Texas Teacher Suspended for 'Go Back to Mexico' Comment

[MineralMan]

23. I know you are, and that's muy excelente.

If the school has large numbers of Vietnamese-speaking students and parents, then yes, teachers there should study Vietnamese. Attaining basic conversational competence and the ability to be polite in a language is a simple matter, and is much appreciated by native speakers. It is not necessary to be bilingual, just conversational. If bilingual capabilities are required, then that's another matter.

When I moved to my St. Paul neighborhood, I discovered that about a third of my neighbors were Hmong. So, I took an introductory class in the language so I could be polite and friendly with those neighbors for whom English was difficult. Since then, the neighborhood children have taught me more of the language. The children think I'm funny, since I'm the only American they know who speaks Hmong. They've played a couple of pretty funny tricks on me, though, and I've learned to check what they teach me with an adult. Now, the grandmothers in their households can chat with me about cooking, etc. They think it's amazing that I can speak with them and it has made relationships with my neighbors much better.

I consider learning the conversational basics of the most dominant language besides English where you are to be an important priority.