Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides
Welcome to Talking to Grandma, a weekly podcast that elevates stories, science, and strategies to help you raise and teach multilingual and bilingual children. I’m your host, Dr. Veronica Benavides, founder and CEO of Bilingual Generation, an organization that helps children with bilingualism in their bones stay connected to their heritage languages and cultures. I am also a Harvard-educated doctora who has experienced losing, recovering, and passing on my heritage language to my children. Whether you are a parent, grandparent, teacher, researcher, school leader, or simply someone interested in the topics of language learning and language preservation, this podcast is for you. Through interviews with amazing guests and solo episodes, you will find the resources, guidance, and strategies needed to support you in your journey. Let’s get started!

We are kicking off Season 3 with a conversation with the formidable Nawal Qarooni. She is a Jersey-City-based educator and writer who supports a holistic approach to literacy instruction education spaces across the country.

Nawal Qarooni
We often talk about getting to know our students at the beginning of the year. And this tends to be a beginning of the year survey or approach and it tends to not extend beyond the child but like you said the child is bringing so much they're bringing problem solving skills, they're bringing their own rituals, whether that's like breathing practices or kitchen practices or you know what they do every day with their families for haircuts and for changing the tire their daily lives provide a rich springboard for literacy learning that if the classroom teacher doesn't know, they then can't like tap into a wealth of information. So when I work with schools, I armed the teachers and encourage teachers to have a variety of entry points for getting to know the families

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides
Drawing on her work as an inquiry based leader and as a mother. naoise pedagogy is centered in the rich and authentic learning all families give their children every day she is author of nourishing caregiver collaborations, elevating home experiences and classroom practices for collective care, which is out now She also serves on the Library of Congress Literacy Awards Advisory Board, which funds powerful literacy programming in the world. You can learn more about her work at MQ si literacy.org. Get ready for a thought provoking discussion with nawada where she shares insights from her new book which sheds light on the intersection of cultural and linguistic preservation with literacy.

Welcome to the podcast in a while we are so happy to have you here and to dig into a really great conversation both about your experiences. Personally as a parent and professionally as an educator working within that space. So let's dive into the conversation with a question that we often start with with our guests around your own story of language loss and language preservation.

Nawal Qarooni
Yeah, thank you so much, and thank you for having me. My mother, my mother is she was the she was born. And raised in Iran near the Zagros Mountains. And my father is from photoshot Iran in southern Iran, but he was an Arabic speaker and my mother is a farsi speaker. I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And because both of my parents spoke Farsi, I was raised hearing the sounds of Farsi if both of my parents were in the home but hearing Arabic If my dad's relatives were around, and it wasn't until I went to grade school that I that I started speaking English. So even though I was you know, born and raised in the States, much of my early preschool upbringing, all of that time period was really hearing Farsi. And so when I think about my own preservation, I feel shamed that I don't speak Arabic the way that you know, my dad's side of the family does, because of both parents not speaking it. And so I think about that when I am raising my own kids, because both parents don't speak Farsi or don't speak Spanish. I'm married to a Puerto Rican, you know that preservation I think, is so critically important to me. But what it amounts to then potentially could be shame for my kids to not have a mastery of one versus the other based on the parents and so I think what that often

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides
That's a powerful thanks for sharing that and may mean that really strong emotion that's tied to our language, especially in the diaspora around shame of the kind of idea of expectation that we should be able to speak this language, but we don't, and the implications of that. I'm curious to know if that relationship with shame has morphed over the years and how that impacts your your parenting approach and what you hope to pass on to your children.

