Transcript: Challenge

Ms. Christie—a history instructor at Chester Himes Middle School—is playing private detective this week. She’s trying to solve the mystery of why her lessons, so effective at her old school, seem to be falling flat with her students at Himes. Ms. Christie puts a lot of effort and energy into her lessons. She really tries to make history come alive by including real stories about real people. At her old middle school, these lessons were well received. Students seemed engaged and interested, even excited, by what they were learning.

But not now. Her students at Himes appear uninterested, even disengaged. Some seem bored, others frustrated. They shift around in their seats or stare down at their books. They never ask the kinds of questions her former students asked. A lesson about the discovery of America—a hit at her old school—fell flat. During a more recent discussion of westward expansion, a few students kept challenging her with questions about American Indians, and things soon got off track. Ms. Christie knows that she is a good teacher, but right now she seems to be failing with these students. And she wants to know why.

Her investigation leads her to other teachers, most of whom encourage patience. She’s new, after all, and getting to know students can take time. One teacher, though—Mr. Chandler—gently suggests that maybe Ms. Christie’s issue is that her lessons haven’t been planned with Himes’ particularly diverse student population in mind.

Ms. Christie politely thanks Mr. Chandler for his advice, but secretly she believes that he is way off base. For one thing, Ms. Christie has always believed that “kids are kids,” and that a good lesson in one school will be a good lesson in any school. For another thing, Ms. Christie thinks of herself as someone who is sensitive to issues of diversity. It’s not as though the fact that Himes Middle is more diverse than her last school has escaped her notice. So what is the solution to her mystery?

Here’s your Challenge:

Is it important to acknowledge students’ diversity in classroom settings?

Why or why not? What should teachers understand in order to address student diversity in their classrooms?

Transcript: First Thoughts

Listen as the words appear on your screen. What thoughts or images come immediately to mind? Jot down a few notes about your first impressions. Continue watching for further reflection.

English language learner.

Cheerleader.

Student living in poverty.

Student with a disability.

Honor roll student.

School bully.

Prom queen and king.

Digging Deeper movie transcript

Now that you have written down some first thoughts, let’s dig a little deeper into those impressions.

We like to think that when we look at the world, we see it objectively. We tend to think that reality is exactly what we see, that it exists in the order and detail in which we see it, but how neutral are we when we look at the world around us?

A moment ago, you listened to a list of words, and it’s likely that some impressions or images came into your mind. Language is an abstraction that we attempt to convert into something simpler to understand: a concrete thought or picture that we can make sense of. What pictures leapt to mind when you heard those words? Were there several? Was there just one?

When you heard “English language learner,” did you see this?

Or this?

What about “cheerleader”? Is this what came to mind?

Or was it something like this?

What about “student living in poverty”? Did you see this?

Or perhaps this image is what occurred to you?

We don’t always like to acknowledge it, but our perceptions can sometimes be influenced by stereotypes. A cognitive and social mechanism, a stereotype is what we call the human mind’s tendency to simplify people or groups into a narrow range of characteristics, habits, or reactions. But these types of perceptions are often inaccurate, leading us to oversimplify or to unfairly categorize others.

People are more complex than that. People are more diverse.

So when you heard the words “student with a disability,” did you see this?

Or this?

What about…

“honor roll student”?

“School bully”?

Or “prom queen and king”?

Did these images come to mind?

All people stereotype, because stereotyping is a natural function of how the human mind perceives the world. But our minds also have the ability to understand that function—to realize that it is happening—and through reflection, reconsideration, and careful self-examination we are able to mitigate the worst effects of this tendency that we all share.

Student Diversity Enrollment in Public Schools

*In 1990, the Other category included Asian, American Indian/ Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian/ Pacific Islander, and two or more races. In 2010, these groups were further delineated.

Source: U.S. Department of Education. (2012). The Condition of Education 2012.

Most Spoken Languages in Homes

Source: Migration Policy Institute, National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy, 2010.

This is a pie chart detailing the Most Spoken Languages in Homes. The different languages and their percentages are listed to the left of the pie chart, with a corresponding color box next to the information. The pie chart itself does not have the percent designations on the graph itself. The languages, percentages, and colors are listed as follows: Spanish 73.1% – green; other languages 10.1% – yellow; Miso/Hmong 1.1% – purple; Russian 1.1% – dark green; Arabic 1.2% – blue; German 1.5% – orange; Korean 1.5% – brown; Hindi & Related 1.8% – red; French/Haitian Creole 2.1% -light yellow; Vietnamese 2.1% – dark blue; Chinese 3.8% – pink.

