(Vol. 2, No. 1 - Fall 1997)
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Breaking the Language Barrier
Innovative standards could help stem the tide
of students with poor English language skills
by Anne C. Lewis
Juli Kendall sits in the middle of a clutch of students whose desks are
arrayed in a rough "U" around her. In many ways, it's a typical
Long Beach classroom scene. The kids' attentive faces come in many shapes
and hues - Mexican, Laotian, Cambodian, East European - an adolescent United
Nations.
But one thing immediately distinguishes Kendall from the typical sixth-grade
teacher. She never stops talking.
In this polyglot classroom full of emerging English speakers, every action
and instruction is a teaching opportunity. When a student fetches a ream
of paper, Kendall asks how much goes into the printer bin: one-fourth or
one-half? When a student uses a noun to ask for or explain something, Kendall
insists they add the appropriate adjective. "It's behind the red door."
"Hand me the green book."
Kendall explains everything as she reads, enunciating each word slowly and
clearly. She asks questions of each student and refers them to the language-rich
clues all around them.
This is a Level I English Language Development class at Hill Middle School,
full of students who are only beginning to master the intricacies of one
of the world's most idosyncratic languages. The room is full of words-they
cover the blackboard, fill the bulletin boards, and hang from the ceilings.
Much of what the students see is their own work, printed out under the direction
of Kendall's Americorps volunteer.
The room has the lively look and feel of an elementary class, perhaps explained
by the fact that Kendall was recruited from first-grade teaching two years
ago. Most prominently displayed on the wall this day is a scoring guide
developed by the students for the poems they are writing.
"Love is a very hot topic," Kendall laughs as she describes some
of her students' early efforts to express themselves in English. Phirun
Koeun, who arrived from Cambodia only six months ago with very little English,
is still considered to be at "beginning fluency," but Kendall
says his poem "What is Love?" shows significant progress:
Love is Holding hands.
People who love are happy.
Love is smiling all the time.
Love is what you liked.
You can get love from your girlfriend.
Love is not three people.
Love is not fighting all the time.
In Kendall's bungalow classroom, students need little direction to move
from one activity to another. Her activity "centers" are tasks,
not places, and at any given moment the youngsters could be writing journals,
working at computer stations, or gathered around her for reading and writing
lessons.
Kendall asks a student who has been with her most of the year to help a
young girl newly arrived from Cambodia with directions on writing her poem.
At one of the computer stations, a revved-up Radu Cadaneanu - who left economically
ravaged Romania only four months ago - writes out a story about his favorite
pet and includes his poem within the text. Kendall says his fluency level
appears to be much higher than the school district's screening test suggests:
Cats are so nice
When they catch mice
They like to play
In the golden hay
. . .
They move their tails
Like the whales.
Some of them have stripes
Like the wild cats.
New language standards may help more teachers "earn their salary"
Radu and Phirun's rapid progress is not necessarily the norm for limited-English
speakers in the Long Beach Unified schools. While new immigrants regularly
appear on the doorstep of Kendall's portable classroom (tucked away on the
backside of the Hill campus), many of her students have been in the system
for years. And many have reached the middle grades not on the basis of their
ability to read and write in English but because they speak their adopted
language well enough to get by.
"Some people have not been earning their salary," she concedes
sadly, and have allowed children to move on without gaining the skills they
need to do middle school work.
It's a large problem, and it's not limited to Long Beach. More than a third
of LBUSD's middle schoolers have significant English fluency problems, a
figure close to the California average.
"It's hard to be optimistic about how (California's) limited-English
proficient students-80 percent of whom are living in poverty-are doing in
school," says Stanford professor Kenji Hakuta, author of a recent report
on improving schooling for language-minority children. "We can look
to examples of what's working. But people shouldn't expect a quick turnaround
in test scores."
While educators in Long Beach Unified don't claim to have come up with
a quick fix, they do believe that with the introduction of the school district's
first standards for students in ELD classes, they've developed a tool that
will steadily reduce the flow of ill-prepared ELD students into middle and
high school. (See a sampling of standards applied
to a student's work.)
Kendall and many other teachers of ELD classes are enthusiastic about the
development, although they concede the standards' impact may not be felt
for several years. However, for the first time, Kendall says, "These
standards will tell us exactly what we need to be teaching and whether students
are learning."
LBUSD breaking new ground with ELD standards
Long Beach is one of the first school districts in the United States to
include students who are learning English as a second language in the content
standards movement.
The English Language Development standards were developed by a broad-based
LBUSD committee that included educators from kindergarten through college.
Although the committee members drew from many sources, they eventually crafted
a unique approach to standards that the group believes will work best for
a district where families speak as many as 60 languages and which serves
the largest Khmer-speaking community in any urban area in America.
Long Beach Unified has been working on academic or "content" standards
for nearly five years. The standards for core subjects like math, science
and social studies have been in place for some time, and subject-area teachers
are expected to use these same standards to plan their lessons, whether
they teach in English or Spanish.
But the district's ELD classes are a special case. Taught exclusively in
English, the ELD classes are designed to help any student who lacks written
and oral English fluency. Ideally, each student eventually gains enough
fluency to succeed in mainstream English classes.
Because learning a language is such a complicated task, writing the ELD
standards was especially challenging. For example, while oral proficiency
in English is important, it's not uncommon for students to develop a speaking
knowledge of English without gaining many reading, writing, and listening
skills. The ELD standards committee had to look beyond basic oral fluency
and analyze each complex element of language development - making sure the
standards covered all the different skills and knowledge students would
need to gain full English literacy.
