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Why Connection and Curiousity Matter in Language Learning with Dr. Lillian Ardell · Inchstones with Sarah | Autism Advocacy & Caregiver Stories

• 0:01
  Speaker A: Inchdomes podcast coming to you live today from Luminary, this really cool workspace in New York City. I am so happy and feel so honored to have Dr. Lillian Ardell with me today for our one on one conversation. Lillian is a speaker, a bilingual advocate, and monolingo biases disruptor, which is such a cool. I mean the fact that our paths have crossed and our missions in life and in work are so vastly different, yet have so many syntheses. I'm so happy to have you here. What I like to start with this. What's your 1 inch stone win today? And how does that apply to your mission in life?
• 0:44
  Speaker B: Okay, what is my inch stone win? What's it like? Our micro victory.
• 0:49
  Speaker A: Is that how I'm tiniest. Micro victory?
• 0:51
  Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Um. Well, it's technically yesterday, but I will. It's been a 24 hours.
• 0:59
  Speaker A: 24 hours. Yeah.
• 1:01
  Speaker B: I was tutoring a Venezuelan newcomer in my daughter's school yesterday. He's a fourth grader and this child had pretty to say limited English was. Is accurate. He. I speak Spanish and so does he. And so we were chatting in Spanish. My victory was a way that my brain started to see what he couldn't do as the first assessment of interacting with this child and then taking a breath, like a big deep breath and then projecting three years down the road and thinking about what he would become.
• 1:39
  Speaker A: I love that. I love that. Well, I. I believe that all of us should only be comparing ourselves to the previous versions of ourselves. Right. And so your ability to hold space for that for him, allows you to be a better teacher for him to get to that spot. I love that.
• 1:57
  Speaker B: And to see what his future was and trust that he'll get there.
• 2:01
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:01
  Speaker B: And not feel anxiety where he is today.
• 2:04
  Speaker A: So totally talk to me about your work and what you do.
• 2:10
  Speaker B: Yeah. So I was a dual language bilingual teacher in New York City in the Bronx for about a decade and became curious about the intersections of language and teaching and went to get a doctorate at New York University. So still in New York. And started to tiptoe into teacher beliefs and attitudes and how mindsets operate in classroom spaces. And picking at the black box of human cognition was a bold choice to make because how can you empirically prove anything about what teachers believe or don't believe? But ain't nothing scaring me from going into the hardest content space.
• 2:57
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:58
  Speaker B: And so today as I know that my company, it's called Language Matters, and I only focus on issues of linguistic justice. So if you think about DEI spaces, how do we think about language speakers, how we think about language acquisition, which, insofar as, Sarah, your work and your advocacy work is really tied together, because the thing that we all do as humans is speak and listen and develop language. It's a human right. And there's a lot of variations with how that process looks. And there's. That's especially true in humans that are navigating more than one language. Right?
• 3:46
  Speaker A: Right.
• 3:47
  Speaker B: So a lot of the work that I do with language matters and when I partner with school districts and I work with families, is to have them think about all of the pressure and the anxieties and concerns that they hold for their bilingual children acquiring English, and to help them shift their thinking from anxiety and what they aren't seeing to the potentials and possibilities of what will come one day. And I think this story about the 4th grade Venezuela and refugee really anchors the work that I do, because Even I spent 25 years in the field with 4 degrees in bilingual education was susceptible to a deficit positioning of this kiddo still. And that's why I. I held space, I took a breath, and then I thought, he's here today. Where will he be in three years? And also I learned that this little kid is a budding engineer and that he really likes to build and construct things. And when he wrote down on his identity sheet, soy ingeniero, and he looked really proud that he had learned this new word because he told me that he liked science. And I said, I really. Language matters. Let's get really specific about what about science that you like. And he was like, oh, wait a second. Building things is a. Is a thing that you could do. And I like. That's an engineer, sweetheart.