Nawal Qarooni
Yeah, so when I think about now, that I'm 41 is that there is no right or wrong way to language, and that we can build meaning and what I think is the most important for our kids to know and my children to know and my students to know is that there are so many words for example, to say the word water and whichever word comes to your mind whether that's Arabic or Farsi or Spanish or English is a valid word to say that, that, you know, to give meaning to that, and so I actually think the translanguaging of our lives is like really beautiful and nuanced and textured. And so I see it less ashamed now and more as prideful that I know, maybe a word or two in Arabic for that. object or that feeling. And I comment Akbar is a poet and Iranian American poet, and he talks about the Delta and language, the space in between the languages that you know, being the most playful place to make meaning as a result of knowing a bunch of different languages or knowing parts of a bunch of different languages. And I love that idea. I love that idea of playfulness with language for our kids, because there are so many synonyms for the word run, walk, Gander saunter, gallop, for example, in English and Farsi. We only have like two words for that. It's either like, run fast, like race or whatever, there's, you know, when I was teaching my English, I remember as like a fifth grader saying to her, though, those words all mean well, they all mean getting to that place. And I think that that kind of playful, dynamic and understanding language is in itself like a really beautiful kind of way forward.

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides
Yeah. And I love that shift of like, shame to pride because I think I also similarly went through a journey like that having grew up hearing my heritage language, but not speaking it and then realizing that like, actually, any word that I knew or any connection to my heritage language was an act of resistance in the face of colonialism in the face of linguistic oppression. So I think that that's a really important kind of mindset shift in order for us to feel ownership over our heritage language in our culture and, and not the gatekeeping that can often happen in these spaces. In your kind of parenting role. You mentioned that your partner is Puerto Rican like what that looks like for you in your household to raise children that are multicultural, who have these linguistic histories? Like what does that look like? How do you all approach that as parents?

Nawal Qarooni
You know, when I when I had my first daughter, we have three girls and a boy I tried desperately like you hear all the home videos of me speaking in Farsi and Jonathan speaking in Spanish and, and us never really speaking to each other in English as a result. And then like as each consecutive child came, my Farsi started slipping. This message started slipping, and we started leaving it a little bit to the grandparents and the cousins on both sides to kind of elevate that culturally. It's a big gorgeous mash up of all kinds of identity conversations and a lot of conversations about where our family members came from, where they spend time where they lived, what we consider to be home, who we consider to be family. We celebrate all the traditions from three kings to you know, all the every single tradition that John can uphold, with his Puerto Rican cultural heritage and everyone that I can with both the Arab and the Iranian diaspora, I try to exalt with stories and storytelling and calling family members and looking at pictures and asking all kinds of questions. What's interesting is my daughter who's 12 has to choose an affinity group at school to like go to and it was like letting her and watching her a seat like watching her navigate by herself and come home and say, like, should I be part of the Latinx group? Or should I be part of the and watching her, you know, come to her own for which group she wanted to go to and what story she had to contribute to those. So she had to write this cultural kind of piece about a family tradition for her Latin X group. Which is what she ultimately chose for this year. And she wrote this like, you know, beautiful piece about making like Renea with her grandfather on a certain day, you know, like this whole long story about like, dancing salsa and like with these big family gatherings with like, and then the feedback from the teacher and the leader of this group was, where's your mother in this? Like, I want to hear your mother who is Iranian and Arabic what is your mother say? Or how does she involve herself in this which I thought was like a very interesting question then what Eliana said like, she gets in there and as learning Spanish and she's doing the same thing. It's like making you know, she's part of it. But what's interesting, like what our children determine is then their identity.

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides
I agree. And it's interesting to not, I guess every parent goes through this to not have lived the experiences of your children, but maybe there's an extra layer added when your child is multiracial or multinational and multicultural. There are things that you can't totally relate to because you didn't have the same upbringing. And he might not know the playbook or the rules or the experiences and so it's really this every part of parenting is a little bit scary, but that also feels scary of like, not knowing all the answers and your child is going to be the number one expert of their own experience.

Nawal Qarooni
That's right. And you know, what we thought was navigating names feeling different in the mouths of, you know, white children who I went to school with in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, trying to give my kids names that in New York City are not very surprising or difficult for the folks to in their classrooms to pronounce or say they're very used to having a variety of names and so it's all contextualized you know, and yeah, they're gonna own their own experiences. Let's see what they come up with.

