This is the true story of a boy we will call Ricardo, who was an enthusiastic young 4th grader in a Spanish-English dual-language classroom circa 2011. Due to circumstances completely beyond his control, Ricardo had by 4th grade essentially stopped speaking his native Spanish in favor of English. This was the case at school, where at least his preference for English was appropriate half the time. But it was also the case at home, where everyone in his family had continued to communicate almost exclusively in Spanish since the family’s move to the United States from South America. Everyone, that is, except Ricardo. Listen as we learn about the events that led to Ricardo’s loss of Spanish, and how he eventually started speaking it again. We also discuss language interpreters and language brokers. They’re not the same thing.

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If you live in the United States and are familiar with only one decision handed down by a court of law, it’s probably the U.S. Supreme Court case known as Brown v. Board of Education. Specifically, that would be young Linda Brown, only nine years old when she sued her local Board of Education for sending her to an all-black school a mile and a half from her house, when there was a perfectly good white school right around the corner. But did you know this racial discrimination did not occur in the Deep South? It occurred in Topeka, Kansas, out on the Great Plains, halfway to California. And guess what? Race-based school segregation extended the rest of the way to California, as well. In fact, it was in 1931 that another young student, 12-year-old Roberto Álvarez, sued the Lemon Grove, California, Board of School Trustees for trying to separate him and 74 of his Mexican-American classmates from their Anglo classmates and send them instead to a “new” school that they and their parents considered no better than a caballeriza, or horse stables. Roberto won that case in San Diego County Superior Court, making it the first successful school desegregation case in U.S. history. In fact, it served as the earliest precedent for the Brown decision 23 years later. Listen as we tell the story of Álvarez v. Lemon Grove, one of the most important court cases in U.S. history that most people have never heard of. 

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In this episode, we visit with Ishtar Rosario Medina, whose educational and personal journey has spanned Puerto Rico, New York City, Mississippi, New Mexico, and now Minnesota. She was born in Puerto Rico and raised in the tradition of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in Manhattan and Queens. At the age of 7, she returned to the island. Six years later, her path took an unconventional turn when her father implemented his idea of "homeschooling": enrolling her in his college courses at the University of Mayagüez. At 13, she was majoring in physics. 

Despite often excelling beyond the levels of her older classmates, Ishtar dropped out and began a series of moves across the U.S. with her father, from central Florida to community college life in rural Mississippi, to several years as a substitute teacher in Hattiesburg—all while raising her oldest child. Inspired by her mother’s love for New Mexico, she later relocated to Albuquerque, where, after 12 years of accumulating college credits, she completed a BA in Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts and TESOL at the University of New Mexico. She briefly taught 4th grade at a local charter school.

A spontaneous trip to the Mall of America over Thanksgiving vacation in 2024 led to her current role teaching U.S. History in Spanish and Spanish Language Arts at the high school in Chanhassen, Minnesota. 

As a lifelong bilingual learner, parent, and educator, Ishtar brings a rich perspective to discussions of bilingual education. Listen, enjoy, and learn from the stories behind her remarkable journey.

We also discuss SUP and CUP, which, in case you're wondering, are not acronyms for Stand Up Paddle and Conditional Use Permit!

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In this episode of Language Goes to School, we speak with Ina Montoya, lifelong educator, proud Jicarilla Apache (father’s side) and Navajo (mother’s side), and tireless advocate for the revitalization of Indigenous education in general, and Indigenous languages in particular. After years of teaching in the Dulce Independent School District of the Jicarilla Apache Nation, Ina recently served as the district's superintendent, a term that culminated in being named the 2024 Administrator of the Year by the New Mexico Association of Bilingual Education. She is currently the principal of Lybrook Elementary and Middle School, located conveniently—and, more importantly, in perfect familial and geographic balance—between the traditional lands of the Jicarilla Apache and Navajo Nations in northwestern New Mexico. No matter the role in education she fills, Ina applies the warmth, humor, and dedication from every circle of her life to her efforts to promote high-quality Indigenous and language education. Consistent with her lifelong history of learning, Ina is currently pursuing a doctorate in Missiology. And if you’re wondering how she finds a proper work-life balance within her busy schedule, it’s easy: Ina is an accomplished fiber artist, specializing in crochet, knitting, and quilting. In this episode, we ask Ina about many of her talents and interests. In response, she weaves an instructive narrative about the importance of language, education, identity, and community for all who take the time to listen. We also discuss informal (BICS) and formal (CALP) registers of language.

