Change 1: Brain Change is Possible and YOU matter!
With roughly 50% of our students being labeled "Economically Disadvantaged," the article "Equitable Education for Students in Poverty Starts with the Teacher," presents many relevant points for the teachers with whom I work. My frequent conversations with teachers echo what Liebtag notes in her article about poverty's impact on children; "...students may come to school tired and hungry, be assertive in their behavior and unwilling to follow along, seem disengaged...it is these behaviors and indicators that educators are often left to navigate, in addition to trying to support students academically." Certainly not always, but more often than not, when I hear teachers talk about the exhausting work of managing behaviors that have causes too large for them to ever fix, it is powerlessness and sadness that I sense much more than bitterness or unwillingness. The truth that many, many of our students experience stress from living in poverty is not something we can change single-handedly. The impact that stress has on our students' brains, however, is a change that we have the power to make.
The first change I would like to make is to share information with teachers that shows them it is possible to change our brains and that they play a really important role in helping diminish the effects of poverty on their students' brains. I would like to start by sharing some information I learned in course I took about Growth Mindset and Neuroscience. Although their brains may not be impacted by poverty, I would like to share some activities with teachers to help them disrupt some thinking around an area of teaching that causes them discomfort in order to "rewire" their brains and create new neuropathways. My idea is to provide teachers the experience and opportunity to see how their own brain can change so they can believe it's possible for their students. Secondly, I would like to share excerpts from Paul Tough's How Children Succeed to provide concrete examples of specific actions teachers/adults/coaches took to help diminish the negative impact of poverty and other trauma for their students. Hopefully, this information and experience will help teachers see that they do have power to make positive change for students.
Change 2-4: Addressing Beliefs about and Instructional Practices for ELL students.
Providing equitable education to our English Language Learners is an immediate concern for teachers at my school. Our population has changed drastically over the last 5-8 years, and English is not the first language of 66% of our current student body. While state-mandated RETELL certification has helped provide research and a bank of strategies for teachers, the reality of the changing structure of ELL programs in the school continues to challenge teachers' skills and confidence. Changes 2, 3, and 4 all center around providing more equitable education for our ELL students.
The Edutopia blog post, "Equity for English-Language Learners" cites research that ELL students are often subjected to instruction that doesn't offer them enough opportunities to "[engage] critically though oral or written work." I am not surprised at all by this finding and I think it comes down to assumptions that turn into expectations which become actions. Last spring, I had the chance to discuss Sharon Draper's Out of My Mind with three 6th grade female students who were in a book club. They were outraged at how so many teachers in the protagonist's life underestimated what she was capable of and how much she really knew because of her cerebral palsy. I asked the girls if they thought it was possible for adults to underestimate kids who don’t have an obvious physical disability. The girls all nodded and one of the girls told us that when she came to the US from Brazil in third grade the teachers assumed she knew nothing just because she didn’t speak English. She described her frustration at knowing more than she was able to communicate in English and how she was made to do what she considered “baby work.” Change 2 is about identifying the "bright spots" in our instruction where ELL students are being given valuable learning opportunities.
Change 2: Peer Observation is a great way to learn from colleagues but also to see students you might share in a different context. I would like to increase Peer Observation among staff, specifically focusing on how many opportunities our ELL students are being given to engage in meaningful oral and written discourse. For those who may be stuck in the mindset of low expectations, I would like to set up observations of classrooms where teachers regularly offer ELL students these kinds of experiences. Ideally, we would have follow-up discussions that help the teachers discuss many aspects of the lesson—how the teacher intentionally planned to include the ELL students, which supports were provided that allowed the students access, and data from student talk that showed students interacting deeply with the content. By observing peers with this focus and parsing out the specific teacher and student actions, hopefully, more teachers will offer more ELL students more rich learning experiences.
Change 3: Looking at Student Work Protocols and Double scale of Criteria
A major concern I hear from teachers of ELL students is how to assess what the students know. They’re receiving messages about holding all students accountable to the same high standards which sometimes leads to using the same assessment rubrics, out of fairness, but then often times teachers feel as if students get over-penalized for limited English skills. Of course, this leads to a great conversation about the importance of being clear about the true goal of the assignment—writing skills or content knowledge—but in the meantime, the idea of “double scale of criteria" to separate out the language skills from students’ understanding of the concept is one I’d like to explore more.
We are fortunate to have Professional Learning Group time built into our schedule, two days per six day cycle, and we are comfortable using protocols. Before asking teachers to use a double scale of criteria, I would like to support the practice by using Looking at Student Work Protocols, such as the Atlas Protocol, in the Grade level team PLGs. These teams are made up of 4-5 teachers of all different contents who share the same students. I would like to use the Atlas protocol to look at ELL students work to have the teachers uncover what they can tell that the students do know and understand about the content from the work. The process of discussing and listing all the students do know, will help dispel assumptions about ELL students' content knowledge. As a group, we could help the teacher create a rubric that accounts for all the content criteria he/she expects to see in any students’ response. I could see using the WIDA “Can-Do” statements to help build a languages skills rubric that can be reasonably expected from a student at each level (1-5). Each teacher in the team could create a double-scale of criteria rubric for an upcoming assignment and bring student work back to the team to evaluate using the criteria. Hopefully, this practice will reinforce high expectations for ELL students and communicate clearly to teachers and students their content knowledge.
