I   chose to enter the field of education over 20 years ago.  Since my mother was a teacher, my decision was more about what I would teacher rather than whether I would teach. The field of second language acquisition has always interested me and so I studied to be a Spanish and English as a Second Language teacher.  Even though recent research (Collier & Thomas, 2002) has shown that second language learners benefit more in a dual language program, my experience and my bias have been for an English only approach since most of my classes have been composed of many language groups.  However, for the past three years I have taught at a high-poverty elementary school with more than 60% of the students from Spanish-speaking families.  The school has been struggling for accreditation.  Four years ago, as a measure to bring up test scores and to appeal to the neighborhood population, the school initiated a dual language program, a two-way bilingual immersion program in English and Spanish.

     Bilingual education, especially a dual language program, is a new experience for me.  My teaching experience has always been teaching either Spanish or English as a second language but not the two together.  When trying to define a focus for my research project, I thought of investigating how the dual language program worked in the classroom.  I had thought of studying what happened in the classroom but I have switched my perspective to studying the teachers. I am trying to understand it by interviewing the teachers who teach in the Spanish part of the day to find out why they chose to be Spanish teachers.   I also wanted to find out if and how their background influenced the way they delivered instruction in the classroom. 

     Both personal and professional experiences have honed my interest in second language acquisition.  Personally, I lived over 20 years outside the United States and I watched my children grow up learning Spanish and French depending on the language of our host country.   I saw how they grasped the languages by being immersed in them, playing in Spanish or putting on plays in French.   For my children, the schools provided the academic structure of the language as the community provided the social language. 

     Professionally, my university transcript is peppered with courses in language and linguistics.  I was fascinated with learning languages and studying the structure of language.  In graduate school I concentrated on how to teach Spanish and English as a Second Language.  All of my experience and coursework focused on learning one language at a time.  So the concept of dual language is relatively new to me and it fascinated me.  I knew I wanted to study some aspect of dual language for this project.

     Arriving at a focus has been a process of self-discovery as well as professional growth. In the past three months, my ideas have gone through an evolution as I have searched for a research topic. On my own, I have observed classes and students in the dual language program in my school.  I have read research on second language acquisition program models, especially dual language, and have analyzed my school’s program according to criteria for a successful program.  In my mind, the dual language program wasn’t working and I had the reason: the teachers were not following good program design especially in the Spanish part of the day. 

     My first attempt at a topic for this project dealt with trying to find out why the Spanish teachers used so much English in their Spanish immersion classes.  My goal was to find the reasons and design a series of staff development workshops that would solve the problem.  I had discovered a problem and I wanted to offer a solution.

       From class consultations, I saw that I was going into the study with a judgmental attitude to show the program as flawed and poorly-taught.  My bias was so blatant that I would have found reasons to prove inadequacies whether they existed or not.   My questions in the first interview guide would have required that the teachers defend their practices rather than explain them.   As I reflect on my previous attitude, I wonder how the interviews would have proceeded and whether my colleagues would have told me anything. 

     The research question started to evolve as I observed and talked informally to the teachers. I knew I had to bracket my beliefs and simply let the teachers talk to me. I saw three very dedicated Spanish teachers who approached teaching in a bilingual program with distinct practices.  I decided to focus on the teachers rather than the program. I wanted to understand how and why they had gotten into teaching bilingual education in general and this kind of program in particular. . Since I saw so much variation in their approach to the dual language situation, I would see whether they talked about how their background influenced their practice in the classroom 

      Recent research is showing dual language to be an effective approach to   long-term academic achievement for English language learners (Cloud, Hamayan & Genesee, 2000; Collier & Thomas, 2002; Cummins, 2000).  My elementary school is the only one in the school district with a dual language program.  I felt it was a logical choice to study this program.  Also, I thought it would be logistically easier to study a program in my own backyard.  I would not have to travel to interview the participants and I was known and respected by the staff.

