Rodriguez "Aria"

After reading this article Aria by Richard Rodriguez I can relate this passage to the first time I volunteered for inspiring minds and entered a providence school last week.

Entering the first class of kindergartners during a English lesson she had me work first with the students who were learning English as a second language. They were separated from the rest of the group and like the passage they were encouraged to speak in English and do English related activities. However I did notice some differences, the teacher did speak/say some Spanish words to the Spanish speakers unlike in the passage where the nuns did not speak to them in Spanish at all. In the second class I met with I did not work with any of the English as a second language learners but I could see where they were working. They were also separated from the group and were working on IPad's while the rest of the students did another activity. Like the passage from Rodriguez those students must have felt separated from the group because English is seen as the public language. 

After reading this passage and attending the providence school I was curious to see how many English language learners there were in Rhode Island and I found these statistics. 

When seeing the statistics for Rhode Island's English as a second language learners I am curious about how much encouragement there are in the households for the parents to speak only in English to their kids. As we saw from the Rodriguez passage this type of encouragement damaged his family relationship and had a hard time connecting with his parents after.