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides
Yes, Nawal you are not only kind of bringing in this experience, it's rich experience as a parent that is doing the work of linguistic and cultural preservation, but to also work in schools and you support specifically around this work of cultural linguistic preservation as it intersects with literacy, which is incredibly important. And I think interesting to a lot of our listeners, because we have a lot of educators who are interested in literacy and how they can make these Homeschool Connections. And we have a lot of families who are super engaged and figuring out how they can support their children and literacy especially as it relates to preserving their heritage, language and culture. By the time this episode is out your book, nourishing caregiver collaborations, elevating home experiences and classroom practices for collective care will be available and we highly recommend that everybody get their copy. We're curious to know why you wrote this book, what inspired it and what do you hope people would take away from it?

Nawal Qarooni
It came truly from the pandemic and mothering caregiving at the same time as supporting teachers across the city of Chicago at the same time and what I realized when I was doing this, like nursing my baby and also you know, setting them up in their like respective spaces for children, right, I realized that caregiving and educating were truly synonymous, that what we were trying to do in the classroom and what families have been doing for centuries was actually the same work. And that potentially that miscommunication or barrier between the two is like a systemic issue. I then was like lucky enough to be the person to design family literacy, programming and engagement for the city of Chicago was an influx of pandemic funding. And the sole purpose of my work was to make sure that it wasn't going to be used for one off experiences in schools for like example, a literacy night where all the funds would just go into kind of one event where families may or may not attend. It may or may not be connected to curriculum, it wouldn't maybe then make impact connected to the classroom work. And so what I came up with is what I call a framework around collective care, which basically has a bunch of different buckets that we can move over time with like care and consideration starting with as educators and teachers unpacking our biases around what we think family should look like. And sounds like. Yeah, and so that's why I wrote it. I think that I think that there are a lot of reasons why families have different engagement modes and methods with schools that could be a toxic one because of their own experience that could be a toxic one because they feel entitled for some reason. It could look and feel different based on if the families speak the same language look the same as the teachers feel empowered or feel intimidated. That could be because they don't know their own advocacy questions to ask. And so I felt that a book needed to exist that shared with families, all the amazing things that they're already doing all the questions that they could be asking schools that they have a right to ask schools and teachers to know of their children and for teachers and educators and districts to say, wow, what's already happening that's powerful in every child's home that we can tap into in the classroom to raise literacy

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides
That is so important and amazing. So bilingual generation, we work specifically with schools and with families because I think it is so important to see it as a holistic unit, like learning isn't something that just happens at school. It is something that happens all the time and our families are first teachers, our core teachers, and I think it also goes back to kind of this non industrial pre colonial way of thinking that's like, learning is something that is happening with our grandparents. It's happening through storytelling, it's happening through doing and so it's really important that you're bringing that knowledge, that cultural knowledge, that historical knowledge that way of being unknowing into the school space to try to heal that divide. When kind of reviewing and reading the book. I was really struck by this statement where it says nourishing caregiver collaborations is rooted in the simple truth that we cannot separate knowing our students from knowing their home communities and the people they love. That is so powerful. Can you share a little bit about what this work looks like when schools get it right? And what it looks like when schools get it wrong?