     The school is in the middle of a neighborhood in the midst of gentrification.  The single-family houses have tripled in value and the previously run-down apartment buildings are being converted to luxury condominiums. The school demographics for 2003-04 show: 58% Hispanic, 30% African American and 12% White.  Seventy-two percent of the students receive free or reduced lunch, usually the measure for telling the socio-economic level of the student population.  Even though the school population is predominantly non-White, the mostly White families moving into the single-family houses are attracted to the idea of a bilingual education program for their children.  In the past 3 years, the White population has increased from 2% to 12%.  Most of the White children are in the dual language program.   For English speaking students, the dual language program now has a considerable waiting list of neighborhood children.

        The dual language program grows to encompass a new grade every year.  At present there are two dual language classes in kindergarten, first, second and third grade.  There are four Spanish teachers and four English teachers in the program.  I chose to interview three of the four Spanish teachers.  The fourth, the second grade teacher, was an alternate in case one of the other three could not arrange an interview time with me. 

     I am part of a staff of 60 teachers/assistants and specialists at a school of 500 students.  This is my fourth year at the school.  The teachers know me as an experienced teacher who frequently presents short staff development sessions at the faculty meetings.  They know that my interest is in second language acquisition because that is usually what I address in staff development. The kindergarten teacher knows me as an ESL teacher.  The 1st and 3rd grade teachers have joined the staff recently and know me in my new position as the facilitator for the Instructional Support Team (IST) which is a school-based problem solving team.   I have a professional relationship with each of them.  The three teachers I chose to interview know that I am a doctoral student and that I am very interested in bilingual education, especially dual language.  They have all given me free access to their classrooms any time that I would like to visit or observe.

     At the beginning of the project when I was concentrating on how the dual language program was carried out in the classrooms, I started observing the Spanish teachers and their classes. But, by the time I had observed twice in the kindergarten, first and third grades my focus was more directed to finding out about the teachers themselves.  I decided to stop observing how the Spanish teachers acted in the classroom and shifted to interviewing each of them about their backgrounds.  Once I had shifted away from classroom practices, I felt that observations would not add to the information about their motivation and background.  But, the observations did give me an idea of how they taught and how their understanding of dual language influenced their classroom practices.  The observations helped me to understand when participants offered examples of how their experiences influenced the way they treated their students. 

     At first, interviewing presented a challenge because it was hard to keep from sharing my ideas when the topic switched to pedagogy.  I found myself wanting to jump in frequently to agree with the participant or add my input.  My impulse was to begin a professional dialogue.  After six interviews, I have decided that interviewing is not easy.  It is an art form that needs to be practiced and perfected in order to be effective.  Even though I had an interview guide with the areas I wanted to cover and a sheet with specific questions for each interest area, I found that I wanted the conversation to flow more naturally and not be dependent on a sheet of questions. 

     After deciding on which three teachers to interview, I talked informally with each one of them to describe the research project.  I asked if they would mind my asking them about their bilingual background and their educational experience.  I told them that I wanted to learn more about why they were teaching in a dual language program.  Only one teacher (N) asked me if she could have the questions in advance so that she could practice the answers.   When I told her that I would be asking about her family, what language she had used growing up and what she studied in school, she told me that she would be ready the following Monday.

     I decided to interview three of the four dual language teachers for one hour each. Finding an hour that each teacher was available during the day became impossible.  We agreed to meet in 30-minute segments while their classes were in the computer lab.  The data collection schedule is detailed in the following table:

Teacher   Date  Time Comments
Kindergarten (D) Oct. 13
Nov. 10 10:30-11:05
10:00-10:25 
  Her English got better as we talked. She seemed very nervous with the recorder. 
First (N) Nov. 3 
Nov. 10 11:00-11:35
11:00-11:30   I found her difficult to talk to and to get information from. She didn’t seem to understand some of the questions. 
 
Third (O) Oct. 13
Nov. 10 9:00-9:40
9:00-9:25 Very easy to talk to. Could have continued longer, lots to contribute

    With the interviews divided into two segments, I had time to reflect on what each participant had told me and to see what I wanted to pursue in the second half.  Before starting the second interview, I went over what we had covered in the first and asked if I had captured what she had wanted to tell me.  Then I proceeded.  In that way, the interview could flow from the information from the first 30 minutes and also I was able to check to make sure that I had understood what the participant meant to say.

