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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December Staff Satisfaction

A synthesis of a mid-December staff satisfaction survey I conducted via Survey Monkey. Not necessarily directly related to dual language, but given what a challenge the launch year is, no aspect of staff satisfaction can be taken out of the context of two-way immersion and the work it requires to implement well.

Media Spotlight

I think I forgot to mention that back near the beginning of the school year, our little local Mission newspaper, The Progress Times, featured our school's dual language launch on their front page; click here to read the article. The local district, Mission CISD, has apparently developed a definite distaste for this new little spirited charter school that is IDEA Academy Mission (inevitable when a new kid moves in down the block), and a few people here and there have dubbed our featured program a "producto inflado" (inflated product), meaning that it looks and sounds better than it is. Well...come judge for yourselves y'all. It's very hard NOT to be impressed with what my teachers have done with our two-way immersion launch. And this is just the beginning!

Mid-Year Reflection

Our first semester of two-way immersion is almost over. Since my last post we've had two more visits from Dr. Mercuri. She spent a half day with each grade level. Some big "illuminations" resulting from the meeting with each grade level:

1st grade: We really began to think long and hard about language objectives and how to craft them. We came to realize that it doesn't necessarily have to be a separate "self-contained" language objective for every daily class period. Instead, we learned that language objectives within a given content area can be longer-term (ie: weekly), but from this objective we should "unpack" daily, scaffolded, "bite-sized" daily objectives. For example, in a science unit on rocks, we might craft the sequence of language objectives something like this:

• Monday: Students will identify rocks with specific characteristics (ex: individual or groups of students have a few rocks and hold up rock(s) as teacher calls out characteristics, such as "smooth," "rough," "black," "shiny," etc) This is a LISTENING language objective--students don't yet have to produce language but they are listening and comprehending.
• Tuesday: Students will orally describe a rock. (ex: student has a particular rock and must orally describe it, perhaps using a sentence frame to support language use at the sentence level; "My rock is _______.") Students are producing language orally--this is a SPEAKING language objective. For beginning language learners we might only expect the use of one particular adjective.
• Wednesday: Students will write a sentence describing a rock. (ex: student does what he/she did yesterday, but this time in writing) This is a WRITING language objective--we might even use a more complex sentence frame today to encourage children to use more than one adjective in describing their rock: "My rock is _____ and _____.")
• Thursday: Students will compare 2 rocks. (ex: students work in bilingual pairs and orally complete the following sentence frames: Our rocks are similar because they both _________. Our rocks are different because one is ______ but the other is ________. Perhaps they could use a Venn Diagram to prepare for this more complex level of thinking and language production.)

So on and so forth...

I had a huge light go on for me--I realized that language objectives were tightly connected to different modes of thinking and different ways of visually organizing information. I began seeing how the same graphic organizers and sentence frames could be used across all content areas to promote high level thinking and explanations of such thinking. I immediately went to the Thinking Maps website (www.thinkingmaps.com), pulled out release TAKS tests from grades 3 - 6, etc. and began drafting a set of graphic organizers/thinking maps, accompanied by general sentence frames, that we could use to much more systematically and powerfully build comprehension, high-level thinking, and academic language production. For example, a simple Venn Diagram for comparing and contrasting has 2 sentence frames connected to it: ______ and _____ are similar because __________. ______ and ______ are different because ____________. This could be used in reading, writing, math, science, social studies, anywhere!

Here are some quick examples...





We now just need to translate into Spanish.


Kinder: The Kinder team had been experimenting with Preview-View-Review quite a bit and decided that instead of adding Preview-View-Review in their regular lesson plans, they'd create a document that just contained their P-V-R plans. It was obvious they were a little further along in this area than the other grade levels. Some great things kinder is doing to make P-V-R more powerful:

• posting same vocabulary words (in different languages) with the same visual in both the Spanish and English classrooms
• when content areas transfer to the partner teacher (every three weeks), teachers exchange anchor charts (ex: a reading workshop chart outlining what readers do and don't do during independent reading) so that the partner teachers can recreate them with the same visuals in the other language.
• every classroom has the same unit anchor chart (for example, during a unit on the 5 senses, each teacher posted the outline of a child on the inside of their classroom door with the title: How did I use my 5 senses today? or ¿Cómo usé mis 5 sentidos hoy? Teachers would give students a chance to review their learning each day (from either English or Spanish classes) and record its connection to the 5 senses using this ongoing anchor chart)
• Whole grade level team planning of P-V-R for the upcoming week

