EDU 585 Cultivating Leadership
Prof. Barbara Eritzian
Student: Carlos Ochoa
University of Maine at Farmington
Master’s in Education Program
Symposium Project EDU 585
The Jay School Department is a grade Pre-K through 12th school district
located in Jay, Maine. According to the 2000 census, Jay had a population of 4985
(http://www.census.gov). However, an update in population records shows that
there has been a decline in the town’s population of about 4.9%. By July 2009, the
town of Jay had a population of 4741 (http://www.city-data.com/city/JayMaine.html). The census data also show that the average family income in 2008 was
$46,233. The Verso Paper Mill is the major stable employer in the town of Jay.
The Jay School District includes 3 schools, which serve a population of 780
children in grades Pre-K through 12. Of those students, almost 41% of them receive
free lunch, while another 8% of them receive reduced lunch
(https://portal.maine.gov/sfsr/sfsrdev.ED534.ED534_report). The Jay School
District mission statement establishes that all children must be given equal, but not
identical opportunities to allow them to achieve at levels according to their abilities.
Their educational experiences will prepare and will provide students with the skills
necessary for success in a global society while giving them a broad educational
foundation compatible with their interests, aptitudes and aims. Furthermore, the
Jay High School, which serves a student population of 264 students has aligned its
mission statement with the district mission statement. The Jay High School mission
states that the school’s mission is to provide the opportunity and means for each
school graduate to become a clear and effective communicator, a self-directed and
life-long learner, a creative and practical problem solver, a responsible and involved
citizen, a collaborative and quality worker and an integrative and informed thinker.
Both mission statements from the Jay School District and High School clearly
establish that the whole school system advocates for students’ learning success. It
draws from the students’ needs and its students’ reality in order to prepare them to
be successful community members who can identify issues in their local community,
think of solutions, and communicate their solution, articulating them effectively to
other community members. The mission statement also strives to give its graduates
the skills to be informed citizens in order to take part in the political life of its
community and nation. This element of the mission statement is very important
because one of the main goals of the educational system in the United States is that
its citizens are well informed so that they can take part in its political process. By
helping the student body at Jay High School to achieve literacy in reading, writing,
mathematics and science, the Jay School District may accomplish its goals of helping
graduates to be involved citizens and informed thinkers.
In its school vision, the Jay School District determines that it will furnish a
learning environment, which will support students to obtain the necessary skills
and the perspectives for a productive life and professional careers. The Jay School
District will make great efforts to aid students in forming desirable habits which are
necessary for them to be responsible, informed citizens. Moreover, the school
district hopes to help students develop positive attitudes toward themselves and
genuine respect for others. The Jay School District aims at preparing children in the
Jay community to be productive and useful members of society at local, national and
global levels. The committee that drafted the district’s vision seems to understand
the reality and nature of the town. Some of its high school graduates may be able to
obtain employment within the businesses in its community. However, its vision also
strives to prepare its graduates with the knowledge, skills and understanding to
look for professional careers outside the Jay community at the state, national and
global levels. In its mission and vision, the Jay School District clearly establishes
that in order to help its students to be successful learners and communicators of
their skills, knowledge and perspectives in an ever-changing global community and
pluralistic society at home and abroad, its high school graduates must become
linguistically competent and develop a level of proficiency in at least one other
language (http://www.state.me.us/education/lres/mcl.htm).
Achieving this linguistic academic goal will empower Jay students to
communicate with others whose language is not English, so that Jay graduates in the
work place, at home and abroad, can easily “compete in the global marketplace and
produce an informed citizenry” (Regarding World Language Education, NEA
Research, December 2007, p. 1). The state of Maine recognizes the learning of a
foreign language as a very important goal for its residents because there are several
benefits that come to individuals from being proficient in a language other than
English. Furthermore, at the national level in the United States, the public school
system has recognized that there are benefits that can be gained from including the
learning of a second language and the exposure to other languages from a young
age. Thus, there is now more interest and support that has been gained from
parents and communities to include foreign language from kindergarten through
12th grade in the public school curriculum. Foreign language instruction can be
beneficial and is crucial for economic growth in the United States because “a
multilingual workforce enhances America’s economic competitiveness abroad, helps
maintain our political and security interests, and promotes tolerance and
intercultural awareness”
(http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/0001promoting.html).