Percent Change in U.S. Total and ELL Pre-K–12 Enrollment between 1997–1998 and 2007–2008

Source: Migration Policy Institute, National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy, 2010.

This is a double line graph showing the Percent Change in U.S. Total and ELL Pre-K-12 Enrollment between 1997–1998 and 2007–2008. The x-axis is labeled year and each year from 1997-1998 to 2007-2008 is listed and labeled. The y-axis is labeled Percentage Increase and every 10 percentage points from 0% to 60% are labeled. The first line plot graph spans from 0% to around 10%, steadily increasing over the 10-year span. This graph is yellow and is labeled as “U.S.” in the key at the top of the graph. The second line plot graph spans from 0% to around 50%, with a large increase from 1998–1999 to 1999–2000. From the year 1999–2000 the increase is steady. This graph is purple and is labeled “ELL” in the key at the top of the graph.

Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) & Cognitive/Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) differences

Transcript: Janette Klingner, PhD

We tend to think of English-language learners as being sequential bilinguals or, in other words, speaking a different language than English at home and then learning a language, such as English, when they start schools. But in fact the majority of English-language learners in the United States are actually simultaneous bilinguals, meaning that they actually speak another language than English, as well as English, in their homes and so start school speaking some of both. Because if you assess that child in his or her presumed home language, you might find that scores are low. Same thing with English. You might test the child and find out scores are also low. But if we combine all the words the child knows, we find out that the total number is actually higher than his or her peers who are monolingual in one language or another.

Another misconception is that instructional frameworks developed for students in English are appropriate for developing skills in a second language. I think it’s important to realize that, although there are similarities, there also are very key differences in learning to read in a second language, and that instruction needs to take that into account. Another misconception is that the more time students spend in English instruction, the faster they will learn English. We know from research that some instruction in the native language actually helps students acquire English faster. Another misconception is that all English-language learners learn English at about the same rate. And in fact what we know is that the length of time students take to acquire English really varies a great deal and really depends on a lot of different factors. Another misconception is that errors are problematic, that when children seem to be confusing language that it’s problematic to be code-switching or mixing English and Spanish. In fact, we know that they are a positive sign that the student is making progress, and that’s very much a normal part of the language-acquisition process to be drawing from both grammatical structures, vocabulary, in whatever languages are available to the child. So they should not be considered errors but rather a sign of progress and a natural thing to be doing. I think, perhaps, the most important one of all is the sense that children who are not yet fully proficient in English somehow aren’t as intelligent and also that they’re not ready to engage in higher-level thinking activities until they learn basic skills. What we see in schools is this being played out, where kids need to go through drill, focus on basic skills sort of over and over again until they are asked to engage in higher-level thinking related to content learning, etc. Clearly, English-language learners are every bit as intelligent as fully proficient peers, and we need to structure our instruction accordingly.

Transcript: Janette Klingner, PhD

One of the first things we need to do is look at the instructional practice to determine whether it really is evidence-based for that population of student. Because one of the things that’s happened is we have a lot of generic evidence-based practices out there that in fact were not validated with English-language learners. Another challenge is that very often research reports do not include enough information about the participants or about their levels of language proficiency. It’s not enough to ask what works; we must ask what works with whom and by whom and in what situations or contexts and for what purposes. One of the things I see happening in schools is that when a teacher is given a program or asked to use an evidence-based practice and then it doesn’t work with a particular group of kids, say English-language learners, the teacher tends to think the students can’t learn or they’re not getting enough support at home. It’s the parents not helping them. But really to blame the kids, the families, etc. And what I’ve also seen is others—the principal or the developers of the program—then blaming the teacher. Saying, oh, the teacher’s just not doing it right. If the teacher would just do it right then we’d get these results we got in a different situation with different kids. So I think we have to be really careful. Also we need to look at the level of instruction, at the support provided to students to understand the language being used, whether or not instruction is comprehensible. We need to look at the conclusions the teacher is drawing about why students struggle and whether or not the teacher is misunderstanding those reasons. There are a lot of reasons kids might not understand something, and it takes a pretty sophisticated understanding of the second language-acquisition process to get a good sense for why that might be and then what kinds of support the children need because of those struggles. The environment is very important. I think we tend not to look enough at how conducive to learning the environment is, whether there are a lot of positive supports provided for kids, a lot of reinforcement, whether it’s a safe environment where kids feel comfortable trying out new language structures. We know that the relationship with the teacher is very important and whether or not the teacher has a close relationship not only with the student but also parents and the community. All of that matters, and there’s some research to suggest that it may be more important with culturally and linguistically diverse students than White mainstream students.

