Best Practices for Serving English Language Learners and Their Families

11,000,000 children under age nine are Dual Language Learners 

    I chose this webinar because I want to be prepared and educated on how I can best serve English Language Learners in my classroom. This webinar provided a variety of ways in which you can be supportive in the classroom and I will talk about some of those ideas below.

Make the curriculum relevant→ embedding stories, reading, and perspectives that focus on history and immigrations in the units that are taught. You want to include your students in the curriculum.

Use a variety of teaching modalities→ Call and response, using movement, graphic organizers, visual representations in order to make the curriculum more understandable for all the students.

Familiarize yourself with cultural norms→ Respect looks different in different parts of the world. What a student does might be respectful to them, but you do not read it as respect. Get to know their culture and the different ways they may send messages.

Get to know your students’ contextual skills and educational backgrounds→ Can the students write on lined paper? Can they use scissors? Do not embarrass them if they do not know this. Rather, figure out what they do and do not know and teach them the things they should learn to be successful in the classroom.

Distinguish between academic English and conversational/home English→ Create the bridge between home and academic english. Some may be less familiar with academic English but this should not be seen as a deficit. It takes 5-7 years to become proficient in English and 7-11 years to become proficient in academic English.

Honor your students’ first languages→ find ways to bring it into the classroom and celebrate the language. Have students bring in artifacts of that language or tell stories about their language that they know.


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In the classroom….

    

Limit pulling ELL students out of the classroom for separate instruction time because this puts them at a disadvantage of working with peers and forming relationships. Give the ELL students the same curriculum as everyone else while being aware that they may need scaffolding. Use texts that show mirrors for the students so using texts from their culture s o they can see themselves. Allow the students to teach us about their language (teacher and other students) in the classroom. Finally, go beyond the classroom and allow ELL students to work alongside their peers and allow them to feel comfortable working with others.


Regarding family engagement…

    Being clear about the purpose of meetings means that you are setting goals and making sure that all parties are on the same page with realistic expectations. Be mindful of the power differences between parents and teachers. They may be uncomfortable because they do not speak english or because they are immigrants so be mindful of this and eliminate any power difference that may be present. Another important part of meeting with families is to have a translator in order to be able to communicate effectively (hint: the student is NOT the translator here, that is too uncomfortable for them and they should not be put in this position).


    I recently just had a guest speaker come to my MLED class to discuss teaching English Language Learners (Rachel Toncelli) and so I learned a lot of information from her and now through this webinar, I learned even more! I feel a bit more prepared for English Language Learners in my class and I still want to do more work on this. I want to be educated and informed so I can provide the best education to all my students in the classroom. What is worse than a teacher not being educated on this for an ELL student? It is already a scary time for them and I cannot imagine them feeling uncomfortable in the classroom because of their teacher. I want to avoid this at all costs!

Classroom Management

I want to start this post with a quote that was shared during this webinar on reframing classroom management. It really stuck out to me and I think it shows what is wrong using great examples. The quote reads:

If a child doesn’t know how to read, we teach. 

If a student doesn't know how to swim, we teach. 

If a student doesn’t know how to multiply, we teach. 

If a student doesn’t know how to drive, we teach. 

If a child doesn’t know how to behave, we punish? (Tom Herner)

Why do we punish instead of teach? Is it easier to just punish and send the student to the office? What does that do for the student and why can’t the teacher try to fix this within the classroom walls? This is what I wonder and this webinar has helped me answer this and learn how to handle my classroom.

There are four steps in responding to student behavior with the goal of keeping learning on track

- The first is to understand and distinguish the behavior and figure out why are they doing this and how are they acting out? An example of the most common misbehavior is disrespect and disregard. An example that may be seen in the classroom is a student distracting others by making unnecessary noise during silent reading time. Why does the student do this and how should we look at it? You need to look at the entire environment and look at what the student is getting by doing this behavior. That student may be looking for attention. How can you help this student? The effective intervention would be to maybe allow the student to tell jokes to his friends at the end of class because this is an easy way to meet that need. Another example is a student not listening and not following directions. Maybe that student is trying to escape a task. So, to help that student, you could offer more incentives for engaging in the text or maybe offer them a break because this is hard work. These small fixes can really go a long way instead of sending the student to the office immediately and not giving them a chance to improve in the classroom.

