Highlight the assets of English Learners in your classroom
Students do better in school when their voices are heard. For English Learners, that means not only supporting their growing language proficiency, but also empowering them to share their linguistic and cultural identities.
This practical guide, grounded in compelling research and organized around essential questions and answers, is designed to help all educators build on their current competencies to authentically harmonize home languages and cultures in the classroom. Inside you’ll find
· The emotional, social, linguistic, cognitive, and academic rationale for incorporating cultural and linguistic assets
· Creatively illustrated powerful practices with concrete examples of successful implementation
· Myth-busting reflections to spark critical thinking about diversity, inclusive education, and family engagement
· Curriculum connections tied to American and Canadian standards
Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
Fern: Dedicated with great love to my family who has always stood
by my side, no matter the distance or the direction.
Stephaney: To Vُ Văn Vinh, my light and rock, and to Robert D. Ray, an Iowa governor who changed lives through his compassion and unprecedented leadership when others failed to act.
Paula: To the many talented and dedicated teachers in Toronto and across Canada who threw open their classroom doors wide and welcomed me so I could learn from them, and to my late father, himself a refugee, who started me on my journey of wanting to work with newcomers.
And with deep gratitude for our colleagues, educators, and professionals everywhere who strive to effect more equitable outcomes for culturally and linguistically diverse students and families.
Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
Elevating Diverse
Assets and Identities
Fern Westernoff
Stephaney Jones-Vo
Paula Markus
Foreword by Jim Cummins
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Contents
Foreword vii
by Jim Cummins
Acknowledgments xi
About the Authors xv
Introduction
Chapter 1 School and Community
A. What are some ways that schools can provide
a welcoming environment for all students, families,
and the local community?
B. How might initial assessment and reception services be
offered to newcomer students and their families?
C. What are some ways to facilitate integration of students
and families into school and the larger community?
D. What have we learned so far about supporting English
Learners attending school from a distance?
Chapter 2 Classroom
A. What components of meaningful instruction are
needed to support English Learners in every classroom?
B. What are some ways to expand students’ connections
to new learning in an additional language?
C. What are some ways to embrace languages that
we do not speak in the classroom?
D. How might we show that it is important for students
to continue to develop the home language?
Chapter 3 Families
A. What are some ways to support families who are
adjusting to life in a new country?
B. What are some ways to collaborate with parents?
C. What are some ways to partner with parents to support
both the home language and English language development?
D. What are some ways to communicate with parents
when we do not speak their languages?
Chapter 4 Students
A. What are some ways to ensure that English Learners
maintain high levels of engagement in language learning?
B. What are some ways to support English Learners with
exceptional needs?
C. What additional considerations are needed to help newcomers
with a range of circumstances thrive and be successful?
D. What are some ways to support students with limited or
interrupted formal schooling?
E. What are some ways to support newcomers who may be
experiencing trauma?
Conclusion
References
Author Index
Subject Index
Foreword
Jim Cummins
University of Toronto
uring the past 30 years, I have given a large number of workshops and D conference presentations in both North America and Europe to educa
tors of multilingual students who are learning the language of instruction. Although each context is unique in multiple respects, similar questions were raised by participants over and over again:
•• How can you tell if a student who doesn’t appear to be making adequate
progress has a learning handicap or is just going through the normal process of learning the school language (L2)?
•• How can students utilize their home language (L1) to transfer knowledge
to the school language when they have missed out on schooling and have minimal literacy skills developed in L1?
•• How can we involve parents in their children’s education when the
parents don’t speak any English and are not highly literate in their L1?
•• How can I teach for crosslinguistic transfer when there are multiple
languages in my classroom, and I don’t speak any of these languages?
•• How can I get my principal and ‘mainstream’ or subject matter teachers
to understand that it typically takes at least five years for students to catch up academically and the ESL teacher can’t simply ‘fix’ the students in just one year?
I would do my best to answer these and many other questions, but I was acutely aware that my answers were always partial and not fully satisfactory, even to me. I frequently tried to let myself off the hook by saying (legitimately!) that many of these issues have emerged relatively recently, and research doesn’t provide definitive answers that will apply in every context. There are no formulaic answers to many of these questions, no book that we can just pull off the shelf that will point us in the right direction.
vii
That is, until now. As I was reading Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners, I found myself engaging in retrospective fantasies, reliving those question and answer sessions and being able to tell committed teachers and school administrators that much of what they need to know to support English Learners will jump out at them from the pages of this lucid, unpretentious, and inspirational book.
The book is lucid, but in no way formulaic. It doesn’t tell us what to do— instead, it shares with us successful initiatives and creative projects that other teachers have carried out, working individually in their classrooms and collectively as a school community. The book stimulates us to think about how we might adapt some of these strategies in our own unique contexts. It also invites us to extend our own identities as educators. We are not simply passive conduits for the transmission of pre-packaged curriculum into the minds of generic students. We are also far more than just recipients of research findings generated by our university colleagues with the expectation that we will ‘mobilize’ this knowledge in our schools and classrooms.
Rather than providing us with definitive formulas, the authors have shared with us narratives of educators, working together creatively with students and families, who transform ‘problems’ into possibilities, who define learners not by what they lack (e.g., knowledge of the school language) but by what they are capable of achieving, and who, in the process, define themselves as advocates of all that is best in humanity and as generators of knowledge and insight. The inspirational educational initiatives that you will read about in these pages were not dreamt up by researchers on the basis of rigorous scientific studies—they emerged from the imagination of brilliant educators who were familiar in general terms with much of the relevant research, but who went far beyond the research in pushing the boundaries of what was conventionally considered possible. For example, several of the instructional examples illustrate how teachers can engage students’ multilingual resources and teach for crosslinguistic transfer even when they themselves don’t speak the home languages of their students. Researchers didn’t generate this knowledge—teachers did.
The book is unpretentious because it has been written by teachers for teachers—it uses a language that we all understand and doesn’t try to complexify basic educational principles that are ultimately fairly evident to all committed educators. For example, the vast majority of educators, many of whom work in challenging conditions, will agree with the foundational principles that run through every page of this book:
•• You connect instruction to students’ lives;
•• You get to know and respect the students who are in your classrooms;
•• You identify and build on the personal, cognitive, and linguistic assets that
students bring to the school’s learning community;
viii Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
•• You respect students’ families and the diverse communities they repre
sent, and you reach out to involve them as partners in their children’s education;
•• You continue to expand your professional knowledge and you learn from the students you are teaching, the families who have entrusted their children to your care, and the colleagues with whom you share the journey.
I truly believe that this book will make a significant difference in the lives of students, families, and educators. The powerful practices that it so clearly describes have the potential to create not only powerful learning, but also powerful learners and powerful educators.
Over many years, I have explored the idea of schools as sites where teachers and students negotiate identities (e.g. Cummins, 1986, 2001). Schools in many countries, including Canada and the United States, share a shameful history of racist practices designed to exclude Indigenous and minoritized students from educational and social advancement. These schools were permeated by what I called coercive relations of powerwhere power is exercised by a dominant individual, group, or country to the detriment of a subordinated individual, group, or country. I contrasted this notion of ‘power over’ with collaborative relations of power that reflect the sense of the term powerthat refers to being enabledor empoweredto achieve more. Within collaborative relations of power, power is not a fixed quantity but is generated through interaction with others. The more empowered one individual or group becomes, the more is generated for others to share. The process is additive rather than subtractive. Within this context, ‘empowerment’ can be defined as the collaborative creation of power.
The powerful instructional practices documented in this book clearly constitute ‘effective instruction’ but we can understand whythey are so effective only when we view them through the lens of identity negotiation and the collaborative creation of power. When emergent bilingual students create multimodal and multilingual identity texts that find their place in the school library side by side with the books of experienced and accomplished authors, they are telling the world, and more importantly themselves, that they are more than simply learners of English. When educators at Crescent Town Elementary School in Toronto organize a potluck community iftarevent (a meal that breaks the fast each night during Ramadan), they are creating an interpersonal space within which power is being collaboratively generated for students, families, and educators themselves.
It is my expectation that this book will act as a catalyst for schools to more clearly articulate what they stand for—what concept of educationis embodied in the interactions that take place within the walls of the school. For educators within these schools, collegial discussion of the powerful practices vividly described in these pages will open up new instructional possibilities that not only expressour identities as educators but also expand and re-create these identities.
Foreword ix
REFERENCES
Cummins, J. (1986) Empowering minority students: A framework for intervention. Harvard
Educational Review56, 18-36.
Cummins, J. (2001) Negotiating Identities: Education for Empowerment in a Diverse Society.
2nd edn. Los Angeles: California Association for Bilingual Education.
x Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
Acknowledgments
e gratefully acknowledge the support, guidance, and encouragement W from our team at Corwin: Dan Alpert, Program Director and Publisher,
Equity and Professional Learning; Lucas Schleicher, Senior Content Development Editor; and Mia Rodriguez, Associate Content Development Editor.
would also like to thank the following people and agencies whose dedication to students from diverse backgrounds provided us with much inspiration.
