{"id":57262,"date":"2022-08-26T06:15:09","date_gmt":"2022-08-26T12:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renlearnstg.wpengine.com\/?p=57262"},"modified":"2023-06-26T12:36:09","modified_gmt":"2023-06-26T18:36:09","slug":"blog-thinking-beyond-language-empowering-emergent-bilingual-learners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.renaissance.com\/2022\/08\/26\/blog-thinking-beyond-language-empowering-emergent-bilingual-learners\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking beyond language: Empowering emergent bilingual learners"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When I first began working as a bilingual teacher, a colleague asked me to join her parent conference as an interpreter. During the conference, my colleague told the parent that her third-grade son was performing at a first-grade level. The parent got confused and asked, \u201cThen why isn\u2019t he in first grade?\u201d My colleague was perplexed by this question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having attended school in Costa Rica, I understood immediately and explained that globally, students are often retained in the same grade until they pass that grade level\u2019s curriculum. So, in the US, when a student annually advances to the next grade, parents assume their child is performing on grade-level, based on their own school experience. US educators may not be aware of this difference, so part of our work is to share this information with students, their families, and our colleagues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I begin with this story because it highlights the important distinction between language<\/em> proficiency and cultural<\/em> intelligence. When discussing emergent bilingual learners<\/a>, it\u2019s common to speak about these students\u2019 English language proficiency\u2014in fact, \u201cELP level\u201d is a common acronym. In many schools, it\u2019s far less common to hear educators discussing their own cultural intelligence, meaning their appreciation and understanding of students\u2019 and their families\u2019 backgrounds and language assets. As a bilingual educator, I believe that educators\u2019 cultural intelligence is vital to supporting students\u2019 academic success\u2014a point I\u2019ll explore in this blog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building on emergent bilingual students\u2019 assets<\/h2>\n\n\n

When I taught first grade in California, I read aloud to my students daily after lunch. One day, I chose El zapatero y los duendes<\/em><\/a> (The Shoemaker and the Elves). To elicit students\u2019 prior knowledge, I asked, \u201cWhere do shoes come from?\u201d Most children called out the names of local stores like Payless or K-Mart, but one student raised his hand and said that when his family lived in Mexico, his pap\u00e1 was a shoemaker. I invited him to come forward and share with us. Jos\u00e9 told us about the tools, materials, and shoemaking process he was familiar with. Thoroughly fascinated, I asked him how his pap\u00e1 figured out the size of the shoe to make. Jos\u00e9 took a piece of paper and slipped off his shoe, stood on the paper and traced around it with a pencil. What an incredible asset we had in our midst! And what a valuable lesson I learned that day.<\/p>\n

Had Jos\u00e9 not offered to share what he knew, I would not have thought to ask, and the class would have missed an amazing learning opportunity. In this case, the life-experience asset he brought to the classroom was expertise that exceeded what even I\u2014the teacher\u2014knew.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In some cultures, this might be looked down upon as the student trying to out-shine the adult, and some children may be hesitant to speak up like Jos\u00e9 did. But we can still elicit these assets in other ways\u2014provided we understand their value to student learning.<\/p>\n

I think of assets<\/em> as the valuables we own, beyond money, property, cars, etc. Learners\u2019 assets include their name, language, family, knowledge, and life experience. An asset in mainstream US culture may not be equally appreciated in other cultures and may even be uncomfortable for some students to adopt. For example, individual accomplishment is highly valued in mainstream US culture, but in other cultures, group achievement is more highly prized. When we understand this, we can incorporate this asset into our teaching by setting up group activities and projects where students work together and contribute to the team\u2019s success. We can also introduce the idea of competition as, for example, the whole class beating the clock rather than individual students competing against each other.<\/p>\n\n\n

Standards: A goal or a hurdle for emergent bilingual students?<\/h2>\n\n\n

Our content standards set rigorous grade-level expectations for all\u2014in English. If these are challenging for students who are native English speakers, how much more so for children who are acquiring English?<\/p>\n