     Before starting the interviews with the participants, I decided to practice. I decided to try out the questions in a practice interview, more for practice interviewing than for information.  I practiced with the one dual language teacher I was not going to interview for the project.  My goal was to focus on listening to what the teacher was telling me and to practice using open-ended responses to encourage more details.

     When we tried to set up a time, it turned out that the best time was right then and there.  So, with no tape recorder nor the prepared interview guide, we sat down and she started to talk.  I asked her how she looked at her job as a dual language teacher.  As soon as she started talking, I tried to figure a way to get down all her responses because her views were very insightful.  After about 10 minutes I decided that what she was telling me gave a lot of background information and that I wanted her to be one of my participants.  So I asked if we could stop and do an official interview.  She seemed flattered and we agreed to meet the next day.

     We talked for 35 minutes and agreed to meet again in a week for another 30 minutes.  That would give me time to transcribe the interview and see which points I would like to delve into more deeply.  It would also give me a chance to see if I had missed any ‘markers’.  Next, I interviewed the kindergarten teacher and the first grade teacher for 30 minutes each.  Two interview sessions of 30 minutes were easier to arrange for the participants and they would give me time to listen to the tapes and reflect before meeting again.

     The second round of interviews gave me the opportunity to make sure I had addressed the same areas with all three participants.  I realized when reviewing N’s first interview that I had not asked her to elaborate on why she had gotten into teaching originally.  D’s first interview had focused more on her daily routine than on her background.  I also found that I wanted to ask them about incidents in their life that influenced them to become teachers. 

     As I reviewed the second round of interviews, I realized that two (N and D) did not yield much information.  I think that the setting, (outside the earshot but not vision of their class while they were working in the computer lab) was not conducive to giving thoughtful answers.  I should have picked a more secluded location so that the teacher would not be distracted by how her class was behaving.  O’s second interview was in her classroom when the children were not there.  Even though teachers interrupted us a number of times, she seemed very focused.  I found that I was able to touch on all the themes I had wanted to ask her about.

     Before I finished interviewing all the participants, I started transcribing.  I wanted to do this so that I could refine my questions for the second part of the interview.  As I transcribed the first interview, I added comments in italics indicating where I wanted to go back and reflect or I wanted to follow-up with more questions in the second part of the interview.  After transcribing the first interview of 30 minutes, I read through it with a pink highlighter and I underscored the lines and phrases that struck me in this first reading.  I felt that these words would relate to etic categories from my interview guide.  For example, in the first page of O’s interview she mentioned “…what I know about bilingual education, I’ve learned from teaching.”  She had “never experienced it first-hand”(O, 1:1).  This conformed to my category of academic knowledge about bilingual education, which I thought would be an important piece of the puzzle of why they had gone into teaching in the dual language program.  I also added an organizational category: how experience affected classroom practice.  I felt that it would be a way to blend information that I was gleaning from the conversations with what they were actually doing in class.  I added this category because the first participant kept connecting what she did in the classroom to elements of her past experience.

     After marking the phrases that stood out, I reread the interview with a yellow highlighter and marked the words or phrases which surprised me or which I had not thought about before the interview.  I felt that I was starting the first search for emic categories.  In the first couple of pages, I had marked role model because she mentioned that she “had encountered only one Hispanic teacher and wanted to be just like him.   Also, she spoke a lot about being different because she was brown-skinned.  Another thing that caught my attention during this second read-through, was the frequent use of the words “frustration” and “struggle” when describing her experience of learning English in her elementary school in Texas.

