National Day Of Spanish To Promote Latino Solidarity

A Latina has begun a movement to promote a National Day of Spanish, modeled after the National Day of Silence, to stand in “support and solidarity with all those who have been marginalized, oppressed, and faced symbolic or actual violence as a Latino in the U.S.” The website is here. The Facebook Page is here.

Jean Rockford is a Cuban-American Latina who is currently getting a Ph.D. in science education at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro who decided that something had to be done about Latino students’ educations. Formerly a science teacher in East Los Angeles, California, Rockford said she’s realized that, time and again, Latino students are marginalized because of how their English proficiency is judged by authorities.

“You don’t force kids to learn English, you accept them as they are and they learn English,” Rockford said of her professional experience. “There’s more than one way to teach students science, we don’t have to wait 10 years for them to learn English before we can teach them something.”

Rockford is focusing her education on Latinos and equity in education and said the idea for the National Day of Spanish occurred to her after being frustrated trying to communicate her ideas to others about English acquisition. “I thought, ‘We should just have a day of Spanish and we need to get accustomed to the fact that other languages are perfectly acceptable, it doesn’t make us less to speak Spanish.'”

Indeed.

Rockford is currently looking for a good day on which to plan the National Day of Spanish and also planning for ways in which non-Spanish speakers can participate. “It’ snot just only people who speak Spanish, but just everyone who wants to support Latino issues,” she said. For more information, check out her website.

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD