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A letter from the BBE Program

Dear Prospective Student:

Do you want to promote multilingualism in the world?
How are language, power and education related? 
What is the difference between multililngualism and learning a second language?
How does cultural and linguistic diversity interact in learning?
Why does language matter?
How can teachers promote language freedoms in schools?
Why is it important for children to be able to access all the language systems they know?

If you ever asked yourself these or similar questions, we urge you to continue exploring our program.

The Program in Bilingual/Bicultural Education focuses on promoting multilingualism worldwide.  We specifically prepare educators to promote multilingualism through the exploration of issues of learning and teaching in more than one language.  Language allows us to codify our worlds in a dynamic way.  The use of more than one language in instruction calls for new ways of teaching and learning as the multiple language represent different cultures and worldviews that have converged within a social space. 

We value the heritage languages of the children and communities we service.  Thus, if we are in the country of Spain, we tend to go beyond the teaching of Spanish to, for example, the teaching of Basque; if in the United States, we value Spanish; if we are working in China, we value minority languages such as Bai; if we are in Singapore, we value Chinese.  Our emphasis is on servicing populations through more than one language.

Literacy, as we understand it represents not only the decoding and encoding of words and knowledge but also the codified legacies of a people. Thus, we believe that in educational institutions we must work with multiple literacies, that of the school, the community, and the home. Legacies, however, have more than one medium – they are more than print.  They can also be experienced through oral, visual, and emotive means.  They are also constitutive of identities that need to be explored as part of the settings we work in.  All of the different means are, moreover, embedded in power structures that we also have to explore within the individual and the society we live in. 

The diversity of the city of New York is a source of inspiration for us to craft our instruction in ways that take advantage and mine its resources. So, that while we concentrated on the major language minority groups of the city – Spanish speakers and Chinese speakers – we have something to say and contribute to other settings in which the co-existence and intermingling of languages occur around the world

Please be our guest, explore the program website postings, and send questions you may still have to bilingual-bicultural@exchange.tc.columbia.edu.

We leave you with the hopes that we can respond to your questions, that you give us the opportunity to see your admissions forms as part of the possibility of your making a presence in our classrooms next year. 

Sincerely,
Program in Bilingual/Bicultural Education

Please note that Prof. Garcia has left Teachers College and is now working at the Graduate Center of the CUNY. If you need to contact her, please email her at ogarcia@gc.cuny.edu.