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It is entirely possible to draw a straight line from the advent of human flight, to the world’s largest hot-air balloon fiesta, and thence to Nancy Oakes, our guest for this episode. That’s because Nancy was a high school French teacher in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, neighbor city of Albuquerque, the undisputed modern hot-air balloon capital of the world. It was there she established herself as a cultural, linguistic, and historical link between Albuquerque and Annonay, France, le berceau d’aviation, or the cradle of aviation. It was in Annonay that the Montgolfier brothers built and launched the world’s first hot-air balloon on June 4, 1783. Nancy created and maintained her status as an important Franco-American link by facilitating exchanges between American and French students from the two cities best known for hot-air balloons. But she didn’t stop with high school students. She has also been instrumental in arranging exchanges between hot-air balloon pilots in Albuquerque and their counterparts in Annonay. In a word, Nancy is all things balloons and French, therefore, the perfect guest for this episode, which we’re releasing just days before the start of the 53rd annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. We also discuss the difference between language equality and language equity. 

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Bardo Trujillo first experienced the rush of the rapport between the rock guitarist and the audience in fourth grade, when he played The Rain Song by Led Zeppelin in the school talent show. In birdwatching jargon, this was his spark bird; for him, his spark performance. He was hooked. From there he took off on a lifelong career in music, specializing in classical, rock, metal, New Mexican, country, jazz, and pop. He holds a bachelor's degree in Guitar Performance and a master’s in performance on the classical guitar. Since fourth grade, he has played in over a dozen bands, with names like Traveler in Pain, Prince of Darkness, Especial, Bad Obsession, Malvado, and more. For over 20 years he has taught guitar at Cibola High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, leading his students to an unprecedented number of awards in district and state performance competition. Bardo was also an integral part of redesigning the music teacher’s annual evaluation so that it reflected the performance of the teacher’s students instead of how high a score they could achieve on a paper-and-pencil, multiple choice, high-stakes, standardized music test. Though Bardo is not certified as a bilingual teacher, he grew up in Taos, New Mexico, listening to his parents and relatives speaking Spanish in various cultural contexts. He is currently recapturing his Spanish and using it extensively in his guitar classes, pointing out the logic behind using the Spanish language while learning to play an instrument that was brought directly from Spain to New Mexico. In that regard, Bardo is an excellent example of how one does not necessarily have to be deemed officially bilingual to use his heritage language—as well as other languages spoken by his students—as effective and meaningful teaching and learning tools in his classroom. We also discuss English learnings and emergent bilinguals. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: Contrary to what you'll hear in this episode, New Mexico guitar legend John Truitt is not "late" in any sense of the word. He's alive and well and still inspiring guitar players. It is guitar professor Michael Chapdelaine who has passed onto to the great fretboard in the sky. We regret the error in this episode. 

Visit Bardo's website at: http://www.bardotrujillo.com

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Nemiliztli means “life” in Náhuatl, the language of the Mexica people who inhabited Tenotitchlán, a beautiful city in the middle of beautiful Lake Texcoco. Mexico City stands there today. And “life” adequately describes the path Nemiliztli Trinidad Ortega followed to becoming a bilingual teacher. Her mother taught bilingual kindergarten in Los Angeles and started a doctoral program in bilingual education at the University of Utah even before Nemiliztli was born. So, by the time she was born, she was surrounded by a world steeped in bilingual education. As a result, it was not surprising she attended dual-language programs from K-12 in the Albuquerque public schools, a 13-year effort whose crowning achievement was symbolized by the district's and the state's bilingual seals, which Nemiliztli received upon graduation from high school. It was also no surprise that, upon graduating, she entered the College of Education at the University of New Mexico, where she studied—what else?—bilingual education. So, “life” for Nemiliztli is not limited to the biological and social elements we normally attribute to it; “life” also represents the professional path she has traveled literally since the day she was born. Join us to learn about this path—and much more—from this enthusiastic and engaging young teacher. We also discuss the deficit and the asset views of language development. 