I'm going to stop and explain a little bit about the evolution of structured collaboration on our campus (as I think I've neglected to explain it here)--we've understood more and more clearly the importance of team planning in our model. Every grade level has 60 min of common conference time per day (in addition to about 110 min of personal planning time scattered throughout the week). The common conference times have some very specific objectives:

• Monday: Grade Level Team Meetings (facilitated by the grade level leader--agenda items can cover anything and everything. It's often about logistical things--field lessons, homework, upcoming events, etc--though 2 grade levels have often started spending about 15 min each week discussing a book they're all reading). Once every three weeks team leaders are expected to dedicate 15 - 20 min of this meeting to discussing students teachers are considering referring to the SAC (Student Assistance Committee--part of RTI). This is called Pre-SAC.
• Tuesday: Personal Planning (we try to leave Tuesday open as this is when we schedule SAC meetings, LPAC meetings for ELLs, etc. Lesson plans are always due Tuesday nights, so this, hopefully, gives teachers the chance to sometimes work on them during Tuesday conference.
• Wednesday: Same Language Partner Planning -- every grade level has 2 English teachers and 2 Spanish teachers. They divide the planning together. Let's say that for a given 3 week period Spanish teachers are teaching Reading Workshop and Math (instead of Writing Workshop & Our World--taught in English for those same 3 weeks). Every teacher also teaches Language and Word Study every day, so that children get this in both languages every day. Spanish Teacher A would create the lesson plans for Reading Workshop & Math while Spanish Teacher B would create the plans for Language and Word Study and Centers. During Wednesday's conference period, they review all plans together so that both teachers are on the same page and fully understand the lesson plans created by the other, have the resources they need, etc.
• Thursday: Bilingual Team Planning -- After both English teachers and both Spanish teachers get on the same page within their respective languages of instruction on Wednesdays, they are ready to come together to collaborate across languages on Thursdays. My teachers have tried several different things for this meeting--first it was just in pairs (the Spanish teacher and English teacher that teach the same 2 homerooms), then it was as an entire grade level (both English teachers and both Spanish teachers), but both my Kinder and 1st grade teams have decided upon a balance of the two. For the first 30 minutes of this meeting, they meet as an entire grade level and identify key areas they need the partner language teachers to preview or review for. This helps every teacher of the team better understand how their instruction contributes to the overarching unit of inquiry and also how their teaching helps reinforce instruction in the other lanuage. It also helps them identify how everyone can help children make critical connections across languages and transfer knowledge and skills from one to the other. The 2nd 30 minutes of the meeting is spent in separate bilingual pairs (just 2 teachers)--here they discuss individual students they teach together, share data, agree on key procedures or approaches that need to be kept consistent across both classrooms, etc. Last week (week of Dec 14 - 18) I observed both Kinder and 1st conduct this bilingual team/pair meeting and saw we've come a loooong way compared to the beginning of the year!)
• Friday: Problem of Practice (or) Personal Planning -- I reserve Fridays for grade level "problem of practice" meetings. Or, if this doesn't happen, teachers have additional personal planning time. Problem of Practice meetings can be really powerful. This is where I can address common needs across the grade level--as I observe and debrief with all first grade teachers, I might find that there are certain areas of instruction in which all of first grade could benefit from support in. So, I facilitate "problem of practice" meetings where I'll help develop grade levels around a particular aspect of instruction. We might watch video, observe in other classrooms, hold discussions, etc. Some example of "problem of practice" meetings are: Writing strong objectives, Posting and communicating objectives to students, Increasing student engagement to 100%, etc.. Often a by-product of these meetings are observation templates that teachers use to conduct peer observations...10 min "peeks" into a colleague's classroom, focused on our current problem of practice. It makes sure teachers step outside of their own isolated classrooms every once in a while. I expect each teacher to conduct a minimum of one 10-min peer observation every 2 weeks. My assistant tracks completion of this expectation.

That sums up how we've structured collaborative planning. Teams are learning to be better about assigning a time-keeper and note-taker each meeting. They're also reporting that without these meetings (Wednesday and Thursday meetings in particular) their following week of instruction can sometimes really suffer. As a school lead team, we're working to make sure we never interfere with Wed and Thurs meetings if at all possible. We're working to really safeguard this time and treat it as something of very high-priority.

