Teaching Fellows

At our last dual language committee meeting, I shared the following proposal for a Teaching Fellows program in Kinder.  I've also decided we'll likely pilot it in first grade next year too.  Here's a quick overview...

Next year each Kinder & 1st Grade classroom will be self-contained.  There will be 2 certified teachers teaching the class—1 English dominant, 1 Spanish dominant.  One of those teachers (with at least 1 year experience) will be what we’ll call the "lead teacher."  Basically this means he/she is the more experienced of the two.  The other will be called the "teaching fellow." This will likely be a certified 1st year teacher who will teach for half the day but in an intense “apprenticeship” with their other partner teacher.  They'll be able to collaborate around every aspect of teaching and receive valuable real-time feedback from their lead teacher.  Teaching fellows will be on a professional salary schedule but it will be a slightly lower-paying schedule than the regular teaching salary as fellows will not have to create lesson plans from scratch at the beginning--they will simply tailor lesson plans created by lead teachers for the first couple of months.

Each classroom will have 28 – 30 children.   This increased enrollment will help pay for the program.  With 2 teachers it will move classrooms from the current 1:24 (or 1:27 in first grade this year!) teacher to student ratio to a 1:14 or 1:15 ratio.  Huge difference.


Some additional details:

• Is the main teacher for half the day (opposite language of lead teacher), with lead teacher present & working with high-priority sts (1-on-1; small groups)  
• Lead Teacher & Teaching Fellow both maintain their assigned language at all times   
• Later in year, Teaching Fellow writes lesson plans for one content area  
• Allows for a 1:14 certified teacher/student ratio (total 28 - 30 students in room;  2 certified teachers) 
• Two certified teachers lead guided reading groups during centers, ensuring every child receives about 20 min of guided reading every day in their dominant language  
• Plans collaboratively with Lead Teacher, other same-language teachers, and entire grade level  
• Both teachers take additional personal planning during partner teacher's LWS block  
• Teaching Fellow is evaluated by Lead Teacher & Manager together  
• Lead Teachers are developed around key instructional coaching basics  
• Teaching Fellows receive real-time feedback from Lead Teacher as well as from manager   
• Ensures 2 adults in early childhood classrooms at almost all times (critical for extreme misbehavior, bathroom accidents, etc)   
• Eliminates the many transitions our students previously experienced with team teaching while still ensuring language separation by teacher (key element of our model)  
• Potential to dramatically reduce misbehavior & increase student achievement in Kinder given the low teacher to student ratio (without needing additional classrooms) 

That's the idea in a nutshell.  It aims to combine all the benefits of a self-contained classroom with the benefits of a language team-teaching approach.  If it works as well as I think it will and proves to be cost-effective and sustainable, then I'll expand it to 2nd grade and make this our K - 2 approach.  3 - 5 can then be team taught in 2 separate classrooms.


Not only will this (most importantly) have a positive impact on children academically, linguistically, and socially (due to dramatic improvements that can be made in classroom culture), but it will launch what I believe can be a very powerful first-year teaching apprenticeship program, helping first year teachers work in a highly supportive environment that sets them up for career success in the years to follow.  I've struggled with the fact that first year teachers have such a tough time at IDEA (we really expect a LOT) and I sometimes wonder if IDEA is a good place for 1st year teachers....while also considering the fact that there probably couldn't be a better place for teachers to learn to teach--we might as well learn the right way first!! (Presumptuous of me to say, I know, but I really do believe that IDEA's focus on intensive instructional coaching is the best thing brand new teachers could have!)

I got the green light on the Teaching Fellows program from my manager, so now I'm just waiting for HR to create an official salary schedule and for my budget to be readjusted accordingly.  Luzdivina and I are heading up to KIPP SHINE in Houston, an elementary charter school that gave us the idea to begin with.  We'll meet with Teaching Fellows there, talk with admins, observe in classrooms, etc, and hopefully come back ready to launch our own version of the program!

Dual Language Revision Committee

I knew I needed to engage teachers in every step of the "revision" process as we made changes for the 2010 - 11 school year. I also knew that different teachers want to be involved to varying degrees. So, I decided to set up a Dual Language Revision Committee that would meet at least 3 times after school and have as much input as they wanted on changes I would be proposing for the coming school year. Anyone could join--I had two takers: Blanca (1st grade) and Christine (Kinder). My assistant principal, Luzdivina, also wanted to be involved but hasn't been able to attend either meeting so far due to after school duties/incidents.  Hopefully she'll be able to attend this final meeting.