Transcript: Diane Torres-Velásquez, PhD

A lot of people think that mathematics is a universal language and that it’s something that can be taught without any difficulty for someone who’s arriving from another country and doesn’t speak our language. And there’s a couple things that I would want to caution teachers about. It’s important to consider what the profession is viewing as mathematics instruction these days, as a science of pattern and order. And mathematics is really looking at the world around us and making sense of it. And so as we’re looking at this type of perception of mathematics then it’s really important for us to understand that it’s much more than just computation and learning to add and subtract and multiply and divide just by learning the steps. We’re looking at mathematics in a way that involves children at a much deeper level. They are active participants in their learning and their experience of mathematics. And when we look at the content of mathematics we have five general areas, and one of them is number and operations. Another is algebra. We have geometry, measurements, data analysis, and probability. And when we’re looking at the verbs of what it is to do mathematics, we are looking at words like explore, solve, justify, develop—words that are action words and not just the directional words that we used to associate with arithmetic. Sometimes vocabulary has different meanings, and so when you just translate things for a student into English, they may have a different understanding of the word. For example, table. If you’re looking at data and you have it in a table, and you use the word table and you’ve got a student who’s just learning English and they’ve learned table is that object that has a flat top and has four legs then there’s going to be some initial confusion. And, obviously, that vocabulary needs to be taught.

Transcript: Ginger Blalock, PhD – Individualized instruction

Individualized instruction is taking the goals and objectives that the team has identified as critical for a particular student and then putting them into play in the classroom. It may mean that a student has and needs certain modifications in either the materials or the content or the sequence of presentation, the way that the instruction is delivered, or the way that he or she demonstrates knowledge or competence. Individualized instruction may also mean changing some goals and objectives so that the student only learns part of what other peers are learning, or it may mean in some instances that students participate in a different curriculum that may parallel the general curriculum but that will get them closer to achieving the goals and objectives identified as critical for that particular student. So it means making changes to ensure that the kid doesn’t have a cookie-cutter approach. It means designing instruction, carrying it out, and assessing it all along the way to make sure that students are progressing and learning what is most essential for him or her to learn. And you always want to key that back to the general content standards and benchmarks that all peers are learning, but sometimes students need to also acquire additional or other skills.

Transcript: Ginger Blalock, PhD – Accessing the general education curriculum

Regarding the education of students with disabilities, their individual education program includes a statement of how the student will be supported in obtaining the annual goals that the team decides is important. Every individual education program has to also include a statement about how the child will be involved in the general curriculum and actually progress in that general curriculum, and also, related to LRE, how much the student will be educated and participate with students with and without disabilities. And this access to the general education curriculum is intended to be with appropriate modifications or supports or services that allow the student to be able to access the curriculum, to be able to learn from it, to be able to demonstrate what they know, and to be able to be a part of that curriculum with their peers.

The reason why this provision is so important is because historically many students with disabilities who were in the general ed. settings, classroom or school were still denied access to that general ed. curriculum. There was a tendency for educators to say, “The student cannot learn this, and therefore we’re not even going to bother. We’ll just provide them with their own curriculum, or we’ll unfortunately just kind of let them bide [their time] and not really progress.” And what this does is compel all the planners, all the folks on the team, to make sure that this student is participating as much as possible in what every other kid is learning. And so one of the greatest ways in which you see that facilitated is that now all planning that goes on for these students with disabilities must address the regular content standards and benchmarks that every child is learning at that grade level. And so it just forces us all to think about how can we help this kid at least achieve as much as possible, in the same content, and the same skills that his or her peers are learning.