Dr. Jim Cummins (2008) tells us that it takes 5\u20137 years to learn a new language, and often longer if the learner has had little formal education and begins after their elementary school years. During this time, they are expected to catch up to peers in English, to annually meet a set of rigorous grade-level standards in English, to complete homework in English, and to read on grade level in English. Even when emergent bilingual students arrive in US schools in pre-K or kindergarten, data and teacher observations have shown that large percentages of these students take far longer than 5\u20137 years to become Fluent English Proficient. Instead, they become Long-Term English Learners (LTEL).<\/p>\n

Why does this happen? Some students become \u201cstuck\u201d at intermediate-level English proficiency for several years, have low scores on standardized tests, and receive low grades. Curiously, they may be quite proficient in conversational English, attend school regularly, and even want to go to college, despite having a low GPA. Thankfully, there are steps we can take to prevent students from becoming LTELs.<\/p>\n

In gathering data\u2014including interviews and secondary classroom visits\u2014for the 2010 research study \u201cReparable Harm\u201d led by Dr. Laurie Olsen, we found that many LTEL students were passive in class. They didn\u2019t raise their hands when the teacher asked a question. When working on group activities, they would frequently listen to others in the group without saying anything, or would answer with \u201cThat\u2019s what I was going to say\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Some well-meaning teachers try to engage LTEL students by using \u201cequity sticks,\u201d which are popsicle sticks with students\u2019 names written on them. Rather than having students raise their hands, the teacher asks a question and then randomly draws a stick. Unfortunately, when called upon, LTEL students tend to not respond, or to say they don\u2019t know, or to be afraid that other students will make fun of them. This passive response is then reinforced when the teacher moves on to another student or simply provides the answer, eliminating any motivation to engage.<\/p>\n

\"Slide<\/a><\/figure>\n

LTEL students quickly learn in the early grades that passivity works. It\u2019s a learned behavior, not a cultural characteristic.<\/strong> This is why Think\/Pair\/Share activities, group discussions, and the use of white boards by all students to show their responses are far more productive than calling on students individually. Students learn that they are all going to have to answer, but not necessarily with the spotlight focused on them.<\/p>\n\n\n

Using emergent bilinguals\u2019 home language<\/h2>\n\n\n

Another great piece of news is that the research is clear and undisputed regarding dual-language instruction (see, for example, Collier & Thomas, 2004; Collier & Thomas, 2017; and Butvilofsky et al., 2017). Students who learn in both their home language and in English, in a planned, designed program such as dual-language immersion, achieve outstanding results<\/a> in English acquisition and content learning, as well as in their home language. Then why do so many schools in the US employ an English-only approach that forces students to struggle and to fall further behind, and their home language to atrophy?<\/p>\n

One of the reasons is that educators are held accountable for their school\u2019s progress based on annual summative tests\u2026in English. The flawed logic follows that if the tests are administered in English, instruction should be English-only. But we know from years of research that what is learned in one language transfers to the new language\u2014what Cummins (2008) calls Common Underlying Proficiency. So, an English-only system is endorsing inefficiency and stressing learners by not utilizing the asset of the language they already understand.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Brain<\/figure>\n

I\u2019m reminded of Albert Einstein\u2019s remark that when he moved to the US, he only had to learn English. He didn\u2019t have to relearn physics\u2014just the English vocabulary for the concepts he already knew.<\/p>\n

Teachers don\u2019t need to be able to speak every student\u2019s language, but the more they can learn about<\/em> the language and how it both differs from and is similar to English, the more they can help students make important connections<\/a>. Providing resources in the student\u2019s home language for them to read and listen to in order to reinforce their understanding of content\u2014and having parents or older children regularly read aloud to them\u2014are an incredible use of the assets they bring and actually bolsters<\/em> their English reading comprehension.<\/p>\n\n\n

Doing the math\u2014and promoting educational equity<\/h2>\n\n\n

One of the questions I hear most often is, \u201cWhy does it take so long for these students to learn English?\u201d Remember, emergent bilinguals\u2019 focus is two-fold: learning English and also learning new content. In my projection below, I compare the amount of English input between emergent bilinguals and native English speakers as a strong rationale for using dual languages in education:<\/p>\n

\"Chart<\/figure>\n

In the first five years of life, children average about 12 waking hours per day where they are potentially receiving home language input. I multiplied this by 365 days per year. At 5 years old, children enter kindergarten with over 20,000 hours of language foundation.<\/p>\n