     After I had underscored the passages I wanted to revisit with pink and highlighted specific phrases with yellow, I tried to put the yellow phrases into categories and wrote the categories or themes in the margins.  I also put question marks in front of the lines/phrases I wanted to go back to or pursue further. From the first interview I had:

Organizational categories or themes Substantive categories or themes 
Family background/growing up bilingual “I want to be just like my Hispanic teacher”
Education/educational experiences “If you’re brown skinned you have to try harder.” 
Teacher preparation/experience “I’m proud of my culture.” 
Understanding of the goals of dual language/bilingual education  Speaking versus reading Spanish 

     When I had found these categories, I transcribed the other two interviews and looked over them for these same themes.  I performed the highlighting process in reverse.  First I highlighted in yellow on the transcriptions where I found something related to the above categories.  Then I underscored in pink the sections that did not relate to the above categories but contained topics or phrases that I wanted to pursue in the second part of the interview.  For example, the first grade teacher talked a lot about the experience of her son who had a “speech impairment” and his difficulties in learning in a bilingual setting.  I want to pursue this to see if his problems affected her decision to teach Spanish-speaking children in the process of learning a second language. 

     After I finished the second round of interviews, I decided that I needed to synthesize what I had learned from each of the participants.  I did the synthesis by using the notes written in the margins.  I wrote a profile of each participant and the main themes that surfaced from the interview.  I summarized each interview in paragraph form which made the data easier to handle.  I could see common themes as well as ideas appearing in only one or two interviews.  From the three interview summaries I revised the categories. 

Organizational themes Substantive themes Other issues raised*
Experience   “frustration’ and ‘struggle’ Use of Spanish/English in class 
Family ‘You have to work harder’/’Spanish speakers can learn’ Frustration with lack of support from parents
Education You have to be proud of your brown skin Social versus academic English
*I added this section because these were common themes which did not pertain directly to the topic but surfaced in all interviews. 

     With my final categories, I laid out the three now hour-long interviews side-by-side and went over the notes I had written in the margin.  I put all the codes and notes in a table and from those notes, I developed profiles of each participant.

     O is a third grade teacher in the dual language program.  She was born in Mexico near the border with Texas.  Her family moved El Paso when she was 8 years old and started first grade in El Paso and continued her schooling to 12th grade in Texas.   O is the middle child of 5.  Some of her brothers and sisters returned to Mexico but she married and has lived in the US all of her life.  She is fluent in Spanish and English.  Her English is not accented and her vocabulary is extensive.  It is difficult to think of O as a non-native English speaker. 

     O is new to the school system having moved here from Alaska, where she had taught in a dual language program.  Before that, O had taught in a bilingual program in Texas.  She taught a regular education class for one year.  In that class she taught the Spanish ?speaking children whose parents did not want them in a bilingual program. She described herself that year as a “monolingual teacher who was bilingual” (O, 1:4).  After that year, she piloted a dual language program in Texas and then moved to Alaska.  She was in her 8th year of teaching in a dual language program.

     O talked at length about her mother and her mother’s influence on her academic background.  She is very proud of her mother’s education and her ability in English.  She also talked about a Hispanic male teacher, Mr. Martinez, who inspired O to become a teacher.  She talked about wanting to be a role model to young Hispanic students because she had encountered only two Hispanic teachers in her school in El Paso, a city with a population of mostly Mexicans.  O stressed that she liked to tell her students that even though they are Hispanic, they can be as good as anyone else.  She tells them to “dress the part, speak the part, work the part” (O: 1:9)

     Another theme which permeated the interview is her negative attitude connected with brown skin.  O talks about being put back a year when entering school. 

     When I asked her if she could think of a student whose life she had changed, she answered that one girl stood out because she had helped her become comfortable in her brown skin.  She also said that a lot of students from low socio-economic situations have cultural issues because of skin tone.  As a Hispanic teacher, she feels that she can get them to feel comfortable in their skin.
 

     D is the Spanish dual language kindergarten teacher.  She is an energetic, petite young teacher, barely taller than some of the students in the school.  She was born in Puerto Rico and lived there with her mom and brother until after university.  She studied English as a subject in high school but felt that it wasn’t well taught.  D entered a Masters program in New York five years ago and according to her, that is when she started to learn English.  In Puerto Rico, she went to public school and said that whether someone learned English in school depended on whether the teacher was good.  She did not have a good English teacher (“I didn’t have a good teacher.  She didn’t speak it.”  D, 2:8) and D felt embarrassed when she had to use English with relatives who came from the US to visit.

