Teaching Spanglish in the Classroom: "Mango, Abuela, and me"

    The role of Spanglish in the social and academic lives of Spanish-speaking students is something that needs to be embraced and taught in the classroom. Teaching Spanish and it's history must start at the elementary level so that students are exposed to this type of language early. Stavans verbalizes the point that Spanglish is an acceptable form of a dialect. This author has been fighting for this point to be taken seriously for over a decade and has received a lot of criticism for it. In order to get his point across, Stavans discusses the history of Spanglish and how English and Spanish have come to share linguistic tensions. He also discusses his own particular methods on how to incorporate Spanglish into a classroom and emphasizes the importance of validating Spanglish for bilingual students.

    Teaching elementary students early on about Spanglish through literature allows them to become exposed early to this form of dialect that they will most likely hear at one point in their lives. Spanglish comes with a lot of stigma and it is important to fight that stigma since it is a valid dialect as said by linguists. Medina and Dominguez have written a book that depicts Spanglish being used throughout a family. In this book, a little girl named Mia lives in the city with her parents. Her grandmother who is from a different country moves in with her. The pair struggles to communicate due to the language barrier because the grandmother only speaks Spanish and Mia only speaks Spanish. The two come up with a different way to learn each other’s language by using their pet Parrot. This book discusses Spanglish and generational language barriers. This book also emphasizes the importance of Spanglish as a method of communication and the language barriers that often form between generations. 

    

According to the study led by Ramón Antonio Ramirez, he provides evidence that reports findings from a qualitative study of Spanish-English code-switching. In order to conduct this study, Martinez used a group of Latino sixth graders who all spoke in Spanglish to get his results. This article uses the research to defend Spanglish and makes the point that embracing it can actually help students in the classroom. Martinez makes two points with evidence from this study which are that students were able to ‘display an impressive adeptness at shifting voices for different audiences, and communicating subtle shades of meaning.’ Therefore, students' literacy skills were actually improving from the use of Spanglish contrary to the belief that the use of Spanglish will actually confuse students and not help their literacy skills in any way. 

    Souto-Manning offers a lot of insight into what strategies teachers can use when teaching students from immigrant and diverse families. Often these students will speak different languages and have different backgrounds.  The book emphasizes three paradigms which shape early education of children who are immigrants. These three are inferiority, cultural deprivation, and cultural difference. Souto-Manning discusses how these paradigms affect children and how educators can work to make sure these issues are addressed in the classroom and in their lessons. Teaching Mango, Abuela, and Me can help with these cultural barriers and validate student's language and dialects.