(Vol. 2, No. 1 - Fall 1997)

Franklin Middle epitomized "the ELD school"

by Anne C. Lewis

Even the most veteran ELD teachers in Long Beach Unified welcome the district's groundbreaking English Language Development standards -- among the first to be developed in the United States.

"They will help me stay even more on task," says Mike Smale, an ELD teacher at Franklin Middle School, who has the new ELD standards posted prominently on his cavernous classroom wall.

Turning his former band room into a cultural oasis for his kids with murals, flags and books, Smale never sits down unless it is next to a student (he has no teacher's desk). He teaches his students not only to use language but also to deal with customs like writing thank-you notes and shaking hands.
Smale uses everything to explore language and customs-from clocks made of paper plates that students practice with each day to a Ritchie Valens song played by his co-teacher on a guitar with students filling in the blanks from words at the bottom of the song sheet.

Smale frequently gathers his students in a corner of the room where two old couches border a rug. They all plop down and read books brought from home or from his library of multicultural books, substituting students' names for those in the stories. He reads with such animation that the students, who in an ordinary class would be playing with their hair or passing notes or dozing off, are totally fixed on their teacher. Smale slips in a moral tale, summarizing a story about "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" as a message for them-- "never give up," he says.

Smale, recruited as a science teacher from Vancouver, British Columbia, transferred to ELD classes six years ago. "You couldn't have told me when I started teaching 20 years ago that I would still be enjoying it so much," he says. His enthusiasm carries over into evening literacy classes for adults, many of them parents of his own students.

"60% school with a 30% program"

Principal Tom Lau says Franklin Middle School epitomizes what "used to be" for language-minority students and what standards will mean for them. The fifth principal since 1990, when he took over last year Lau found what he calls "a 60-percent ELD school with a 30-percent program." When existing classes for ELD students filled up, other students who needed ELD programs "were placed in mainstream classes willy nilly."

Instead, says Lau, "the needs of kids should drive the master schedule," a goal he is moving toward by first obtaining a language assessment of all students, then creating a long-range plan to provide students with the support they need.

Lau also found that attention to the district's content standards was superficial when he arrived at Franklin. Teachers saw them "as just one more thing the district has dumped on us." Now, by department and grade level, the teachers are having conversations about the standards and choosing a few to work on. Their goal was to have the curriculum aligned to the standards by the beginning of this school year.

"When we look at where we were," says Lau, "we see that everyone has a better understanding of standards, and the ELD teachers are primed for them. They have been asking when would they get them."

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