• 5:13
  Speaker A: I love the overlap here because I think so much about your example of this Venezuelan student is how I, as a parent approach my children, but specifically my daughter Millie, who really loves using her AAC device and how it's a. And how it is language. It is a second language, and it is her voice. Right. It speaks in a little girl voice, but that's a language that she's developing. And how her speech therapist has always seen her as a fully capable child to communicate. And the irony is that, you know, at first she was labeling a lot. It was just like labeling what she's seeing. Right. Tree, car, this. Now she has humor in how she communicates. You know, she thinks it's really funny to miss to misname the pet our dog. She thinks it's hilarious. And she looks. And I think to myself, language to your point, I Mean the name of your company, Language Matters. And the development of that is going to look different even in a child who doesn't use her vocal cords to talk, but that she knows that language matters. And this is a second language in a lot of ways.
• 6:21
  Speaker B: Can you zoom in for Millie? I want to actually be a fly on the wall when she's using her device and then shooting you a look to make sure you caught the joke. Can you walk me through that?
• 6:31
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, say we're on a walk. Like, I do a lot of one on one time when the other one is at speech therapy in the town that we're in. And so we leave and we go to get ice cream or something, and she's talking about the street. And I say, mills, she fricking hates our dog and wants nothing to do with it. And so I was asking her, I said, millie, you know, it's so funny to me. Why don't you like moose? Can you tell me why? And she goes into her feelings, and she goes angry, sad, mad, frustrated. And I go, gosh, it's so interesting. I mean, I don't feel that way at all about him. I mean, he's just a dog. And she goes, no, hammerhead shark. And I went. And she looks at me and I go, camera head shark. And then she goes, great white shark. And I go, like, is that what you feel about him? Do you feel attacked by this? But then she starts laughing, and I'm like. I'm like, are you. You're trying to be silly about this, to not talk about your feelings. And that's exactly what typical kids do, too. They try to make a joke to, like, be like, oh, mom, stop. She did the exact same thing.
• 7:35
  Speaker B: And it.
• 7:35
  Speaker A: And it was like this aha moment. And because, you know, there's all these. I'm sure there's labels that come with the work of the children that you do that are like, why is that the label that's attached to these kids? You know, autistic kids don't look you in the eye. Oh, she was like. She knew exactly what she pressed and looked right at me like, I'm gonna see my mom's reaction to this. So language does matter, and the evolution of them matters. And Millie, from two and a half, just starting out in an AAC to nine and a half. It's slow, Lillian. I mean, it is a slow and steady process. But she has grown so much that she's using humor now. I mean, I'll take it. I'll take it.
• 8:09
  Speaker B: Well, and that's. I mean, okay, she has always had humorous responses in her world, that has just not landed on the audience that she was working with. Right. And you know that. And so did any of the parents that you work with understand that? And let's just remember that adults take their adult understanding of the world and impose it on the children that we are with. Right. But that's our world.
• 8:37
  Speaker A: That.
• 8:38
  Speaker B: That comes with it. A lot of lived experience, a ton of beliefs, a lot of baggage. And there is a. When I say, like a. Like a simplicity, but there's just less noise around a child that's navigating what they're doing and serving. And that gaze part, to me, is, for me, the most interesting and compelling piece of the story that you told. Because actually, a lot of the studies that they do with little babies, it's their gaze. Where are they looking and where are they. Are they clocking to get the feedback from the people so that they can learn whatever is. So that they can assess. Right. And I gotta believe that there's probably a lot of research about kids on the spectrum and their gaze and what that teaches you about how they're communicating.
• 9:26
  Speaker A: I wish there was more. So we continue on this narrative that. That the children with autism lack a proper attention span to hold a gaze.
• 9:34
  Speaker B: Well, Sam, could you tell your story and have it make sense without Ellie's gaze?
