There's no EASY way of doing it

As I've gotten feedback (both formally and informally) from staff as part of our mid-year reflection and evaluation process, it's clearer and clearer that there will never be an easy way to implement a two-way immersion program.  Now, it will hopefully get easier and easier each year--due to familiarity, practice, and previous lessons learned--but it will always be a more difficult alternative to a traditional all-English approach.  During yesterday's visit from Dr. Mercuri, teachers shared their reflections on learning (specific to dual language) thus far, by answering these questions:

What have you learned so far?  ....specifically in terms of...

• planning curriculum
• delivering instruction
• biliteracy development
• how students learn in a dual language setting

What has been your greatest accomplishment so far this year?

What is your biggest need in terms of professional development/support? (can be reviewing something we've already learned about or something completely new)

A few things that stuck out to me from the various reflection discussions:

Many teachers articulated a very clear understanding of many things we'd learned....helping me see that they have learned a great deal and now just need more of my support in certain areas.  It was also a good assessment in some respects.  For example, many teachers reported confidence that using bilingual pairs has gone well, however my classroom observations have helped me see that there is much still to be done around using bilingual pairs much more consistently and purposefully.  By no means is this my teachers' fault!  I've essentially done little to no training around bilingual pairs and how to facilitate bilingual pair cooperative learning in ways that truly promote academic language use.  Basically it helped me see that in certain areas of dual language, teachers have both knowledge and skill, in others they have the knowledge but still need help developing the skills, and yet in other areas they don't yet have the knowledge necessary to move forward.  Always exciting was the investment evident in almost every teacher.   One teacher put it something like this:  "Some parts of our model are nearly impossible for us as teachers right now, but they are so critical for the students."  I really respect this attitude--it exemplifies being sincerely student-centered.  Much of this year has been about this--giving up personal preferences and ways of doing things to ensure that we do what's absolutely best for the children.   For example, dividing language by teacher and team teaching, collaborating to plan together, ensuring consistency across partner classrooms in physical environment, procedures and routines (still a huge area for improvement on our campus), focusing instruction on content and language objectives, implementing cooperative learning structures to encourage student discussion and collaboration, etc, are all very difficult to do!  However, we do them because we know it's what's best for our students.

The biggest concerns/drawbacks of the way we've done things thus far are:

1) the time crunch inherent in a dual language schedule (especially a team teaching model where you switch children mid-way through the day)

2) getting to know students at a really personal level is much more difficult when you have 50 kids and only see each of them for 1/2 a day

These were my biggest concerns as a dual language teacher myself.  I'm trying my best to come up with some possible solutions.   I've already begun playing around with some very very rough drafts of possibilities for next year's schedule...a big priority being sneaking in some additional personal planning time for teachers.  I think I'll be able to accomplish this with a 45 - 50 min common conference time & an additional 30 min personal planning--or something comparable.  I've also begun playing with the idea of having each teacher instruct a specific class for an entire day (while the partner teacher instructs the other class) and then switches every day.  This would allow us to continue our team teaching model and divide language by teacher, but it would also loosen some of the strict constraints on time caused by the 1/2 day switch and would give teachers a full day at a time with each group of children--this can make a big difference in bonding with them and getting to know them.  They would then see each class every other day.  It would eliminate the need for additional preview-view-review planning (this would take care of itself) and it would eliminate the frustration some teachers are feeling every 3 weeks picking up a content area they haven't see for weeks and trying to "get back in the loop."  It would require careful planning of every vocabulary term in both languages.  It would also eliminate the need to "switch" homerooms at mid-year since students would begin and end the day in both classrooms--classroom A one day, classroom B the next.  It would allow every teacher to teach every content area;  this has both benefits and drawbacks.  Benefits:  You're never "lost" and can facilitate powerful connections across the content areas because you're teaching them all.  Students get an entire day from the same teacher, improving connection and flow across the day.  Also, it would reduce the amount of lesson planning each teacher would do, allowing us to return more to the model of lesson planning we followed in 2008-09.  Drawbacks:  It would take more time to prep materials/manipulatives as you'll be teaching every subject every day.  It would take some careful planning to manage student materials.  Another possibility (though I don't think teachers would really go for it) is that students stay in the same classroom every day, but the teacher switches.  This would have its own benefits and drawbacks, but would ensure consistency of room and materials organization like never before.  All things to think about.  :)

If we went down a road like those I've outlined, I think that in K/1 we would still divide students by language for GR/Centers, but in 2nd grade (either BOY or MOY) we'd transition them to getting GR/Centers in both languages.  Rise and additional interventions would likely still be in L1, at least for literacy.

I'll be doing a lot more thinking, planning, and discussing with a number of people before seriously considering any of the above options as viable.  Part of me has to realize as well that there will never be an "easy" effective dual language model and that every single approach will have both its benefits and its drawbacks.  In the end, we may decide to keep everything as it is.  I do want to find any way I can to still meet student needs in a powerful way but also provide staff with the time and support they need to keep morale high and attrition low.

