Personal Story Gives Teachers Insight Into Multicultural Classroom

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Carlos Cortes tells his story of growing up the son of a Mexican Catholic father and a Jewish mother in 1940s Kansas City to help teachers understand their students of mixed background.

Cortes is professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Riverside, and works as an independent lecturer, writer and speaker. He performs the one-person play that he wrote, “A Conversation with Alana: One Boy’s Multicultural Rite of Passage,” all over the country for different groups, including education conferences. He will perform it at the University of Arkansas ESL Symposium on Friday, Feb. 22, at the GuestHouse Hotel, formerly the Clarion Inn, in Fayetteville.

“Children of mixed backgrounds face the same issues I experienced all those years ago,” said Cortes, who has also written a memoir called Rose Hill: An Intermarriage Before its Time. “The big difference between the 1940s and today is there is so much intermarriage. It’s more accepted today than back then. When I was growing up, you had to be part of one group or the other. I was often rejected because of the background of either my mother or my father.”

The play helps teachers understand issues faced by students of mixed background in their classrooms, said Cortes, who writes a blog about acculturation for the Spanish-language network Univision and works as creative and cultural adviser for Nickelodeon on its popular children’s television series, Dora the Explorer. During the play, Cortes speaks to his daughter, Alana, represented in the play by an empty chair, as he portrays himself and other family members to describe events and feelings he experienced growing up.

“As kids do things in the classroom or say things, the teacher has better insight into what might be happening behind those words,” he said, about the effect of his story. “As teachers work with their students, they recognize the students might not fit into tight cultural patterns the teachers expect because of this mixed background. Every human being has these cross-currents playing out. They may be linguistic or religious; … my family was trilingual. Teachers can avoid stereotyping and be better able to grasp the complexity of backgrounds and issues that students might be going through.”

The other symposium speaker, Joyce Nutta, an associate professor and coordinator of English as a second language education at the University of Central Florida, will give a keynote address. In “What’s Different About Differentiating For English Learners,” Nutta presents a process for differentiating instruction and assessment in academic subjects for English-language learners.

“Differentiating instruction and assessment requires determining which learners need what kind of support under which circumstances,” Nutta said. “English learners have specific needs for differentiation that not only are distinct from other learners but also vary depending on their level of English proficiency.”

More than 90 languages are spoken by children in Arkansas schools, according to the Arkansas Department of Education. Some of the highest populations of students who speak English as a second language are found in schools in Northwest Arkansas with Springdale schools reporting the highest number at 10,045 language-minority students in the 2012-13 school year. Rogers schools are second with 6,118 language-minority students, Bentonville fifth with 1,883, Fayetteville seventh with 1,029, and Siloam Springs eighth with 870.

Cost of the symposium is $115 with a special price of $60 for students. Educators can earn six hours of professional development approved by the Arkansas Department of Education. Registration may be done online and is required by Feb. 13.

Symposium sponsors are the curriculum and instruction department in the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas and Project RISE (Realizing and Increasing Student Excellence), a federally funded program operated by the college to increase the number of local teachers certified in English as a second language.