Disrupting Drive by Deficit Discourse: The Power of Questions As Advocacy for Our Multilingual Learners

by the Educator Collaborative Fellow, Beth Puma

Professor Angela Valenzuela’s ethnographic research documented how education systematically minimizes multilingual youth’s culture and language. Shew rites, “subtractive schooling encompasses subtractive assimilation policies and practices that are designed to divest Mexican students of their culture and language.” Multilingual students face immense pressure to assimilate, with many youth holding the generational stories of their elders who were forced to not speak their home language at school, by threat of the paddle, the greater consequences often resulting in language loss.

Although multilingual students are not subject to paddling anymore, schools still are not guaranteed safe spaces from immigration raids, the shuttering of critical programs, and daily xenophobia.

Therefore it is our role as educators who love our multilingual students fiercely to advocate for them. For some this may look like joining a professional organization, writing to lawmakers, or joining a demonstration. 

Yet advocacy must not be regulated to outside of the school building. The most powerful advocacy exists in our systematic curricular and instructional design. I invite you to read my two previous blog posts on programs and translanguaging for some ideas on what might this look like in the day to day.

However, there are other spaces where we can serve as advocates for our multilingual learners. The spaces in between the lesson: the teachers’ lounge, the department meeting, the hallway. When it comes to multilingual learners there are pervasive biases that creep into casual conversations with colleagues that are steeped in deficit language.

Deficit discourse is when systems and educators use language that positions students’ linguistic, cultural, academic, or experiential differences as deficiencies or barriers to learning, locating responsibility for academic challenges within students and their families rather than examining the institutional, instructional, and systemic conditions that shape student learning and opportunity. Gutiérrez et al. (2009)

For me, the hallway deficit discourse moments are the worst. I call them drive-bys. I’m just trying to dash to the bathroom or to my next class when a teacher stops me in the hallway. The teacher says something out of frustration, steeped in bias, expecting me to commiserate; and I look at them with widened eyes and furrowed brows..often too flabbergasted to respond. Like does this teacher even know me and what I stand for? Then as I continue my mad dash to the bathroom, a teacher bladder full, an MLL specialist heart triggered, face hot and fuming I think of a rebuttal worthy of a dissertation. But the moment has passed, the bell is about to ring, and most teachers don’t respond to being lectured anyway.

So this is where I offer a different approach. Sometimes, just slowing down the moment with a question, rather than engaging in an ideologue debate, is enough to quietly and bravely challenge a monolingual bias (Ardell, 2023) that harms our multilingual learners schooling experience.

A Question with a Little Humor and a Little Sass

A question that mixes mathematical reasoning with a little bit of humor. This one is a good question for those who are new to everyday advocacy work.

A Question that Reframes the Deficit to Asset Language

This question is really that simple. And yet, in regards to our multilingual students-it’s not one that is often heard in schools.  It is a question that invites wonder. When coupled with a graceful walk-away, it majestically will ring out in the halls for all your students to hear.

A Question That Asks the Disgruntled to Repeat Themselves

Sometimes asking someone to repeat themselves, is a gentle enough correction to let them know what they said is not ok. When asking this question, your delivery can be expressive (ala David from Schitts Creek) or more deadpan (example) pending your personality and level of sass that day.

A Question to Invite Curiosity and Empathy

This question sprinkles a dash of neurolinguistics without getting dissertation-preachy. It also decenters the teachers’ frustrations and reminds them that learning a new language while learning new content is a heavy cognitive load to carry.

A Question to Demonstrate Empathy and Invite Collaboration

This question is not for everyone. There is no obligation that you give up your planning period for every person who weaponizes deficit language towards our multilingual students in the hallway for all to feel. Unless of course you are a principal, curriculum leader, instructional coach, or MLL specialist. Then yes, this is the job. 

Questions Disrupt Deficit Discourse

Having a few tiny questions up your sleeve has the ability to:

• Shut down nonsense and signal that nonsense has no space in your ear-a-sphere
• Help you manage your personal triggers around deficit language by having responses at the ready (put them on tiny paper on your teacher ID lanyard!) so that you save your spoons and protect your peace WHILE advocating for our multilinguals.
• Invite a moment of pause and invite reflection with a colleague. Best case scenarios the reflection invites curiosity and future collaboration.

As an advocate for multilingual learners, you don’t have to be an expert about all the things. You don’t have to be an MLL Specialist. You don’t have to be a pitbull advocate. You just have to love our multilingual students fiercely-in a country whose narrative of power does not. Brave moments can come in the tiny package of a question: your multilingual students will notice and feel their impact.

References

Ardell, L., PhD. (2023, July 13). Introducing: Disrupting the Monolingual Bias — Language Matters. Language Matters. https://www.languagematters.org/blog/introducing-disrupting-themonolingual-bias

Gutiérrez, K. D., Morales, P. Z., & Martinez, D. C. (2009). Re-mediating literacy: Culture, difference, and learning for students from nondominant communities. Review of Research in Education, 33(1), 212–245.

Valenzuela, Angela. 1999. Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.