Developing Your Stance: A Translanguaging Approach to Computing Education

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LEVEL 2

pila-cs.org

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Facilitation Guide

Below are suggestions for facilitating different activities in this session:

• For the teaching scenario activity (slides 20-25), participants can write on hard copies of the worksheet available on the website. Alternatively, a copy of the Google Doc can be created, and participants can work on a digital version of the worksheet.

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Participating in Literacies and Computer Science (PiLa-CS) is a Research Practice Partnership promoting equity in computer science ed for emergent bi/multilingual learners.

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Where are we headed?

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The Game Plan for Levels 1-4

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Level 2 Goals

Last Time

• Build on your learning about language injustice from Level 1.
• Develop a stance that notices and values students' diverse language practices.

Today

• Reflect on your in-the-moment responses to classroom scenarios involving language and power to support development of that stance.
• Consider how you might make “translanguaging shifts” that build on students’ language practices.

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Warm up

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Translanguaging Theory

Translanguaging Pedagogy

Describes how people use language and defy traditional categories as they do it.

A framework for mobilizing students’ diverse language practices in teaching & learning

Stance

Shifts

Design

Level 2

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Three components of the Translanguaging Classroom… (García et al., 2017)

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1. Stance

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• Shifts

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• Design

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1. Stance

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The belief that bilingual students' different language practices need to be leveraged together and performed collaboratively with others. Teachers are co-learners with their students.

Three components of the Translanguaging Classroom… (García et al., 2017)

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Everyone has a unique language repertoire of practices they use to communicate

¿Qué tal?

What’s good?

你好

سلام عليكم

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Why?

Focusing on students’ translanguaging can help us center and build on students’ communication practices…

…and not just center how schooling expects students to express.

Attuning our senses to students’ translanguaging

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How?

To notice students’ translanguaging, we attend to…

• the ways students already mobilize a range of resources to communicate.
• the conversations they are taking part in.
• the communities they are conversing with.

We use ALL of our senses! We recognize potential sources of language injustice. We suspend judgment.

Attuning our senses to students’ translanguaging

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What we noticed...

Andy

John

• Chose to write directions in English to match their Scratch audience
• Uses “Span-English”
• Andy also used a language used amongst gamers and in fanfiction
• Use of gender neutral pronouns for self and game character
• Terms used in the gaming community
• Gaming lingo; bilingual Fandom lingo; Both English and Spanish and coding; cotalk; Coding Language; Art

• Speaks multiple languages, though he calls Tigrinya “his language”
• Willing to use English, although someone wrote he is “not fluent”
• He corrects misconceptions people may have about Eritrea
• Uses Scratch code & sprites to tell his story
• Computer generated voices in Scratch portray ages of siblings traveling.
• Homeland is significant - flag as symbol
• His Scratch project + use of Tigrinya connect him, his mom, teacher, and Sara

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Reflection: Connections to Language Injustice

Look back over the student communication resources we noted…

If a student in your school environment were using these resources, would any of them get labeled as…

• “smart / articulate / intelligent?” Why?
• “inappropriate / not acceptable / low / limited / not valuable / broken”? Why?

Who or what would be doing this labeling?

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Activity 1: Translanguaging Shifts

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Translanguaging Theory

Translanguaging Pedagogy

Describes how people use language and defy traditional categories as they do it.

A framework for mobilizing students’ diverse language practices in teaching & learning

Stance

Shifts

Design

Level 2

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2. Shifts

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the many moment-by-moment �decisions that teachers have to make �all the time to respond to students.

Three components of the Translanguaging Classroom… (García et al., 2017)

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How do we enact translanguaging “shifts”?

• Anticipate moments

In the moment…

• Notice and regulate your emotions
• Listen / think again with translanguaging in mind (centering students, their language practices, communities)
• Brainstorm / try out responses
• Reflect

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Teaching Scenario Activity

• In breakout groups, we are going to read a scenario inspired by a real-life moment.�
• As we read through it we will…
• pause to reflect
• share and talk about other teachers’ reactions and responses
• discuss our developing shifts together

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Reflection Worksheet

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Framing for Teaching Scenario Activity

• Let’s slow down to move towards equity
• Emotions are key to process
• Our practice is evolving (think sports or jazz improv)
• Nobody’s perfect, stuff happens in-the-moment
• No one right answer
• Let’s examine our intentions & choices, and consider (missed) opportunities

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Scenario Intro

​You are a Computer Science (CS) teacher working alongside Ms. B, a Language Arts teacher, to integrate CS into her sixth grade language arts classroom.

