Speaking in Tongues is a film about bilingualism. The producers have expanded their scope to document the experience not only of children learning Cantonese but also English learners in a Spanish immersion program and African American students in San Francisco's first Mandarin immersion program.
These three stories connect issues as disparate as immigrant integration, the inequity in educational achievement, and the critical need to develop a more multicultural perspective. They've also been tracking the development of a proposal to offer every public student in San Francisco a chance to become bilingual a revolutionary idea in a country where 23 states have English-only legislation on the books. Today's San Francisco is a harbinger for the nation itself in 20 years, a U.S as diverse will be struggling with the same challenges.
You can see some of this new material on the recently updated clip streaming at: www.patchworksfilms.net
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Speaking in Tongues info
Hi all,
I just saw this post about our film SPEAKING IN TONGUES. I just wanted to invite anyone interested in learning more to watch our 2 minute trailer at www.speakingintonguesfilm.info. If you'd like to know when it is screening in Chicago or on public television, please sign up for our e-mail list on the site.
Many thanks,
Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider
PatchWorks Films
Young children in Early Childhood Programsand heritage language
We all heard about the billions of $ being distributed to the districts throughout the entire United States with the main purpose of improving our schools. There is no mention of the requirement to increase cognitive growth via the native language which is most often the language spoken by the mother and/or care giver. The Anglo-American children truly benefit from the impact of Early Childhood Education as 100% of the instructional program (self-selected activities for play or teacher directed activities) are conducted utilizing English which is the native language of the Anglo-American children. Recently (Spring 09), the Illinois School Code was ammended to identify young children(3-5 years of age) participating in public education and in need of native language and English as a second language support to receive equal educational opportunity. However, the Illinois State Board of Education has not created the procedures with the timeline for compliance nor the monitoring procedures for evaluation. Districts will not comply!!!Our children will be deprived of the equal educational protection....Each day in which our ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS are submerged into a discriminatory program (disregard for native language and culture), their cognitive growth is delayed because the instructional environment does not facilitate their learning of concepts leading to higher level of thinking and speaking and social skills needed for future academic sucess. The billions of dollars under the Stimulus Educational Program will continue to increase the disparity of educational gap between the language minority population and the Anglo-American children because the Early Childhood Public Education Programs are designed with the nurturing environments for the young Anglo-American to continue moving towards the path (paved by the school system) to reach the American Dream. Please write to your legislators with Cc; Mr. David Barker -Chairperson -Bil Advisory Committee.
100 North First Street Springfield, IL. 62777
Subtitles?
I really wish there was funding to support subtitles for this film. I'd love to be able to show it in a multilingual setting with an English- and Spanish-speaking audience.
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