Joao Goebel and the Power of Moving Between Languages
Joao Goebel is an instructor in the Teaching, Learning, and Education Program. He is also the chair of ESL/Bilingual Education at National Louis University.
Public schools across the nation work with an estimated five million English Learners (ELs), or students who come from non-English speaking homes and are learning English. Indeed, in Chicago Public Schools alone, an estimated 70,400 students are classified as ELs. As the numbers of students learning English continue to rise in our public schools, so too does the need for prepared educators who can support them.
Instructor Joao Goebel, who teaches Foundations of Learning in a New Language at the School of Education and Social Policy, aims to ensure all classroom teaching students have the tools they need to promote the use of multiple languages in their classrooms while supporting the preservation of students’ first languages. Having worked with English Learners for almost twenty years, Goebel has spent a significant amount of time studying translanguaging, which describes how multilingual students use multiple languages to communicate and learn, rather than restricting themselves to one language. In the United States, this is usually English.
Goebel's upbringing in Brazil and fluency in Portuguese, Spanish, and English gives them a personal connection to translanguaging. “There’s an emotional attachment to one’s first language,” he said. “Portuguese is my first language, so I can think of a million words that I use to talk about translanguaging with that emotional attachment.”
His Spanish-speaking students, for example, often use terms like ‘abuela’ instead of ‘grandmother’ or ‘tio’ instead of ‘uncle’ when talking about family, which invokes a feeling of closeness and connection.
So what does this look like in practice? Goebel models translanguaging as a pedagogical tool in his courses, including Foundations of Learning in a New Language. In class, Goebel creates opportunities for his multilingual students to use their first languages. This past fall, there were a number of languages represented in Goebel’s class, especially English, Chinese, and Spanish. So Goebel prepared his teaching materials in all three languages. Students were encouraged to use their first language in group discussions, note-taking, and even in their final presentations. Goebel reports that leveraging his students’ linguistic diversity increases students’ engagement, while also helping them see the model in action.
Xuaner He, who is pursuing a master’s in elementary teaching through the Teaching, Learning, and Education Program, was surprised to find that she was allowed to use her first language of Chinese in class.
“At first, I couldn’t believe that I could use Chinese in an academic setting, especially since most classes assume English is the only language for learning. It was so reassuring to speak in Chinese and be able to fully express myself.”
She continued, “Before this class, I often felt self-conscious about using Chinese to help me translate my thoughts into English. But it actually made my understanding clearer and also made me feel more confident about using English, which I hadn’t expected.”
In an educational system where English has long been considered the “language of academia”, Goebel wants to challenge this idea and encourage teachers to advocate for their multilingual students. “To me, learning truly happens when we create a space where we are a community and support one another. That’s my philosophy.”