A first-generation Mexican-American, Ana Zermeño Campos grew up speaking Spanish at home with immigrant parents and four siblings. From elementary school to high school and now in college, she studied all subjects in English.

“When we started school, we were exposed to a culture that was very different from what we were used to and a language that our parents had always struggled to understand,” says Zelmenho Campos.

But now, Zermeño Campos, a first-generation bilingual student majoring in Child and Adolescent Studies at California State University Fullerton, created math lesson plans in Spanish through Project AMIELA.

Project AMIELA brings together bilingual faculty mentors and bilingual students in their respective fields to jointly design lesson plans delivered in languages ​​other than English. This initiative is a way to promote a multilingual campus where Spanish and other languages ​​of the world are heard, spoken and learned through a variety of subject areas.

Backed by a new $67,000 grant from CSUF’s Scott-Jewett Fund for Student Success and Innovation, the project will support academic disciplines and majors, as well as Vietnamese, Korean, Mandarin, Farsi and Hindi languages. , Pashto, and other languages ​​spoken on campus. This is his one of 11 campus programs supported by his Scott-Jewett donation of $40 million to the university this year.

Julián Jefferies, Associate Professor of Literacy and Reading Education, and Fernando Rodríguez-Valls, Professor of Secondary Education, coordinate Project AMIELA. The name of this project means “Learn my language in my field in Spanish” or “Aprendiendo Mi Idioma en la Asignatura”.

“We want our multilingual students to be able to make full use of their language repertoire. It is done,” says Rodríguez-Valls from Spain.

Zermeño Campos created a lesson plan as part of a mathematics course for primary school teachers, with the mentor of mathematics professor Armando Martínez-Cruz. She gained insight into developing math terms and concepts in Spanish, added her Zermeño Campos, who aspires to become an elementary school teacher.

“We create a learning environment in which the student’s identity is recognized and learning includes the student’s culture, language, and family context,” says the Mexico City-born and educated mathematics teacher. Martínez-Cruz, who works there, said. “Including language at home as part of a student’s identity and a meaningful asset in teaching results in powerful learning.”

To date, faculty in biological sciences, business, engineering, and mathematics have worked with 56 students to develop lesson plans in Spanish, from studying infectious diseases to discussing gas prices.

Since its launch in Spring 2020, the project has been funded through the California State University Math and Science Teachers Initiative. The initiative is limited in scope to working with Spanish-speaking faculty in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields, Jeffries said.

The goal of this project is to embrace the multilingualism that students bring to their field of specialization, create a pipeline of future multilingual educators, and help students enter a job market empowered by their language skills in languages ​​other than English. is to increase the number of

Multilingualism reaffirms the concept of linguistic fluidity, the ability to use multiple languages ​​in communication and interaction, Rodríguez-Valls explained.

The project was inspired by Proposition 58, which passed in 2016, to give California public schools more control over two language programs and to help pre-K students achieve multiliteracy all the way to higher education. It aims to develop pathways for At the same time, schools are looking to hire multilingual teachers who can teach subjects in languages ​​other than English.

Jeffries, who immigrated to the United States from Argentina and is a first-generation university, said: student.

Zermeño Campos told us that as a child he struggled to navigate between two languages ​​and cultures. As a bilingual teacher, he wants to change that.

“I want to give my future Spanish-speaking students the ability and confidence to learn all subjects in the language they are familiar with.

“Project AMIELA gave me the opportunity to develop my understanding, skills and knowledge in two languages,” she said. “I really see how much of an impact it can have on the kind of young students I hope to teach in the future.”