Federal projections say by 2025, a quarter of the nation’s K-12 students will be learning English at school, while speaking another language at home. But researchers say these students are among the most poorly served, and are 250 percent more likely to drop out. Some of the southwest’s most diverse school districts are working to bridge the bilingual achievement gap, with help from people like “Guero Loco.”
With a cabbie hat, full face shades and a fade hair cut, the bilingual Spanish rapper looks like the kind of guy you’d see hanging out the window of a lowrider or emceeing a reggaeton show. The Los Angeles-based former Marine and award-winning performer tours schools across the country, using reggaeton and hip-hop to put some swagger into bilingual and Spanish learning.
He said his stage name, Guero Loco, which means “The crazy white guy! The crazy gringo.”
His real name is Steve Stiegelmeyer.
“My parents aren’t Latino. I don’t have anybody in my family that is Latino,” he said.
A recent performance brought Guero to Deming High School in New Mexico, just north of the U.S.-Mexico border. He led students through the fundamentals of Spanish: the alphabet, vowel pronunciation and verb conjugations, all in rap and hip hop.
“It is hip with the hip-hop!” Guero said. “It is the youth, they really love hip-hop. I mean, shoot, 50 and 60 year olds love hip-hop now. So just really taking a music that they like and putting the music and repetition to good use as far as teaching.”
Sitting in the back of the school auditorium was Michael Chavez, the director of Bilingual Education for Deming’s public schools. He said he brought Guero into the district to raise the profile of dual-language learning.
“We service different kids within the program,” Chavez said. “We service English learners that are of course Spanish speakers that are learning English, and we are also trying to recruit more English speakers that want to learn Spanish in our dual language programs.”
Chavez says in the last decade, bilingual programs have had to do more with less federal funding. But he says bringing Guero to schools is money well spent, because students can relate to him and his experience. Guero is fluent in Spanish and knows his way around Mexican slang, but he almost failed Spanish as a high school student in Indiana.
“For a lot of the gringo kids, I used to be in their position,” Guero said. “I used to be sitting in their seats wondering, ‘Why am I taking this language? How is this ever going to help me with my life? It is probably not, why should I even pay attention?’ So my job is to be that link and say this is why.”
One reason to pay attention: Better test scores. Researchers at Michigan State took a look at math and reading scores at Texas schools. Native English speakers did better at schools with bilingual education.
Chavez says English language learners in the district’s bilingual programs are also performing better in reading and math, contradicting a popular belief that “in order to learn English you need to be in an all English environment,” he said. “There is lots of research out there and we have data within our district that shows that English learners that are doing it through both languages, English and Spanish, are actually out performing our kids that are not.”
Despite the data, some students say there is a second-class status attached to students in the bilingual Spanish tracks. Deming High School student Christina Hernandez was born in the U.S., and is a native Spanish speaker. She said, “I see other people looking at other people, calling them like, ‘You are just a Mexican.’”
Guero says some bilingual students are bullied.
“So what I want to do is come and be able to connect with those kids, and the kids that are being pushed, the kids that are being bullied, and explain to them, ‘Don’t ever ever feel ashamed in the fact that you are bilingual,’” he said. “Sometimes they just get over loaded with it and they say, ‘You know what, I am just going to reject my language,’ and they are rejecting this gift.”
Chavez says the same pressures and an “English Only” emphasis cost him his native tongue when he was a Deming High school student in the 1970s. He says bringing Guero Loco is one part of coordinated campaign to ensure students’ bilingual opportunities are not getting overlooked in the Deming district.
This school year, Guero Loco takes his message on the road, to schools across the country.
