As a bilingual teacher, one must be prepared to argue and defend the program so as to be advocates for our bilingual children. There will be many individuals we will face in the extend of our career that will disagree with the purpose of bilingual education and we will have to be able to successfully 1) not be influenced negatively and always hold firm to our beliefs 2) know the debate and both sides to the arguements 3) be knowledgeable about theories and concepts essential to bilingual education. Most importantly, we must remember that all teachers should ultimately have the same goal in mind and that is to provide children with the equal opportunity to education by advocating and assisting their needs, whether they be children with disabilities, gifted children, or english language learning children.
Bellow is a link to slideshow that demonstrates 10 issues on the Bilingual Education Debate and explains both sides of the argument.
10 Issues that Fuel the Bilingual Education Debate
Resources:
10 Issues that Fuel the Bilingual Education Debate. Retrieved from http://www.education.com/slideshow/reasons-why-bilingual-education-debate/divided-we-stand.
By: Brenda
I agree that as bilingual education teachers, we should know what are the points rooting against us. Sometimes when I tell people that I'm a bilingual education major, I can sense the disapproval in their response and I think it's because they don't really know what we do in bilingual education and there are a lot of misconceptions about it. We should be knowledgable on these points so that we can defend bilingual education and it's theories and concepts.
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