TRANSFORMING THE
INTERCONNECTIONS
BETWEEN LITERACY
TEACHERS, ELL TEACHERS,
AND CLASSROOM
TEACHERS
LRA Conference
December 2013
Dr. Kena Avila
Linfield College
kavila@linfield.edu
BIG IDEA
ELL students need their teachers to
weave together language, literacy, and
content by advocating for time to
engage in effective and productive
collaboration with an awareness that
challenges the dominant discourses
that isolate teachers of ELLs.
GOALS & AGENDA
Goals
• Reflect on the discourses that
represent and enforce isolated
identities.
• Share models of collaboration
between ELL specialists,
classroom teachers, and Title 1
teachers.
• Define idealistic versus
complex views of collaboration.
• Identify issues of power in
scheduling and time.
Agenda
• Introduction
• The Problem & Its Result
• Isolation of Teachers of ELLs
• Group TicTacToe (Creeese)
• The Need for Time
• The Need for Collaboration
• 3 words on Collaboration
• The Need for Awareness
• Just what is Bi-Discoursal anyway?
• Conclusion
DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS
In one decade 1998-99 to
2008-09 the ELL population
increased by 51% compared
to the total K-12 population
which grew only 7.2%.
12% of the population was
foreign born and 20% spoke
a language other than
English
Over 70% of English learners
in our schools were born in
the US; that is, they are
second- or third-generation
immigrants.
EDUC 340 SIOP Ch. 1 Introduction
BACKGROUND ON ENGLISH LEARNING
 Demographic Trends
 The states with the fastest-growing
limited English proficient student
populations are:







North Carolina
Colorado
Nevada
Nebraska
Oregon
Georgia
Indiana
ALL HAD 200% increases
between 1993-2003.
EDUC 340 SIOP Ch. 1 Introduction
ACHIEVEMENT GAPS
71% of ELLs in 4th
grade scored Below
Basic on NAEP Reading
2009
¾ of 8th grade ELLs
scored Below Basic on
NAEP Reading and
Math 2009
43% of ELLs in 4th
grade scored Below
Basic on NAEP Math
2009
EDUC 340 SIOP Ch. 1 Introduction
The Six Blind Men
and the Elephant
What are the
parts of the
elephant for ELL
students?
Isolated
Identities
(Discourse)
Need for
Collaboration
• Move from Idealistic
to Complex View
• Respond to alignment
of CCSS & ELPA-21
Need for Time
• Framework for
Collaboration
• Structured
Institutionalized
Schedules
Need for
Awareness
• Macro Issues of
Power and Status
• Bidiscoursal
Perspectives
ELLS HAVE MULTIPLE TEACHERS
THROUGHOUT THEIR DAY
ELL
Specialists
Classroom
Teachers
Title 1
Teachers
2 teachers
from
School A
2teachers
from
School A
2teachers
from
School A
2 teachers
from
School B
2 teachers
from
School B
2 teachers
from
School B
METHODS AND DATA SOURCES
Qualitative Design Approach = transcribed
interviews, field notes, and transcription of focus groups.
Grounded Theory:
An inductive method that examined
the themes that emerged from teachers’ experiences,
insights, and viewpoints (Clarke, 2005).
Phase
I
12
Interviews
Phase
II
12
Observations
Phase
III
2 Focus
Groups
ANALYSIS
Discourse Analysis:
• Gee (2011)
• Context as a Reflexive Tool
• “Speech creates or shapes (possibly
manipulates) the context.”
Situational Analysis
• Clarke (2011)
• Multiple mapping and saturation of
data
THE ISOLATION OF TEACHERS OF ELLS
ELL
Specialist
•"Our role is to teach the functions
of language."
Classroom
Teacher
•"I don't have to worry about the
language development .. that's
not really my job."
Title 1
Teacher
•"Primarily, what I'm doing is
teaching kids how to read."
CREESE TIC-TAC-TOE
Robert Linquanti, 2012, Project Director for EL Evaluation WestED
THE NEED FOR COLLABORATION
“The theory of action embedded in
the Framework
to first
cross before acquiring the CCSS
and NGSS, but as partner
standards articulating practices,
knowledge, and skills students
need to have to access the CCSS
and NGSS”
(Council of Chief State School Officers et al., 2012).
ELPA-21
BIG IDEA
ELL students need their teachers to
weave together language, literacy, and
content by advocating for time to
engage in effective and productive
collaboration with an awareness that
challenges the dominant discourses
that isolate teachers of ELLs.
CONFRONTING AN ALLOCATION OF
EFFECTIVE TIME TOGETHER
Title
1Teacher
•Well our, our teams meet every week um, I try to get into a grade level meeting
once a month, our ELL people try to get into a grade level meeting once a month.”
Title 1
Teacher
•“We get to meet with our teachers, half our staff about every other week I think it is
and then the other half on the other- so twice a month we're meeting with staff so
we get to meet with all staff once a month, that's what it is.”
