Community Service and Activism in Heritage Languages, New York City, 1915–1956

Abstract: In this article I describe the work of Leonard Covello, a New York City language educator and high school principal of the early 20th century who argued for Italian and Spanish heritage language (HL) preservation in schools. Although Covello promoted standard language Italian and Spanish in the HL classroom, he also encouraged HL students to use their languages and language variations for community service and activism in their East Harlem neighborhoods. Through historical evidence, I show that HL students' community work in their languages and language variations helped them develop a civic identity that contrasted with the delinquent roles presupposed for them in the public sphere. I conclude by offering Covello's work as a perspective for language educators in the 21st century. Key words: community service-learning, Leonard Covello, multiculturalism, pedagogy, U.S. heritage languages Introduction In a speech New York City language educator and high school principal Leonard Covello made to the New Jersey Modern Language Teachers' Association in 1938, "Language as a Factor in Integration and Assimilation," he declared that mass immigration to the United States had fundamentally changed the language teacher's role in urban schooling. In addition to offering the traditional program in "words, grammar and linguistics," Covello wrote, language teachers must now be responsible for "community life and development," "vivifying" their classrooms from the "very heart of the community itself" (1939, p. 326). At Leonard Covello's own Benjamin Franklin High School on 108th Street (later 116th Street) in East Harlem, a predominantly Italian and Puerto Rican working-class neighborhood, language educators were central actors in a wider school commitment to neighborhood revitalization. The prevailing ethos at Franklin, which was all-male during Covello's tenure as principal from 1934 to 1956, was "communitycentered," cohering with 20th-century progressive notions of the role of public institutions in educating immigrants and other minority groups for an active citizenry. 1 At Franklin, students, faculty, residents, and community organizations collaborated democratically on a range of community issues in the 1930s and 1940s (Johanek & Puckett, 2007). Italian and Spanish teachers Michael Decessare, Emilio Guerra, and Mary Giocobbe and their heritage language (HL) students were vital participants in the school's activist campaigns, interviewing non-English speakers in the campaign for low-rent housing in 1937; serving on bilingual community councils; interpreting for parents and other residents; providing lessons in English, heritage languages, and civics for adults; and promoting Franklin and East Harlem's causes in the bilingual press. Covello himself, who began his career in 1911 as a French teacher at DeWitt Clinton High School at 59th Street and 10th Avenue, another predominantly Italian immigrant area, was himself the model for these activist language educators. Although Italian was not offered in the New York City schools when Covello began teaching at Clinton, he instituted an Italian course at Clinton in 1920 and helped launch a successful campaign for the parity of Italian with other languages in New York City in 1922 (Covello, 1956). Covello also started an Italian parent organization in East Harlem, interpreted for Clinton parents, and constantly mentored HL students, encouraging them to take up their own community service in the Italian language club Il Circolo they launched in 1915. The speech to language educators in 1938 substantiated Covello's and his cohort's ideas on the wider role of heritage and community languages in American life. In this article I study more fully these ideas in his myriad writings in the Italian American and Puerto Rican press, teachers' magazines, scholarly journals, and mainstream publications like his moving autobiography The Heart Is a Teacher (1956). …