The end result: the ELD standards set out four levels of language proficiency,
from "pre-production" (the student can understand a question but
does not know enough language to reply) to "advanced intermediate fluency"
(the student is close to the proficiency of a native speaker and is able
to make a transition to the regular English classroom.). At each level,
ELD teachers concentrate on the same skills - listening, speaking, reading
and writing - as their counterparts who teach traditional language arts.
Along the way, the ELD standards committee came to several key conclusions,
the most important of which was that the standards - which are in essence
an instructional roadmap for teachers - could not be easily divided into
grade levels, like other subjects.
"Our greatest difficulty was coming to understand we could not create
these standards based on grade levels," says Beth Grace, an ELD teacher
at Marshall Middle School, who served with Kendall on the ELD standards
committee. "We looked at the grade-level standards in history and science,
but then we tossed them, and once we did that, our work flowed more easily."
What the committee realized is that students who are not native speakers
bring different skill levels with them that are not dependent on their age.
Bonnie Walsh, the ELD specialist for LBUSD's Area C schools, explains that
a child whose parents are educated and who is fluent in her native language
will move into mainstream English classes more quickly than a student who
is illiterate in his own language.
A student who is nearing adolescence but has third-grade language skills,
Walsh adds, may need three to four years in ELD classes to gain the vocabulary
and language structure used in middle grades.
Critics of bilingual education often argue that students spend too much
time in English Development programs and believe they would fare as well
if they were quickly placed in regular English classes. But Area B ELD specialist
LaWanna Trainor likens that approach to expecting students "to pass
trigonometry before they know basic math." While some students can
make the transition fairly quickly, she says, "It just takes some students
more time."
Walsh, an English literature major who once planned to teach Shakespeare
in high school, says until 10 years ago she believed "the more English
given students, the better." But experience and reading research plus
her own attempt to learn another language convinced her how difficult the
task is.
ELD standards make assessment easier
Because the standards focus on skill development independent of grade level
or age, LBUSD district leaders say it will actually be easier in the future
to judge just how long a student needs to remain in ELD classes.
"These standards give us the freedom to take students wherever they
are in language and move on," says Elizabeth Hartung-Cole, the district's
ELD curriculum leader.
Long Beach Unified uses tests that incorporate the four types of language
skills to determine what level of ELD class is appropriate for each new
student. Hartung-Cole says the district tries to balance a new student's
language development needs with whatever academic skills they bring with
them. "Often we will see older students who arrive with few English-speaking
skills but who are on par or even above grade level in math or science,"
she says.
Hartung-Cole has negotiated college credit for advanced math and Advanced
Placement courses taught in Spanish. And non-native-speaking students who
want credit but cannot afford the AP classes can prepare portfolios which
are evaluated by faculty from California State University/Long Beach.
New training, new textbooks
The ELD content standards were introduced to teachers and principals this
past summer. The district is developing a guide that will help teachers
integrate resources, including a new textbook series. Within the year, teachers
will have "performance standards" as well - guidelines that describe
the minimum and maximum expectations for student achievement in the area
of English Development.
Teachers are being prepared for the standards in waves, beginning with a
cadre of teachers who will then train all veteran ELD teachers in the district.
A permanent program will be set up to train new ELD teachers as they are
hired. Principals, who will be expected to help evaluate ELD classrooms,
spent a half-day learning about the new standards.
Specialists in the ELD area are relieved to no longer be dependent on textbooks
to determine what is expected of ELD students. Hartung-Cole remembers discarding
the textbook she was given to use when she began teaching limited-English
kids.
"It was on the level of `See Spot run,'" she says, and one more
indication of the low status once given to her classes and her students.
She believes the district's decision to craft a unique set of standards
for the ELD program is proof that those days are over. "I think it's
clear now that the ELD program is central to standards-based reform,"
she says.
The district's newly adopted texts are literature-based (and more interesting
to kids) but also have a strong focus on skills development. "They're
a big improvement," says Trainor. In the past, she notes, what was
taught in ELD classes depended on the trendiness of texts, swinging from
too much attention on "pre-production" skills to too much literature.
While a good textbook will be important to teachers, now they are not completely
dependent on the text to steer instruction. With standards, she says, "we
will now know what we want kids to achieve and at what level."
Teaching "with a light heart"
The ELD standards, according to Chris Dominguez, assistant superintendent
for curriculum, represent Long Beach's commitment to having the same expectations
for language minority students as for all others. Using the same strands
of listening, reading, writing and speaking as in mainstream language standards,
the ELD standards "move the kids through sequentially into the language
arts standards."
For Juli Kendall, the ELD standards mean she can teach "with a light
heart." The purpose, she says, "is not to get better and better
at ELD. Instead, it is to move nearer and nearer to the English/
language arts standards. We are building a program that is different."
Elizabeth Hartung-Cole, who taught in Japan for four years and remembers
how frustrating it was to get across complicated ideas in Japanese, is empathetic
with middle school students "who make mistakes in fumbling around in
a new language." Most of them, she believes, are highly motivated and
will respond to a high-quality ELD program.
Cambodian students, she says, who have studied how dictator Pol Pot killed
hundreds of thousands who could read and write, are especially aware of
the power of literacy. For many of them, Hartung-Cole concludes, "Literacy
is something you die for."
##
Look at the work of Maria, one of Juli Kendall's
students, and track her progress.
Read about ESL teacher Mike Smale and Franklin
Middle School,
once "a 60% ESL school with a 30% program."