• 9:37
  Speaker A: No, because that's part of the humor. Like, that's part of the pause. That's part of the beat that she took to. To know that she was with me that we're checking in, you know, on this story, it really sits so parallel to the student that you worked with, because it's. I think about how far she's come, and I know that in these small little moments of learning, whether it's a word, a phrase, to. To. To communicate it differently and then have that audience, whether it's a parent or a teacher, understand you. That's a luxury that is such a luxury that I cannot buy. And I always think about that every day, is that the luxury of my life is being able to stay present to my children's development because it allows me to stay so in the moment with them, to learn about their world and how to engage and relationships and love. That's what. That's what. This is all. Why else are we here?
• 10:28
  Speaker B: Well, so my work is in disruption. It's in taking this concept of the monolingual bias, which is having bilingual students abandon their heritage language and oftentimes culture and a process of Assimilation so that they can acquire English as quickly. Quickly. And there's really a, an urgency to this.
• 10:49
  Speaker A: I can imagine.
• 10:50
  Speaker B: Yeah. And so if you take, you take a bilingual kiddo and say let's have them sink or swim in English and get them as rapidly because the tests gotta adhere to the tests and because all of their peers and you know that their test scores anchor into status of the school and parents wanting to send their kids there and all of this other noise and, and really the way that the system is designed for it. And so when I talk about disrupting it, I talk about taking my fourth craven as Leland kiddo and not feeling the beat of anxiety around what he doesn't have or seeing me through a deficit. Taking Millie on a walk and you trying to sort through her Angus towards your at home dog.
• 11:36
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Just like a typical family would do. Like why aren't you like this?
• 11:40
  Speaker B: Yes. Well, you know, so think of parents that haven't done this sort of disruption work in your own thinking and feeling around your kiddo and their response would just be why me? I am so frustrated. Why can't she be like. And start the compare and despair narrative. And at the end of what was meant to be a tender outing with your daughter. Millie's no idiot. She picks up on your energy and what probably in fact I would guess even more so because it's my understanding that kids that have limited verbal sort of development, they have to rely on other senses.
• 12:19
  Speaker A: It's just like your body. It's like when you hurt your shoulder, you overcompensate in a different. On the other side of your. It's a hundred percent. Her senses are so different and I believe they have a six. There's a, there's a sixth sense for sure.
• 12:29
  Speaker B: An energy. Well, an energy reading.
• 12:30
  Speaker A: Energy. An energy reading. Yeah.
• 12:32
  Speaker B: And so that parent that thinks that they're not expressing their frustration isn't hiding shit. Um, and so then it becomes like a divergence of the caregiver and the kid on the spectrum which again there's a, there's a very disappointing parallel here where that, that is a self esteem and a negative self talk feedback loop feedback where if my student felt that I didn't see his brilliance and his capacity to learn the word engineer in the moment and be like I know you know what this is. I'm just going to give you the label for it. And your ability to engage with your daughter in humor and see the fullness of your humanity in the absence of that. She thinks that she doesn't matter or that she's meant to be small in this world. And really, on the broadest level, that's what you and I are seeking to disrupt is the messages that our kiddos are hearing about their sense of self worth. Right.
• 13:35
  Speaker A: It's a hundred percent in that. I think sometimes as parents and adults and educators, I bet you see this a lot with students, but obviously my students are my two children as a caregiver, that there, there is a lot of pushback towards doing the work to receive communication in a different form and in a slower form. And I think that people who expect certain things want this game of catch up. So it's no surprise to me what you're sharing about the urgency part about the work that you do and trying to disrupt that because there's an urgency in the autism world to correct them, to get them to be more typical or to get them to be X. It's, it does such a disservice to their actual growth that, I mean, I, again, I wish there were studies done and longitudinal data that could prove this, but I feel like you and I know in our gut because we're seeing the benefit of slowing down.
• 14:38
  Speaker B: And I think there's another data point here which again, I was trying to paint the. What I like to do, this is my linguistics training is I like to take the affirmative case and then I like to take the non case and I like to sit those two together to see what is so different in that Venn diagram.
