I teach immersion and parent one — what US schools get wrong about bilingualism
I stand on both sides of the same door.
On one side, I'm the teacher in a fifth-grade Cantonese-immersion classroom — thirty-odd kids whose families chose to raise bilingual children in a country that mostly doesn't.
On the other side, I'm the parent — raising bilingual kids the same way, one car ride and one dinner table at a time, watching my own children do what my students do: live in two languages at once while a country treats that as a problem to fix. In both roles I meet two kinds of bilingual families — the ones building English on a new foundation, the ones holding onto the language they arrived with — and our schools mostly have one script, written for neither.
This is what I've learned standing on both sides. It's a critique — not of teachers, but of the system's assumptions, the ones embedded in how US schools approach bilingualism without anyone noticing they're assumptions.
1 · Nobody agrees on what "bilingual" even means
Ask five educators, get five definitions: "balanced in two languages" (the myth), "fluent in both" (undefined), "English learner needing support" (deficit), "two first languages" (rare), or "switches between them functionally."
The argument itself absorbs energy that should go to the child. Families need one thing more than a category: someone to tell them what's typical — a 7-year-old answering in the "wrong" language for 40 minutes, then switching mid-sentence like a light toggle, isn't behind. Bilingual kids do that. Everywhere.
2 · Schools treat the home language as an obstacle, not a resource
The most damaging thing a school can quietly tell a family: "Speak English at home so he learns faster." Heritage families get the other version: "Honestly, why bother with Chinese?" Different words, same message: your language is disposable.
Research says the opposite of what the advice implies: the home language isn't a competitor to English — it's the foundation English is built on. Comprehension runs through what the child already knows. Strip it, and you don't build English faster; you build on sand.
I teach in an immersion school partly because someone got this right at the district level. Most schools don't. Parents who followed the bad advice send us a child with less language total — and we all try to build on sand we helped demolish.
3 · "English learners" is a status, not a description
Watch how it functions: a five-year-old enters; primary language at home = Cantonese/or Mandarin; the school registers an "English Learner" — a status that follows the child through tests, programs, grades — often until middle school. Administratively useful, categorically cruel: it tells the child daily that something is wrong with their language.
One student taught me this the hard way: strong Cantonese, strong thinking, slow English — and every system in orbit treated the English as the emergency, not the truth: a kid adding a register to a language family they already owned. Deficit labels make adults read normal code-switching as symptom.
3.5 · The other bilingual kid: the one who's losing the language
Not every bilingual child here arrived bilingual. Some are third- or fourth-generation — raised on English, understanding Cantonese from grandparents' kitchens, answering every Chinese question in English. Heritage learners: bilingual too, at a different mile marker.
What they need is permission to be a beginner in their own family's language. The hardest part isn't vocabulary — English is what their friends think is cool, so speaking anything else feels like social risk. My room's rule: mistakes mean you're in the game — mixed sentences, missed tones, all practice.
And the surprise: heritage kids often envy the arrivals — whose fluency they may never easily get back — while the arrivals envy their effortless English. Same route, different mile markers. Neither "behind."
4 · Parents get blamed for the system's confusion
The verdict lands on families from two directions: newer-immigrant parents hear not enough English at home; heritage parents hear if you'd spoken more Chinese early, it wouldn't be slipping now. Two mirror-image guilt trips, one shared message: this was your fault. And underneath both, a monolingual norm — the assumption that the second language is a bonus round, not a life.
The research is stubbornly clear: the strongest predictor of long-term bilingual success is the richness of the home language. Read in Cantonese, argue in Cantonese, joke in Cantonese — English benefits too, years later. Among the least-communicated facts in American parenting.
5 · What actually works (the constructive part)
Not critique for critique's sake — the practices I've seen help bilingual kids when schools and parents hold them together:
- Two-way dual-immersion — the whole class learns both languages together
- Heritage-language homework, not "extra English" — the child hears: my language belongs here too
- Parents keeping the home language, unapologetically — the thing most American advice tells them to drop
- Bilingual books on the main shelf, not a corner — visibility is a message
- Assess what bilingual kids have, not what they don't — bilingualism shows in use, not scores
- Heritage kids: invite understanders before speakers — comprehension is the foothill; production follows when the gap isn't shamed
6 · The version that isn't my argument — the one only a parent can make
Here's the thing I couldn't have learned by teaching alone:
The emotional weight of raising a bilingual kid in the US isn't about school. It's the walk home at 6pm, when a child switches to English at a friend's house and can't switch back for dinner. It's the grandmother's voice messages going unanswered because answers in Cantonese take longer. It's a kid thinking in her stronger language, saying "I don't know how to say that" in the strategic one.
The school gives my kids English. Only I give them Cantonese — and that window closes as fast as childhood does. The system leaves the hardest part of the bilingual project to the people with the least time and the least backing.
That's what a parent knows that a teacher can't. And it's why this blog exists.
The announcement
下一站係 雙語不只是學校的事 ｜ The next station is: bilingualism, beyond the classroom walls.
— announced on Mom's Transition Route · 下一站是……
There are more stations coming. If you'd like to ride along, subscribe. The next one: what the job I left taught me about my kid's résumé gap.