       D started at this school as the first dual language teacher. She is now into her fourth year of teaching.  This is her first experience with bilingual education and she seems quite comfortable talking about theory.  She mentioned that she took the dual language position because she wanted to teach in Spanish and have time to continue learning English.  Her English is slightly accented and usually grammatically correct. She uses English with her colleagues and rarely uses Spanish in a school where Spanish is heard in the hallways, offices and with the students.
D mentioned her mother, an English teacher, as her role model.  She talked about Spanish being her home language and that she was proud of her language.  She also used the word “frustrated” when describing her lack of fluency in English compared to her friends’ ability.  She struggled to learn English and still struggles, according to her.

     In her Masters program, D took some electives in bilingual education but had not studied anything specific about the theory or philosophy of dual language.  She did not differentiate between traditional, transitional bilingual education and dual language.   She feels that because her students are having their first experience with elementary school, it should be as pleasant as possible.  D aims at lowering frustration by using the child’s home language at the beginning of the school year and gradually transitioning to the second language during the year.  She also uses the home language when a child is upset.  Her experience learning English was frustrating and therefore she tries to minimize that emotion with her Spanish-speaking and English-speaking students.

     N is the first grade dual language teacher.  She was born in Manhattan, the youngest of 7 children in a Puerto Rican family.   Her mother had never gone to school but had taught herself English when living in New York.  The family returned to Puerto Rico when N was four years old where she went to school until her second year of college.  She finished college and her MA here in the US. 

     N has taught for more than 10 years and had always previously taught in a transitional bilingual program.  This is her first year at this school and also her first year teaching in a dual language program.  She admits to having difficulty switching from teaching in two languages (Spanish and English) to using only Spanish in the classroom. 

     N mentioned that she speaks English with an accent and is proud of that because she knows people can tell she is Latina.  She wants her Hispanic students to recognize that she is like them and that they can be like her.  She wants them to be proud of who they are and of their ability to speak two languages.

     N’s conversation gravitated to parents of the children in the dual language program and her frustrations with lack of parental understanding of dual language and lack of parental support.  She also talked about her own children and how she listened to bad advice and didn’t put her children into bilingual classes.  As a high school student, her son is finally learning to read and write in Spanish.  She expressed frustration at the ignorance of non-Hispanics and gave the example of the difficulty she encountered registering her son in a high school Spanish class.  In her words, “ He has to take a second language…See how ignorant they are?  They say, ‘oh, you can’t take a Spanish course because you’re already Spanish!’  You can’t assume that” (N, 3:2).

     N stressed that she wants to make sure that her students, her Hispanic students, do not lose their home language and that they develop the academic language as well as the social language.  She wants them to have more than street Spanish.  Her son and daughter missed their “window of opportunity” by not studying Spanish in elementary school.  N is determined that her students grow up with skills in both languages.

     I began my research with the idea of pointing out a design flaw in the dual language program and presenting a solution to the problem.  As my focus changed to trying to find out more about the Spanish teachers and the career choice they made, I believed that my questions focused on their background.  But, as I reviewed the interviews many, many times, I realize that I still focused on what was happening in their classrooms.  I feel that I am missing some valuable information that I could have collected had I followed up on responses about their early education, family dynamics or their college courses and early professional experience. 

     Before interviewing the three participants, I had assumed that their motivation for becoming bilingual education teachers would revolve around three topics: education, family and professional experience because my decision to be a teacher was based on those.  I found with my participants that some of these categories entered into the decision but that they do not give the whole picture. 

  All three participants credit their mothers for being role models for them at least in terms of knowing English.  Fathers were not mentioned in any of the interviews except in the first one.  O mentioned that her father went with her mother to talk to a teacher when her brother wouldn’t or couldn’t speak English in class.  Mothers seem to be the walking dictionaries and moral support for all three teachers when they needed help in English.