I also dedicated an entire Faculty Wednesday afternoon professional development session (students have early release so we can hold PD on Wednesdays) to "fine-tuning" collaboration. I gave grade level teams substantial time to discuss and plan together. They had to identify clear objectives for each collaboration session, articulate standing agenda items (and time allocation for each), and identify common obstacles to meeting efficiency & efficacy and brainstorm solutions. They had to discuss meeting facilitation and roles/responsibilities of each team member. They reviewed team norms and re-committed themselves to this. Each grade level turned in a written synopsis of their decisions to me (I, in turn, reviewed these with Dr. Mercuri for feedback--she was highly complimentary of the strides teachers were making in this area).

I also talked to her about another challenge that teachers keep bringing up--the tri-weekly transfer of content areas (all except Language and Word Study). Teachers have expressed that they feel "out of it" when it comes back around to them to teach each content area every 3 weeks. They feel unsure about what objectives have been taught and how individual students are progressing toward mastery of these objectives. I discussed several solutions with Dr. Mercuri:

• Changing subjects bi-weekly or weekly: This would shorten the time during which teachers don't teach a particular content area, leaving them less "in the dark" about what's being taught. Dr. Mercuri recommended we consider this--either piloting this year or considering for next year. Melissa (grade 1 team leader) posed the idea to her team but they preferred to keep it tri-weekly.
• Improving communication between bilingual partner teachers: If we don't change the timeframe of content area transfers, then we need to improve flow of information between the teachers sharing students. I proposed one idea to teachers and they seemed to like it--I suggested that once every 3 weeks that their co-teacher cover class for the morning or afternoon, giving them the chance to spend a whole AM or PM session in their team teacher's classroom--watching carefully how and what is being taught in each content area to facilitate a more seamless transfer of subjects from one language to the other. I was very honest about my only worry--that it would taken them from their own instruction too often, but my teachers' feedback was that, at least in these beginning stages, the longterm benefits would outweigh that drawback. They felt this would really help transfer of subjects.
• Finally, I need to figure out how to better use Faculty Wednesday (periodically) to facilitate transfer of student achievement data across team teachers. We've done a couple of exercises, but nothing that really has become an ingrained and regular practice for us. One data analysis activity we did do a month (or so) ago seemed to be very powerful in getting bilingual teaching pairs to look at data together. I printed out the most current student achievment data in reading levels, high frequency word mastery, math objective mastery, etc. Teachers worked together to "color-code" results according to the following categories (I gave them clear quantitative guidelines around this too): CRITICAL (far below expected standard--red); BORDERLINE (below expected standard--yellow); MASTERY (meeting expected standard--green); EXCEEDING (well above expected standard--blue). Using this color-coded spreadsheets, teaching pairs then created student priority lists for each homeroom, with the highest-need students at the top. We divided the list into English-dominant and Spanish-dominant students, so we could prioritize within language dominance. I also added a column for "behavior-priority" children. Sometimes a child might not be struggling academically, but might be a top-priority child (for interventions and support) due to behavior. I'm trying to use these priority lists to help me better focus my observations and debriefs of teachers. That particular activity is one I plan to replicate periodically as we get more data.

VACATION PRIORITIES

During this Christmas vacation, I want to take some time to do the following:

1. Think through a pilot of changing our tri-weekly subject transfers to weekly or bi-weekly. Perhaps Kinder would be willing to pilot this? I'll consider presenting the idea to them but will not force anything at this point. They are already trying so many new things--any other changes/tweaks will require 100% investment on their part in order to be succesful.
   
2. Analyze progress monitoring reading data for our 1st grade Spanish dominant students reading at a critically low level. Figure out some short-term and long-term solutions.
3. Start planning what kind of curriculum work must be done in preparation for the 2010 - 11 school year and when/how it will be done. What materials need to be purchased? What professional development needs to take place?
4. Other reflections on the past semester... Dr. Mercuri and I had a conference call just over a week ago. She was very kind and complimentary as she praised the work that has gone on at our campus thus far. She encouraged me to record as much as I could concerning the process we've gone through. She mentioned that she's considering writing/editing a book about curriculum planning for dual immersion programs, and asked me to write down as much as possible in preparation for potentially contributing our school's experience to this collection of articles/essays. What an opportunity that would be. For that reason I'm trying to get as much as possible down in this blog. I know some things make sense only to me, but hopefully it will be reminder enough for me to come back to and really get down on paper so that other schools can benefit from our successes and victories.
   