Change 4: Listening to Students and Teachers
Several years ago our UDL Team put together a student focus group of about 45 students. The group was reflective of our school's diverse population and the students met periodically with members of the UDL team to discuss their learning experiences in the school and how to make learning more meaningful for them. I would like to recreate this feedback group, but focus mostly on the students in the ELL classrooms--this would include the ELL students and the non-ELL students who are in class with them. Initially, we could give the students a survey with some questions about their experiences and then use their responses to guide a conversation. Additionally, I would like to have a focused discussion with the teachers of ELL students, both the ELL teachers and the content teachers who are also SEI endorsed, to hear their perspectives on teaching ELL students. It would be interesting to share with the teachers some of the anonymous feedback from the students to see if there are any common themes. Ultimately, the point of this change is to just listen to what the people who are most impacted--the students and teachers--have to say about the success and challenges they face so that we can make more informed decisions.
Change 5: Engagement and Feedback Strategies
The Hanover Research Brief titled "Closing the Gap: Creating Equity in Classrooms" provides a Checklist for Responsive Instruction with explicit teacher behaviors. I appreciate that these instructional strategies, categorized into three groups--engagement, learning environment, and feedback--are applicable across all content, grade-level, and cultural backgrounds. I can think of many teachers who employ a number of these strategies as part of their regular practice but who may not be able to articulate this to a colleague because it has become such a normal part their practice. Although this tacit knowledge can sometimes be difficult for a teacher to point out, if you talk with the students of those teachers, it becomes quickly apparent that the students take note of all the small gestures that make such a big difference in how students feel in a classroom. Rather than passing this list checklist onto teachers and saying, "Reminder, to be culturally responsive you have to do these things.", I would like to enlist a group of colleagues in my building, such as coaches and administrators or the Instructional Leadership Team and review this checklist. As a small group, I would like us to select a few strategies, for example, "Welcome students by name as they enter the classroom." and commit to employing this strategy with adults first. This might mean greeting your colleagues by name when they enter the building in the morning, come into the teachers' room when you are there, enter a PLG meeting, etc. After we've chosen the few strategies and talked about how that might look for adult to adult interaction, we could start implementing them and make note of our colleagues' responses to us over time. This sounds like a very small change, but I believe it takes these consistently small actions over long periods of time to build trust and create a climate where everyone feels valued. At the very least it is hypocritical, maybe impossible, to hold teachers accountable for creating this climate for our students when it does not exist among adults.
Change 4: Listening to Students and Teachers
Several years ago our UDL Team put together a student focus group of about 45 students. The group was reflective of our school's diverse population and the students met periodically with members of the UDL team to discuss their learning experiences in the school and how to make learning more meaningful for them. I would like to recreate this feedback group, but focus mostly on the students in the ELL classrooms--this would include the ELL students and the non-ELL students who are in class with them. Initially, we could give the students a survey with some questions about their experiences and then use their responses to guide a conversation. Additionally, I would like to have a focused discussion with the teachers of ELL students, both the ELL teachers and the content teachers who are also SEI endorsed, to hear their perspectives on teaching ELL students. It would be interesting to share with the teachers some of the anonymous feedback from the students to see if there are any common themes. Ultimately, the point of this change is to just listen to what the people who are most impacted--the students and teachers--have to say about the success and challenges they face so that we can make more informed decisions.
Change 5: Engagement and Feedback Strategies
The Hanover Research Brief titled "Closing the Gap: Creating Equity in Classrooms" provides a Checklist for Responsive Instruction with explicit teacher behaviors. I appreciate that these instructional strategies, categorized into three groups--engagement, learning environment, and feedback--are applicable across all content, grade-level, and cultural backgrounds. I can think of many teachers who employ a number of these strategies as part of their regular practice but who may not be able to articulate this to a colleague because it has become such a normal part their practice. Although this tacit knowledge can sometimes be difficult for a teacher to point out, if you talk with the students of those teachers, it becomes quickly apparent that the students take note of all the small gestures that make such a big difference in how students feel in a classroom. Rather than passing this list checklist onto teachers and saying, "Reminder, to be culturally responsive you have to do these things.", I would like to enlist a group of colleagues in my building, such as coaches and administrators or the Instructional Leadership Team and review this checklist. As a small group, I would like us to select a few strategies, for example, "Welcome students by name as they enter the classroom." and commit to employing this strategy with adults first. This might mean greeting your colleagues by name when they enter the building in the morning, come into the teachers' room when you are there, enter a PLG meeting, etc. After we've chosen the few strategies and talked about how that might look for adult to adult interaction, we could start implementing them and make note of our colleagues' responses to us over time. This sounds like a very small change, but I believe it takes these consistently small actions over long periods of time to build trust and create a climate where everyone feels valued. At the very least it is hypocritical, maybe impossible, to hold teachers accountable for creating this climate for our students when it does not exist among adults.