Nawal Qarooni
Well, what an entry you know, we often talk about getting to know our students at the beginning of the and this tends to be a beginning of the year survey or approach and it tends to not extend beyond the child but like you said, the child is bringing so much they're bringing problem solving skills, they're bringing their own rituals, whether that's breathing practices or kitchen practices or you know what they do every day with their families, for haircuts, and for changing the tire their daily lives provide a rich springboard for literacy learning that if the classroom teacher doesn't know, they then can't like tap into a wealth of information. So when I work with schools, I arm the teachers and encourage teachers to have a variety of entry points for getting to know the families and then looking at the curriculum and asking what are the places that we can connect with families to honor a story or honor their expertise or honor some part of their culture, these can be low level or small asks like please send in a photo please, you know, contribute by adding to this Padlet or it can be a kind of bigger invitation. And so there are kind of, I think kind of a hierarchy of of questions that starts with deep listening that starts with really getting to know the families that starts with wanting to know when the child smiles the most and when the child feels the most motivated and what the child is mostly curious about and how they you know these types of questions. Moving into further down the line family websites, inviting families into our classroom spaces for shared literacy experiences so that families know what we're doing in the classroom. It can be something like reading pictures together and asking a plethora of questions and then transferring that to reading picture books together and then saying families this is the work that you do every day. Here's how you can intentionally elevate it a little bit more with a little tweaks you can read the world here are some sentence stems that we use in the classroom. Try this in your worlds so that it doesn't feel like an unapproachable element and then it can move into also storytelling around neighborhoods and your past and oral history projects. That happens down the line when I work with districts and I work with schools after like three years you see a real shift to families have been invited in a variety of ways so that it feels like teachers always say this. There are so many more teachers. That's what I usually hear as feedback because families will take multiple buses to come if they're going to engage in a shared literacy experience with their children, encouraging those family lab sites for them to feel really kind of like low stakes not highly planned, but many across the school year so that there are no barriers when it comes to like schedules or you know, childcare bring siblings, I often lead these family websites with children on my hips, so that it feels extremely inclusive and bilingual, multilingual and you know, let the children translate for their for their families. One of the one of the projects that I love to do the most early in the school year working with teachers and families is drawing code drawing the neighborhood with your children and telling the stories that happened in those spaces or telling stories that happened either in a house or a neighborhood or a place a special place. It always been springboards writing workshop ideas for classroom practice. So my book has a bunch of different two way street parallels for how honoring families also then leads to really strong literacy work in the classroom and vice versa. If you know the kids, you're preserving their identities and their their culture and their heritage. And you get to know the families better.

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides
I first want to just recognize honor and appreciate the scaffolded approach that like there is an entry into this work at any point in which you're at and you can enter here with kind of the lower level tasks not so difficult. We're not making a huge change in your practice to really deepening the work and I think that is great, but there are so many different places where you can enter and I'm also wondering in terms of literacy and strengthening literacy practice. If you can kind of speak a little bit to say the scenario in which someone is a teacher in a monolingual English classroom, and they are working with families that speak another language other than English. Like how does a strengthened literacy practice in their home language, strengthen the English literacy practice in the classroom?

Nawal Qarooni
I think teachers really need to hear and learn the research behind you know, funds of knowledge like those smiles work and all the deep kind of learning that happens outside of books on a shelf. And to think really deeply about the plethora of research that exists that debunks the false parallel. That schooling and education and classrooms is the only form of education because a strong, a strong family engagement program in quotes actually means that families are simply engaged in linguistic practices with their kids at home, in their communities in their spiritual spaces. I'm sure also add a couple of events in school. But family engagement is erroneously right now called Family Engagement. If that if that family attends events, or if that goes to report card pickup. And that is that is untrue. Family Engagement comes from families just narrating their lives and families speaking out loud to their kids, sobbing about missing their homelands and telling a story about something that happened in their days. So what we really want to do is elevate for classroom teachers ways that families can just talk more, ask more questions, analyze their worlds more like give them the give them the springboard to be curious and to follow their children's curiosities and give them the resources to do that. And to say that should happen in every language in all languages. And in you know, in translanguaging, like insert any language

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides
Definitely. Speaking of translanguaging and all of the languages I think a lot of multilingual, emergent multilingual students when they come into us classrooms can face resistance when they bring their full linguistic repertoire or confusion when they move between languages. And so how do you coach maybe schools and also maybe monolingual schools with monolingual models around this concept of translanguaging and I should correct myself too because it's not just monolingual schools, I've seen dual language programs that have been very strict about when Spanish is spoken or when Mandarin spoken and when English is spoken, and never the two shall meet. So you know, how does that play out in your literacy practice?