ELL
Teacher
•“I might occasionally hear from a class- from grade level teams or classroom
teachers something that their kids are working on in class and that they are asking
me to support in their ELL time”
ELL
Teacher
•As I am having a conversation with a teacher I might say that, you know, I think that
this is a kid:: who really needs a lot of visual support, you know”
CONFRONTING AN ALLOCATION OF
EFFECTIVE TIME TOGETHER
have a push in so that's really nice from ELL and she
Classroom •“We
comes and helps and I schedule writing at that time so she
Teacher
comes in and works with them.”
Classroom
Teacher
•“I think that's a huge crutch in our system. um, that everyone
else is doing these amazing things and you might just not
know it because you haven't gone down to ask them and they
don't have time to explain.”
Classroom
Teacher
•“All the ELL assistants that are amazing and do great work
but I don't have time to talk to them because they leave
before my day is over.”
THE NEED FOR TIME
“Leaders need to provide time for teachers
to study texts, tasks, and assessments, and to
examine student work products at different
levels of English proficiency in collaboration
with content, ELD, and literacy experts”
(Santos et al., n.d., p. 9).
Effective and productive
collaboration cannot happen
during teachers’ prep or
transition time.
WRITE DOWN 3 WORDS THAT DESCRIBE
COLLABORATION
.
.
.
CONFRONTING AN IDEALISTIC
PERCEPTION OF COLLABORATION
Classroom
Teacher
Classroom
Teacher
•“There's no doubt that you know that working as a team has true benefits”
•“When we have time for collaboration. It’s a little more effective than when I’m doing my
own.”
Classroom
Teacher
•“You can bounce ideas off and they will have information for you or share information that they
can help you with.”
Title 1
Teacher
•“Each time we've gotten together we've tried to talk about um, what are things that we're doing
in title or what are things that they're doing in ELL that would help um, those kids with the
vocabulary and the content.”
CONFRONTING AN IDEALISTIC
PERCEPTION OF COLLABORATION
ELL
Specialist
•“Last year, I worked with someone in the district who I
disagreed with on many things. Her theory politics and
instruction were all completely opposing. Her and I had the
same job. We agreed to set aside our beliefs.”
ELL
Specialists
•“It doesn’t come down to this policy or that policy. It comes
down to listening. Everyone wants to learn. We all want to help
kids.”
Classroom
Teacher
•You know, we think for ourselves and obviously are our own
teachers but we do try for consistency. We try to do the same
things with one another or do the same thing as the other is
doing."
ISOLATION VERSUS COLLABORATION
“No longer can ESL teachers sit back and
deliver isolated skill lessons to their ELLs in
vocabulary, grammar, reading, and writing”
(Honigsfeld, 2010, p. 29).
IDEALISTIC VERSUS COMPLEX
PERCEPTIONS OF COLLABORATION
“In their optimism about caring and
supportive communities, advocates often
underplay the role of diversity, dissent,
and disagreement in community life,
leaving practitioners ill-prepared and
conceptions of collaboration
underexplored.”
(Achinstein, 2002, p. 421)
WRITE DOWN 3 MORE WORDS THAT
DESCRIBE COLLABORATION
.
.
.
CONFRONTING A LACK OF AWARENESS
REGARDING STATUS AND POWER
ELL
Specialist
ELL
Specialists
• "They think you are just some sort of an assistant who is there to teach
Spanish and they just want you to either take the kids out of the classroom
to get them out of the way or they expect you to leave the kids in the
classroom who they think are accademically successful. "
• "I think within the whoe school wide setting there might not always be as
much understanding for what the purpose of ELL time is, you know, that
we're really trying to support language growth and so like I, you know, I
guess make surethat I'm also trying, if you now, I guess trying to tie in
learnign about readin or other subject areas."
CONFRONTING A LACK OF AWARENESS
REGARDING STATUS AND POWER
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
•The subject teachers
have a sense of
ownership of their own
areas and the authority
to influence other
teachers.
•The ELL achievement
problems are indicative
of a larger institutional
and societal culture
reflecting a larger
macro discourse of
power and status.
Arkoudis
Creese
“Bi-discoursal people are the ultimate
sources of change. They are prepared to
seek out alternative ways of viewing the
world in which relations of power can be
disrupted and reconfigured”
Miller-Marsh (2002).
In your own
words define
“bi-discoursal”
While what may seem an obvious remedy for teachers to simply
collaborate, it becomes more multifaceted as we take into
account
•
dominant discourses that isolate teachers,
• complex models of collaboration, and the
• sociocultural factors of Power & status
that impact the education of ELLs. We need to strive to expand
our identities and perspectives in order to become one of MillerMarsh’s (2002 ) “Bi-discoursal people”.
BIG IDEA
ELL students need their teachers to
weave together language, literacy, and
content by advocating for time to
engage in effective and productive
collaboration with an awareness that
challenges the dominant discourses
that isolate teachers of ELLs.