LEP students uniquely enrich their classrooms, according to Gil Valdez, Ph.D., Deputy Director, NCREL, and Director of the North Central Eisenhower Consortium for Mathematics and Science.
Gil Valdez:
They bring a cultural perspective and an understanding of other countries and other ways of doing things, of even how you come to solve a problem.
I mean, one of the things I find fascinating is that in both the Hispanic culture and the Native American culture, it's okay to be circular and coming around to finding a conclusion. You don't have to immediately go there and seek it out. And it's fun to see how the different people approach the same solution.
And even in solving a mathematics problem, how you get — I'm a great believer in students working with each other in classes. And you'll see one adding a dimension of thoughtful reflection and another one wanting to find great detail to recordkeeping. And you'll have others who are looking for scientific proof. And there are others who are looking for just the answers, you know, "Give me the facts, that's it," and how those intermingle.
And especially when you have different cultures and different languages represented in those student groups, you find yourself seeing that interplay makes it that much richer, you know.
I mean, the contrast, bring out the beauty of each individual piece, too, because you start seeing how they're different from each other.