispanic population (84% and
93%). In my experience the school leaders’ implementation of a bilingual program is not consistent with
the literature of bilingual pedagogy, and this can lead to fragmented programming. I believe that the
transitional bilingual (TB) program available to most public elementary schools derives from a deficit view
of the native language, using it only as a means to English development, and pushing students to
transition into English as soon as possible. The three opportunities available to a transitional bilingual
public school student will now be presented in order to evaluate the impact of the program on student
and teacher.