Learning and Not Learning English: Latino Students in American Schools

I highly recommend this book to all teachers working with Latino students. This gives you a perspective that breaks your heart, but it is necessary to know. She provides many recommendations for how to improve our situation with Latinos and education.

This book is absolutely heartbreaking. It contains several different ethnographic accounts of children with different levels of English proficiency and different family backgrounds. Valdés documents the progression and development through middle school and beyond of these children. Ultimately, she paints a bleak picture for the success of these developing bilingual children and young adults. This book demonstrates the absolute necessity for increased attention and focus into programs for English Language Learners - the absolute necessity for these students to receive a quality education so that they can learn, both the English language and the content areas.

It's half novel, half research; the story of four recently-arrived Latino teenagers and their journey through American junior-high's and high school's. All I felt after reading this book was guilt. Guilt at my own ignorance and guilt at the way American schools keep immigrant Latino kids out of the mainstream of our social and economic system. It seems as if the four kids in Valdes study never had a chance. Their teachers fed them dull, repetitive drills suitable for eight year olds. Their parent's work ethic made them orphans for most of the day, fresh meat for the Surenos and Nortenos. Their `sheltered classes' isolated them from the very English language they needed to compete in the mainstream society. Even the `good' girl who made it all the way to a high school diploma was told she couldn't enroll in a junior college without more repetitive, enervating remedial classes. The research component of this book was what made it so powerful for me and took it beyond a simple story of four kids struggling to make it in U.S. society. Valdes, to her credit, documents test results to show exactly how far each student progressed (or failed to progress) in two years. It made me realize how vast is the gulf separating immigrant youngsters from the American middle class. And by focusing on Latino students I had a chance to see into their lives well enough to gain a little insight into the most confusing aspect of my teaching: why is it that Asian, African and European immigrants outpace Latino students almost without exception? I still don't have the answer to that one but it's clear in Valdes book that most Latino kids can function reasonably well without access to written English (and, to a lesser extent, spoken English). The other insight I got from Valdes was, ironically, that the success or failure these kids experienced in school was mostly a function of their exposure to English outside school. They spent their day in a Spanish-speaking bubble with few interactions in English. Their opportunities to break out of the bubble seemed to determine to a large extent whether they would be able to become full-fledged Latino-Americans. If you teach Latino students in an American secondary school I believe you'd find gold in this book.

Dr. Vald?s did an amazing research for this book. He found 4 ESL students as his subjects and (with parents and their agreement) he tracked their English learning progress and also their social progress. He also talks about the teachers at the high schools he visited and describes their teaching techniques, what worked for the students and what didn't. In this book, readers will discover one of the biggest problems public school teachers face in not only ESL class but also content area classes. In the end of the book, he provides some suggestions in improving those problems. The book is not at all dry. I read this book not as an assignment but as a guide to help me teach ESL better. After reading this book, I was very shocked at how real those problems are. It really showed me what I should be aware of and what I need to do in my ESL classes. Great book and I highly recommend it to anybody who is thinking about or is currently teaching and struggling with students who have limited English abilities. Thumbs up!