Pauline Kanyiva Mwendwa works full-time as a teacher at Pulaski High School in Milwaukee while also attending graduate school at UWM. A native of Kenya, she has taught in that country and in Mexico. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
If a student asks her a question in Swahili, Pauline Kanyiva Mwendwa will try to answer. Likewise, if she gets a question in Spanish, she can help.
Mwendwa, a graduate student in the UWM School of Education, is an English-bilingual teacher for juniors and seniors at Pulaski High School in Milwaukee.
“We have students from Asia, we have students from Latin America. We have students from all around the world,” she said.
Mwendwa has taught in her native Kenya and in Mexico but came to UWM because she wanted to develop a better understanding of teaching in a large urban school. “What are the challenges and how can I overcome those challenges,” she said.
Scholarships are crucial
Because she is working full-time as a teacher while going to school, scholarship support has been very important to her, she said. “It has really helped me be able to balance my finances so I could pay school fees and work as a teacher full-time.”
During the 2023-2024 school year, she received the Roland Callaway Memorial Scholarship, the Day/Finch Scholarship and the Milwaukee Educators Scholarship. During the 2024-2025 school year, she is receiving the Rolland Callaway Memorial Scholarship, the Amy Tessmer Boening Scholarship and the Sydney G. Hambling Scholarship.
Mwendwa was inspired to go into teaching by her parents and her own teachers in Kenya. After a few years, she decided she wanted to challenge herself by teaching in another country. She chose Mexico, where she added Spanish to the languages she already knew — French, Swahili and another community language from Kenya. In Mexico, she said, “Google translate was my friend” at first, but she learned Spanish and adapted to the culture.
Those experiences impact her work at Pulaski, where many of her students are from immigrant families. “I tell them I am an immigrant. I know what you are going through. It’s hard being in a different country, but you can’t give up, even if it is overwhelming at times.”
‘A superpower’
A key challenge is helping students meet standards when the materials they need to learn are all in English. Another challenge is helping them focus on their schoolwork, Mwendwa said, when many of them are facing other issues outside of school that affect their concentration.
In her teaching, Mwendwa encourages her students to see the fact that they are bilingual as an asset now and in future when they apply for jobs.
“I tell them they are walking around with two languages in their heads. That is a superpower.”
What she is learning at UWM helps her every day in her classroom, she said. “If I didn’t go to UWM, I would never know how to tackle this. “If I hadn’t been taking the program, I don’t think I would be the teacher I am today.”
Her mentors and advisors at UWM, including Tatiana Joseph, assistant professor in Teaching and Learning and director of the English as a Second Language and World Languages programs, have helped her decide on the courses that fit her needs as a teacher.
Meeting a challenge
Through UWM, Mwendwa has also been able to attend conferences with other bilingual educators. “I’ve been able to interact with people who’ve been in the career for years. They’ve been very helpful. They know the challenges and they’ve developed ways of overcoming them,” she added. “Being able to learn from them is amazing.”
Learning to develop her own curriculum has been very helpful to her, Mwendwa said. In Kenya and Mexico, the curriculum was pretty much set so, at first, developing her own was a challenge, but one she’s met.
“Students have different ways of learning. It’s not one size fits all. I’m not criticizing the systems I worked with for years, but I like the freedom to develop my own strategies to meet the needs of my students,” she said.
Just because students don’t speak English doesn’t make them incapable, she added. “I want to support students at their own pace. I know they’re very smart and they will be able to work with me. I want to support my students as English language learners to liberate their knowledge.”
Written by Kathy Quirk
Link to original story: https://uwm.edu/news/no-matter-the-language-uwm-education-student-helps-her-mps-students/