The SAUSD confirms the hiring of Meléndez de Santa Ana as their Superintendent

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• MQ,

  I tmare and Dr. de Santa Ana and others agree with your assertions on the problem and what needs fixing. Those that argue your points on the need for accountability from administrators,teachers, parents and students need to come together, support and assist Dr. de Santa Ana in implementing the plan to hold and assist the group above, who are the solution.

  Those out to destroy Dr. de Santa Ana before she starts (with a plan no one can objectively attack) and focuses on divisiveness,negativity and stereotyping have a hatred agenda based on economic/political manipulation and/or racism.

• Hi Doc by the way:)

  The one point you make could be a possibility if she is REALLY out to make a change. Political manipulation by the unions to keep the status Quo going because this school district has a lot of reasons to want children to fail because they more the school district fails the more money will be pumped into it. I you carefully read what this woman say about what needs to be done to turn this district around its the same old union crap about needing more money, no mention at all from her about the parents and students responsibility. She will get over 250,000 to run this failing school district and I bet no matter her RACE she will keep pumping out the underserved, the vulnerable and the needy to keep that nice paycheck. The problem is YOU think because of her RACE that she is what is needed at the school district, will I bet she is everything that is not needed at the school district, but the men and women who appointed her know she is everything that is needed to keep the district profitable. YOUR public school system has become a business and Mrs Santa Ana is in the business of keeping kids in a situation that is profitable for the district....And i will bet my life of it!

• And again my apology for my writing...I am trying to get better! :)

• Well, Michelle, we don't always agree but your writing is getting better! :)

• Thank you very much:0)

• MQ,

  Read the article above I presented carefully. She does not say what you say she says.

  No one on this thread has mentioned her ethnicity except you. It then seems the only one preoccupied by this is you. I wonder why.

• Wow your son is smart!

• I know she does not I went into her record and found out a lot of things that she does not say.

  "In most countries, bilingualism or multilingualism is the norm—it is just expected. It is built into the school system and is a life-long process. This continuous language learning model is something America needs to explore."

  MQ says:

  This above is a complete fabrication. In most countries in this world, one language the native language is always the case. Only in countries such as Canada with a french quarter and Asia, India where English is encouraged as a second language, because English is the language that is spoken by countries that are beneficial in the world of business. Mrs Santa Ana is PLAINLY wrong about multilingualism unless it is learning English as a second language. She is the opposite, she wants people to learn english as a second language that come from a English speaking nation and of course that is ridiculous in every way. Countries rely on speaking one language to unite that nation and she is looking to divide our nation based on her belief of multiculturalism...which many countries AGREE does not work and of course we see this in the segregated cultural mess that is Santa Ana!

• No one on this thread has mentioned her ethnicity except you. It then seems the only one preoccupied by this is you. I wonder why.

  "Dr. Meléndez has been recognized frequently for her educational leadership. In April 2011, she received the National Hispanic Woman of the Year Award from the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation. She also received an honorary doctorate from Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Education and Psychology in May 2011. In 2010, she was named Hispanic Business Magazine’s Woman of the Year. In 2007, she was named Latina of Excellence by Hispanic Magazine, receiving the Educationalist award. In 2005, Dr. Meléndez was recognized as an Outstanding K-12 School Leader & Distinguished Partner for Educational Excellence by California State Polytechnic University at Pomona. And, in 2003, the Los Angeles County Bilingual Directors Association named her Outstanding Educator of the Year."

  No need to wonder, she is your new mexican hope, and I am telling you, she is going to fail like the rest of the idiots that you vote for with a spanish last name! It's your ethnocentric culture to stick with your own Dr. L.

  A failure and breakdown of American values to vote for the best man/woman for the job, not the best match in color or ethnicity!

• MQ

  "I know she does not I went into her record and found out a lot of things that she does not say.

  “In most countries, bilingualism or multilingualism is the norm—it is just expected. It is built into the school system and is a life-long process. This continuous language learning model is something America needs to explore.”

  MQ,

  Dr. de Santa Ana is correct. You are ignorant.

  Multilingualism

  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  This article's lead section may not adequately summarize its contents. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of the article's key points. (September 2009)

  "Bilingual" redirects here. For the journal, see Bilingualism (journal). For other uses, see Bilingual (disambiguation).