Quarterly Info Sessions

We decided to hold quarterly dual language information sessions for primary parents. This time our presentation for English-dominant parents was even more different than that for Spanish-dominant parents. We focused much more on questions and concerns that we've heard from both sets of parents. They are related but definitely unique.

Spanish-dominant parents need to understand the critical role their child's home language plays in the development of a 2nd language and the importance of learning to read that home language as the literacy skills will easily transfer once their oral vocabulary in English is large enough to read and comprehend in that second language. Several Spanish-speaking parents have said things such as: "But we speak 100% Spanish at home. My child doesn't need to get Spanish here at school. We moved to this country so that they could speak English." This is when I explain the research that shows how children that receive elementary school instruction that includes significant and sustained instructional time in the home language actually end up with higher achievement in English down the road. I also explain the third generation phenemenon--that because Spanish is a minority language here in the U.S and because it wields much less social power (unfortunately), we have to work even harder to maintain it in. To parents that say "but my child will never lose their Spanish--it's all we speak at home," I quickly respond that it's almost a guarantee, however, that their child's children will most likely speak very little Spanish if the value of Spanish is not explicitly taught to every generation. Then they'll be left struggling to communicate with their own grandchildren. I share how we have many third generation children in our very own classrooms--whose parents have personally shared with me that they cannot talk much with their own grandparents because of the language barrier. I've now had several parents excitedly share how our dual language program is giving their child the language skills to communicate much more meaningfully with their Spanish-speaking grandparents. Language is not just about language. It's about culture and family and heritage.

English-dominant have fears too. Some of them don't see the need for a second language. However, most of the parents I've spoken with here do understand the value of speaking both languages but they're a bit afraid that spending several hours a day in Spanish will put their children behind academically. To respond to this concern I discuss research that highlights the many benefits a second language offers cognitively, emotionally, and socially. I also reassure them that research on two-way immersion shows that English speakers in the program, on average, do just as well (and often better) than English speakers not in a bilingual program. In other words, it's win-win!

We advertised last week's meeting (Tuesday October 27th @ 6 PM) for several weeks in the Family Connection, our weekly parent newsletter. We had a total of about 10 parents, not a strong showing, but a good small "sample" size for trying out our new presentations. Both the English session (I facilitated) and the Spanish session (Luzdivina, my assistant principal, facilitated) went well according to the feedback forms. We'll definitely improve our advertising for next time!

Who am I? Where am I?

Whoa. I knew this whole thing was gonna rock my world but I didn't quite know just how much. Yes, I come in with experience as a former dual language teacher. Yes, I've read everything I can get my grubby li'l hands on about the research and practice of two-way immersion. Yes, I'm insanely passionate about the dual language approach. Yes, I've visited multiple dual language schools and spoken with dozens of administrators leading dual language schools across the country. Yes, my school is filled with teachers who, for the most part, are 100% bought in to our program. Yes, I've hired a consultant to help guide me through the instructional planning part of putting dual language on the ground. So why do I feel only slightly conscious--like I was hit on the head with a brick on, say, August 24th (AKA the day the children arrived) and am only now (barely) beginning to come to my senses?

The first few weeks and all the additional transitions that are a regular part of a day when team teaching (moving back and forth between the English and Spanish teachers' classrooms) had me wondering if this was the right way to make the model work. However, this past week or two the children seem so much more settled and comfortable with the transitions. I'm also beginning to see the power of dividing language by teacher--there are children who would otherwise refuse to speak in Spanish that are busting out full sentences simply because they know their Spanish teacher will only ever speak just Spanish to them. Consciously or subconsciously, their brain knows that "when I'm in Sra. Herrera's classroom, I've just gotta speak Spanish." We see the same in our English classrooms too. The model is beginning to bear fruit.