Qudsia Ahmad Frances Ferguson
Judith Arrowood Laurel Fynes
Vanessa Barnett Mandi Gerland
Donna Beaton Yasmin Hasan
Ryan Bird Heartland Area Education Agency,
Iowa
Bliss
Susan Hind Kay Cairns
Shirley Hu
Campana
Shannon Hutchison Jenny Cheng
Janet Jundler
Roma Chumak-Horbatsch
Ellen-Rose Kambel
Grace Chung
Artemis Kapakos
CultureLink, Toronto, Ontario
Andrea DeCapua Farida Kassum
Sukayna Dewji Sandra Katz
Peter Dorfman Ann Kong
Carol Doyle-Jones Thursica Kovinthan Levi
Rose Egolet Ashley Lam
Jennifer Fannin Stephanie Ledger
xi
Emmanuelle Le Pichon-Vorstman Jennifer Shields
Lisa McDonald Angela Sioumpas
Martha McGloin Cecilia Song
Sandra Mills-Fisher Elena Soni
Shamira Mohamed Jan Stewart
Mike Montanera Fei Tang
Alyssia Montesino Betty Ann Taylor
Genine Natale Denise Taylor-Edwards
Jo Nieuwkerk Toronto District School Board
Marlene Neri Jeanette Voaden
Sharon Newmaster Tu Vuong
Kaila O’Callaghan Dan Warden
Sheila Pinto Nadine Williams
Hetty Roessingh Grace Wong
Tammy Ross Ann Woomert
PUBLISHER’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Corwin gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the following reviewers:
Ina Berard
Kindergarten Teacher
Greater Essex County District School Board Windsor, ON
Hope Edlin
Teacher
Bethel Elementary School Simpsonville, SC
Lynn Farrugia
ESL Program Coordinator Edmonton Public Schools Edmonton, AB
Karen Kozy-Landress
Speech/Language Pathologist Brevard Public Schools Merritt Island, FL
xii Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
Maija Leipala
ESL Teacher
Thames Valley District School Board London, ON
Jeffrey Robinson
Learning Coordinator, ESL/ELD K-8 Thames Valley District School Board London, ON
Joanne Shimotakahara
Retired Chief Speech-Language Pathologist, East Office Toronto District School Board
Toronto, ON
Laura Von Staden
Teacher
School District of Hillsborough County Tampa, FL
Susan Woo
Literacy Consultant
Edmonton Regional Learning Consortium Edmonton, AB
Theresa Young
Speech-Language Pathologist, M.Cl.Sc., Reg. CASLPO, SLP(C), CCC-SLP Sound Communication
Parry Sound, ON
Acknowledgments xiii
About the Authors
Fern Westernoff is a speech-language
pathologist with over thirty-five years of experience at the Toronto District School Board. She served on the Immigrant Assessment Team, which prompted her to pursue doctoral studies regarding bilingualism and second language learning at The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto. She co-instructed in the Kindergarten Early Language Intervention (KELI) Program, where she was also a co-program leader supporting the development of the program. Fern continues to publish and
present widely in Canada, the United States, and Israel regarding cultural and linguistic diversity and communication disorders in education.
Stephaney Jones-Vo is president of
Starfish Education, LLC, focusing on equity for English Learners. With over a decade of Title III grant directing, refugee sponsorship, and K-12 ESL classroom teaching experience, she served as an English Learner and Diversity consultant at a regional state education agency supporting multiple school districts to increase English Learner achievement. She has designed and facilitated ESL endorsement and cultural competence
quent presenter in the United States and
in Canada, she has co-authored multiple books, chapters, and articles; designed and delivered a variety of adult ESL classes for specific purposes and in the workplace, and advocated widely for English Learners.
xv
Paula Markusserved as the ESL/ELD Program Co-ordinator with the Toronto District School Board from 2001
through 2017. She is currently a sessional lecturer in the Master of Teaching Program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto, preparing pre-service teachers to support English Learners. Paula is the founder of the annual “Celebrating
Linguistic Diversity” Conference, Ontario’s largest professional gathering of K-12 teachers of English Language Learners for the past two decades. She er at school districts and conferences
across Canada and the United States.
xvi Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
Introduction
ave you ever been invited to a friend’s party that included a bit too much H of their unique office talk? Sure, it was wonderful to join the celebra
tions, even if you did not really participate much in the discussions. No doubt after a while, you might become a bit disillusioned with making small talk. You might start losing interest. You might even begin daydreaming or mentally going through your to-do list while unconsciously murmuring words of agreement. This distractedness can mirror the feelings of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds who often do not recognize their experiences, background knowledge, cultures, or home languages represented in the curriculum or visible in the school community. Students who have very little opportunity to connect to what is happening in the classroom may begin to feel detached, uninvolved, unimportant, or devalued. Perceiving that they are excluded from the school community, these learners may disconnect from school entirely.
Over the past decades, classroom demographics have continued to evolve, becoming increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse. As a result, all teachers share the responsibility of supporting diverse learners in their classrooms, including English Learners. Educators appreciate how critical it is for students and families to see their backgrounds, experiences, and lives authentically present in the classroom, school, and community. Organically incorporating culturally and linguistically responsive educational practices is an essential element of today’s schools. The purpose of this guide is to articulate a foundation of culturally and linguistically responsive core practices that break through boundaries, bridging the gap between research and application. Building on educators’ current competencies in supporting linguistically and culturally diverse learners, this guide aims to illuminate meaningful ways to engage learners and to promote their achievements inside and outside of school.
As authors who have partnered on a range of educational projects over the years, we are a trio who embrace the unique perspectives that each brings to our shared work on behalf of English Learners and their families. We have chosen to focus our collaboration on this book through a collective interprofessional, transnational, and asset-based lens.
Interprofessional: An interprofessional perspective allows professionals from different disciplines and backgrounds to integrate their knowledge
and skills. Through collaboration with colleagues, interprofessional initiatives can enrich professional practices, build capacity (Fairbairn & Jones-Vo, 2016), promote creative problem solving, and lead to increased opportunities and options for clients and students (Geva, Barsky, & Westernoff, 2000). Dove and Honigsfeld (2020) maintain that systemic collaboration among professionals effectively advances the educational outcomes of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. When a variety of differently prepared professionals combine their expertise and insights, they can create a uniquely effective team for serving English Learners. Classroom teachers, teachers of English as an additional language, special education teachers, teaching assistants, paraprofessionals, speech-language pathologists, psychologists, social workers, school counselors, coaches, and administrators all contribute to the betterment of services for students. The process of working in tandem with others is not always easy, but the outcomes can be extraordinary.
The effort to co-create this guide is an example of interprofessional collaborative work, highlighting the four core principles of teamwork proposed by Dove and Honigsfeld (2020): common purpose, shared mindset, supportive environment, and diverse team membership. It incorporates our work as practitioners from the teaching and speech-language pathology professions who have worked with young children, teenagers, and both seasoned and pre-service educators situated in a variety of American and Canadian school districts. Together, we bring a combined century of knowledge, training, and experience in public and private education, teaching English as an additional language, communication sciences and disorders, professional consultation, teacher and clinical training, and educational administration; work that encompasses meeting the needs of language learners and educators at the systems/organizational level as well as in day-to-day classroom learning.
Transnational: With differences in national policies, procedures, and history, the transnational approach infused by Canadian and American authors allows the weaving together of diverse practices, experiences, research, and national leadership. Both American and Canadian perspectives can include an emphasis on multicultural, multilingual pedagogy, a focus on curriculum, and the use of large-scale assessment data to drive improved student achievement. It is the authors’ intent to spotlight powerful instructional and support practices from contexts both north and south of the 49th parallel rather than to provide a comparative perspective. This transnational perspective will also be reflected through the spelling used in this guide. While most of the writing reflects American spelling conventions (e.g., color, favor, center), Canadian conventions are used when discussing Canadian contributions, names, and quotes (e.g., colour, favour, centre). The use of spelling from different nations in one publication is rather unique and is an example of how we have tried to blend transnational perspectives as well as language use.
Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
Asset-Based: An ongoing worldwide movement focuses on the notion of positivism in a number of different disciplines. Positive psychology is gaining in popularity beyond the field of psychology and is reflected in both the fields of speech-language pathology (e.g., Holland & Nelson, 2014) and education (e.g., Zacarian & Staehr Fenner, 2020). Asset-based approaches value and elevate student resources and talents rather than focus on deficits or what the student has not achieved. In the case of English Learners, an asset-based approach means viewing all the internal riches and personal linguistic and cultural contributions that students bring into the classroom as transcending any perceived lack of knowledge or skills. An asset-based approach means acknowledging and integrating students competencies and skills, or in the words of Moll, Amanti, Neff, and Gonzalez (1992), their “funds of knowledge.” The educational use of funds of knowledge significantly impacts how students define themselves, as described in a related concept of “funds of identity” (Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014). An asset-based perspective serves students best and begins with the language we use when talking about students (Sلnchez-Lَpez & Young, 2018). For example, when we say “He is fluent in Tamil and is developing English” rather than “He doesn’t speak English,” we are focusing on the student’s skills and potential. This is one example of maintaining an asset-based perspective in our views of students, which then carries into our interactions with others. By purposefully and consistently recognizing students’ experiences and backgrounds as strengths, educators establish a collective asset-based approach to pedagogy that promotes more authentic integration of cultural and linguistic resources into daily classroom activities. Highlighting these assets in the classroom, while positioning the English Learner as expert when possible, empowers students to find their voices and a new sense of belonging.