     N mentioned that she got into bilingual education because of her son.  She related that she had wanted her children to grow up with both English and Spanish.  She tried to speak both languages to her children but her son seemed to be having difficulty in school. 
 
 

     N volunteered in her son’s school during her college years and decided to get her MA in education after she took some courses in bilingual education.  She almost went to law school but changed her mind when her son had so many learning problems.   N works hard to make sure that her Hispanic students avoid the problems her son had in school. 

     I had thought that the participant’s school experiences would have influenced their career choice. Only O mentioned having a Hispanic teacher in elementary school who inspired her to be a teacher.  The others did not mention any teacher inspiring them.  It could be that I didn’t ask them directly if any teacher had been a role model for them.  O was the only one who answered the question about how she became interested in becoming a bilingual teacher with a reference to a Hispanic teacher she had in 5th grade.

     The kindergarten teacher told me that she came to the US to perfect her English and when she finished her BA she was offered a job and she jumped at the opportunity because she could teach in Spanish.  She was not confident enough to teach in English.  Up to that point she knew that she was going to be a teacher but had thought that it would be years before she could find a teaching position because she was still learning English. 

     One idea which surfaced with all three participants is one which emphasizes that as Hispanics they feel they need to work harder and that they need to get that idea across to their students.  For example, O said, “Being Hispanic means that you have to go the extra mile in my opinion”…. You have to do well.  My mother always said that you are a representative of your family, of your culture, of everything”  (O, 1:9).  She learned that she should be proud of who she is and she tries to instill that ethnic pride in her students.

     D echoed the same idea about working hard when she said that she wants her students to work hard because ‘they can learn. … They can learn in two languages and be special.  It’s hard but they can do it.”  D went on to say that she tries to get this message across to the parents as well as the students.  N said that she was not bothered about having an accent when she speaks English because she wants to be identified as a Latina.  She wants her students to identify with her and try to be like her. “I want my students to understand that …they can be like me.  They can study hard and be educated.”  (N, 3:8) All three participants had learned that they could get an education in their second language if they worked hard and it was important for them to pass that advice on to their Hispanic students.

     O, the only Mexican participant talked a lot about having brown skin and the discrimination that comes from being brown-skinned.  The other two participants did not mention the color of their skin.  It is probable that they did not mention facing discrimination when they were growing up because they were raised in a Spanish speaking world and didn’t have to survive in English until they were young adults.
O talked about having to go back a grade in school because of her skin tone.  She said that the school sorted children by skin color and put the brown ones back a year. 

     O’s experience with discrimination because of skin tone influenced her decision to teach Hispanic children. 
 

     O also felt that she was discriminated against because of her accent in English.  Her accent made her very self-conscious.  She comments, “I hated to read out loud.  I remember I hated when the teacher commented on my accent. …I was so self-conscious about my accent.  I loved reading, reading to myself.”   When I read these comments that O made about her accent, I realize that of the three participants, she is the only one without a trace of an accent in English.  She worked to get rid of it when she was young because she felt inadequate.  One of the other participants feels her accent is a positive factor in her self-identity.  And the third participant didn’t mention having an accent.

      All three participants used the words “frustration” and “struggle” when describing their experience learning English and that could supply a reason for deciding on a career in bilingual teaching.  D talks about how her private school friends learned English better because their teachers were better.  She struggled because in class “we had grammar, a lot of nonsense and we didn’t speak it.”  (D, 2, 8)   D also mentioned struggling with the language when her family visited the US or when her cousins came to Puerto Rico. 

     Having experienced the frustration of not being able to communicate and the struggle learning English, the participants felt they could help Spanish speakers have a more enjoyable experience in school.  N talks about the struggles of both her English speakers and her Hispanic students. 
 
 

     O says that every time she goes back to school she struggles with language, new vocabulary.  She relates her difficulty to her students’ frustration. 
 