We are now also starting to encounter anxious parents who want immediate results in their child's second language process. One already withdrew and another is threatening to withdraw; I have a meeting with this parent on Monday to (hopefully!) convince her to keep her daughter in the program. This family is Spanish-dominant and the mother is concerned that, 6 weeks into kindergarten, she is not yet reading in English. She says that the family moved to the U.S.A. so that the children could get a good English education so she's concerned that by her daughter receiving 50% of instruction in Spanish her growth in English will be slowed. I'm going to have to break it to her that we wouldn't typically expect her child to be reading at all this early in kinder--even in her dominant language! I also need to help her understand the (looooong) language learning process and the role childrens' native language plays in the learning of the 2nd language. Finally, I'll whip out the trusty Thomas and Collier graph and show, in no uncertain terms, that the long term results of bilingual instruction are staggering. It helps English achievement tremendously! I'm looking forward to this parent meeting.

These anxieties are normal right now--parents don't realize how long this process takes! That's why we ask them to commit to our program for 5 - 7 years. It really does take that long for young children (still developing ther first language) to acquire a second language at high academic levels. I've also decided that I need to hold a (minimum) quarterly information meeting for parents who haven't yet attended one or parents who still have questions and concerns. We held several last year and include an overview of dual language in our recruitment information session, but--other than that--haven't held any info sessions this year. Definitely an oversight I won't repeat next year.

Teachers are really starting to get into the groove of things. Tomorrow will mark the end of each grade level's first unit of inquiry. They're starting to better see how their units can truly become transdisciplinary and how they can weave their unit concepts and topics throughout every content area for a much richer and contextualized dual language experience. I also had Melissa and Ilse, an English/Spanish team in first grade, share excitedly that they had worked together for Mel to preview dictionaries and their format in English in preparation for a science activity in which students created huge dictionary posters with vocab from their current Fabrics unit. They're beginning to find opportunities to apply preview-view-review strategies across the languages. Bravo!

Dr. Mercuri had her first observation/debrief consulting day with us on Thurs 9/24. We saw every teacher in action and met with grade levels for team meetings. She provided some feedback and also listened to their questions and concerns. Some of my big takeaways from that day--

**all roads must lead to meaning--in a dual language school we can never teach anything that doesn't incorporate comprehension and meaning.

**we need to increase and improve oral language experiences. I learned that oral language experiences should encourage students not just to listen to their second language but to produce it. Therefore we need a lot more singing, chants, etc. We also need to consistently employ the daily news oral language structure and use it to reinforce elements of language such as vocabulary, syntax, conventions, etc.

**we must be more purposeful in our sheltered instruction. We must alway have second language learners in might and plan ahead to provide them with the supportive scaffolding they'll need to also be successful in mastering lesson objectives, even though they aren't delivered in their dominant language.

**we haven't really started capitalizing on the preview-view-review strategy. Dr. Mercuri suggested we structure more formal planning at three different levels to better facilitate this: (1) grade level planning (ex: entire 1st grade team) (2) language partner planning (ex: all Spanish teachers in 1st grade) and (3) team teacher planning (English/Spanish teacher pair sharing the same 2 classes of children. As a result I set up a schedule to provide more structure to the use of each grade level's common conference time each day--

Mon: Grade Level Planning
Tues: Personal Planning (lesson plans due each Tues evening for the following week)
Wed: Language Partner Planning
Thurs: Team Teacher Planning
Fri: "Problem of Practice" (instructional development) with principal

We began following this this past week--I need to monitor this more closely and provide additional support around how to do use these different types of planning more effectively (specifically in helping teachers understand how each serves a somewhat different purpose and looks at instructional planning from a slightly different perspective). Overall, however, I'm pleased with how this is strengthening instruction. I also rearranged enrichment & PE schedules so that teachers have some additional personal planning time at different points in the week. I'm hoping that will help them (everyone was feeling a bit frantic and as if there was no time to do much planning/prep on campus. They weren't incredibly far from the truth! :) I do think we found a good plan, however. I'm crossing my fingers that teacher morale goes up. It's been pretty low lately, particularly with my new (brand new as well as just new to IDEA) teachers. I think the reality of what they signed up for is really hitting them. Some are embracing it and working through it, while a couple are having a much rougher time.