-The second step is to rethink control and power dynamics within a classroom. There are six phrases that disempower students. An example is “If you have been paying attention, then you would know” and this is a problematic statement. How do we know it was a lack of caring or focus? We do not. This is not something to say to a student, rather you could instead say “Start by asking a classmate for help. If you still need clarification, I’m here”. Another mistake that teachers make is to engage in a public battle with a student. There is no reason to engage in something like this in front of other students and this will humiliate the student and will not make them want to think about changing their behavior after you just did this to them.

-The third step is to be proactive instead of reactive. In the classroom this means teaching the classroom behavior and expectations to the students. The most important thing a teacher can do according to the presentation is build relationships and foster engagement to prevent being reactive. Greet your students outside of the class as they walk in, frame discussions in accordance with future success meaning, call your students scientists, researchers, thinkers, etc. And another preventative step to take is to avoid removing the student from the room immediately because in the long run, this does not fix anything for the student or teacher.

-The fourth and final step is to respond to the child, not the behavior. One strategy is to refocus the energy, so ask the student who is misbehaving to answer the question related to the lesson. By doing this, you are giving them attention and if they are seeking attention, this is a way to cater to that in a different way than they wanted, but it is what you as the teacher needs from them. Give them a break if they need it because this responds to the child and their needs. Give the student non-verbal cues- maybe they just need to make eye contact with you once and it will solve the issue. Lastly, another option is to give anonymous reminders. I like the example used in the webinar, “I am just waiting for two scholars to take their seats”. This calls them out but in an indirect way as to not draw attention to them and embarrass them.

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How can we avoid classroom removal?

1. Schedule a one-on-one conversation→ allow students to speak and discuss their frustrations.

2. Call home→ discuss with the family and come up with a solution to change the behavior.

3. Offer time for mindfulness→ almost like a “time out” which gives them time to reflect on their behavior and gather themselves back together to be able to come back to the lesson.



    This was such a beneficial webinar to watch as a future teacher who will be soon stepping into a classroom on my own. I need to be able to handle situations of poor behavior and know how to work with the student to help them fix it. I am not a supporter of removing a child from the room immediately because I saw this happen way too often in my high school years where students were removed from the class and put in the in school suspension room. This did nothing for them- they would come back the next day and do the same thing and get removed again. Reflecting on what I saw and now what I learned from this webinar, I feel that some of these simple strategies would have worked for the students in my classes and they would have been much more successful in high school than they were. I am determined to tackle behavior issues using these techniques and avoid just calling the office for help with a student. 

                                                

Digital Literacy- What Skills do Students Need?

I chose to listen to this webinar on digital literacy because to be honest, the internet scares me. The things that happen on the internet with kids is scary and I want to make it a point to really educate myself on this so that when I do use the internet in my classroom, it is beneficial to the students and that they are staying informed. It is important that they know the difference between real and fake news and this webinar helped me learn about this.

More than 60% of Americans now rely on social media for the information about political controversies. 

This is scary because social media is filled with fake news and people fighting over voicing their views on social media platforms. I would like to talk about a statement that the speaker made during the presentation. Kate Shuster states, “So, a lot of what we’re trying to teach our students to do is to switch domains and be able to transfer knowledge from one domain to another domain and to be able to make connections across what seem like unrelated fields” (Shuster). Since our brains are wired to look for connections, students will look for connections and in the classroom, that is great. We want them to bridge previous knowledge to new content but for internet purposes, this can hurt them. This is because they are reading conspiracy theories on the internet and trying to make connections in areas where there aren’t any. On top of this, they are reading the same false theory over and over again on the internet and therefore, our brains start to adapt to it and believe it and think we know it as the “correct” answer.

