Olivia Flores: Kansas City Here I Come!

In this episode, we speak with Olivia Flores, a dynamic young bilingual educator from Chicago, who now calls herself a proud transplant to Kansas City, Missouri. Bilingual education in the heart of the Midwest? Well, yes. Of course! Due to recent increases in the number of Spanish-speaking immigrants to the Midwest, often due to the meat and poultry processing and home construction industries, the Midwest has experienced an impressive increase in the number of first-language Spanish-speaking students enrolled in its public schools. (Other immigrant groups and languages have also been represented in these increases, but Spanish-speaking immigrants by far represent the largest single group.) Because of the 1974 Lau v. Nichols U.S. Supreme Court decision, mandating that schools accommodate the language needs of students—instead of the other way around—school districts in the Midwest have had to implement instructional strategies that effectively address both the students’ language needs, as well as their overall academic needs. As has been the case in the Western and Southwestern United States, dual-language education, where core subject areas are taught in two languages, has proven to be the most effective instructional strategy for English learners in the Midwest, as well. As a native Midwesterner and a fluent speaker of Spanish—having lived in both Argentina and Colombia—Olivia Flores is the type of educator best suited for the challenges inherent in the implementation of a valuable pedagogical approach still relatively new to the region. Listen as she explains shared as well as unique features of bilingual education in Kansas City, Missouri, the heart of the American Midwest. We also discuss code-switching and translanguaging.