Week of 8/24/09

I'm also posting weekly reflections on a google group I set up, so sometimes I'll just cut and paste from that:

From my perspective, it seemed like the half day schedule (7:30 AM - 12 PM) made getting to know students really difficult in a team-teaching setup. Might want to consider eliminating having half-days for the first week next year? Next year, we need to be more strategic in getting ready to get to know a lot of children & fast....and to have them feeling completely at home in both of their classrooms. I knew this would be difficult but didn't proactively plan ahead well enough. Teachers are reporting that dividing language by teacher and never having to change languages is much easier than last year's language of the day approach. So glad we took the time to have our 3-day TWI institute as it really provided critical background knowledge for conversations this week.
Teachers are reporting lots of parent confusion with TWI. I need to schedule additional info sessions ASAP (interesting since every parent that registered has attending our introductory intro session--lots of time given to dual language. Must not have been clear messaging in the info sessions).

Getting Personal

While I've known it for years, it becomes more and more apparent to me that language is a deeply personal issue and that our opinions on language and how it should be taught are rooted primarily in personal experience and mindsets. We met as a group of principals yesterday--the task was to bring drafts of our plans for a bilingual model for each school and to use a protocol to provide feedback to one another as we worked to make sure everyone's plans met the requirements of state education code. Every one of us is in a different place with respect to our bilingual models--as we should be....

First, because each of our schools has a unique combination of English and Spanish speakers. While we are all located in the Rio Grande Valley, it's fascinating to see the differences in numbers. For example, our North McAllen campus is only 15% ELL while our Brownsville campus is over 60% ELL. The rest of us are somewhere in between (my campus is 50% ELL). This DOES make a difference--for example, a two-way immersion bilingual program is simply not feasible as a school-wide model for IDEA Quest in McAllen, though the principal, Sharon, would have loved to launch one. They simply don't have enough ELLs to serve as Spanish language models.

Second, we each come to the table with vastly different personal experiences, opinions, and knowledge of bilingual ed and second language acquisition. Some really great questions came up--Dolores asked me to send her some of the questions that surfaced during our breakout session, so I thought I'd include them (and my two cents) :) here. The answers, obviously, represent some of my thinking around possible responses.

1) What if I don't speak Spanish? How can I coach Spanish teachers? How do I (or other non-bilingual teachers) participate in the language of the day?

First of all, Language of the day is just one small element of a bilingual approach. It definitely helps by 1) adding value to the minority language and 2) providing additional opportunities for kids to build more everyday basic vocabulary in both languages; however, it's not a deal breaker. In other words, you can have a bilingual program without it.

However, given that it does help a lot, if a school decides to include "language of the day" as part of their model, non-bilingual staff (just like monolingual students) can use the language of the day to the best of their abilities (this might just be a single Spanish word in an English sentence, phrases, or full conversations, depending on language proficiency) Modeling the learning of a second language can go a long way! :)

As far as coaching teachers instructing in Spanish, there are a few things to think about. First of all, if the lesson isn't comprehensible to you, chances are there students also not understanding. Excellent language teaching should always focus on "comprehensible input"--delivering instruction that uses the various modes of learning so powerfully that the concepts are clear in spite of a language barrier. If you have Spanish-speakers on your lead team--other admins or coaches--you can engage them in joint observations of Spanish instruction. They can help fill in any gaps--things you didn't quite understand.

2) I have only about 12 non-spanish speaking PK students....all the rest are Spanish-dominant. If we teach PK in L1, they're going to have to be in a bilingual classroom--how do I work that?

The 12 English dominant children would be in a classroom with 12 Spanish dominant students (they might be 12 of your ELLs that already come with high levels of proficiency in both languages or children with "off the charts" scores in Spanish). You'd have to really utilize a strong bilingual co-teacher (aide) here, so that a significant portion of the day is spent in small groups, so that ELLs spend substantive time learning the key content in Spanish, even though whole group activities may need to be English. In this sort of setup, you'd need to find as many ways to "sneak in" additional Spanish as possible--maybe the morning meeting could be in Spanish one day, English the next, etc.

3) I'm going to start with about 20 - 30 min Spanish daily and increase up the grades, introducing Spanish reading in 2nd grade for all students....what's wrong with that?

First of all, hats off for at least considering Spanish important enough to include in core instruction! To clarify what this approach really is....this is a "Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language" approach that allows monolingual English speakers to learn to read first in their home language (allowing their brains to fully practice all aspects of reading, including high-level comprehension) but doesn't allow Spanish speakers to do the same. Unless parents are teaching them to read at home the same way we teach them at school, many of them will only go through the "motions" of reading--connecting letters and sounds without having the vocabulary required to really access the text's meaning. They may go for several years without their brains having sustained "practice" at reading for meaning, not just decoding and sounding out words that may or may not have meaning.

