Four years ago, in an effort to address the needs of Spanish heritage speakers at Lick-Wilmerding High School, Joanna Bethencourt, a former LWHS Spanish teacher, proposed a Spanish Heritage Speakers (SHS) course.
After attending professional development programs at Stanford and researching successful SHS programs at other schools, Bethencourt received support from the administration, the World Languages Department and families. The plan was set.
When the program was first instituted in 2019, the plan outlined by the department was for students to take two years of SHS. Then students would “assimilate” into Spanish 4 Honors, explained the current department chair, Beatriz de la Cruz Pinar.
Pinar said that the department’s consensus was that “SHS 2 Honors is aligned with Spanish 3 Honors.” Spanish 4 or Spanish 4 Honors would be the next class, depending on the student’s final grade.
Before the implementation of SHS classes, heritage speakers sought out different paths to fulfill their three-year minimum world language graduation requirement.
LWHS Assistant Head of School, Randy Barnett, said, “The original World Languages policy was to push heritage speakers into a different language (Chinese or French), because then they all started at level one.”
Many heritage speakers, however, chose to continue into the regular Spanish track rather than begin a new language from scratch.
Bethencourt had been the sole teacher of both SHS classes. She left LWHS at the end of the 2020-2021 school year and currently teaches a SHS program at The Bay School of San Francisco.
The LWHS SHS classes are now taught by Maria Marquez.
Heritage speakers have fluency, vocabulary and conversational skills far beyond their peers who are learning the language for the first time. Time spent learning basic vocabulary or conjugations is not useful for these students’ specific needs.
In addition to addressing the specific language gaps of heritage speakers, SHS classes became an important academic affinity space.
Bethencourt spoke of the unique opportunity the class provided her students. “I had students who finally felt that they were Latino enough,” she said. “Because of this course, being surrounded by other people who share their identity, they felt more empowered, felt more pride and more of a part of the community. So that’s a beautiful thing.”
Marquez also understands the need for a SHS program, especially in a state like California, noting that the population of Latinx people in California surpassed the number of white people in the latest census.
Marquez immigrated from Venezuela to Delaware and knows what it is like to be a Spanish heritage student in a typical Spanish class. Marquez sympathized with the students’ identity: “It’s a double-edged sword. It is amazing that you have this dual identity. But you can also feel like you’re in a limbo, if you don’t quite belong in your household, but you don’t quite belong to school either.”
Marquez described the unique sense of community she experienced in the class so far. “I can engage with them. When I show them my story and when they tell their stories, I can sympathize. They feel like, ‘I’m not alone. I’m not the only one.’”
SHS 2 Honors alum, Vittoria Volpi ’22, said, “I’ve struggled with my identity for a long time, as a Latina but not necessarily looking the part. And so, to go into a class where, regardless of your skin color, or where your family’s from you were immediately accepted, was something that I didn’t necessarily know I needed.”
Christine Godinez Jackson, the Director of The Center for Civic Engagement, took a four-year Heritage Speakers class as a student at Mercy High School.
She said, “It was one of the best classes I’ve ever taken and not only for the content, but just to be in a community of students that look like me, who spoke my native language, that I didn’t have to perform for.”
Bethencourt spoke to Barnett in 2020 and began the process to propose the addition of a SHS 3 Honors course. Throughout the process, according to Bethencourt, all had been running smoothly.
After internal discussions, however, the department decided to maintain the original plan: heritage speakers will switch to the regular track after SHS 2 Honors for the 2021-2022 school year. Bethencourt’s proposal for SHS 3 Honors was not accepted.
Several SHS 2 Honors alumni felt underestimated by the decision to not add the third level. Maya Iribarren ’23 said, “They’re just trying to make us assimilate to LWHS’ core Spanish program. And I think what they didn’t realize is that we’re speaking Spanish at a much higher level. And we’re writing in Spanish at a much higher level and we have a much deeper connection to the topics that we’re talking about in these Spanish classes. And it’s just wrong to ask us to assimilate.”
The department decision was what guided the administration’s final decision to reject the proposal. Head of School, Eric Temple said, “I’m here to support the department’s decision. And I did think it was the right decision.”
Godinez Jackson added to the importance of administrative support. She said, “It’s not a smart decision to go against your faculty.”
On May 26, 2021, in an email sent to SHS students and parents, Temple laid out the following factors that led to the department and administrative decision to not continue SHS 3 Honors this year.
The main issue that was presented was one of equity between teachers within the department. Although the last SHS 2 Honors had 13 students, the current SHS 1 Accelerated has six students and the current SHS 2 Honors has nine. Previously classes at LWHS have been discontinued when the numbers dropped to below eight.
Other Spanish teachers in the department have classes with up to 20 students in each class. The difference in caseload of students is therefore very different for teachers being paid the same salaries. Student access to teachers would also be unequal.
For the 2021-22 school year, Temple and Barnett did decide to run the SHS 1 Accelerated class even though it was under the eight-student capacity and far away from the ideal model of 18 students, as a show of good faith in the program and in an attempt to market the course.
