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Thank you, Evelyn, for that introduction.
It’s a joy to be back here. I look forward to NABE every year . . . because when I’m here, I know I’m preaching to the choir. Me siento que estoy entre familia. Espero la sopa ahorita.
I don’t have to tell this group that being bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural is a superpower.
Unlike some leaders who think we should be English only, I don’t have to tell this group that knowing more than one language makes this country stronger . . . not only culturally, but cognitively. Academically. Economically.
I don’t have to tell this group that we can’t continue to normalize being a monolingual country in a multilingual world.
And, lastly, I know I don’t have to tell you how amazing our nation’s bilingual and multilingual educators are.
You are some of the best teachers in our nation – period! You were providing full-service classrooms before the country was talking about full-service community schools.
Today, I salute all of you here.
No matter what, bilingual educators put students first, sometimes under difficult conditions, often facing way too little respect for what you do.
And frankly, for a lot of you, it probably feels like what you really do is . . . everything. You’re asked to be jacks of all trades in your schools.
On top of it all, you come here as advocates outside of your classrooms – because multilingual education in our nation is that important. Multilinguismo es el futuro de nuestra nación.
So I want to start today with a story about someone who is both a bilingual educator and a powerful advocate.
She is a proud Boricua who came to New York City in the 1960s with her family.
At the time, they were practically the only Puerto Rican family on the Lower East Side.Spanish was her first language. And she knew right away that she was different from everyone else.
She remembers it as being “like West Side Story.” “I had to learn how to defend myself and become very tough,” she says, “because Latinos were picked on and called terrible names.”
And let me tell you: she did become very tough.
She was tough when she started out as a parent-advocate, fighting because her child got sick from asbestos in her school building.
She was tough when she became an early childhood educator, fighting for many English learners like herself.
And she IS tough today, as a top leader in her union and one of the foremost champions for bilingual educators in our nation.
I’m sure some of you have already figured out who I’m talking about, right? You see, her name is Evelyn DeJesus.
Let’s give Evelyn a hand. Evelyn, thank you for your leadership of NABE – for all you do for educators and multilingualism in our country.
Now, one thing about Evelyn: we know she does not shy away from a fight.
She’s unafraid and unapologetic about boldly challenging a status quo that’s broken.
She won’t stand for normalizing a system that denies people access and opportunity.
She demands results, and she delivers results. In her own words, she “tends not to wait.”
That’s the spirit I want to bring to this today. Because when it comes to multilingualism, the time for waiting is over.
We’re not going to get a better shot at building a multilingual America than we do in this moment.
So now is the time to fight like hell, like every day counts. We need results, not rhetoric.
Well, today, I’m proud to say that I come to you with more results than ever.
Last year, I announced our proposal to move the Title III program back into our Office of English Language Acquisition, or OELA.
Today, I can say: we delivered on that.
That means more capacity to lift up what we know really works in multilingual education – because the leadership, the technical assistance, the resources are coming from the real experts in these issues at the Department.
It also means we can, and we will, use the levers we have to make sure every program follows what the years of research tells us is best to support English learners and encourage multilingualism.
And we won’t stop fighting for OELA to have the resources and the funding it needs to make the most of this.
Our budget request this year calls for $940 million more in funding under Title III.
By the way, OELA has a booth at the conference, so I urge you to stop by. Our team is here for you!
And that OELA team is being led by the great Montserrat Garibay.
I also called last year for making sure we’re recruiting and retaining a lot more high-quality bilingual and multilingual educators like you.
We’re delivering on that, too.
This month, we finalized a Grow Your Own competitive grant as part of a reimagined National Professional Development program administered by OELA.
This grant provides funding to support pre-service and in-service professional development activities that improve instruction for English learners and help educators working with ELs meet high professional standards.
Our goal with this funding is to make sure that potential bilingual and multilingual educators have more pathways into this great profession . . . and those who are already in the field get to be at their very best.
Now, this grant is a pilot program. So we need your support and partnership to demonstrate the incredible value it can provide. Apply for this grant. Use it to advance your great ideas and build a better pipeline into the field.
In the meantime, we’re continuing to fight for more funding to elevate our multilingual educator workforce.
Our budget request this year dedicates a total of $80 million to those efforts.
And because bringing in high-quality bilingual educators needs to start in DC, since last year, I also made some changes at the Department of Education.
I hired, as a Senior Advisor to me, an expert in leading Bilingual Education in our country. It’s my pleasure to introduce you to Dr. Melissa Castillo.
She is helping make sure we have a national strategy around improving Bilingual Education along with our powerful OELA team.
The final area of action I mentioned last year was this: lifting up the credentials our bilingual and multilingual students can earn, like the state Seals of Biliteracy.
And this year, I’m proud to say that – finally – the Seal of Biliteracy is now being offered by every state in this country.
But we’re not going to stop there.
Because we can’t be satisfied that these credentials are simply being offered. We need to make sure these credentials are as celebrated as an honors cord at graduation. We need to show that, when we highlight that a student is bilingual or multilingual, we’re really signifying that they have a superpower in our society and our economy.
Que ser bilingüe vale mas que tener honores. It means you are a gifted learner able to code-switch and culture switch. Que tienes un superpower!
The Grow Your Own pilot grant program I just mentioned can also be used for projects that encourage high school graduates who’ve gotten the Seal of Biliteracy to pursue a career as a bilingual or multilingual teacher.
And in June, we’ll also be holding our nation’s first-ever Seal of Biliteracy Summit at the Department of Education.
We’ll be bringing together key stakeholders, including representatives from business and industry, and state and local education leaders, to look at ways we can further lift up the power of the Seal of Biliteracy. Los esperamos!
I’d like to conclude with a little perspective on why this work matters so much.
We’re here together in the beautiful city of New Orleans in Louisiana. But long, long before anyone called this place New Orleans, or Louisiana . . . this was once a place called “Bulbancha.”
It’s a Choctaw and Chickasaw word. And appropriately, it means: “place of many tongues.”
You see, this once was a place where many Native indigenous tribes shared languages, cultures, and traditions. An economic hub that drew strength from that beautiful diversity.
Today, in the United States of America, we also have what it takes to draw strength from our diversity.
To be a place where differences in culture and identity are celebrated as our superpowers.
A place where that diversity reinforces us as the economic hub of the world. A place where hearing languages of all kinds is the norm, not the exception.
A place of many tongues.
I am proud of all the real results we have delivered to get us closer to that vision of our nation’s future.
But I am not done. We are not done.
We can’t be done until every student in America has the opportunity to become multilingual . . . until every English learner is celebrated for who they are and what they bring to this country.
There’s never been a better moment for multilingualism in America. So we’ve got to strike while the iron is hot.
Let’s push harder than ever to make progress.
Let’s fight for more dual language programs, more bilingual and multilingual educators, more Seals of Biliteracy, for the dignity and respect our students deserve for being the gifted learners that they are!
Colegas, your voices matter more than ever . . . so como dice la cancion de JLo: let’s get loud—and let’s stay loud.
Pa’lante! Mi gente.
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