SSL and SHL together

Wednesday's discussion about integrating SSL and SHL classes recalled an experience that I had in an elementary school Spanish class. It wasn't major or even necessarily negative, but you know how certain things stick in your mind better than others? Well, that's what happened to me in this case, and it is something that I've thought about every once in a while over the years. As a child, I had no idea that there was even a difference between SSL students and SHL students, because we were all taught together by one teacher who rotated around the school to the different grade levels during the week. I will be the first to say that I learned textbook Spanish and standard grammar; no mention was really made of dialectal differences, and I agree that it is something that would have been extremely useful in my future language development. The only difference I remember learning was in the pronunciation of the letter "y." We were taught that in some places this letter is pronounced like the "s" in "measure," but that only one person in the room should really use it, since she had family who spoke like that. I remember asking myself, even then, why the rest of us shouldn't use that pronunciation if we chose. I realize that the comment was innocently made, and that this was over ten years ago, but I think that students should be able to speak the way that makes them most comfortable. (Of course, academic language should be stressed in the classroom, but variation should not be discouraged.) That is why I am so glad that both SSL and SHL have recently made leaps and bounds in their teaching methodologies and philosophies.