THE ORGANIZATION OF THIS BOOK
Researchers and educators agree that strong relationships between students and caring people are crucial for the emotional, academic, linguistic, and social growth of students (e.g., Asgedom & Even, 2017; Cummins, 1996; Kottler, Kottler, & Street, 2008; Zacarian & Staehr Fenner, 2020). Students interact directly and indirectly with a network of people who support their education to various degrees of connection and influence. For example, students interact with relatives in their immediate and extended family, with teachers and classmates in the classroom and around the school, as well as with others who make up their wider school and neighborhood communities. These multifaceted relationships are closely intertwined; each exerts significant influence on the others. For example, administrative decisions affect what teachers do in the classroom, which in turn impacts student learning; a family crisis influences a student’s readiness to learn, which may then alter teacher expectations. Teachers become increasingly culturally competent by learning from their students, the benefits of which can then can be shared with other teachers, cascading greater understanding into the wider school community. The resulting unique inter-relationships can be depicted in the English Learner Interconnected Ecosystem Model presented below.
INTRODUCTION
FIGURE INTRO 1 English Learner Interconnected Ecosystem Model
. School/
Community
. Classroom
3. Families
. Students
The spheres of school/community, classroom, families and students can be envisioned as four separate, large gears, all connecting and interacting to advance student well-being and achievement. When any part of the mechanism is not working to capacity, the entire ecosystem bears the burden of slower forward movement and progress. To best support English Learners, educators can facilitate smooth meshing and interaction among the gears by using culturally and linguistically responsive understanding and practices. This guide explores each large gear of the English Learner Interconnected Ecosystem Model as a separate chapter. We recognize that depending on one’s role, experiences, and responsibilities, some readers may have a greater interest in one chapter over another. You may not currently serve all the different types of learners that are included in this guide. But one day you might. Perhaps an idea, comment, or perspective might inspire you to innovate new professional partnerships and projects.
Each chapter is organized based on a repeated pattern of three parts: (1) What We Know, (2) What It Might Look Like, and (3) Making It Your Own.Each chapter begins with What We Know: an overview of research highlighting the linguistic, cognitive, academic, social, and emotional rationale for inclusion of home languages and cultures as a keystone in culturally responsive education. As with all learning, what we already know provides the basis for additional learning. For this reason, each chapter goes on to ask salient questions, building on current knowledge and exploring additional ideas and applications. These questions can be represented by smaller gears internal to the chapter, showing us what we want to know next about that particular area of investigation. Each chapter will include a visual overview of the questions, for reference purposes.
What It Might Look Like provides a variety of responses to each question using effective and pragmatic Powerful Practices, which are also pictured in visual overviews. Powerful Practices are the cogs of the gears: actions, activities, programs, and interventions that we have curated from educational interactions, observations, classroom practices, professional reading, as well as work and life experiences. To highlight the Powerful Practices,we include examples of implementation using descriptions, photos, explanations, vignettes, sample lesson plans, links to related websites, videos, interviews, and so forth. Sometimes the Powerful Practices are written with specific details about actual practices, sometimes they are portrayed as an amalgamation of activities or contextualized as a narrative. Because many of the Powerful Practices come from our experiences, they often reflect our geography and work lives in Ontario, Canada, and the states of Iowa and Georgia. While we are proud of these models of innovation and records of success, it is important to keep in mind that the Powerful Practices described in this guide are not meant to be a definitive or exhaustive list. No doubt you have Powerful Practices of your own that would be significant contributions to each chapter. Our hope is that the Powerful Practices will provide a catalyst for growing and expanding the support in your educational context for English Learners and their families. Rather than replicating the Powerful
INTRODUCTION
Practices, we hope that you can use them as springboards and liberally adapt them to your particular setting. To facilitate this process, each Powerful Practice concludes with an application component—Making It Your Own— designed to promote educator reflection with activities such as exercises, brainstorming, thought-provoking questions, and further reading.
To better personalize and operationalize the English Learner Interconnected Ecosystem Model, you are invited to complete the provided template on page 255 of this guide, where you will find a working copy of the English Learner Interconnected Ecosystem Model. First, using your own professional knowledge, try brainstorming facts, ideas, thoughts, and musings about your students, families, classroom, school, and community context and jot them inside the appropriate large gear. As you work through the chapters, you can add to each gear with appropriate culturally and linguistically responsive ideas from the Powerful Practices,as well as with your additional thoughts. This brainstorming and labelling will support you to fully consolidate your own version of the model and how it can work in your own context. We will prompt you to add to this model after each chapter. You can do this by yourself, or perhaps you would prefer some professional dialogue with likeminded colleagues sharing this professional learning journey. Read a chapter and then get together to discuss and add to each gear in a professional book club format. By the end of reading and completing this guide, you will have had the opportunity to create your own personalized ecosystem model to support your students in reaching their fullest potential.
In Chapter 1, we examine practices pertaining to the school and community. Specifically, we answer the following questions:
A.What are some ways that schools can provide a welcoming environment
for all students, families, and the local community?
B. How might initial assessment and reception services be offered to new
comer students and their families?
C.What are some ways to facilitate integration of students and families into
school and the larger community?
D.What have we learned so far about supporting English Learners attend
ing school from a distance?
In Chapter 2, we focus on the classroom and instruction by answering the following questions:
A.What components of meaningful instruction are needed to support
English Learners in every classroom?
B. What are some ways to expand students’ connections to new learning in
an additional language?
Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
C.What are some ways to embrace languages that we do not speak in the
classroom?
D.How might we show that it is important for students to continue to
develop the home language?
In Chapter 3, we look at connecting with families, as we answer the following questions:
A.What are some ways to support families who are adjusting to life in a
new country?
B. What are some ways to collaborate with parents?
C.What are some ways to partner with parents to support both the home
language and English language development?
D.What are some ways to communicate with parents when we do not
speak their languages?
In Chapter 4, we answer the following questions revolving around some specific needs of the student:
A.What are some ways to ensure that English Learners maintain high levels
of engagement in language learning?
B. What are some ways to support English Learners with exceptional needs?
C.What additional considerations are needed to help newcomers with a
range of circumstances thrive and be successful?
D.What are some ways to support students with limited or interrupted
formal schooling?
E. What are some ways to support newcomers who may be experiencing
trauma?
We present many essential questions distributed across four chapters. But there are two more key questions—one in the introduction for grounding our efforts and one in the conclusion for reflecting on the work that we have achieved. Let’s begin with the first question, which only you can answer:
Question #1: What are my goals in using this guide?
. ______________________________________________________________________ . ______________________________________________________________________ . ______________________________________________________________________
INTRODUCTION
FIGURE 1.1 School/Community: Overview
.
School/Community
A. What are some
ways that schools can
B. How might
a welcoming
initial assessment environment for all and reception
, families,
services be offered and the local
to newcomer community?
students and their
families?
C. What are some
ways to facilitate D. What have integration of
we learned so far students and families
about supporting into school and the English Learners larger community? attending school from a distance?
CHAPTER 1
School and Community
WHAT WE KNOW
Schools in Canada and the United States often serve as the portal for receiving and serving young English Learners. Some of these students are newcomers, while others are native to the country but perhaps have not yet acquired full command of the language of classroom instruction. In the United States where the population is estimated over 330 million people (United States Census Bureau, 2020), a majority of schools throughout all fifty states have enrolled English Learners (Lynn, 2018). Comprising nearly 10% of students in U.S. public schools and nearly 25% of students in California alone (Ruiz Soto, Hooker, & Batalova, 2015), English Learners “are the fastest-growing student population in the United States, growing 60% in the last decade, as compared with 7% growth of the general student population” (Grantmakers for Education, 2013).
“It is crucial . . . that these students, and all students, have equal access to a high-quality education and the opportunity to achieve their full academic potential. We applaud those working to ensure equal educational opportunities for EL [English Learner] students, as well as the many schools and communities creating programs that recognize the heritage languages of EL students as valuable assets to preserve” (U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education, 2015, p. 1).
Canada, a country of just over 37.5 million people, is also experiencing significant growth of English Learners, welcoming approximately 321,000 newcomers in 2018, its largest annual influx in more than a century (Argitis & Hertzberg, 2019). The city of Toronto in Ontario, Canada, considered the most culturally diverse city in the world, is home to the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), which serves students from over 190 different countries, speaking over 115 different languages. Thirty-four percent of the students speak one or more non-English languages as a home language, while 22% speak both English and a non-English home language at home. The remaining 44% of students speak English as their sole home language (Toronto District School Board, 2013). All ten Canadian provinces and three territories have enrolled English Learners to varying degrees. Also reflecting exponential English Learner impact, Vancouver reports that over sixty schools in their school board have a majority English Learner enrolment.
The Calgary Board of Education in the province of Alberta identifies approximately 25% of their students as English Learners (Skelton, 2014).
