Over the past few months, the IRC has asked members of our community to nominate Illinois teachers working with multicultural, multilingual students who are going above and beyond, and now, we’re celebrating them and highlighting their work. Keep an eye out for these features in the coming months – and if you’d like to nominate someone, email leanet@cntrmail.org. Next up is Janice Campbell of Mendota High School District #280.
Says Denise Aughenbaugh, who nominated her: “Mrs. Campbell is truly a lifelong multicultural education advocate. She believes that students and their life histories and experiences should be placed at the center of the teaching and learning. Mrs. Campbell is also a resourceful teacher that will promote and encourage differentiated learning and addresses multiple ways of thinking. She is a Bilingual and Spanish teacher that incorporates the histories, values, and perspectives of all people from different cultural backgrounds. Her students feel welcome in her classroom and supported by her. Parents are known to attend her class and participate in project presentations. Mrs. Campbell is also respected in our community and a valuable member of the Bilingual Parent Committee.”
For Janice Campbell, it’s important that she gets to know her students, that they get to know each other, and get to know themselves to form a classroom community. She finds opportunities for students to share their stories and family histories, such as the anticipated heritage project, where students share their or their families’ immigration stories. “I love watching them tell their stories,” Campbell says.
Through this effort, in addition to an appreciation for their own histories and stories and a connection to their culture, students also gain important skills, including multilingual presentaton and research. “I have them research the place their family is from,” she says. “They’re like ‘hey, come look! That’s my grandma’s house on Google Maps!’”
In addition to being a member of the Bilingual Parent Committee, Campbell utilizes these presentations as a means of connecting her students’ families to their work in the classroom as well. She invites parents and grandparents to attend presentations like the heritage project, so they can see firsthand what their students are learning. The project ends with students sharing what they learned from the experience, and Campbell says most often, students share how much they appreciate what their parents and grandparents have done for them and their families, and it’s nice to be able to share and facilitate that moment.
Campbell says she sees herself as “a cheerleader more than a teacher,” finding ways to support and build up her students. Her classroom rules are simple: respect yourself, respect others, respect me. From there, she says the environment is one where students have autonomy, and they work together to build a classroom environment based on mutual respect and encouragement.
Sometimes, that encouragement looks like supporting students in other subjects. If students have their notes, she will work with them on math or other subjects to help them improve and succeed beyond her classroom. Her advice to her peers is simple—get to know your kids.
“Make it a relationship,” she says. “You get so much more out of them if they feel like you’re a part of their learning.”