• 14:57
  Speaker A: Right.
• 14:57
  Speaker B: So I think the non case, which happens to be the default or the typical one, is then there is an emotional flooding that happens with both the ESL teachers or the multilingual teachers and in your case, whoever the caregivers or the speech pathologists are, whoever sits with the deficit narrative. And it's a. This isn't working. Why? There's like a. There's an immense amount of frustration that can seep into contempt, dare I say, and a feeling of victimization. Why? Yeah, the why. And listen, the why me? Question is a really, really tricky one because actually that's an existential question that we don't have answers to. And it's a place that people go and they're feeling really desperate.
• 15:46
  Speaker A: Right?
• 15:47
  Speaker B: Right.
• 15:47
  Speaker A: Well, people bargain. I mean, it almost sits on the grief timeline, right.
• 15:50
  Speaker B: I think.
• 15:50
  Speaker A: So you're bargaining of like this, why me? I. Oh, and then you start just grasping for any sort of reason and it's literally just stagnant. Your, your growth then becomes stagnant when you're grasping for Straws. You know, there's a. I think.
• 16:04
  Speaker B: Is it. I don't know if it's Shakespeare, but like pain that way, suffering that way in life. Yes, that is, that is a direction.
• 16:11
  Speaker A: What the heck just happened here?
• 16:13
  Speaker B: Hold on. Oh my gosh.
• 16:14
  Speaker A: I was so still that the light turned off. I was so engaged with you. Okay, the, the quote was, yes, take.
• 16:21
  Speaker B: Suffering that way lies. So if you, if you want to maybe turn down the daily suffering that you have, then popping over to an asset trust belief that there is something that I need to unlearn, something as the teacher or as the caregiver. And I can trust my kiddo. Which doesn't mean that there aren't going to be daily frustrations. Excuse me, there's frustrations between any caregiver child experience. But you can really dial down on the basis of the mindset shift that you have. Which is why I think that the idea of an inch stone is that let's actually just see the victories, call them, count your blessings. There's a lot of ways that we can talk about what this is. But I gotta say, Sarah, I do a lot of coaching with language teachers, ESL teachers, coaches and directors. One of the saddest things I observed was in my last client cycle is I said tell me a success story, a time where you knew that you were your best day self as a bilingual coach. And the woman sat there and she couldn't come up with any. And I'm like, that's a real problem. And that is a shame because it means that you're not clocking. Don't could work that by the way your community is observing and seeing. I could ask the students that you've worked with or the teachers you've worked with and they would probably have five things to tell you right now.
• 17:54
  Speaker A: But it's the story that the adult tells himself. It's the story of the leader, it's the story of the guide. That we have the power to shape our own narrative on this too. You know, I, I think that's why what made my desire to really launch, you know, Saturday Story from just a sharing of the written word of my journey to more of a live version is because I get that this is very big amongst anyone doing really hard work with different abled children. Whether that's different, whether that your work in helping, you know, ESL children or autistic individuals and students. There is so much self reflection that has to be done daily in order to continue on. And I think that we have to just get back to, like we were saying before I press record on this, like, we're not that unique. We all have this primal wiring. My life looks so different than yours, and yet, like, there's probably, like, more similarities in our work and in our. In our, you know, gut response and in our lives as mothers and just women that. That are probably more alike than. Than not. And I. And I can. I firmly believe that if I could snap my fingers and be fluent in Spanish. Look at that. I could sit with your student and find those small wins to have his day go better or his knowledge of himself and his growth. And I believe that if you were completely fluent in the AAC app language that Millie uses, you would be a wonderful teacher for the day as well. And that's where that. That's where that meets. That's where I think our work meets.
• 19:31
  Speaker B: I'm going to challenge that notion that we require a fluency in order to have victories in each of our systems.
• 19:38
  Speaker A: You're right.