The spectrum of English Learners in Canada is comprised of a variety of smaller groups that reflect a wide representation of cultural and linguistic backgrounds, including newcomers and refugees from around the world, indigenous peoples in communities where primarily indigenous languages are spoken (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit), children from French-speaking communities outside of Quebec, and children from Canadian communities where another language is spoken, such as the Mennonite and Hutterite (Markus, n.d.) communities.
In the United States, where the majority of English Learners are speakers of Spanish, English Learners also lay claim to a vast variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. While English Learners in the United States are partly composed of newcomers or refugees, their languages also might reflect state history, from multigenerational Spanish speakers, to Germanspeaking migrants in Montana, former refugees of Vietnam and their second or third generations whose first language is Vietnamese, or people speaking Ilokano in Hawaii or Yupik languages in Alaska (Bialik, Scheller, & Walker, 2018; Lynn, 2018), to name only a few.
Due to the dramatically increasing presence of diverse cultures and languages in classrooms and communities, schools experience urgency to explicitly connect English Learners with achieving academic accomplishments so they may continue their success in post-secondary studies or in the workplace. Today’s classrooms demand different and fully inclusive ways of conducting the business of education. Classroom teachers often recognize that strategies for instruction and assessment intended for non-English Learners are insufficient to meet the linguistic and cultural needs of English Learners. Since the scales have already tipped under the weight of increased English Learner enrollment in many classrooms, instructional research, data interpretation, guidelines for learning to read in English, engagement with parents and families, indeed every aspect of school, must be informed by facts that are English Learner-specific and focused. It is not appropriate or effective to simply apply the same instructional strategies or approaches used for non-English Learners and expect success for all students. For example, when a district, agency, or school employs instructional coaches, those coaches should be expected to possess training about language acquisition and experience relevant to English Learners. When school principals or superintendents are hired, they should be prepared with deep knowledge about English Learners and their families to create an equitable and caring environment where all are welcome and supported to achieve high standards.
The enrollment of even one English Learner in a school constitutes a mandate for their equitable opportunity and treatment. This directive requires conscious attention to the way school is conducted so that English Learners
Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
and their families see themselves reflected and capable of achieving success to the same extent as all other students. Whether English Learners are gifted, have limited or interrupted educations, are second or third generation immigrants, have special education needs, are undocumented or documented refugees, are children of parents with work visas, are adopted, or fit any other description of English Learner, each deserves the same opportunity in reaching full developmental potential along with all of their peers. Accordingly, this means that all aspects of school, including classroom activities, texts and materials, school activities, special programming, extracurricular activities, parental communication and involvement, and community efforts must visibly take into account and explicitly engage English Learners and their families in an equitable fashion. To highlight this developing sensibility of equitable inclusion, the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice jointly issued a letter of guidance in 2015 to all superintendents at the helm of public school districts laying out expectations in line with current policy and laws. The letter stated that, “In addition to ensuring EL students have access to the core curriculum, SEAs [state education agencies] and school districts must provide EL students equal opportunities to meaningfully participate in all programs and activities of the SEA or school district—whether curricular, co-curricular, or extracurricular. Such programs and activities include pre-kindergarten programs, magnet programs, career and technical education programs, counseling services, Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, gifted and talented programs, online and distance learning opportunities, performing and visual arts, athletics, and extracurricular activities such as clubs and honor societies” (U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education, 2015, p. 18).
While many teachers of English Learners have received training in researchbased pedagogy designed to promote the development of both language and content knowledge, significant variability in teacher preparation, as well as local requirements that govern educational practices for English Learners, diverge throughout Canada and the United States. This unevenness in educational programming for English Learners, as well as in teacher preparation programs for those serving English Learners, highlights the lack of coherence between teachers’ preparation for working with English Learners and knowledge about how to serve the diverse students who actually populate contemporary classrooms. In addition, teachers of English Learners are not only expected to possess pedagogical skills but are often called upon to expand their reach by addressing various concomitant issues related to living conditions, food security, cultural adjustment, mental health issues, family communication, and so much more.
Areas with the most rapid current growth generally tend to have less experience educating the English Learner population, which can cause seasoned teachers to struggle with their level of confidence in being prepared to support and teach English Learners who currently make up their classrooms.
Chapter 1 • School and Community
Such teachers can benefit greatly, as can their students, from exploring the notion of affirming student identities.
To enable English Learners’ engagement with literacy, Cummins, Mirza, and Stille (2012) highlight, among other things, the importance of teachers connecting with students’ lives and affirming student identities in a myriad of ways. This “English Learner-specific” approach, which explicitly considers and responds to the unique background characteristics and distinctive data related to English Learners as it contrasts with that of non-English Learners, plays a critical and essential role in the classroom engagement and academic achievement of English Learners.
Despite the aforementioned challenges in some locales, countless educators succeed in making a profound daily difference in English Learners’ and their families’ lives by enacting and building foundational dispositions of empathy and professionalism within their classroom and community contexts (Jones, Weissbourd, Bouffard, Kahn, & Ross Anderson, 2020). Such is the intent of the Powerful Practices described in this book: to share ways for educators to expand profound daily difference-making interactions in students’ and families’ lives.
The authors of this book concur that empathy serves as essential grounding for the implementation of the Powerful Practices,fueling advocacy and inspiring informed responses. Empathetic, knowledgeable, and prepared educators embrace their essential roles with English Learners, advocating for and learning together with their students and their families while promoting student success and academic achievement. Such responsive practitioners also often serve as the most critical factor in students’ success at school and beyond through their daily choices and actions (Brayko, 2018; Staehr Fenner & Snyder, 2017; Wright-Maley & Green, 2015). Maintaining this responsiveness became even more critical during the spring of 2020.
In the interest of public health due to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools required that teachers educate all students by maintaining their classrooms via distance learning. Such a monumental instructional shift challenged teachers not only to quickly become adept with distance education technology and pedagogy but also to adapt their classroom approaches and strategies for communicating a welcoming and friendly stance that conveys emotional comfort and safety during unprecedented and particularly stressful times. Teachers of English Learners in the United States and Canada, from populous provinces and states to rural areas, reached out in pioneering efforts to ensure that English Learners continued to sense recognition and inclusion as a valued part of their classroom and school community. Likewise, clinicians in educational settings, such as speech-language pathologists, psychologists, and social workers, quickly learned how to adapt their services to telepractice technology, in order to provide continued support for students and families. Their professional regulatory boards, whose mandate is to protect the public, also rallied to guide clinicians by drafting standards
Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
for virtual care (e.g., American Speech-Language and Hearing Association, 2020). Educational professionals recognized the urgent need to balance student and family emotional wellness during a particularly stressful and vulnerable time in history, with the need to help some gain access to technology and to provide effective quality education and interventions in new and exciting ways.
To accomplish such social and emotional continuity between the distance learning platform and students and families at home, educators must first respond to the essential question, In what myriad of ways can we communicate our foundational environment of caring and responsiveness, reduce anxiety, engage families in meaningful activities, provide resources, and make personal connections, as well as cover content and language development, when our students are learning from their homes?The answers to this question include strategies that are only as limited as teachers’ imaginations and actions. In this chapter, we share some useful resources and describe adaptable ideas innovated by educators in the early stages of reaching out to effectively maintain the personal threads of connection that foster equity, inclusion, and learning in a virtual context.
After establishing and maintaining an appropriate learning environment for English Learners, teachers must attend to many additional challenges. Against the rapidly increasing and diversifying demographic backdrop, other competing instructional needs have been heaped onto teachers’ plates in the United States and Canada. Common Core standards, individual state and provincial content standards, English language development standards, such as those developed by WIDA (2020c) and English Language Proficiency Assessment for the 21st Century (ELPA21) (2018) in the United States, the Alberta K-12 ESL Proficiency Benchmarks (Alberta Government, 19952020a), and Steps to English Proficiency (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015), as well as federal guidelines, high stakes assessments, special education mandates, reading instruction expected of teachers not previously trained as reading teachers—the dizzying range of teachers’ responsibilities can seem overwhelming. Teachers of English Learners who are able to weave targeted English language development standards together with content standards can simultaneously promote students’ progress through the stages of language acquisition, as well as advance content learning. When both of these sets of instructional standards are blended together by artful teachers in grade-level and content area classrooms, appropriate instruction and assessment of English Learners thrives. In a smart combination of both sets of standards and an economy of effort, students simultaneously learn language when it is rooted in content learning (Alberta Government, 19952020b; Larson & Lau, 2016; Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015; Van Viegen Stille, Jang, & Wagner, 2015; WIDA, 2020a).
While each of the ten Canadian provinces and three territories manage educational policies, including those related to English Learners, independently of the federal Canadian government based on the Constitution, the United
Chapter 1 • School and Community
States Department of Education (USDE) is the ultimate source of oversight of education in all states, providing federal education guidance and compliance monitoring, complemented by each state’s department of education. In practical matters, populous states might function more independently while other states tend to share costs and expertise by joining together in consortia, such as WIDA (2020c) or ELPA21 (2018), to develop materials such as English Learner assessments and standards or learning targets.