This field research project aims to determine the benefits that a foreign
language may have for students. Four linguistic areas will be assessed through a
test in order to establish some of the benefits that students may achieve when they
are instructed in a world language at an early developmental age. The test will
measure the levels of students’ Spanish proficiency in the areas of listening
comprehension, understanding of grammatical structures, vocabulary acquisition
and speaking production for Spanish level I. The participants in the study are a
group of 9th grade students who are now enrolled in a high school Spanish level I
course. Some of the students attending the class had early exposure from the 4th
grade through the 8th grade. Some of them did not. The control group for this study
is the group of students enrolled in the class who never had a foreign language
before this class.
The basis for this study is the linguistic theory established by Noam Chomsky
called Universal Grammar (UG) along with studies of neurological scientific research
of the brain, which has been able to determine that the right and left hemispheres of
the brain are not fixed in their functions from birth, making it possible for young
children to acquire the linguistic inputs of any language they are exposed to. In the
case of Universal Grammar, individuals are born with an innate capacity to acquire
any language because there are a set of universal linguistic principles, which apply
to all languages “and parameters that vary within clearly defined limits from one
language to another” (Cook, V.J , pp. 1-2). In order to understand how human beings
acquire language, the analogy of the seed can be used. A seed is an embryonic
organism that has all the potential to develop into a healthy, mature plant.
However, it needs elements from the environment, such as dirt, water and sun, in
order to spring into growth (Cook, V.J., p. 73). Chomsky argues that individuals
possess “a preset biological clock” (Cook, V.J., p. 73), which predetermines people’s
cognitive ability to grow languages rather than learn them. Moreover, UG focuses on
the fact that there are elements that all languages have in common. UG is not
interested in the features particular to each language.
For example, if a child whose first language is English is taken to live in Japan
or if a child whose first language is Japanese is taken to live in the United States,
both children will grow up with competencies in their second language (L2)
identical to children whose parents only speak either Japanese or English (Cook, V.J.,
p. 73). Furthermore, their native-like speaker competencies will develop because
human beings share a “common genetic inheritance” (Cook, V.J., p. 73) regardless of
particular physical attributes. In the case of second language (L2) learners who are
exposed to an L2 at the elementary school level, some studies propose that young
children have an easier time using the principles that are universal to all languages
because children’s brains are more malleable from birth to the time they reach
puberty (http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/0001promoting.html). During the
critical period from birth to puberty, the human brain interacts with both right and
left hemispheres as a whole brain. The brain capacity makes it possible for young
children to assimilate and construct their own understandings of the second
language, formulating a non-native grammar, which is referred to as “interlanguage”
(White, Lydia, p. 1).
This project has, as a goal, to determine whether it is beneficial to students of
a second language to be exposed to an L2 before they reach the closure of the critical
period in the brain. The Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) explains that the human
brain goes through a progressive process of lateralization. This neurological
process starts at birth and ends at preadolescence. Before the Critical Period is
reached, the brain has great neural plasticity, which allows young children to
become competent in an L2 with the same capacity they have to acquire their first
language. Moreover, at a very young age, children can access the innate mental
faculties of the Universal Grammar more easily (Second Language Acquisition and
Critical Period Hypothesis, pp. 1-5). This correlational study will try to determine
whether a group of 9th graders who are native speakers of English and who have
received early instruction in Spanish, have experienced linguistic benefits from their
early exposure to an L2 from the 4th grade to the 8th grade. The relevance of this
correlational, empirical research is to determine the linguistic benefits to students
at the high school level. High school students are typically advised to take a foreign
language if they are planning to attend college. Therefore, the study attempts to
shed light on the benefits of assimilation of a foreign language (in this case, Spanish)
when children have been exposed to it at a young age and whether this language
assimilation can aid students in being more successful at achieving the learning of
language features such as lexicon, grammatical structures, competency in listening
comprehension and speaking proficiency.
In order to gather data for the correlational research, two groups of language
students from the Spanish I program will be assessed in the areas of lexicon,
grammatical structures, listening comprehension and speaking proficiency. One
group of 27 students has received instruction in Spanish from the 4th grade through
the 5th grade for 45 minutes per week and later from the 6th grade through the 8th
grade for 90 minutes per week. This group of students is currently taking Spanish I
in high school. The Spanish I program provides instruction for 80-minute block
periods in alternating two or three days per week cycles. The second group of seven
Spanish I participants had never had a foreign language until beginning Spanish I at
the high school. The collected data will be analyzed in order to determine whether
there is a significant difference in the scores obtained from both groups and in
which areas of linguistic competence differences arise.