The majority of students are multilingual learners – students who speak two or more languages – and some are learning English. They and/or their families immigrated from parts of Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East.

You and Ms. B agree that to satisfy Language Arts goals and CS goals that students will use the Scratch programming environment to create digital dialogues.

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At a planning meeting with Ms. B…

You show Ms. B the part of Scratch which enables students to change the language of the interface. Ms. B, a Spanish/English bilingual herself, says

“Oh, they should use Scratch in English, I want students to practice English as much as possible – it’s the only way they’ll learn and stand a chance at passing the state test. Students tend to use their languages as a crutch, but they can’t do that forever.”

What are your thoughts on Ms. B’s comment?

How do you respond to Ms. B? What are some next steps you might propose that you and Ms. B take?

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Let’s move into the classroom

You model using the text-to-speech code blocks in Scratch and tell students to begin adding dialogue to their animation projects.

You give them these directions in English, and set them off to work.

After a few minutes, you hear that computers belonging to different students around the room are "saying" the same short phrase over and over again.

You recognize the phrase as Spanish, but can't tell what it is right away. You also hear students laughing and talking with each other using language you can't quite understand.

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Stop and think

• How might you feel in the moment?
• How might the students feel? How would you tell what the students feel?
• Would you intervene at all? When/why?
• Do you think your emotions would influence your own choice to intervene or not?

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Sara’s Reflection

Sara was there as a researcher taking notes. She felt:

• Excited that students were engaging with the tool in multiple languages.
• Overwhelmed by the volume of sounds in the room
• Wearing teacher hat – anxious that students would run out of time before they finished their dialogues

She felt students were…

• Excited, tinkering, playful

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Words teachers said they would feel are in YELLOW.

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Words teachers said students might feel are in BLUE.

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An unanticipated moment…

A moment later, you recognize the phrase being spoken by the text-to-speech computer voices (or, if you do not speak Spanish, you ask Ms. B). They are saying "¿Qué lo qué?", a popular phrase used as an informal greeting in the neighborhood around the school and in the Dominican Republic.​

As you continue circulating the room, you hear "Qué lo qué" being sounded again on students' computers, but this time, there is a slight change in how the voice sounds.

The video shares how the voice sounded initially, and then how students changed up the code to modify it.

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An unanticipated moment…

As this new twist on "Qué lo qué" plays, two students sitting at opposite corners of the classroom begin to giggle. One boy says aloud "Es americanita esa."

You know that sometimes, students use the word "americanita" to refer to white women. Another student changes the language of the text-to-speech voice to Italian and laughs, saying. "Es acento campesino."

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Stop and think

• What is your read on what is happening in this moment?
• What, if anything, might you say or do? Why?

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Sara reflection

In the moment:

• Felt like a deer in the headlights
• “I’m an ‘americanita.’ I’ve worked to distance myself from that accent. In my early days as a teacher, students used to mimic that accent in front of me, and it was triggering.
• That’s interesting that they are calling the voice white.
• If I ask about it or call attention to it, will the students feel like I’m trying to get them in trouble?
• My response was to ask students to “fix” the program, as if the voice was a “problem,” and move on. I ignored the “campesino” comment.

Upon later reflection:

• I was centering myself and my own feelings in this moment.
• This is an example of students’ deep metalinguistic awareness and language play!!
• I could have really engaged students in a conversation about language and power. Missed opportunity.

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Past teachers’ reads of this moment

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A selection of teacher responses

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A selection of teacher responses

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A selection of teacher responses

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A selection of teacher responses

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Shifting towards our Translanguaging Stance

Considering our focus on building on students' translanguaging…

How would you shift practice to help students use these moments to “dig in” a bit more into content (English and/or language arts, issues around language and power, CS/computing)?

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Activity 2: Share Out

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Whole group share out and last words...

Any ideas from your small groups you’d like to lift up for everyone?

How can we sit with and respond to the ideas written by these colleagues? (right)

I think the biggest struggle is the fear of the unknown. We teachers love to be in control and when things are happening in another language, it can be hard to stay confident.

I struggled with the accent conversation. I want to be open and flexible with students. I think it is important for everyone to not judge one another. I would also feel weird when students speak in other languages that I couldn't understand... I know it is important but then it would leave me out of the conversation.

I struggled with being an "americanita" addressing this, what if they don't respect me as a teacher because I can't speak their language? What if I can't connect with some of our students because of this?

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Sponsored by the National Science Foundation under NSF grant CNS-1738645 and DRL-187446. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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References

García, O., Johnson, S., & Seltzer, K. (2017). The translanguaging classroom: Leveraging student bilingualism for learning (1st Ed.). Brookes Publishing.

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