To set the stage for overall successful interactions with English Learners and their families across a spectrum of cultures and languages, the most essential action that schools can undertake is to provide a welcoming environment. A warm and friendly atmosphere where families can seek resources or assistance, volunteer, ask questions, and more, will attract families to the school and can be part of an overall strategy of inclusion. Further, such an appealing environment reduces students’ anxiety, allowing them to focus on new learning. Finally, since parent involvement in children’s education correlates highly with increased achievement, consistently communicating emotional comfort, safety, welcome, and respect as foundational in the school environment is essential to support family involvement (Staehr Fenner & Snyder, 2017).
Inextricably linked to welcoming and interacting with English Learners and their families in culturally and linguistically responsive ways is the identification of students’ individual starting points in their English learning journey. Wide variability in the English language experience of individual English Learners across grade levels underscores the necessity for accurate initial assessments. Consistent identification of instructional entry points allows students to clearly demonstrate their progress and growth in a standards-based format. Further, assessment data enables educators to match instruction with demonstrated student needs. Similarly, when rich individual background data is accurately interpreted and shared, teacher collaborators throughout the school can consistently facilitate appropriate scaffolding and supports. Teachers are then empowered to provide adjusted linguistic expectations promoting student engagement in grade-level content at their current levels of English language development, even while “pushing” and supporting students to higher levels of language performance and content learning.
When serving newcomer and refugee students who may have experienced a range of challenges, including the psychological impact of trauma, sensitivity and information are key. Teachers’ awareness and focused attention to lesson design, as well as ways to best support such students and families, may also be needed. Together, educators can form a network of responsive supporters that mirror a schoolwide stance and attitude of inclusion and compassion.
Turning attention next to practical instructional considerations, we suggest ways for teachers to productively engage English Learners in the simultaneous development of language and content learning within their own
Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
classrooms. Many of the Powerful Practices described in this chapter rely on one or more of the following three important features: student motivation, relevance, and interaction with peers. When teachers embed these key features in their lessons, students tend to experience high impact on their language development and content learning, increased engagement and interest through context and personal connections, and increased voluntary socialization with others to advance language learning and relationship building (Bernard, 2010; Mousa, 2018; Saeed & Zyngier, 2012).
In this chapter, we explore focused approaches to inclusion of English Learners and their families in schools and communities, as we answer the following key questions:
A.What are some ways that schools can provide a welcoming environment
for all students, families, and the local community?
B. How might initial assessment and reception services be offered to
newcomer students and their families?
C.What are some ways to facilitate integration of students and families
into school and the larger community?
D.What have we learned so far about supporting English Learners attend
ing school from a distance?
FIGURE 1.2 Question A Overview
Include
Cultivate a
diverse
culturally
perspectives
responsive
via school
school life.
resources.
A. What are some ways that schools can provide a welcoming
environment for all students, families, and the local
community?
Provide
Implement
wrap-around
professional
support services
development
with community
for staff.
partners.
Chapter 1 • School and Community
A. WHAT ARE SOME WAYS THAT SCHOOLS CAN PROVIDE A WELCOMING ENVIRONMENT FOR ALL STUDENTS, FAMILIES, AND THE LOCAL COMMUNITY?
• Powerful Practice 1: Cultivate a culturally responsive ethos that permeates every
facet of school life.
• Powerful Practice 2: Provide wrap-around support services for newcomer
students and their families in tandem with education and community partners.
• Powerful Practice 3: Implement professional development for staff to increase
knowledge, build empathy, and support inclusion of newcomer students and families in all aspects of school.
• Powerful Practice 4: Prioritize the inclusion of books and resources representing
diverse perspectives throughout the school and community.
Powerful Practice 1: Cultivate a culturally responsive ethos that permeates every facet of school life.
What It Might Look Like
Experienced teachers of English Learners know that learning is kick-started only when students feel relaxed enough in a new school and classroom environment to attend to the demands required by active learning, especially in another language. By putting both students and families at ease through seizing every opportunity to demonstrate welcome and inclusion, the school starts an intentional relationship-building process to best foster learning and student achievement, as well as parent and community engagement.
Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
Many schools in Canada and the United
FIGURE 1.3 Tammy Ross
States exhibit an equitable and inclusive mindset throughout their buildings and environments. A thoughtful school administrator’s vision that is shared by all staff, accomplished through collective daily actions, can set an allembracing tone for a culturally responsive school. Meet Tammy Ross, award-winning retired principal of Toronto’s highly diverse Crescent Town Elementary School, where the majority of the students are English Learners. Tammy shared a few of her school’s success stories in the following interview.
Authors:Tammy, what do you consider some of the most important factors for a school to be able to create an inclusive environment where students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds can meet with success?
Tammy:We had high expectations for the teachers and in turn they were having high expectations for the kids. The kids were able to match or surpass Canadian-born kids in other schools in provincial testing. If these kids (English Learners) were able to do it, there’s a reason; it’s the quality of the teaching; it’s the high expectations. The kids can do it; that’s the message that we try to share with our staff and our parents.
Teachers used to think our kids can’t do this because they don’t have the language skills, and we moved our thinking to the point of recognizing the language skills the children have right now. What are we going to do to move them forward? So it’s a shift in thinking.
When we were hiring people, we were looking for staff with experience supporting English Learners and also who were open to learn and had the idea that every child can learn. And also open to working with families. Ninety-four percent of our kids came from homes where another language was spoken. We tried to look for staff who spoke the languages of the community. Most of the staff did speak another language, whether it was one of the ones spoken in the community or another language. We tried to find people who reflected
(Continued)
Chapter 1 • School and Community
(Continued)
the community but also people who had the compassion to understand what newcomer families were experiencing.
Coming there, I really had to be open to learning about the community. I had a lot of support in that way from staff, teachers, the community, our settlement worker. For example, if a parent in the community died, they would explain to me what the protocol was, and we would go into the community to visit them. When a child was sick for an extended period or we unfortunately had some tragedies with the parents and children in the community, we would go and do visits and bring food and show our respect for the families. We gained respect from the community by doing those visits.
We had these two little boys who would run away every day, and every day we would go to their home where they would be having tea and sit with the parents and try to help and get the kids to come back to school. These two little boys hadn’t been to school before, and it was snowing and cold. They were just afraid.
I tried to be visible. In the morning, I would stand on the bridge to the school and say hello and welcome, and I think parents appreciated that. If I could, I would do that at the end of the day too, and say “see you tomorrow.” Research shows it’s so important that kids feel that someone is welcoming them to school and they feel like part of the community. If I knew personal things about the parents or family, I could say something. When I retired, a parent said to me: “Who’s going to remind my son to wear his boots in the wintertime when you’re gone?”
I think it’s really important to consider the whole family and that there are varying needs depending on where they come from. Understanding the children’s needs through their families. How teachers had to adjust what they’re doing. If the mother came and said my son saw his father being shot, you understand more about why that child is behaving in a certain way. Not necessarily giving advice but trying to understand where the kids are coming from.
It’s that trust too. Trust the people around you who know the community but who also understand your values and what you want to do for the school moving forward. Being honest with the community is so important too. For me to say to them, I really don’t know, can you help me, can you teach me?
Building relationships from the get-go is so important. A smile does a lot. The people who were my front line people in the office—you want them to be welcoming and have smiling faces for everybody who comes into the school. I would sometimes talk with the office staff and tell them that they were the first faces that many of these families dealt with when they came to Canada, they had to be welcoming and kind. Then a parent who’s having a
Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
really hard time will feel comfortable enough to have a conversation, which might lead to helping them. The school secretary was very open to sharing with parents about her own experiences as a new immigrant to Canada. Sometimes parents would come into the school just to sit and talk with her.
We used to do Snuggle Up and Readon Tuesdays from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m., once a week. The teacher-librarian would open the school library and parents could come with their kids to read and take books home. We also had the parents reading the multilingual parts of the books to the kids. We could get fifty or sixty people coming on an evening. Different teachers would sign up to read to the kids; grandparents too. The school became a community hub where people enjoyed coming during off-school time. It was also a way of demonstrating what we were doing with books in school so that parents could feel they could do that at home as well.
We’ve also done things like a neighbourhood walk with the staff so they could see where the community was living. We arranged to do a walk through the neighbourhood to look at all the resources that are available and to see where the kids were coming from. We also walked out of the community to where the subway is and farther away to see where the community services were. This way the staff were aware of what was offered for families. And to see where the kids are hanging out after school is interesting! It started a different conversation for teachers; for instance, there was a roof garden in one of the community service organizations. After seeing it, one of the teachers got her students to go there and plant.
As expressed in her brief interview highlighting essential principles of her successful leadership, Tammy’s tenure consistently modeled specific goals. Her leadership embodied maintaining high expectations for her teachers and staff; serving as a reliable presence and trusted advocate visible throughout the school day; setting high expectations for students; recognizing students’ current language skills as a starting point to build upon; developing a hiring policy that rewards multilingual skills and welcoming dispositions; modeling personal engagement with families and community during difficult or stressful events; and developing familiarity with the whole family’s story as a means of accurately understanding and supporting students.