A "super quick" read on some of the basic theories/research that support the importance of initial literacy instruction in Spanish can be found in: http://www.ldonline.org/article/Effective_Reading_Instruction_for_Struggling_Spanish-Speaking_Readers:_A_Combination_of_Two_Literatures and other articles like this one.

4) Another program I worked in (where Spanish support existed but the focus was on English) was successful.

First of all, what do we mean when we say "it worked." We have to be careful (I do it too!) that we don't generalize without data to back up our conclusions. We need to be critical professionals who make decisions based not only on our own qualitative experiences but on approaches (our own & others'--especially in aggregate) that have shown sustained quantitative success. The "numbers" don't tell the whole story, but they do tell an important part of it. The research that we do have points overwhelmingly to increasingly higher student achievement in English when students have a strong and sustained foundation in their first language.

5) Many local districts have been unsuccessful with dual language.

The name of any model means very little if it's not being implemented properly. Some common errors made in local dual language (or any bilingual model) implementation might include:

• uninvested/uninformed principals
• uninvested/uninformed teachers
• uninvested/uninformed parents
• uninvested/uninformed central office
• lack of patience--"pulling out" in fear that the long-term language learning process won't take place
• succumbing to testing pressures and putting the 2nd language "on hold" while preparing for TAKS, etc (for ELLs, this can result in "too much Spanish")
• poor program integrity (usually to transition them to English more quickly than the model calls for)
• bilingual teachers that are "bilingually certified" in word, but not necessarily expert in teaching language learners
• generally mediocre/poor teaching

Also remember that research shows that the FULL benefits of dual language (in terms of achievement in English) aren't fully evident until high school

6) I've taught too many middle school students who came out of bilingual programs with very low English proficiency.

Yep, the research is clear that not all bilingual programs are created equal--FAR from it! The bilingual programs that show the highest sustained achievement in English are those that include large amounts of instruction (at least half the day) in the home language while learning the second language--all the way to fifth grade. As noted in the answer above, if districts "cave" to testing pressure and don't do a go job with intial teaching, they are forced to spent large amounts of extra time in the language of assessment--this decision can hurt ELLs by spending too MUCH time in Spanish and not enough in English. There must be a careful balance and strict program integrity!


7) How will assessment work? Will HQ (central office) understand that language learning takes time?

By allowing Spanish dominant children to show proficiency in their strongest language on state assessments, it should actually BOOST achievement. Children can show their "true colors" sooner. At IDEA Mission, we do, however, assess in both languages in the classroom (depending on the language of instruction) as we must frequently monitor progress both language acquisition and mastery of content objectives. The goal should be on-grade-level achievement in the student's first language EVERY year, and on-grade-level achievement in the student's 2nd language in 3 - 5 years. The goal should be for every student to perform on grade level in every content area in English by 5th grade. This is where LPAC meetings take on a whole new significance--we've got to use those meetings to really monitor ELLs' progress and to use data to determine in which language is the student most likely to be successful for high-stakes state assessements.

8) I am firmly against separating bilingual students into their own separate classes--I believe that this is today's segregation.

(I personally believe the same!) :) One option is to choose a two-way model for your whole school (or offer a two-way "strand" for Spanish speakers and interested English speakers). You might also choose an approach that keeps homerooms heterogeneous but utilizes lots of small group instruction to ensure substantive L1 instruction. Remember though, the the #1 predictor for ELLs' success in English is their level of proficiency in their first language, so regardless of the "nuts and bolts" of any model, substantive and sustained L1 instruction in both literacy and content is a MUST.

I think also that this makes the late-transition model more attractive (if a school decides not to go with two-way)--it would allow upper elementary ELLs to spend much/most of their day in heterogeneously mixed classes as the amount of Spanish decreases (but is still there). I think Rosy & Sharon brought this up as a valid point. The sustained 50/50 one way model is ideal in terms of amount of Spanish used through 5th grade, but is it appropriate to keep students divided by language every year, especially in grades 3 - 5 when social relationships and peer acceptance becomes more and more important? Something to think about...