So far we've discussed revisions to our model and daily schedule. Our district has mandated some big changes by eliminating our weekly early release day (for staff development) and requiring that school instructional hours are neither more nor less than 7:45 AM - 3:45 PM. This was incredibly hard for me to swallow at first as it meant shortening our regular full day schedule (already packed to the max due to the extra time demands inherent in a dual language schedule) AS WELL AS eliminating our weekly 2-hr block of staff development...another critical element of dual language launch, particularly those first couple of years. I'll admit that I freaked out at first, then got angry and went into protest mode, and finally have come to accept that it is what it is and I'd better find a way to make it work. (Ah...the grieving process in miniature). Interestingly, I'm actually really pleased with the results and believe we've really found some great ways to make it work.  Should I admit that I might even like our new ideas better than what we're currently doing this year?  Humble pie.  Eating lots of it.

So I went to work trying to figure out how to maximize a shorter school day and how to fit in substantive professional development without having to spend thousands of dollars for substitutes to provide release planning/PD time. Some things had to go, unfortunately. Right now we have a daily assembly or class meeting time. Next year we'll only be able to have school assembly once a week and an extended (20 min) class meeting once a week. I also had to eliminate our 30 min daily intervention block and, instead, add 20 minutes to centers time to allow for pull-out/push-in interventions for struggling students during that time. Saves 10 minutes without having to do away with it altogether. I created a special planning time schedule (STEPP Days...stands for Staff Time for Evaluating a Problem of Practice) :) where one grade level a week will have a 2 hour period without students (kids will be in an extended enrichment rotation in PE, Art, etc...) during which we'll engage in intensive PD activities. Got that idea from Sharon at Quest. However, it will only be tri-weekly for each team (1 team per week) instead of the current weekly PD time. Better than nothing. Also, it won't be the entire school together--it will only be by grade level. Again, better than nothing.  Download Proposed Master Schedule

Blanca & Christine provided valuable input during meeting 1 and then came back with additional thoughts from other teachers during meeting 2. That's when I shared with them a very new idea I'd hatched for Kinder and 1st grade--a Teaching Fellows program. I'll give further details in a post dedicated just to this idea.

Here's my plan for meeting 3 (this is the email I sent yesterday):

Hi Ladies,

For some reason I’d calendared Tuesday 3/23 as the final dual language revision committee meeting date. Instead it will be the following Tuesday (3/30) at 4:15 PM. I’d like your feedback on the following two things:

1) Unit Planning Template
I’m attaching a unit planning template for next year that I’d like feedback on.  Download Proposed Unit Planning Template  I’m also attaching an “overview” help sheet that includes questions to think about at each stage of the planning process. The template I’ve created is based primarily on the Understanding by Design (UbD) backwards planning model (something I’ll be developing you all on at the beginning of the school year and throughout) and will allow us to “beef up” the tremendous work that’s already been done in planning our units. I anticipate this document going onto Google Docs so that all grade level team members could access them simultaneously and collaboratively and use the template to together create a detailed plan for each unit of inquiry. While you’ll see that it’s primarily UbD, I’ve also tweaked/revised it to ensure it includes critical aspects of our dual language planning expectations as well as some key pieces of IB’s PYP unit planning process (particularly the stage 4 post-unit reflection...this isn’t a part of the UbD framework). If you want to find out more about UbD’s planning framework to help you better understand the template’s organization, you can learn more (as well as see sample unit plans for different grade levels) at: UbD on Google Books.  It’s actually a pretty fascinating read. :) After participating in a book study of this text, I used UbD as my primary unit planning approach as a teacher and found that it really pushed me to think very critically about how I planned, taught, and assessed units of study.

2) Website: Teaching & Learning Central
I’d also like you to take a look at a (VERY rough) draft of a website I’ve been working on to better organize & streamline all the information we need to access as well as our collaborative planning documents. I’ve invited you each to view: https://sites.google.com/site/ideaprimary/. The invitation was sent to the gmail accounts you use to access Google Docs. Some of the links on the website are “live” and accessible, many are not, so just play around for a few minutes and see what you think. I’d love questions, ideas, & critical feedback.

Ultimately, this final meeting will be the time to provide final feedback on any of our committee discussions:

• Next year’s proposed model
• Next year’s proposed schedules
• Teaching Fellows proposal
• Unit Planning approach
• Improving our use of Google Apps (website)
• Any other aspects of dual language planning you want me to take into consideration

I’ll then integrate your feedback and ideas and synthesize everything into proposals to be shared with the faculty as a whole. Please let any of your colleagues know that even if they haven’t attended a meeting yet, they’re still more than welcome to come to this final meeting. Just have them let me know they’re coming and that they need access to the website to review beforehand.

Thanks!

Bethany

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!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

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.