In both similar and divergent ways, other culturally responsive school leaders in the United States and Canada have enacted a multiplicity of impactful ideas achieving powerful outcomes in their contexts. For example, as a manifestation of welcoming and including new students and families, educators and students at one Iowa school focused on identifying kind actions that anyone could perform to convey a sense of belonging and caring to newcomers. A lead teacher combined all of her students’ co-created ideas in a project called Acts of Kindness Through a Cultural Lens.Their suggestions were
Chapter 1 • School and Community
FIGURE 1.4 Acts of Kindness Through a Cultural Lens Bookmark
SOURCE:Heartland Area Education Agency, https://www.heartlandaea.org/
Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
printed on bookmarks and distributed to teachers and students throughout the school. Large posters of the Acts of Kindness were displayed in the front lobby of the school, along with multilingual Welcome to Our School posters. The Acts of Kindness initiative was a regular subject of discussion during homeroom periods. Administrators dedicated time in weekly staff meetings for teachers to report on kind gestures observed in action. As such, the thoughtful and welcoming practices became part of the school’s fabric and served as norms of behavior for everyone in the school.
Physical spaces of any school can offer additional avenues for communicating a culturally responsive ethos. For example, an administrative team in a TDSB high school, whose population was evolving to include many newly arrived Muslim students, designed a foot-washing station in two washrooms to streamline the process for students preparing for midday prayers. Many schools and colleges now routinely dedicate spaces for students so that they can seamlessly perform their religious duties on campus during the school day. Other schools have conducted projects for making use of their physical spaces to visibly support an increased sense of inclusion and welcoming from the moment of entry. Simply transforming a corner of the foyer or main office into a parent welcome area, stocked with beverages, newspapers, magazines, and informational materials in the community languages of the school presents a natural gathering place where parents and other visitors begin to feel a sense of belonging. Along with having ready interpretation services, visible efforts such as these signal to students, families, and other community members that they are acknowledged, respected, and valued.
Teaching strategies can evolve to become more intentional in the inclusion of linguistically and culturally relevant pedagogy throughout all subject areas across all grade levels. A case in point was designed by a group of preservice high school physics teacher candidates at the University of Toronto. These beginning professionals designed a lesson for a Grade 11 physics class on the properties of light and colour. They adopted the idea of embedding cultural connections whenever possible to interest and engage students and promote interaction. During the physics lesson, students were invited to jot down the words for one colour in their home languages and add some cultural information about the significance of that colour in their home cultures. A gallery walk provided an opportunity for everyone to expand their linguistic and cultural expertise on the topic of colour significance in different cultures.
In another rich example of inclusive instruction, a middle school mathematics teacher demonstrated increased intentionality in making cultural connections when he designed a geometry unit that incorporated learning about the use of geometric shapes in Islamic religious art and decoration. Using an activity downloaded from the Asia Society (2020), his students discovered the basis for construction of traditional Islamic patterns based on geometric shapes and then created their own designs. Having built a significant background, the geometry students were ready to view images of mosques and other buildings to identify the use of similar geometric patterns in the real world.
Chapter 1 • School and Community
FIGURE 1.5 Physics Venn Diagram FIGURE 1.6 Physics Venn Diagram
Activity I Activity II
Making It Your Own
Cultivating a culturally responsive ethos that permeates every facet of school life is an ongoing goal that begins with a vision and individual mindful actions. Consider the suggestions listed in Figure 1.7 Culturally Responsive Ethos,that can be demonstrated by various areas of influence and impact within the school. Some suggestions might already be very familiar and well established in your setting. As you survey your school, what visual representations of your students’ cultures and languages are incorporated into the environment?
FIGURE 1.7 Culturally Responsive Ethos
AREA OF INFLUENCE
OR IMPACT IN THE ACTIONS FOR CULTIVATING A CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE ETHOS THAT
SCHOOL PERMEATES EVERY FACET OF SCHOOL LIFE
Teachers and staff • Use students’ preferred names and pronounce them correctly. Avoid
personal level simplifying or changing a student’s name.
• Learn and use a few words or greetings in students’ languages. • Conduct home visits.
• Know backgrounds of students and implications for instruction. • Prepare the class in advance to receive newcomers. • Reach out to parents and families.
• Pair a buddy or student ambassador with each newcomer. • Other ideas:
Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
AREA OF INFLUENCE
OR IMPACT IN THE ACTIONS FOR CULTIVATING A CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE ETHOS THAT
SCHOOL PERMEATES EVERY FACET OF SCHOOL LIFE
Classroom and • Display diversity in posters, dual language and multicultural books, poetry,
physical environment word walls, etc.
• Provide a print-rich environment with pictorial support.
• Ensure that students see their languages and cultures reflected in a variety
of ways (e.g., artifacts, flags, posters, multilingual signage).
• Other ideas:
Instruction and • Consider and respond to student’s English language development levels.
assessments
• Provide scaffolds and support.
• Differentiate linguistic expectations based on English Learner-specific data.
Interpret results based on differentiated language expectations and other student data.
• Teach reading with full understanding of students’ language background and
developmental language needs.
• Incorporate students’ home languages routinely, flexibly, and strategically in
instruction (translanguaging).
• Include historical perspectives, literature, music, contributions, etc., from
students’ cultures as they relate to the content area (e.g., games from other countries in physical education; international instruments or music in band, orchestra, music, or choral classes, etc.).
• Other ideas:
Texts and materials • Match supplementary materials and supports with English language
development levels.
• Reflect diverse student experiences, cultures, and languages.
• Incorporate differentiated supplementary materials that support content
instruction.
• Provide bilingual or first language materials as needed.
• Ensure that classroom materials reflect diversity of all students (e.g., skin
tones in crayons, colored pencils; multiethnic and differently abled dolls and other diverse models and playthings in early years learning centers).
• Other ideas:
Extracurricular • Ensure equitable participation of English Learners in all aspects of school
activities and (e.g., band, chorus, sports teams, school newspaper, clubs, honor society,
events gifted programming, special education representation, etc.).
• Incorporate extracurricular events and clubs reflective of diverse cultural
interests.
• Incorporate music reflecting students’ cultures into school concerts.
(Continued)
Chapter 1 • School and Community
FIGURE 1.7 (Continued)
AREA OF INFLUENCE
OR IMPACT IN THE ACTIONS FOR CULTIVATING A CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE ETHOS THAT
SCHOOL PERMEATES EVERY FACET OF SCHOOL LIFE
• Create a “speakers’ bureau” of representative student ambassadors for
participation and presenting at local conventions, conferences, community meetings, and exchanges with other schools.
• Other ideas:
Community • Invite community partners to volunteer at school; solicit businesses to
participation partner with school as sponsors; include and explicitly invite parents
at school and families to all school events; involve community volunteers to staff a
mentoring program for students or parents; provide childcare, transportation, and food at events for parents; collaborate with local civic groups, places of worship, media, and advocacy groups to expand involvement, support, and communication with students and families.
• Other ideas:
Parental • Ensure that interpreters are available at parent-teacher conferences.
communication
and outreach • Ensure that interpreters are available for parent-initiated interactions.
• Dedicate a phone number allowing parents to report school absences in the
home language.
• Provide families with written home communication and phone calls in their
preferred language.
• Offer a family literacy program.
• Invite parents to read bilingual books to students at school.
• Provide simultaneous interpretation at parent meetings.
• Ensure that English Learner parents belong to the school’s parent-teacher
advisory group.
• Offer a parent meeting place at the school that features first language materials, tables and chairs, and other resources to convey welcoming.
• Invite parents to volunteer to support teachers in the classroom by cutting,
copying, laminating, or other needed activities.
• Involve parents as classroom speakers or guests.
• Connect students and families with others who speak their language.
• Offer English and citizenship classes for parents.
• Explore technology that enhances school-home communication, such as
reminders about school events.
• Other ideas:
Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
AREA OF INFLUENCE
OR IMPACT IN THE ACTIONS FOR CULTIVATING A CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE ETHOS THAT
SCHOOL PERMEATES EVERY FACET OF SCHOOL LIFE
Office and school • Emphasize the important role of every school employee sharing and
support staff communicating the school’s attitude of welcome and friendliness with
students and families.
• Provide staff training that includes warm greetings in various languages and
relevant cultural information.
• Ensure that the make-up of school staff reflects the diversity of the
community.
• Clarify specific expectations of staff actions. • Other ideas:
School nurse or health • Become informed about holistic and culturally diverse home medical
office practices (e.g., the use of various culturally specific home remedies).
• Learn a few phrases in students’ languages to be able to calm or
provide comfort.
• Where possible, obtain glossaries of medical translations (e.g., Erickson
Translation (2020) provides a COVID-19 glossary in 18 languages).
• Ensure that staff have information about the acculturation process,
identifying stimuli that can trigger post-traumatic stress and provide information about supportive approaches.
• Be prepared to advise staff of ways to practice self care to deal with their
own stress or fatigue.