     A number of other issues surfaced in each of the interviews.  These are issues that could be pursued in other studies.  As I reflected on the information from the interviews I realized that my original interest, the use of English in the Spanish part of the instructional day, surfaced in all three interviews. Each of the participants brought up her use of English and related it to past experience or training. 

     The third grade teacher adamantly refuses to use English in front of her students. She admits that she uses only Spanish and that her students do not know that she can speak English.  O is determined not to mix the languages because her mother forbid her and her siblings to use ‘Spanglish’, a mixture of Spanish and English.  In the interview O told the story of the first time she mixed the languages and of her mother’s reaction:

     In O’s class, she speaks only Spanish and uses the native English speakers as experts to translate into English if there is a need.  She said that her mother’s voice enters her head if she tries to mix the two languages.

     N says that it is a struggle to teach in Spanish because she is used to teaching in a transitional bilingual program where the goal was to use Spanish for translation when the children did not have enough English to grasp the lesson.  “I always taught bilingual. I talked both English and Spanish to the kids. …I switch into the Spanish. I do that automatically.” (N, 3:5)  She said that the look on the student’s face tells her whether to go over it in English.  A blank stare means she needs to translate.

     D says that since her students are starting school for the first time, she wants them to feel comfortable.  Learning the second language will come eventually.  After telling her classroom routine and mentioning all the activities she did in English, I asked her outright if she could assign a percentage to the amount of Spanish she spoke in the class.  She answered: “I would say 50/50 because that’s what I have, 50/50 students  (half English speakers and half Spanish speakers).  And I want everybody to understand and I don’t want them to get frustrated because they are only 5 and 6 [years old]” (D, 2:6) She addresses each group in the home language and gradually changes so that at the end of year she uses about 80% Spanish.  She added that when dealing with discipline or behavior she uses the language of the child.

     Each participant made decisions about whether and when to use English in their instruction.  They based their decisions on events or beliefs from their prior teaching experience or from their family.  My original question about the use of English in the Spanish part was answered, but in a less judgmental way.

     They also discussed the two kinds of language, social and academic. O talked about how she struggled with academic English but picked up  social language in the ‘barrio’.  N and D expressed the opposite because they learned the academic language in school but did not have the chance to learn  social language until they arrived in the US as adults.  In their classroom, N and O feel that their children are picking up social language very quickly but they need to push them to learn academic language because that is what is important for continuing their education.  The value and use of the two kinds of language is a topic which could be studied further since all three participants brought it up in their interview when asked about their experience learning English.

     A final topic that surfaced in every interview focused on complaints against parents of both Hispanic students and English-speaking students.  The participants agreed that Anglo parents needed to trust the system and try not to interfere so much when they did not understand the Spanish reading that their children brought home.  Hispanic parents need to be educated to take a more active part in their children’s education.  The issue, of whether parents’ complaints or lack of involvement in their children’s dual language education, could also provide an interesting topic for further study.

             Doing this study in ‘my own backyard’ could have produced the frequent comments about frustration and complaints about students, parents, colleagues and the program as a whole. In my role as the head of a problem solving team, these complaints could have been brought up in hopes that I would be able to solve them or bring them to the administration’s attention. 

              If I were to do the project over, I think that I would change the kindergarten teacher for the second grade teacher who was my alternate. D is very young and isn’t sure whether she wants to remain in teaching. I think that input from the 2nd grade teacher, an older male with many years of experience in bilingual education, might have yielded answers with more depth.

              In order to get a broader perspective of Spanish-speaking teachers in a bilingual program I would like to interview some Spanish-speaking teachers who are teaching on the English part of the program. Perhaps interviewing Spanish speakers who are teaching ESL or in the regular classroom would put the views of these three participants into a broader picture.

     As I read through the interview questions and view the responses, I am aware that even though I tried to learn about the background of the three participants, I let the conversation drift to classroom practices and complaints. I needed to focus more on the references to past experiences and upbringing. Two participants liked to move right into what they were doing in the classroom and I let them. Even in the second part of the interview, where I tried to get back to past experiences, both N and D switched the focus to the present. I should have realized that before the data analysis stage of the process. 

