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Language skills can benefit us in many ways and in a variety of personal, professional, and academic settings. When language training is implemented, and skills are improved on a community level\u2014especially when used to empower an underserved community with a voice\u2014the impact can be astounding.<\/p>\n
In a recent episode of LTI\u2019s \u201cLanguage Is Your Superpower<\/a>\u201d podcast, special guest Johanna L\u00f3pez shared how her campaign for a seat on her county\u2019s School Board engaged her local Hispanic community, and how both Spanish- and English-speaking campaign volunteers improved their language skills throughout the process.<\/p>\n Johanna L\u00f3pez is a member of the Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) Board in Florida and the first Latina to attain such a prestigious role via landslide vote in 2018. It was the culmination of a strategic campaign fully managed by her former students coupled with an impeccable career as an educator and advocate for marginalized youth. Ms. L\u00f3pez is fully aware that she has been tasked by the community she has served for over two decades to be the eyes, ears, and voice of students, parents, and educators\u2014especially those who look like her and who experience the most disparities. She takes this responsibility very seriously in her continued work championing minority student empowerment with a special focus on English as a Second Language (ESOL), supporting undocumented students, and advocating for the provision of better treatment for teachers and non-instructional staff.<\/p>\n Ms. L\u00f3pez planted the seeds of improving individual language skills in the minds of her students long before she became a School Board Member. As a teacher in the Orange County Public Schools system, \u201cwhen I saw that we have a PTA, a Parent Teacher Association, that doesn\u2019t have any Hispanic persons and they don\u2019t speak Spanish, I started a group called Familias Presentes, Estudiantes Excelentes,<\/em>\u201d which means, \u201cInvolved Parents, Excellent Students.\u201d After Hurricane Mar\u00eda impacted the island of Puerto Rico, many Puerto Rican families moved to Florida, and the group grew to \u201calmost 900 parents and students together in the cafeteria. So, I think that was the time that we started empowering the students with their native language, because once they feel more secure and more empowered with their native language, because they feel more comfortable, then, I\u2019m going to say, okay, now you have to learn how important it is to be engaged in the community. And forget about the accent and forget about grammatical mistakes. Try to think in English if you could. If not, try to translate. But it\u2019s going to be harder because you\u2019re going to need more time to express yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n Putting words into action, Ms. L\u00f3pez \u201cstarted practicing in the classroom. I put students in pairs; somebody who is more fluent in English with somebody that is not fluent. So, they started learning from each other with basic conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n A few years later, Ms. L\u00f3pez became the first Latina in Orange County to win Teacher of The Year and later decided to campaign for a seat on the County\u2019s School Board. Many of her former students, who had taken part in those classroom conversations, came back to volunteer for her campaign.<\/p>\n Having collectively knocked on over 35,000 doors throughout the campaign, Ms. L\u00f3pez\u2019s students knew her talking points in English and Spanish by memory by the time the debates began. While Ms. L\u00f3pez had once been the person critiquing her students\u2019 language, she noted that the tables had turned, when \u201cat the end of every debate, we had meetings and [the students would] identify, \u2018okay, Lopez. You used the word y<\/em> (and<\/em> in Spanish) 40 times. L\u00f3pez this is not a plural.\u2019 So, we were growing together through the campaign in improving the English language.\u201d<\/p>\n