• Ensure availability of bandages for diverse students in various skin tones. • Other ideas:
For additional foundational ideas for creating the best possible welcoming environment and atmosphere throughout your school, review the site and roadmap from The Language Friendly School,developed in the Netherlands by the Rutu Foundation for Intercultural Multilingual Education (2019). This unique initiative is responding to the fact that worldwide, multilingualism has become the norm rather than the exception. The foundation espouses the belief that all children have the right to an equitable education that respects their cultural identity. The website displays a “road map” that schools can follow to build a school environment that embraces the languages and cultures of all students in the school community. What does being a language friendly school mean to you? Can you use the road map below to see your school’s accomplishments and needs? Where is there room for growth and what will you do about it? Beginning with one or two new initiatives is a great start.
Chapter 1 • School and Community
FIGURE 1.8 The Language Friendly School
The Language Friendly
School
WHAT WE DON’T DO AS LANGUAGE FRIENDLY SCHOOLS WHAT WE DO
As a school In the classroom
• We do not prohibit or • We develop a language friendly • We inform the whole school • Our teachers are Informed • We make room for students’
discourage the use of other plan together. community about the about the role of home
languages at school.
importance of home languages in learning
• We regularly evaluate our languages. additional languages.
• We do not punish our language friendly plan and adapt • We encourage all students to
students for using their when necessary. • As teachers, we work together • We offer regular training and
home languages at school. with parents to support the professional development to
• We have a Language learning of children. support our teachers in their
• We do not prohibit or Coordinator who monitors the multilingual pedagogical
discourage parents to use implementation of our language • We facilitate meetings where approaches.
their own languages at friendly plan. parents can use their home • We offer where possible
school.
languages. • We share and regularly
• We encourage making a reflect on our approaches
• We do not advise parents systematic inventory of • We facilitate multilingual and the materials we use.
to use a different language students’ home languages. communication with parents. • In our classrooms, the home
at home with their children. • We reflect on our own values
• We give visual representation to • We facilitate after school and ideas and are aware of
• We do not allow exclusion students’ home languages at language clubs. our attitudes towards
or bullying around school. language, cultural, and ethnic • We promote written, oral,
languages, dialects, or • We ensure that there are diversity.
accents. • We use language buddies for books available in various
children who speak the same languages. • We offer our teachers self-
languages. evaluation tools.
• Our teachers and staff are
• We pay attention to exclusion or aware of language and
bullying around languages, learning difficulties in relation
dialects or accents. to multilingualism.
De Taalvriendelijke School© is een initiatief van de Rutu Foundationvoor intercultureel meertalig onderwijs
www.languagefriendlyschool.org
The Language Friendly School network promotes language friendly learning environments and innovative multilingual pedagogies. Language Friendly Schools commit not to punish and suppress the use of non-dominant languages. A Language Friendly School plan is adapted to the school’s own needs and aims at creating an inclusive and language friendly learning environment for all students. The Language Friendly School (www.languagefriendlyschool.org) was founded in 2019 by Ellen-Rose Kambel and Emmanuelle Le Pichon as a programme of the Rutu Foundation for Intercultural Multilingual Education.
Powerful Practice 2: Make connections with wrap-around support for newcomer students and their families through education and community partners.
What It Might Look Like
Since newcomer students and families arrive at both Canadian and U.S. schools with a wide-ranging scope of backgrounds and resources, prepared schools must be nimble in identifying and responding to needs that exist within homes and families that could undermine success in school. To increase the capacity for providing meaningful support for both newcomer students and families, experienced school boards and districts in the United States and Canada have forged networks of education and community partners to share and multiply their considerable talents and resources. Schools can access a variety of resources and allies to meet unprecedented needs in their schools by compiling an eclectic list of imaginative education and community partners. The wide-ranging list of potential partners should include representatives from refugee resettlement, faith-based and service organizations; clothing, furniture, and food banks; cultural community sponsors such as a local museum, zoo, or theater; local newspapers and media; colleges and universities; as well as local businesses. Once identified, the entire community can be called upon and involved in making a welcoming and supportive community for everyone.
An elementary school that had just enrolled a large number of young children arriving directly from a refugee camp where they had lived for months provides a great example of wrap-around support. Each of the children had experienced interruptions in education and were beginning to learn in a new language. In response to the needs communicated to the business community by the school, a local car dealership owner dedicated twenty employees to volunteer weekly at the school. Their task was to read stories to the newcomers one-on-one and support literacy development in ways directed by teachers. At the end of the school year, a volunteer celebration with lunch was held honoring and celebrating the faithful volunteers and their contributions to literacy development at the school.
Similarly, a local service organization of retired women extended their support to K-12 newcomers by creating a service project to facilitate their successful start at school. By coordinating lists of grade-level school supplies, they were able to provide each new student an appropriate backpack filled
Chapter 1 • School and Community
with the necessary tools, setting newcomers up for success in the classroom and also supporting their parents. Distributed to students and families during an initial home visit by school representatives and interpreters, The Backpack Projectvisibly demonstrated a connection with this community organization that extended the school’s wrap-around support for newcomers.
Local businesses in the community can follow suit by collaborating with schools as corporate sponsors. In one town, the business consortium provided access to cultural attractions for newcomers and families by supplying admission tickets for the local museum, a community children’s theater production, the zoo, and an amusement park. Partnering with these businesses, the schools organized transportation and chaperones for acculturating their newest members to popular but often costly attractions in the community.
Wrap-around services to support newcomer students and families were further extended at another school where teachers themselves noticed that some of their newcomers showed a lack of basic material resources, such as sufficient food to sustain them over the weekend and clothing suitable for cold weather. After soliciting household and clothing donations schoolwide and throughout the community, volunteer teachers and staff organized a “garage sale” in the school gymnasium for interested newcomers and families who could take items they needed. The occasion grew to become an annual highlight, now even offering household items and furniture for easing the transition of newcomers and families into an unfamiliar environment as they establish their new homes with a welcoming and appreciated community event.
Partnerships with public library boards bring together another powerful umbrella of services to support newcomer students and their families. Many public library branches stock books, magazines, and electronic resources in a variety of community languages. Programs to support newcomer students and their families abound in many districts. In Calgary, Alberta, Canada, the public library offers a slew of programs and services for newcomer parents, from settlement service counsellors to coffee and conversation clubs, writing clubs, and citizenship exam preparation classes. Parents and caregivers can participate together with their children in a translanguaging-friendly program called Learn English Storytime, where adults and children can meet and practice English with others who speak the same home language. The Toronto Public Library system offers online library information for newcomers in forty different languages and a “New to Canada” blog that points the way to information and resources available from the library and around the city for new residents of Canada. In 2016, the Toronto Public Library entered into a partnership with Sun Life Financial to proffer a special museum and arts pass for Syrian refugee families new to the city, giving them free introductory visits to local cultural institutions like the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Ontario Science Centre.
Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
In many areas, universities and colleges partner regularly with the middle and high schools by hosting college campus tours and special services for newcomers. Interpreters are arranged in advance, and there is ample time for questions and answers at the university or college. In this way, newcomers can begin to gain a realistic perspective of what is available to them and set future goals for themselves. In addition, collegial and reciprocal relationships allow the school and university to partner in numerous endeavors, including hosting student teacher practica, conducting research, and teacher placement after graduation.
Focusing their wrap-around support on healing and family well-being, Toronto’s settlement agency, CultureLink, contributes a creative and ongoing way of partnering with schools in easing newcomer transitions. When thousands of Syrian children enrolled in Canadian schools in 2015, the Nai Syrian Children’s Choir was soon established. The chorus of children, ranging from six to twelve years old, received formal music education and now, confident and beloved, they serve as ambassadors as they perform their music at many official and community events, including at Canada’s federal Parliament buildings in Ottawa.
These examples of education and community partnerships described for enhancing and extending wrap-around services for newcomers and families are but a tiny sampling. With imagination being the only limitation, boundless opportunities exist between schools and potential partners for extending caring and meaningful support to newcomers and families.
Making It Your Own
What examples of wrap-around services and supports for newcomers and families exist in your context? What suggestions do you have for forging relationships and new connections to extend wrap-around support at your school? Have individuals at your school started any initiatives based on student or family needs they have observed or heard about? Are educators and staff aware of where they can access information about available resources and support for newcomers and families?
Powerful Practice 3: Provide professional development for staff that will increase their knowledge, build empathy, and support the inclusion of newcomer students and families in all aspects of school.
Chapter 1 • School and Community
What It Might Look Like
One high performing, suburban elementary school of 215 students experienced a sudden transition in enrollment over a two-year time span. As diverse newcomers moved in and others moved out, the enrollment at this neighborhood school stood at 232 students, 104 of whom had recently arrived from various countries and refugee camps in Africa. Teachers who were prepared to teach their students of previous years were now struggling to meet the unfamiliar demands for intensive reading instruction in English, as well as to understand student behaviors, cultural practices, and language differences among their newest students. They felt that their school was in danger of losing its academic distinction, based on standardized assessment results, as a high achieving school. The principal knew that a comprehensive building-wide professional development effort was needed to invest in teachers and empower them with the background knowledge and new tools they were seeking.