     As I think about what I learned about these three teachers, I realize that I have very general information.  The three participants went into teaching so that they could be role models for Hispanic students.  They also wanted to show Hispanic students that they can work hard and achieve academically.  As second language speakers themselves, the participants wanted to reduce the anxiety and frustration that beginning language learners experience.  All three were very conscious of what their students go through as language learners.  They aimed to make school a pleasant experience for all their students.

     As I tried to code the interviews and find common threads or themes, I realized how the interview topic shifted frequently to what frustrated them in their present situation rather than focusing on their background. I feel that it was the mark of an inexperienced interviewer. I would like to start the project over and stick more strictly to a structured interview guide rather than letting them talk about what they wanted to talk about. I would like to be able to consider these interviews as practice interviews and from them create a grid where I could put what each one talked about and what was not touched on. In that way I could make sure that I focused the questioning on the same topics for all three interviews. I thought that I had covered background and motivation with all three participants but I see that only with O did I get a true feel for why she chose this teaching situation.

     Another observation from the interviews is that the setting influenced the freedom of response. When the participant’s class was in view, the participants seemed much more distracted and tried to rush through the answers. Only when we were secluded did the interview pace seem more natural and relaxed.

     I also feel that my interviews with O yielded much more information because of her very open and helpful personality. The other two participants are more reserved and because of that and my inexperience as an interviewer, I did not get as much information on their background as I had with O.

     I also believe that the first participant was so interesting and insightful that I wanted to find the same information in the other interviews. I wanted to generalize and be able to say that the ethnic pride and discrimination because of brown skin motivated them all to become Spanish-speaking teachers in a dual language program. I wanted to find the same positive attitude driven by the struggles that she encountered growing up as a non-English speaker in an English-speaking world, in the other teachers. I was disappointed in the lack of information I got out of the second and third participants because I was looking for the same as what I found in the first one. If I were to do this project again, I would code all interviews before looking for themes. I would try to look at each interview with an open mind to find idiosyncratic themes rather than looking for agreement. I feel that I got locked into the categories that I found with the first participant. 

   My original topic of examining the use of English during the Spanish part of instruction kept surfacing. Now, at the end of the project, I can say that I understand why the teachers use English in the Spanish part of the day. Even though it was not the focus of the research, the background information from the participants led me to an understanding of their decision to use or not to use English.

     For the past three years I have been studying the research on bilingual education and specifically, dual language. I have read books, journals, articles and commentaries on all aspects of bilingual education. I have taken courses on policy, curriculum design and educational theory. This research project has been able to put a human face on the people who actually deliver instruction in a bilingual program. My previous research has given me the background and the conceptual framework for what these teachers do in the classroom. The interviews gave me an understanding of why and how and do it. 

     I learned a lot about my biases and assumptions during this process. I realized that I tend to go to the solution of what I see as a problem rather than analyzing the situation from the point of view of the participants. I am much more aware of my judgmental attitude towards what I learned from theory as right or wrong. I understand that I need to bracket my beliefs when interviewing in order to hear the participant’s voice.
Qualitative research gives the texture and the context to situations. I feel that my school’s dual language program is one full of information which would be difficult to extract from a quantitative study. The families who put their children into the program and the teachers themselves have stories to tell. These stories give life to the program and to a fuller understanding of why these children are learning two languages at the same time. 

     The process of qualitative research is not as easy or straightforward as I had thought it would be. I wanted to tell the story of these three participants. But making the questions and guiding the interview was difficult. But, I did not realize how difficult until I was looking at the information from the interviews and realizing that I hadn’t gotten what I had thought that I had! As I said before, interviewing is an art form. It takes practice and a lot of trial and error until the technique is perfected. It is a human process so the techniques that work with one participant might not work with another.

     I did learn that I want to continue to learn about qualitative research because in the field of language acquisition, the context of the participants’ lives can add so much to our understanding of the program itself. This project is just a taste of the information that can be learned by listening to the voices intimately involved in bilingual education.