In the email, Temple said, “We allow this [exceptionally small classes] in a couple of small programs such as Chinese and SHS 1 Accelerated and 2 Honors, but avoid it where possible.”
A related equity challenge was that if the course were to be added, it would give Bethencourt an additional prep load. The concept of “preps” can be understood through the following example. If a Science teacher was teaching two Biology sections and a Physics class, they would have two preps, but if they were teaching one Biology, one Chemistry and one Physics class, they would have three preps.
The email described that having four preps on Bethencourt’s prep load would “negatively impact the teacher’s well-being, planning and assessment, which in turn can impact student access. We avoid giving people four preps wherever possible.” However, the school does employ teachers with four preps.
Three of the Spanish teachers declined to be interviewed by the Paper Tiger and instead directed their comments to Pinar, the department chair. One teacher in the department, who will remain anonymous, expressed that they and Bethencourt were the only ones in support of continuing SHS to its third year and using appeals tests.
Once the decision was made, the next discussion revolved around the placement of SHS 2 Honors alumni.
Barnett stressed how LWHS uses data to decide placement. However, since the program was new, the data was not there.
Barnett said, “When you don’t have data to go on, the next best thing is the expertise of the Spanish teachers.” Because the SHS class began in 2019, almost a year and a half of the class was taught by Zoom. Substantial data was not available for these classes.
The department looked at the curriculum and saw parallels between SHS 2 Honors and Spanish 3 Honors. The majority of the department and administration came to an agreement and decided to place SHS 2 Honors students into Spanish 4 Honors and one exceptional student into Spanish 5 Honors.
Some students in SHS 2 Honors class felt underestimated by being placed in Spanish 4 Honors. They felt that if there was not going to be SHS 3 Honors, Spanish 5 Honors would be a better fit for them. They wanted to take an appeals test.
Appeals tests allow students who do not meet the grade requirement of two semesters above a 97% move from regular Spanish to Spanish Honors. The test also typically allows Honors students 5 percentage points within a 93% to qualify to remain in the Honors track.
While the Math Department gave appeals tests last year, the World Language Department did not offer an appeals test in Spring 2021.
Pinar explained that due to last year’s shortened quarter system schedule, the Spanish Department felt it was not able to cover the full extent of the curriculum. Also, during the pandemic there was grade inflation within the Spanish Department, therefore students grades did not fully reflect their ability.
In response to this decision, SHS 2 Honors alumni, Julieta Lamm-Perez ’23 and Amelia Mongfiglio ’23, wrote a letter to Barnett to further express their desires to appeal to Spanish 5 Honors.
Barnett spoke with the Spanish Department again to discuss this issue, and their opinion did not change.
Barnett replied that the department “wanted students to be positioned to do their best learning and be able to experience the full Spanish program without skipping full levels. Since they are the subject matter experts, we as administrators are supporting their decision.”
Barnett said, “I wasn’t psyched about the policy, frankly, because I think students have to have the opportunity…This year, I’m going to push them to do the appeals tests again.”
For decision making down the road, the department and administration will use the 2021-2022 school year to gather data and feedback on the SHS alumnae experience in Spanish 4 Honors and Spanish 5 Honors.
LWHS Parent and Co-Chair of The Latinos Unidos Family Network, Yvonne Neira-Perez, expressed the confusion and frustration within the parent community of SHS students. She said many felt as if there had been a huge misunderstanding.
“Parents need to be informed so that they can help their students make informed decisions,” she said.
Temple wrote in an email, “I also assure you that Lick-Wilmerding High School is invested in our Latinx students and your success. We have steadily grown our Latinx population at the school, we have hired many bi-lingual faculty and staff, and we have increased our outreach to elementary school and middle schools. Our goal is to be the independent school of choice in the Bay area for Latinx families and students.”
Barnett reaffirmed Temple’s message of inclusion, supporting the need for the program for specific students. He said, “For many of our Spanish heritage speakers, this may be the first independent school they’ve gone to. So as a heritage person, from Latinx background, you [Spanish heritage speakers] may be coming from a very different cultural milieu.”
In an interview, Temple reiterated, “The school is 100% committed to this program.”
Throughout a complicated situation, Temple emphasized that, “I wouldn’t want the fact that we don’t have the third level to be interpreted as not caring about a certain group of students in school, because it really is not about that.”
Godinez Jackson echoed the difficult position that the administration was in at this time. “Leadership can be a really lonely place because you sometimes have to make decisions that are painful.”
Despite understanding where they came from, Godinez Jackson still expressed her disappointment with the final outcome.
“I think at the end of the day it’s unfortunate. But the fight to continue the class is not over,” she said.
Godinez Jackson continued, “I think what I would like to see come out of this article is like this resurrection of let’s bring this back. Let’s not forget that one line that Mr. Temple said: this is not never, this is just not now. We have to hold people accountable.”
