School Within a School, or Liminal Journey?
The third theme relates to the issue of marginalization and ties closely with the theory of liminality. While making meaning out of the interview data and comparing it with my own experiences, I began to visualize a duality regarding the issue of the immersion program being a separate school inside the school. The way this issue is discussed by different teachers leads to a continuum of opinions. Some teachers describe the school within a school as a negative construct; whereas other teachers strive to
become more of a school within a school. I suggest that this tension comes from the liminal state of being an immersion teacher, as well as the liminal quality of the program itself.
Invoking a Liminal State
Marina says:
Immersion, even though you don’t want it to be, is a separate group within the rest of the school. So, here you don’t really see an immersion team. We are immersion teachers, but we still aren’t an immersion group.
L:Do you feel like they see, how do you think the school in general views immersion or sees…are you a part of the school? Do you have a place?
M: Yeah, I mean, they don’t see. Yes, you are the immersion teacher, but you are the third grade teacher.
L: So you feel included and accepted?
M: Yes. That’s why I said that we need to find out an immersion team, immersion group (Interview, p. 18, lines 389-400).
Marina seems to feel like the immersion team needs to find an identity that is separate from the rest of the school. She feels that they are not seen as different. Instead they are seen simply as the grade level teacher. She wants to acknowledge that what they are doing is different and should be seen as different and treated accordingly. In this situation it is as if Marina is invoking a liminal status upon the immersion team because she recognizes that they are doing something different, even though they are teaching the same curriculum in the same school as all of the monolingual, English speaking teachers. I suggest that it is the nature of bilingual education, within a monolingual system that makes it necessary for teachers to classify or categorize themselves as different or other.
Liminal Confusion
While talking with Mariana about guidelines for immersion schools that would include guidelines for all of the teachers in regards to their collaboration with immersion I asked her,
L: Where do you think that should come from, the district saying that or the administration? I think it would have to be the administration of the school. M: Mmhmm. But it could also be the district. I don’t know how it works. I really don’t know how it works, how they decide which school is going to be an immersion school. Like, okay, if you wanna be an immersion school, this is what you need to have in place” (p. 5, lines 110-115).
Mariana wanted to know who was responsible for the decisions and the changes that need to be made. Who is actually running the immersion program? Is it the district or is it the school? If the immersion program could truly function in the same manner as the rest of the school, this question would not need to be asked. But if majority
monolingual administrators are running schools that are striving to educate bilingual students, additional support must come from somewhere.
Similarly, Marina recommended that especially the new international teachers be taught about the culture of the school in order to help them transition and be more effective in the classroom from the start. She alludes to the responsibility piece in her following questions:
“So, how does the culture of the school function? But of course, this doesn’t have to do with immersion, it’s the school” (Marina, p. 13, 292-293).
She is suggesting that this is the responsibility of the school to initiate new teachers into the culture of the school. Previously, her administration had seen much of the
Coordinator, and so there remains a liminal confusion regarding immersion in some schools.
From Liminality to Communitas
Gayle and Mariana come to some similar conclusions when they talk about the school within a school aspect of immersion. Mariana says,
She [the administrator] talked a lot about we aren’t a separate program, but we are. And how last year, even though it wasn’t a good situation, they were on the same schedule, it was a red hall schedule, and they had common planning and how good that was (p. 2, line 45).
She goes on to say,
It would also be nice to have a set of guidelines for what it means to be an immersion school. For example, if you’re a lighthouse school, every teacher has to be a part of it. So, it would be nice if the P.E. teacher would ask, “What are some games they play in Spanish speaking countries?”, and teach those to the kids. Or if the art teacher could include art or music from the music teacher, it would be nice if the whole school bought into it. Some teachers do, but not all of them. I know it should be my responsibility to go to the P.E. teacher or to the art teacher. But it would be nice if they would show an interest in what we are doing (p. 4, lines 83-90).
Mariana also states,
“If you want to stand out, if you wanna be different, you have to do things differently. There have to be things or extra things you have to do. You know? If you wanna be an immersion team, this is what the immersion team has to do throughout the year, with parents, or with the non-immersion groups. I don’t know. Even the kids would feel even prouder. We go to recess with the non- immersion third graders, and they love it! How I speak to them in Spanish, and the other kids are like, “Huh? What did she say?” And they’re like, “Oh, she said this, this and that.” You know they feel proud, they feel good…So let them be able to shine because they are different, you know? They’re giving their best effort to learn a second language. So, let them shine” ( p. 9, lines 196-206). Mariana recognizes that the administration insists that immersion is not a separate program, but the teachers and the students see that they are, and that there are some positive aspects of being separate. But as she talks, she begins to envision an even better situation in which the entire school takes ownership of immersion and contributes in whatever way they can. Almost as if she is inviting the rest of the school to join them in the liminal state, so that together they can experience “communitas”, a communion amongst equals without the structures of language or culture that so often separate and classify within a normal societal structure.
Gayle says,
love languages. Use it. You know? Use it. Why can’t the announcements be in both languages? Why can’t you integrate it? (p. 22, lines 494-497).
Later she amended her statement. She said,
“I don’t think it’s a school within a school. I think it’s the principal saying, this is a golden resource, let’s use it to our advantage. And let’s figure out a way we can integrate some of this” (p. 23, lines 509-511).
And finally she comments,
“The thing is, I can’t do it. I’ve tried and by myself I can’t do it. I can’t even do all this stuff that I think of in my classroom, much less for the whole school” (p. 23, lines 514-516).
Here she alludes to the need for whole school buy-in, particularly on the part of the principal.
Figure 6.1 From Separation to Integration
MulCple Programs, Languages, Teachers and Cultures Operate in IsolaCon