Nawal Qarooni
I think a holistic model of education and a holistic model of the way that we approach life is just necessary for our mindset. So that's breaking down every box and every barrier so that there are no borders. And that goes for all of our thinking practices. And so we want to give teachers the skills to say like, kids can fluently use any language at any time. We don't want to check any part of ourselves at the door and inserting other language in that playful way is actually a very high level order of thinking and armed them with the research. I think I think families also need that messaging, I think because families often feel that they're not equipped because they might not know English as strongly and so as a result, they're not able to support their kids. So we need to be able to say with confidence, then support your child and your heritage. Language. And I think it comes down to mentors and mentor texts and ensuring that all of the mentors that we're providing for our kids and our families show that fluidity are not rigid and restricted into specific boxes, either for parts of the curriculum or for parts of your language, understanding and expansive literacy practices for like our own creation. So when we model we should be modeling orally recording ourselves playfully recording, revising, recording it back that has supported my multilingual writers, and more than anything is oral dictation and storytelling first recording it first thing it out loud first or writing it down, reading it and hearing where you want it to make revisions. For multilingual kids it's like incredibly powerful tool. So including oral conversation and rehearsal and the writing process has has done wonders for breaking down rigidity when it comes to language compartmentalised

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides
so much richness and everything that you've shared now, and I highly, highly encourage everyone if you are an educator, a school leader, a researcher, a parent to get this book, nourishing caregiver collaborations to really understand as you mentioned, this holistic approach to literacy, because literacy is happening everywhere and we really want to strengthen and empower our children than it is this collaborative approach. So thank you so much for all your work and your contribution to what we're doing here. And we're doing it in such a way that is so affirming to our children's humanity, and their cultural and linguistic repertoires. And as we close out, we would love to hear you know what we ask all of our guests to share their joy with us and share what is bringing you joy these days.

Nawal Qarooni
Oh my goodness. Thank you for asking because I was just telling my daughters how much I enjoy walking them to school every day. We live eight short blocks to their school and it is quite literally my favorite time. Even if it's pouring rain on us because we hold hands and they tell me about their day and or we do this really amazing story building, kind of like game where I say a sentence and then my four year olds will add a sentence and then my seven year olds will add a sentence until we build the story that we then leave off at school. It's like so beautiful and so much fun. Or they tell me the things that they see. It's just like, it's a time where it slows down. And I don't look at my phone and I just spend time with them. And I find that when we don't have it. It feels like a rushed rush morning or a rush day and when we do have it it's just so joyful.

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides
Talk about literacy moments to your over there building stories on your walk to school but a beautiful example. Well thank you so much, Noah for your for your presence for your gift and for coming on our show today. It has been an honor thank you.

Nawal Qarooni
Thank you.

Host, Dr. Veronica Benavides
Thank you so much for tuning in today! If you liked what you heard, take a minute to share this podcast with a friend or colleague. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review on your favorite podcast platform. Your ratings and reviews help us keep the podcast lights on! We can’t do this without your support. Every subscription, share, follow, download, and review makes a big difference and helps others find our show. Also, we love hearing from you! Tell us what you think of the podcast. Email us at hello@bilingualgeneration.com. You can also slide into our DMs on Instagram, @talkingtograndma. If you are interested in learning more about our workshops and curricular tools for schools serving multilingual and emerging multilingual students, visit our website at www.bilingualgeneration.com or write us at hello@bilingualgeneration.com Talking to Grandma is owned by Bilingual Generation. Rebecca De Leon is our editor and producer. The artwork for Talking to Grandma was created by Nansi Guevara. And I’m your host, Dr. Veronica Benavides. See you next episode!