I want to focus now on how I can work in the classroom to combat these issues of perusing on the internet and believing everything we see to be true. So, how can we teach our students to think critically when they are using the media. They need to think about what they are reading and question whether it is true or not. So to do this, I can become familiar with the digital literacy framework that is presented in this webinar. This is a framework for the students to follow and so it is one I need to study before presenting to the class. There are seven layers to the framework and I will list them below.

Students…

1. Can locate and verify reliable sources of information.
2. Should understand how digital information comes to them.
3. Can constructively engage in digital communities. 
4. Understand how online communication affects privacy and security. 
5. Understand that they are producers of information. 
6. Understand their role as customers in an online marketplace. 
7. Can evaluate the value of the internet as a mechanism of civic action. 

These are skills that students need to be able to do. These skills are ones I want to take into my classroom and show my students how to do. Students should know how to locate sources that are reliable and not fake news. There are many sources and activities that can be found to do with students to teach this. They should understand how the digital information is presented and be able to engage civilly online. That is, to not say bashful comments over the internet. The online marketplace wants to draw people in and this can sometimes be scary because they will do anything to lure people in. How do we sort through the information and evaluate it? This is what students need to know and be able to do in order to use the internet successfully and safely.

Student Mental Health MATTERS!

“1 in 5 children between ages 3 and 17 have a mental, emotional, or behavioral difficulty” (Teaching Tolerance)

I listened to a Teaching Tolerance webinar on student health in which the presenters share why discussing this is important and how to handle mental health in the classroom as a teacher. The most common mental health challenges amongst students are:

1. Anxiety
2. Depression
3. Suicide Ideation
4. ADHD
5. Eating disorders 
6. Overlapping conditions (mental health overlapped with physical disorders,ie. Substance abuse) 

Black Mental health matters→ Suicide rate is twice as high than their white counterparts (Teaching Tolerance)

What can I do as a teacher? As a future educator, I need to know how to handle mental health in the classroom because I need to do everything I can for my students. 

• Educate myself on mental health- spend time reading and researching so I know how to act, and how to help in the classroom relating to mental health.

• Educate the families of students- provide them with support systems that can help them. The school nurse, counselors, school psychologist are all people who can be of aid to the family. 

• Work to remove stigma surrounding mental health, especially in Black communities- breaking down barriers to discuss mental health and promote mental health awareness in the schools.

• Involve community groups in this work

The alarming statistic above on suicide rates leads me to my next point that was discussed in this webinar: Systematic racism in curriculum, culture, and policies. The ways in which I can do this are: 

• Decolonizing curriculum- decolonize the ideologies and dismantle the curriculum to make it relevant to all students of all cultures.

• Know and be mindful of the communities that I am serving- What community am I serving? What do I know about it? What do I know about the people?
  

• Be aware of students who may be at risk of harm because of how they identify- know when to step in and be supportive, watch for injustices in terms of identity in the classroom.

    
I also learned what I should NOT do and this is just as important as learning what I should do. I do not in any way want to harm my students more by acting poorly because I did not do the work on my part to know what I should and should not do. The first thing that I should never do is to try and diagnose my students. This is not my space to do so, that is for people who are educated in that field to give a medical diagnosis. I should also not do this because if I make an assumption as to what the student has, I could be wrong and it is a totally different disorder. So, in conclusion, never diagnose a student in your classroom. Another important thing not to do is to generalize one student's problem and apply that assumption to other students. Each student is different and nobody should be compared to another person.


    In conclusion, I want to touch on a couple things I should do in a bit more detail. I should be checking my bias, that is, to not push any beliefs that I hold or that the school system holds onto the family. I should be there to help them move forward in helping the child and being another support system along with the parents. We should work alongside each other, not against each other.


    I should also be working to create a safe environment for my students that is a place for them to feel that they are trusted and that confidentiality is present. I should never share a student's health complications with another student or to anyone else who is not involved in the matter.