Many factors have changed in the curricular structure of the World language
initiative program at the Jay School District, this field-based research project was
started. The Spanish language program at the elementary school level was
implemented because parents, students, administrators, teachers and the
community understood and believed that proficiency in a foreign language may
enhance the opportunities of students once they graduate from high school, and be
able to utilize or market their language skills whether high school graduates decided
to pursue higher education or employment in an economy that is influenced by
global markets.
This field research project has, as a main purpose, the goal of demonstrating
how the world language curriculum aligns with the desires of the stakeholders,
whose expectations are to have successful students who graduate from the Jay High
School. The initiative of determining whether the Spanish program has been
successful in achieving its academic purpose of preparing students for the rigid, high
stakes Spanish program at the high school level originates from the idea that if the
program is “held accountable by measure and debatable indicators of success, and
be ultimately assessed by the extent to which it awakens people’s intrinsic
commitment” (Fullan, p. 20).
Michael Fullan states in his book, “Leading in a Culture of Change,” an
example of how, in order for leadership to have moral purpose, it is crucial to
convey to others a sense of purpose and direction (Fullan, p. 19). I believe that for a
curricular program to exist students who sign up for the course need to feel that
there is a pragmatic reason for them to embark on the long journey toward
becoming proficient in a foreign language. The benefits to them can be direct, such
as securing a job that is satisfactory to their lives, or indirect, such as experiencing
“crosslinguistic influence” (Cunningham & Graham, p. 37). This ability aids students
in being more proficient in their own first language in the areas of reading
comprehension and writing because they make connections between the
similarities in lexicon and grammar in their L1 and L2.
Foreign Language Professional Learning Community Initiative at Jay High
School
The idea of forming a professional learning community for the foreign
language department at the Jay School District came about as the result of being able
to identify the need for the World Language Department to work in conjunction in
order to improve students’ proficiency achievement in a foreign language at Jay
High School. I brought forth the initiative of forming the PLC to my Spanish I and
French colleagues, mentioning that it would be a great way to share information on
students who are struggling with either learning French or Spanish, and that it
would be easier for the three of us to meet since, for the first time, we are in the
same building. My two colleagues have received the PLC initiative enthusiastically
and have agreed to meet once a month on Thursdays, when we all have a
preparation period. We already had our first meeting and the Spanish I teacher
proposed to draw up a plan to apply for a grant to obtain funding to take students
on a cultural trip to Portland, Maine. Portland’s ethnic communities have increased
in the past years, and we would explore the possibility of having students learn
about different cultures through experiencing the dances and ethnic cuisine of
Spanish speaking countries. We will try to get funds in order to finance expenses
such as food, transportation and payment for the cultural activity the group will do
in Portland. We bounced off ideas and we have agreed that we will try to find a
place where students can receive a dance lesson in Spanish dances such as salsa or
merengue. While in Portland, the second activity will be to take students to eat
ethnic Salvadoran or Puerto Rican food. We need to meet again and work out more
details to prepare for the cultural activity.
References
Birdsong, D. (1999). Second language acquisition and the critical period hypothesis.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Cook, V.J. (1988). Chomsky’s universal grammar: An introduction. Cambridge, MA:
Basil Backwell, Inc.
Cunningham, T., & Graham, C.R. (2000). Increasing native english vocabulary
recognition through spanish immersion: Cognate transfer from foreign to
first language. Journal of Education Psychology, 92(1), 37-49. Retrieved
October 19, 2008, from ERIC database.
Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Jay, Maine (2010). Retrieved from http://www.city-data.com/city/Jay-Maine.html
Maine Department of Education. (1997). Modern and Classical Languages. In
Standards (1997 Learning Results.) Retrieved from
http://www.state.me.us/education/lres/mcl.htm
Maine Department of Education. (2010). % Free and Reduced School Lunch Report.
Retrieved from
https://portal.maine.gov/sfsr/sfsrdev.ed534.ed534_parameters
National Education Association. (2007). The Benefits of Second Language Study. In
Regarding World Language Education.
Marcos, K.M. & Peyton, J.K. (2000). Promoting a language proficient society: What
you can do. In Resources (Online resources: digests.) Retrieved from
http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/0001promoting.html
United States Census Bureau. (2009). Jay, Franklin County, Maine. In Population
Finder. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov
White, L. (2003). Second language acquisition and universal grammar. Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press.