Learning and sharing from the very beginning

A few weeks ago, I stayed a couple of days in Lyon, France. It was a tourist visit so it was really short but I saw something that really impressed me. When I was on my way to Lyon’s airport, I had a woman and her daughter sitting near to where I was. I wouldn’t have noticed that they were there if they hadn’t started speaking Spanish. It was like: “Oh, they are Spanish people”. But then, I heard that their accent was quite different and that they were mixing both languages: French and Spanish. The little girl was speaking perfectly both languages. I couldn’t say which one was her first language. That situation made me feel like: “Come on, look at her! She’s very young and she is able to use French and Spanish!”

It reminded me what we had talk in class about taking into account what a child knows and use it as a benefit issue for the rest of the class. Sometimes teacher act not good enough when they’re not valuing other languages that can be known in a group of children. The reality is that there are children out there that know different things that others don’t. So we must feel lucky when having this variety and try to plan lessons and activities that let students explain the others but also learn from the others because every child (no matter who he/she is or if he/she can speak this or that language) has something to share and to learn from their classmates.