At the same time, neighboring residents within the school’s attendance boundaries were also struggling with their own misperceptions and fears related to the newcomer families. For example, a police report was made by nervous homeowners one evening with a complaint of several men “walking around the neighborhood.” Upon closer examination, newcomer parents who lived in the large apartment complex did, in fact, walk around the neighborhood each evening, often in a small group of three or four friends. This practice was the same as they had done each evening in the refugee camp, conversing as they walked. It had not occurred to them that this practice might induce fear in observers.
In another example of misunderstood intentions, police assistance was sought when children who wandered off the sidewalk on their way to school had stepped into a private yard to pick apples. A resettlement caseworker suggested to the neighbors that children recently arrived from a large refugee camp where food was scarce could understandably be excited at the sight of juicy red apples. In fact, in their new environment, no one had yet explained or demonstrated the purpose or expectation of adhering to sidewalks or the notion of a private yard with privately owned trees or that fruit on trees is not necessarily meant to be picked and eaten without permission. As is true with any assessment, evaluating that which has not been explicitly taught is unfair practice. Further, uninformed assumptions can likely lead to inaccurate conclusions.
The perceptive principal at this small neighborhood school decided to organize and implement an ongoing two-year professional development plan for her staff, calling upon many local resources and community members to
Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
assist. Following analysis of a needs assessment, the timeline and elements of the ongoing professional development were conceived, including an embedded professional learning community (PLC) at the school where grade-level teams of teachers could try out and process new learning, share results, and gain support from each other.
To help staff build empathy and understanding of English Learners, teachers were asked to submit a list of their questions to the principal and also to suggest ideas for what was needed to support them. They asked questions such as “How can we improve how we help the community to better understand our new population?” “Could we bring in a panel of parents from different countries and have them explain their education and what their expectations were/are of our education system?” and “What types of after school programs and community involvement should we be offering?” Based on this starting point, The Four-Tiered Model of Professional Development took shape (Figure 1.9). It presented a comprehensive approach to professional development, inclusive of the neighbors and families in the community, by addressing four categories of learning:
. Build empathy and understanding for students and families by learning
about their experiences and realities.
. Provide training on instructional and assessment strategies that meet the
needs of English Learners and culturally and linguistically diverse students.
. Involve and partner with parents and community members in new learn
ing opportunities and outreach efforts to build community.
. Highlight and address under-resourced learner issues by creating partner
ships with community organizations and businesses.
As one introductory aspect of the professional learning addressing all four tiers of professional development described above, the teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) designed and organized a cultural exploration activity for her colleagues to support them in better understanding the newest residents in the community. She organized visits to nearby cultural venues to experience firsthand where families shopped, ate, worked, worshipped, and gathered. Teachers reported that they enjoyed this activity immensely since many had driven past the various destinations on multiple occasions, but had not visited them. As they debriefed and discussed their findings, participants seemed energized by their discoveries and reported that they had enjoyed trying an unfamiliar dish, discovering new products to share, or touring the inside of a different place of worship for the first time. Having factual information, combined with newfound appreciation informed by their own personal experiences, helped participants in understanding and creating a more welcoming environment for their newcomer students and families. This engaging and instructive activity was adapted for inclusion in other classes and courses promoting cultural awareness and sensitivity.
Chapter 1 • School and Community
FIGURE 1.9 Four Tiered Model of Professional Development
Tier 1 • Provide background information in the form of simulations, experiences,
videos, movies, and speakers (“first person voices”) for school staff.
Build empathy for
students and families • Involve police officers, local clergy, civic organization representatives,
by understanding their religious representatives, business leaders, neighbors, and other
experiences and realities. interested community members to build partnership and community.
Desired outcome: • Host a community screening of a movie/documentary, followed by
guided discussion.
While building background
• Provide an overview of the refugee immigration/resettlement process: knowledge related to the
video clips, group discussion, books authored by refugees themselves. resettlement process and
issues specific to recent • Invite immigration attorneys and other guest speakers.
refugees from Africa,
• Invite immigrant parents to tell their stories with an interpreter, if needed.
educators will increase
empathy for newcomer • Teachers participate in a field trip to visit the most diverse elementary
students and families. school in the state for ideas of best practice to adopt at their school.
• Participants make a cultural exploration in the community of identified
locations and report back.
• Brainstorm and implement ideas to make the school and classroom more
welcoming to culturally and linguistically diverse students and families.
Tier 2 • Topics of professional learning
Provide training on • Differentiation of language demands in assignments and assessments
instructional and based on student data.
assessment strategies
• Sheltered instruction strategies.
that meet the needs of
• Appropriate reading instruction for English Learners, particularly those
English language learners/
at pre-reading levels, regardless of grade level.
culturally and linguistically
diverse students. • Language acquisition process.
Desired outcome: • Accurate interpretation of English Learner data.
Staff will adopt and • Application of student background information to instructional planning.
implement strategies to effectively address the instructional and assessment needs of English Learners.
Tier 3 • Identify challenges experienced by students and families.
Involve and partner with • Build ways to support students outside of school.
parents and community
• Share resources with teachers on supporting children and families in need. members in new learning
• Examine lunchroom policies for inclusivity and weekend/summer meal opportunities and outreach
availability for students.
efforts.
• Examine ways to defray or waive costs of extracurricular participation, Desired outcome:
uniforms, sports equipment, band instruments, etc., for under-resourced
Staff will include community families.
members and parents in
• Explore and develop school offerings: English classes for parents, activities to build community
computer class, family literacy program, Saturday school, summer and promote the success
school, intramural sports, or other. of all students. Parents and
members will feel • Make multicultural and multilingual books for school and home available. comfortable and welcomed
• Conduct home visits with an interpreter; contact the home additionally when entering the school.
by phone via interpreter.
• Invite parents as partners into the school to share their skills in various
volunteer activities (e.g., reading books in home languages to students).
Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
Tier 4 • Identify needs of under-resourced learners at school.
Highlight and address • Explore the possibility of partnering with community service groups as
under-resourced sponsors of school supplies for students.
learner needs, creating
• Consider establishing a food bank or clothes closet at school.
partnerships with
community organizations • Provide clearly marked entrances and signage and a dedicated
and businesses to meet welcoming area at school for parents.
needs of students and
• Conduct meaningful home visits. families.
• Hold an event such as school registration at a local venue near where Desired outcome:
families live, such as a library, for their convenience. Staff will gain awareness of
• Invite adult role models or older students to interact with students the impact of intersecting
(e.g., mentoring, skill building, etc.). needs that can accompany
refugee status and translate • Support parents to promote learning for their children, such as
their awareness to specific suggested tips for literacy development using the family’s first language.
actions to meet student
• Open house: invite neighbors, school board members, and community needs.
members to meet and hear from new families.
• Connect with the local Chamber of Commerce to build partnerships and
increase support for the entire school population.
Making It Your Own
Become a tourist in your own city! Researching and personally visiting the community to become more familiar with culturally diverse gathering places can facilitate understanding the lives of new students and their families and promote valuable connections. This activity comprised a small part of one district’s professional development at multiple school sites and was also a part of annual new teacher orientation at the high school, providing an authentic experience for new teachers to learn about and appreciate their students and families.
Might this type of cultural exploration serve as a useful learning activity for professional development in your context? Referring to Figure 1.10 Cultural Exploration Activity, create your own community exploration based on culturally and linguistically diverse destinations in your school neighborhood. Consider a virtual exploration to expand your geographical boundaries if your school is situated at a distance from culturally and linguistically diverse amenities. Review the menu of potential multicultural venues in the model provided and create a version of your own local destinations that could be explored and experienced. What reflection questions would you like to pose at the end? Who might benefit from participating in such an activity?
Chapter 1 • School and Community
FIGURE 1.10 Cultural Exploration Activity
WHERE DO YOUR STUDENTS AND FAMILIES SHOP, WORK, WORSHIP, AND SOCIALIZE?
NAME OF VENUE ADDRESS
Food Markets
Include a range of different ethnic-specific food markets in the neighborhood.
Restaurants
Include a variety of restaurants from different ethnic backgrounds as well as those featuring different types of service (e.g., formal sit-down service, fast food for take-out, street food, etc.).
Places of Worship
Include a range of venues (e.g., gurdwaras, temples, churches, synagogues, mosques).
Places to Socialize
Include community centers, movie theaters, clubs, libraries, and so forth.
Literacy Opportunities
Notice availability of print in other languages (e.g., environmental print, billboards, street signage, newspapers, magazines, books, bookstores, etc.).
Powerful Practices for Supporting English Learners
WHERE DO YOUR STUDENTS AND FAMILIES SHOP, WORK, WORSHIP, AND SOCIALIZE?
Reflection Questions
• In addition to foods, what other kinds of products are offered? • Who did you notice at this venue?
• Describe any personal interactions you had while there. • Would you be able to purchase what you need for a week at this store? • What products stood out to you?
• Describe an item that is new to you. • Describe any purchases you made.
• If a restaurant, what are some of the unique ingredients used in the cuisine?
• If you visited a place of worship or a place to socialize, describe any interactions with hosts or others present. • What impressed you about this venue?
• Can you identify a central belief, practice, or new learning about the religion? • What is one new general learning that you took away from this exploration activity?
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