Hello everyone! On vacation to Flat Iron Mountain, Boulder, Colorado My name is Ila Hyams, and I am a senior at UH, a member of the Honors College, and currently working on my senior thesis in Classroom Diversity. One of the focuses of my paper is in language diversity among students, especially in middle school. Coming from a monolingual household, Ortega makes valid and accurate points on the type of environment this is and the consequences it has on children (2013). Specifically, I felt a pull to the idea that student motivation directly ties to their ability to speak a second-language (Ortega, 2013). As a future educator, this idea both excites and worries me. I hope to become the type of teacher that can influence my students positively, rather than create an environment that is detrimental to their development of such skills. Growing up, I was acutely aware of the type of discourse surrounding second-language speakers. Either they were discouraged from speaking t...