Compadres, We Are 'Bicapacitadores'!
By Alfredo Arango
There were great expectations of us, floating in the cool air-conditioned room, close to the end of the hot summer. About 30 Dual Language Teachers ‒with me included‒ met at Columbia Heights Educational Campus in Washington, D.C., to attend a professional development training pre-service session, designed around the topic of Biliteracy, by Elizabeth Sauler for District of Columbia Public Schools.
Ms. Sauler had invited us by pointing out: “As you have likely heard from your principals, we have been working together over the summer to develop a specialized PD cohort for Dual Language MS and HS Liberal Arts teachers. This is an exciting opportunity for cross-school collaboration, as DL programs continue to expand in DCPS”. The main dishes for the occasion were: “Developing a Shared Language for Bilateracy,” defining “Biliteracy Unit Frameworks”, and “Tuning protocols.”
There were enough reasons for us to feel like the parents of a new being, at least in the Northeast region. In the Southern border states, where Spanish and Mexican influences predate the formation of an anglo culture, there are Dual Language “parents” with an extended family of educational practices and organizations. A good example is La Cosecha, an annual dual language conference that happens in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which since 1996 “recognizes a need to network and share, identified best practices within the dual language community.”
At the end of our 2016 pre-service meeting in D.C., we were asked to propose a name for our foundational group. Ms. Sauler noted that the new recognition and support that our school system was giving to Dual Language had made that first meeting possible and was giving us great possibilities to organize and innovate. “I am very excited to watch this powerful collaboration unfold,” she said.
With that same excitement, I agree that our group needs a name, but I also strongly believe that our “being” itself needs a new name as well. I find that the concept of “Dual Language” is too vague and the concept of “Biliteracy” too limited.
In their extraordinary book “Teaching for Biliteracy”, Karen Beeman and Cheryl Urow, start their preface by stating: “This is a book about teaching for biliteracy ‒reading and writing in Spanish and English‒ in the United States.” In reality, “literacy”, or in Spanish “alfabetización”, is the process of teaching/learning how to read and write. The prefix “bi” just indicates that the process happens in two languages. Thanks to Paulo Freire, the legendary Brazilian educator and philosopher who in the 1960s advocated for critical pedagogy, we now know that literacy should not limit itself to a “banking education” model, but that it should also include a basic component of empowerment for liberation. In any case, the nametag of “literacy” keeps dragging in its original meaning of just teaching the alphabet as if that were empowering enough.
At the end of our meeting, all the dual language teachers made clear that we do not perceive our role as simple literacy teachers in two languages. On the contrary, we are glad and proud to assign ourselves a higher mission that includes facilitating the right of our students to fully flourish in their own cultural and social backgrounds. We want to make them able to not only speak, read, write, and be academically successful in two languages, but also be able to keep being what they are, or be able to explore the rich possibilities of what they can really be, when discovering and taking advantage of their own heritage and identity.
Building upon the concept of making students fully able, the term "bicapaz" meaning "bi-able" would better fit the true nature of our being. It would encapsulate the ability to communicate in two languages; speak, read, and write, and the ability to feel and be in two ways. “Get a new language and get a new soul,” says a Czech proverb. The idea behind the concept of “bicapacitar” would be to cultivate and free those two souls and personalities, so that our students may laugh, dream, and love in two languages that complement each other without losing their essence.
The Spanish concept of "capacitación" is widely use in education and it means: to train a person so as to make them capable of doing something specific. It includes, but is not limited to, the concept of literacy.
If the new adjective “bicapaz” and the new verb “bicapacitarse” are adopted, a student could say something like this: "Me estoy bicapacitando en inglés y español para ser enfermera bilingüe" (“I am bi-training in English and Spanish to be a bilingual nurse;”) or a teacher could say: "Yo bicapacito estudiantes de escuela superior en el D.C." (“I bi-train high school students in D.C.”)
Since “training”, which is the equivalent in English of the Spanish concept of “capacitación”, does not have the same meaning and force ‒because the word “training” does not include in itself the great concept of “being able”, like “capacitar” does when it includes the word “capaz”‒ it would be better to use the Spanish concept of “bicapacitación” even in English. As an example, this is what happens when the English speaker realizes that there is no completely equivalent word in English to fairly translate the Spanish word “compadre”, which means that the other person being referenced to in the conversation by the speaker is perhaps the godfather of their son, or a very good friend/buddy who is engaged in a crucial activity/job with the speaker. And so, the speaker smartly decides to say something like: “How are you, compadre?”
“Bicapaz” and “bicapacitar” would make perfect sense. It would be a new powerful term, based on a familiar, easy to understand, flexible, comprehensive, and organic concept.
Washington, D.C., August 28, 2016
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Alfredo Arango is an educator, writer/editor, and translator, who has been teaching languages (Spanish and English) to children and adults, and developing curriculum, in the U.S. for 20 years.
Photo by Hayden Dunsel
@hayden_dunsel