By Rebecca Wakefield

I’ve been thinking a lot about language lately. One of the things I enjoy about Miami is the way the language — like the politics, the shoreline and the buildings — never seems fixed.

If you ask a certain kind of person here where they grew up, you might hear this: I was raised in saguacera. I’ve seen it spelled different ways, because it is not in fact a word. It is Miami-speak. It means “southwest area,” as in roughly west of Little Havana. The people who use the term are usually Gen X and older and usually, but not always, Cubanos (I’ve also heard it from Colombians, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans, but only if they grew up here in the ’80s). It’s what happens to two English words that get appropriated by a Cuban and mashed into one Spanish-sounding word by randomly removing a couple of vowels or consonants.

Because my first language was English, I might translate the sound of the word into a phonetic spelling that betrays the German and Latin roots of the English language, i.e. “Sawacera.” Someone whose first language is Spanish might spell it the first way I wrote it, or some other way that wouldn’t even occur to me.

The point of that observation is that how you interpret language, or a concept communicated by language, depends on the first language you learned. Language is really just a bunch of abstract rules organized into a predictable structure. When it comes to learning a new language, sometimes the biggest barrier is one’s native language, because the rules act almost like a mnemonic device. That’s why you can often understand a word you’ve never heard before by guessing what it must mean from the context of the words around it.

Teachers who instruct students to read, write and speak English as a second language therefore have a special challenge. They have to understand enough about the underlying structure of a student’s first language and culture to communicate a concept offered only in English. Educators call this specialized training English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL).

All of which brings me to the point of this column, which is the way the residents of North Florida have once again conspired to screw the residents of South Florida. Among the buffet of bills the Florida Legislature passed this past session was one that at first glance seems esoteric. Dubbed HB1219/SB2512, it was passed at the tail end of the session. In essence, what it does is to reduce the in-service training requirements for reading instructors who teach “English language learners” from 300 hours to 60 hours. It makes other changes as well, but the reading thing is what’s got a number of education advocates upset.

According to state Department of Education figures for English language learners, the change could affect some 235,000 students statewide, roughly 57,000 of them in Miami-Dade County. Clay County in northern Florida, where this proposal originated, has 414 students still learning English.         

The reduction in training hours was pushed by the Clay County Education Association, which represents 2,500 teachers. Some of those teachers have complained that the requirements (the same as for English teachers) are too onerous, the training often useless and, in some cases, seem a ridiculous waste of time and money when there aren’t many foreign kids in counties such as Clay.

Some of that may be valid, but certainly should not be addressed by hurting big, urban counties like Miami-Dade. Eric Dwyer, who teaches modern language education at Florida International University, is one of many experts around the state (including, by the way, the Department of Education) concerned that by reducing the training requirement for reading teachers, the state will lower a critical standard for all of them. “The issue that makes me crazy is, reading is one of the components of teaching a foreign language, in addition to speaking and writing,” he said. “When you do the reading activities, it’s mostly phonetics-based and you need a foundation in comprehension of English for that to happen. Sixty hours [of training] just won’t cut it. Not even close.”

Other critics claim this bill runs afoul of a couple of requirements found in the federal No Child Left Behind act of 2001 and the 1990 Florida Consent Decree, which was the result of a legal battle between the state and the League of United Latin American Citizens, as well as a bunch of other groups with long names. Essentially, these various legal documents require Florida schools to provide a certain amount of specialized education to students whose first language was not English.

To their credit, several members of the Miami-Dade delegation voted against this bill, including House Speaker Marco Rubio, Anitere Flores, David Rivera and Carlos Lopez-Cantera.

But from what I can tell, the subtext of this bill is not so much about the reading teachers and more about a power struggle between the education department and a few state legislators (including Republican bill sponsors Sen. Stephen Wise and Rep. Jennifer Carroll, and former Senate President Jim King, who always makes me want to whistle the Dukes of Hazzard theme song).

Wise and Carroll told El Nuevo Herald earlier this week that they sponsored the change to lighten an unnecessary load on reading teachers so they won’t leave the profession. (Speaking of language, why don’t the Herald and El Herald offer all their content in both languages, at least on the Web site? It’s amazing how much you miss if you only read one language.) Wise also said that this was a test of wills between the legislative and executive branches for control of state education, or something to that effect.

Anyway, whatever happened in those final hours of legislative horse trading, the bill passed and now the final word on the matter lies with Gov. Charlie Crist. Once he receives it officially, he has 15 days to veto the bill, let it through or endorse it by signing it. If he doesn’t stop it, it becomes law on July 1.

Lots of locals are lobbying for a veto. Miami-Dade Superintendent Rudy Crew sent a letter to Crist in early May asking that he kill the bill. He wrote that lowering the training standards will likely have seriously negative implications on local school performance on the all-mighty FCAT test, which grades each school. School board member Ana Rivas Logan sent a nearly identical letter.

Others who wrote to Crist requesting a veto include Osvaldo Soto, chairman of the Spanish American League Against Discrimination (SALAD), and Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, among many other groups concerned with bilingual and/or civil rights.

Rosa Castro Feinberg, who is retired as an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at Florida International University, as well as a former school board member, told me that she considers this a moral issue. “This is bad for kids, bad for communities and bad for the state,” she said.

I’ll go with the locals on this one. If we don’t train our teachers to teach our students the language, we lose as a community.

Those who wish to weigh in on the issue can call the governor’s office at 850-488-7146 or 850-488-4441.