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In this special episode of Language Goes to School, we investigate the blockbuster 1923 U.S. Supreme Court case Meyer v. Nebraska, in which parents won the right to “direct” the education of their children, even when their children are not home schooled, but attend the nation’s public and private schools. Recent surges in parents asserting their rights in schools have been evident in the years after the Covid pandemic, when, due to online learning, parents were suddenly afforded a window, in the form of their children’s laptops, into what their children were learning at school and how they were learning it. 

But that's not all this case was about. Importantly, it established the right for teachers to teach and students to learn in languages other than English. Specifically, it’s about the decision on the part of teacher Robert Meyer to deliberately break state law so he could teach Bible lessons in German to his 10-year-old student, Raymond Parpart. It’s this second important feature of this famous case that we discussed in this episode.

Incidentally, for those who balk when encountering a court case, rest assured we have kept the legal terms to a minimum, while offering handy synonyms and short explanations for some of the more legalistic terms or archaic words used in 1923, such as “inimical,” “salutary,” and “baneful.” Baneful? Really?! We’ll explain!

Here’s the link to the Smithsonian article about Robert Meyer: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/small-rural-schoolhouse-one-teacher-challenged-nativist-attacks-against-immigration-180976757/

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“El agua es la vida,” states Adrián Sandoval, a native of northern New Mexico, where water is indeed life, but also much, much more. For hundreds if not thousands of years, Native peoples of the area have used complex systems of irrigation to produce a variety of foods in this high, dry desert. The Spanish arrived in the 16th century with their own designs on how to make the most of limited water supplies in the Southwest. Both the Native and the Spanish populations used their respective languages as the basis of communication in order to build these systems, often borrowing engineering strategies and elements of language from each other. Like many northern New Mexicans of the 21st century, Spanish and Native alike, Adrián has witnessed a growing estrangement among youth from the knowledge of water use in the Southwest, and the cultural and linguistic elements associated with that knowledge. Some of this estrangement may be due to the fact that local, traditional knowledge of water use is not generally included in curricula approved for use in the public and private schools of the state. Working through the Center for the Education and Study of Diverse Populations (CESDP) at New Mexico Highlands University, and the Acequia and Land Grant Education (ALGE) curriculum, Adrián, along with a network of concerned and dedicated educators, has worked assiduously to preserve the ancient knowledge of water use in the Southwest, as well as the languages associated with it, in the form of a curriculum that can be implemented and practiced in classrooms around the state. Listen as we draw from the great well of cultural and linguistic knowledge of Adrián Sandoval. We also discuss the fractional and the holistic views of multilingualism. 

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The relationship between doctor and patient is often delicate. When the doctor and patient speak two different languages, the relationship can be even more delicate and ripe for misunderstanding. Unless, of course, the doctor is bilingual and can communicate fluently with the patient, using non medical terminology the patient can understand. Dr. Shana Drake-Lavelle became bilingual in the 1990s by virtue of a nascent, elementary, dual-language program in New Mexico. She says the dual-language program contributed to the decision to choose a career in medicine, where many of her patients speak Spanish. Her dual-language experience was also instrumental in meeting her husband, a first generation Mexican-American physician, whom she met while engaged in volunteer work involving Albuquerque's Spanish-speaking population, and with whom she is raising a bilingual son. Join us as Dr. Drake-Lavelle leads us through her journey from dual-language student in the Albuquerque Public Schools, to the College of William and Mary in Virginia, to the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, and finally to her current role as a family medicine practitioner. When she's not practicing medicine or raising her son, she plays the harp in the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Symphony and with the Symphony Orchestra of Albuquerque. We also discuss one-way and two-way dual-language immersion programs. 

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