  For multilingualism in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination

  Multilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of, multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population.[1] Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of globalization and cultural openness.[2] Thanks to the ease of access to information facilitated by the Internet, individuals' exposure to multiple languages is getting more and more frequent, and triggering therefore the need to acquire more and more languages.

  People who speak more than one language are also called polyglots.[3]

  A trash can in Seattle labeled in four languages: English, Chinese (垃圾), Vietnamese (should be rác), and Spanish. Tagalog also uses the Spanish word.

  Contents
  [hide] 1 Multilingual individuals 1.1 Definition of multilingualism
  1.2 Learning language
  1.3 Comparing multilingual speakers 1.3.1 Cognitive ability

  1.4 Receptive bilingualism
  1.5 Potential multilingual speakers
  1.6 Definition of "language"

  2 Multilingualism within communities
  3 Multilingualism between different language speakers
  4 Multilingualism at the linguistic level 4.1 Models for native language literacy programs
  4.2 Sequential model
  4.3 Bilingual model
  4.4 Coordinate model
  4.5 Outcomes

  5 Multilingualism in computing 5.1 Internet

  6 See also 6.1 Linguistic aspects
  6.2 Multilingual countries
  6.3 Policies and proposals
  6.4 Education
  6.5 Other

  7 References
  8 Further reading
  9 External links

  [edit] Multilingual individuals

  Poster of the UNESCO for the International Mother Language Day
  A multilingual person, in a broad definition, is one who can communicate in more than one language, be it actively (through speaking, writing, or signing) or passively (through listening, reading, or perceiving). More specifically, the terms bilingual and trilingual are used to describe comparable situations in which two or three languages are involved. A multilingual person is generally referred to as a polyglot. Poly (Greek: πολύς) means "many", glot (Greek: γλώττα) means "language".

  Multilingual speakers have acquired and maintained at least one language during childhood, the so-called first language (L1). The first language (sometimes also referred to as the mother tongue) is acquired without formal education, by mechanisms heavily disputed. Children acquiring two languages in this way are called simultaneous bilinguals. Even in the case of simultaneous bilinguals one language usually dominates over the other. This kind of bilingualism is most likely to occur when a child is raised by bilingual parents in a predominantly monolingual environment.[citation needed] It can also occur when the parents are monolingual but have raised their child or children in two different countries or when the parents are monolingual and raise their child in a society which speaks a language different from their own, which is common in immigrant populations of Western European countries. It's also possible (but rare) that children are raised in a multilingual country like the Netherlands where Dutch is the main language, but also includes the Frisian language in the northern part of the country. Because of the small area of the country most children from Friesland learn Dutch and Frisian without formal education. Also, Suriname, which speaks Dutch and Sranang Tongo, has this feature.

  A further possibility is that a child may become naturally trilingual by having a mother and father with separate languages being brought up in a third language environment. An example of this may be an English-speaking father married to a Mandarin Chinese speaking mother with the family living in Hong Kong, where the community language (and primary language of education) is Cantonese. If the child goes to a Cantonese medium school from a young age, then trilingualism will result.

  In linguistics, first language acquisition is closely related to the concept of a "native speaker". According to a view widely held by linguists, a native speaker of a given language has in some respects a level of skill which a second (or subsequent) language learner can hardly reliably accomplish. Consequently, descriptive empirical studies of languages are usually carried out using only native speakers as informants. This view is, however, slightly problematic, particularly as many non-native speakers demonstrably not only successfully engage with and in their non-native language societies, but in fact may become culturally and even linguistically important contributors (as, for example, writers, politicians and performing artists) in their non-native language. In recent years, linguistic research has focused attention on the use of widely known world languages such as English as lingua franca, or the shared common language of professional and commercial communities. In lingua franca situations, most speakers of the common language are functionally multilingual.

  [edit] Definition of multilingualism

  One group of academics[who?] argues for the maximal definition which means speakers are as proficient in one language as they are in others and have as much knowledge of and control over one language as they have of the others. Another group[who?] of academics argues for the minimal definition, based on use. Tourists who successfully communicate phrases and ideas while not fluent in a language may be seen as bilingual according to this group.

  However, problems may arise with these definitions as they do not specify how much knowledge of a language is required for a person to be classified as bilingual. As a result, since most speakers do not achieve the maximal ideal, language learners may come to be seen as deficient and by extension, language teaching may come to be seen as a failure.

  Since 1992, Vivian Cook has argued that most multilingual speakers fall somewhere between minimal and maximal definitions. Cook calls these people multi-competent.