Spanish Reading Assessment

One of the trickiest aspects of figuring out a two-way immersion model is the assessment piece.  Who will be assessed on what, when, and in which language?  We've determined thus far that the schoolwide/districtwide benchmark literacy assessments (TPRI/Tejas Lee, Guided Reading level assessments, High Frequency Words) would be administered to children in their dominant language...at least during K - 2.  Haven't yet figured out grades 3 - 5.  (**Exciting note:  the district found a way to add Dominant Language as a demographic category in PowerSchool, our main student information system.  They were also able to sync this info with Data Director, our student achievement data management system, so that we can disaggregate data by language dominance and also keep a permanent "living" record on file of the LPAC committee's initial decision concerning language dominance.  Previously we'd been working from our own excel spreadsheets but there was way too much room for error as we added new students, removed withdrawn students and sent out the lists to teachers).  In-class formative and summative assessment is given to all students in the language of instruction.  With our math assessments, we administer the assessment in the current language of instruction for math and provide retesting opportunities in the dominant language for any students that didn't reach the expected level of mastery.

Our English teachers use the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment kit--a solid system for assessment students' reading levels using benchmark books, running records, and clear guidelines for considering accuracy, fluency, and comprehension to determine a child's instructional reading level.  It does not exist in Spanish, however, so my assistant principal spent a great deal of time over the summer creating a similar kit in Spanish.  She chose benchmark books from www.readinga-z.com and created running record note pages for a fiction text and nonfiction text at each level.  It was a tremendous task and she did a wonderful job!  However it doesn't have the kinds of rubrics and tables and calculation charts for identifying accuracy, fluency, and comprehension scores that the F&P kits have so the Spanish teachers are having to put in a lot more work for the same assessment.

One of my kinder Spanish teachers sent me a link for the Spanish version of DRA:  Click here to go to the Pearson website.

It looks very promising, especially since there are established conversion charts that correlate the DRA numerical levels to F&P's letter levels (what we report to the district).  Extra exciting is the fact that DRA is now available to administer via handheld devices.  Tango software (the company we use for TPRI/Tejas Lee testing on Palms) has the software for DRA, making testing much faster and automatic.  IDEA Quest uses DRA so I've emailed Sharon a few questions about it and a request to borrow any extra kits she might have.  But what I've seen on the website looks very very exciting!  I hope to purchase kits for our campus and be trained and ready to go before our EOY testing later in May 2010.

Added Aug 16, 2010:  Bilingual Means Two:  Assessment Issues, Early Literacy & Spanish-Speaking Children, by Kathy Escamilla

Gearing up for change

An important part of a dual language model is ensuring a complete and equitable balance of both languages...at both the academic and social levels.  The way we've built our schedule we do have an equal balance of exposure to academic language, however, we had to figure out how to achieve a similarly equal balance in students' exposure to social language. Because our teachers ONLY speak their language of instruction--even during non-instructional times--we had to make sure that children (for example) who were assigned to their English teacher's homeroom (where they begin/end day, eat meals, go to recess, etc) also received the opportunity to spend equal non-instructional time doing the same things with their Spanish teacher. We decided to achieve this by switching each class' homeroom teacher at mid-year.

I was starting to get very nervous about this transition, primarily because I was anticipating a lot of misunderstanding from parents and was afraid that they'd see it as a much BIGGER change than it really is.  It really just means that the child eats his meals and leaves his backpack in teacher B's classroom, instead of teacher A's.   I worried that parents wouldn't understand that the "new homeroom teacher" will simply be the teacher their child already spends half a day with and that therefore it is truly a minimal change.  I shared these concerns with kinder and first grade teams and solicited their feedback. At first most teachers agreed that it might not be worth the potential parent backlash. One teacher, however, began to push our thinking that if we don't make the change, that we'll never really help our parents understand that their child truly does have 2 teachers instead of just 1. She pointed out that if we message the change powerfully enough and for long enough, we would likely educate them well enough to help them understand our unique two-way model. That began to change our perspective on the issue.  Another teacher then shared that the transition would likely be a fairly easy one for children given the fact that they've already been teaching them for half a day every day for several months; we're not talking about breakfast and lunch procedures with an entirely brand new group of kids. During the kinder meeting one teacher pointed out that she really saw students speaking lots of English during meals in her classroom and knew lots of Spanish was being spoken by her team teacher's homeroom students during those same times. She said she felt it was a disservice to the students to NOT make the mid-year shift.  Kinder has been previewing and preparing for this shift with the children for some time to ensure that they transition easily.  A great point of feedback was that if, school-wide, we'd done a much better job calling every class by only their college mascot (instead of sometimes still referring to them as "Ms. Lopez's class" or "Mrs. Herrera's homeroom") it would make for a smoother transition because it would focus their class identity more on their mascot than on one teacher vs the other.  Teachers reported that kids had lots of questions like: "Where will we keep our things?" "Will you still be a Hurricane, Ms. Lopez?" etc.  We determined that in order for the transition to go smoothly, we'd need to do the following to prepare parents:

1) Remind them of the change every week in the Family Connection newsletter, working hard to "minimize" the transition (as one teacher put it, "they'll be eating their meals with the other teacher....that's about it")
2) Send home a parent letter specifically about this, maybe with a list of FAQ's.
3) Teachers will address the change briefly during report card conferences on Feb 3 & 4
4) My assistant principal and I will set up a Dual Language Q&A room during report card nights so any parent can drop in and talk with us about questions and concerns.

We would then probably make the change the week following.   We'll see how this goes!


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