• 19:39
  Speaker B: Yeah. In a belief in a belief that the full humanity and that over time, if we are granted the time with this human in this world, we'll get there with them. And I think what you and I both carry in spades is a curiosity mentality of.
• 19:57
  Speaker A: I'm so glad you brought that word up. I love that's like the word of the year. Stay curious.
• 20:01
  Speaker B: And if I'm curious, because think of the micro moment with. With my student where he said, me gusta sciencias. I said, okay. And again, for me, my brain works in language, truths. So I'm like, science is the big category. There's a lot of things underneath there. So then instead of me being satisfied with him giving me that answer, I said, pero que de ciencias. Can you give me an example? So that's a. That's a going back into a question to dig just a little bit deeper, which Millie can also answer that type of a response in her device. And she would start throwing animals at me. And then she would get specific, apparently. Well, the sharks was a joke. But, like, she would be able to tell me which type of animal she was more interested in.
• 20:49
  Speaker A: Of course.
• 20:50
  Speaker B: Because it's not that her capacity to be specific is broken.
• 20:55
  Speaker A: Exactly. It's not. She. She. She would listen to Brown Bear. Brown Bear, you know, that classic children's book. I mean, I. I'm pretty sure I've read it 5,000 plus times. I mean, like, not kidding. So we do a lot of change up with it and whatever and. And for. For a chunk of time, she belly laughed over black sheet, black sheep. Belly laughed like. And I have to think that some way she knows that there's this whole societal thought on being a black sheep. You're, you're absolutely right in that like there's so many factors that are input into us as the adults and teachers and if we take that deep breath and meet that child and stay curious to, to their, to what's going on internally for them, it, it's a gift of connection that you can't buy. You have to be, you have, have to be willing to learn and to try.
• 21:46
  Speaker B: Well, and so what do you call it? A luxury. And that's for me a very curious word that you've landed on to describe it. For me it seems like we've got spaciousness just enough in our life or at least we've carved out the spaciousness to be able to set aside some things and get curious. I think there's the Victor Frankel between stimulus and response. There's a space and that's where freedom lies. Right. And so I could sit, remember in my original retelling of the story with the student, I had to take a class and I had to have a self awareness and clock where my brain was going and then give a little spaciousness between my gut response and a potentiality for the student.
• 22:34
  Speaker A: Right.
• 22:34
  Speaker B: And if there's something that I am certain about, it's that teachers and educators are in a time deficit. They're being, I mean especially my population. You talk about a multilingual or an ESL teacher in a school. They have three full time jobs and I'm talking like 40 hour work weeks. So four times three is 120 hours that they're collapsed into frankly a low status and a low paying position. Anyway.
• 23:07
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 23:08
  Speaker B: So yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot that needs to change and I would love to disrupt that one, but I'm just working on the advocacy piece.
• 23:15
  Speaker A: Well, just is not. You are, you are beautifully working. Advocacy piece. I want to thank you for all your examples, all the space that you hold beyond that of just the work that you do with children and language and being a monolingual biased disruptor. Cause that is such a cool title. I, I'm, I was so drawn to that because I know that the word disruption floats around business worlds, but it, but it's for people too and our lives have both been disrupt. Personally, we both had big disruptions in our life and I'm really proud to know you and to the work that you do and I'm so thankful that you've come into my life and I believe this conversation is going to be one of those that such great nuggets of just reminders to us all when it comes to the synergies of autism and language.
• 24:00
  Speaker B: Well, if anybody listens to this and IS has a kiddo on the spectrum and you are a bilingual, multilingual family, please do reach out to me and I will hold space for you and help you unlearn what some of the professionals might have told you about your child's capacity and give you a little bit more spaciousness in your life.
• 24:23
  Speaker A: Yes, we will leave all of Those details of Dr. Lillian Ardell on the blog and on the podcast page. Thank you again for your time today. Until next time on Inchtons.
• 24:33
  Speaker B: Bye.