In 2019, my first blog post here was about approaching language diversity in my English language classroom. I mentioned briefly that my school required English use in all contexts during the school day (from bus to lunch to the classroom), with the exception of the Hindi classroom.
Fast forward five years – my role had changed to Director of Teaching and Learning. Schools closed due to the pandemic and after many months of asynchronous and video-call learning, reopened. Students found themselves with newfound challenges in spoken and written communication. Teachers were – and are – weary and anxious about closing learning gaps. Most importantly, I am five years older and (hopefully) wiser – I have read more research on language acquisition, multilingual learners, and language history in India; I have taught five more cohorts of students, trying out different rules and messages and exercises.
Below, I share a document that our school staff co-created in an effort to re-examine our language policy and ensure that it is more inclusive, less punitive, and still realistic about the high academic expectations we have for our students.
In this different environment, I began staff orientation with a series of nine small-group dialogues (grouped by department) intended to re-examine the school’s approach to language on campus.
I began with explaining why I was using L1 as the primary term to describe what could also be called mother tongue, native language, vernacular language, or any number of similar terms. I then gave two basic overviews to bring everyone onto a common ground. First, I did a quick history of the school’s language policy, to ensure that every teacher regardless of tenure understood the background of the institution. I then summarized the research on multilingual learners and English, including sharing case studies where primary education in L1 yielded stronger long-term outcomes than English-medium schools and outlining different attitudes towards L1. I won’t go into my explanation here – I’m sure there are far superior summaries of language acquisition research than what I can provide. There are also further reading suggestions at the end of the attached document.) This took about fifteen minutes of monologue. I then asked staff members to share their own experience with language as a student, if something I shared resonated with them or surfaced something they wanted to share with their team.
I then asked the group to collectively create a set of Do’s and Don’ts in service of a more thoughtful and nuanced approach to language on campus. I began every conversation with one Do and one Don’t that I imposed. Do ask students to practice speaking in and writing in English when articulating the complex academic ideas they’ll ultimately be tested on. Don’t shame, penalize, or punish students when they struggle with this expectation and switch to L1.
I started with these two norms to explain two things that are often perceived as in tension with each other but that I believe must coexist in an effective classroom: that we cannot let go of practice opportunities in academic English, given that their high-stakes exams are in English and we cannot be punitive with our students fail to meet these high expectations. With these common starting points, I asked each department to outline additional rules/norms for their classroom given their expertise in their subject and their experience with and as students.
I am forever grateful for those conversations – they left me with so much inspiration about the power of teachers reflecting on their experiences as students and as educators and collectively creating guidelines that push for both empathy and excellence in the classroom. Below is the working document that was in place as of July 2023, when I exited the school.
*Note: I have many reflections on what it took to facilitate these conversations, on bow intensely personal and at times traumatic English policies can be not just for students, but for our educators, on the importance of recognising language’s role in India’s political and social history. All are topics for different blog posts.
sruti teaches 