RR DMorn News-Olivera MERCEES OLIVERA-APRIL 2016 DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Bilingual education is common practice these days in public schools all over
the country.
Teach children in their primary language, then shift them into English — it's a
basic strategy that has been successful after nearly 50 years.
But the early years of bilingual education were difficult — opponents
demonized it, while supporters lacked the resources to successfully teach
children in the language they had learned at home.
It took several years after Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act was passed in 1967 for bilingual programs to get off the ground.
There was no curriculum to implement back then.
So what did those first bilingual education teachers do?
They improvised.
"We had to create everything," recalled Martha Morolez-de Anda, now a
retired adjunct education professor at the University of North Texas.
It's been 40 years since she and 21 other young Latina women started out as
the earliest graduates of a bilingual education program in Texas.
Some of these graduates from the Texas Woman's University program will
gather for a reunion on the campus April 15-16.
They are likely to talk about how proud they are to have been part of a historic
period in the education of Latino kids in Texas.
"We were just beginning, and we were using all the tools at our disposal to
prepare our Hispanic children, to help them in the classroom using their
language, with a strong emphasis on English," said Morolez-de Anda.
Many of the graduates, like Narcedalia Uribe Scott, would go to work in
the Fort Worth school district.
Scott, who now lives in Michigan, was a second-grade teacher for 36 years
before she retired in 2009.
She recalled how glad she was to be in a program that let the children speak
the only language they knew on the school grounds.
When she was growing up in Mercedes, near the Texas-Mexico border, many
of her classmates were virtually quiet all day or they would be punished for
speaking Spanish.
"I even saw a report card, which actually had a grade printed on it, `Speaks
English only at school.' They had a grade for that."
But at the Fort Worth grade school, it was a different world entirely.
"It became evident that there was a new way of thinking, and it was a very
positive experience for the children and for us," she said. "If the children got
stuck on a subject, we would help them out in their own language, and they
could keep on learning."
Dr. Rudy Rodriguez Sr., a retired UNT education professor, was the first
director of a bilingual education program in North Texas — the Bilingual
Education Centro de Accion, a TWU-based program that collaborated with the
Fort Worth school district.
"It was cold turkey back then," he said.
"We finally got it up and running after a couple of years. We built a solid
foundation, but it wasn't as sophisticated as it is today."
Nowadays, bilingual education has evolved and expanded into dual-language
programs. But a new problem has emerged.
"We have the data, the research, and the skills," said Morolez-de Anda, "but
not enough bilingual education teachers."