Transcript: Lanette Waddell, PhD

Urban students or poor students particularly grow up in a natural growth way. Their parents tend to be directive. They tend to tell them things to do. You know: “Go brush your teeth.” “Go set the table.” “Go wash the dishes.” It’s not a conversation. It’s mostly, let’s do this, let’s do that, let’s move forward. And students follow those directions because it’s their parents. But they also get a lot of free time where their free time is not structured. It’s open. They can do what they want. They make up their own games. They play. They do whatever they want. They also carry a lot of responsibility. They have to get up, make their own breakfast, wash their clothes, clean their house, take care of their siblings, get to school by themselves. They do a lot of independent work. So they come to school with a much more independent mindset than you would see with maybe suburban students who have mother at home and a father who works, or where there’s money so that there’s someone there taking care of them all the time. But it can cause some tension in school, because when you go to school then you’re told what to do. You’re told when to do this, and when you’re going to do that. You’re not independent in the way that you are at home, in your own personal decisions. When you think about students who are independent and are able to do what they want to do when they’re at home, and they are able to take care of themselves, and they bring that independence into school, you have to be able to understand that, but also let them know that we are in school with others and we have to follow certain procedures so that everyone is safe and everyone is comfortable and content here so that we can all learn.

Transcript: Dolores Battle, PhD

There’s a lot of emphasis recently on the relationship between language and social behavior, because language helps regulate behavior. If a child cannot ask a question for information, cannot use language to get what he wants and to help him in his interaction with others, he’s going to resort to using physical means. Or he’s going to be more inattentive. There’s a lot of children who are thought to be ADHD, for example, who turn out to have problems with language and comprehension. So when a child is not getting the information in a way that he can understand it, he’s going to lose focus, and he may not pay attention. He may then become more interested in the things that he can see. He may not ask for things. He may just simply take them. And that gets into some difficulty with social interactions in the classroom. So a lot of times those “behavior problems” are not so much behavior, but they are language problems. You see the behavior that is shown in very young children, where they reach and take or hit because they don’t know how to ask for things. You see that same behavior in an older child, and it’s called a behavior problem. In a younger child, it’s because the child hasn’t developed the skill, the language skills, to manipulate his environment. The first thing is to ask the question, “Why is this child doing this and under what circumstance?” It cannot be assumed that it’s just a behavior problem. Because it may be a language problem.

Transcript: Dolores Battle, PhD

When the child comes in and this is his first exposure to school, one of the main considerations for the teacher is what has this child’s exposure been to pre-literacy? What kind of language goes on in the home? There’s a lot of studies that show that the lower the income, the lower the education of the parents, the less language the children are exposed to at home—less words, a smaller vocabulary, shorter sentences, less direct questioning, all of the things that contribute to a solid foundation for developing literacy in school. And we don’t want to assume that because the family is low income that they all have come into school with poor skills. The main point is to take a look at what the child brings to school, their background. It’s all about language. It’s knowing how to listen, how to understand the vocabulary, how to ask questions. Many children, at home they’re not allowed to ask questions, particularly for information, from their parents. They’re not allowed to initiate conversations with adults. And here they are in an interaction where they’re with a teacher who is an adult, and a strange adult as it is. So in those early years, it’s all about developing language skills, comprehension skills, and expression skills. So teachers need to be aware that you need to have that very firm foundation in language as a prerequisite for literacy. And if you fail to build that, the child will be forever behind. They need to do a lot of reading, developing vocabulary, making sure the children really understand what’s being read. Not just reading the book once, but sometimes it takes four and five times to read the book. Much as children do in a family where the book is read, the same book, every day for a month, for two months, because that becomes the child’s favorite book. All too often, classroom teachers think that once they’ve read the story then that’s enough. But if you’re going to develop a basis of literacy then it has to follow that same rule, where children get the information. They learn to ask questions about it. They learn to predict what’s going to happen, all of which happens in homes where literacy is developed early. That same process has to follow if children who are entering into school who don’t have that foundation.

Transcript: Lanette Waddell, PhD

The number-one thing that’s important in any school is to know your students in multiple ways. You have to know who your students are. You have to know the families. You have to know their communities, and you have to be able to look at it, not through just your lens, but look at it from their lens and look at how it impacts why they do things, and not just immediately assume that what they’re doing is wrong or negative or rude or disrespectful, though that can happen. But how you can interact with it in a way, to talk to them about it, help you see it from their point of view, and help them to see how acting in a different way helps with teaching and learning in the school. I talk about knowing students academically, socially, and personally. You do need to know their academic skills or academic strengths and weaknesses in order to prepare the curriculum that you’re going to teach. But you also need to know how do they interact with others, how do they interact with you, how do they interact with principals, parents, families, community, how do they do with other people? And then also personally. What are their personal strengths and weaknesses, what do they personally like and dislike, what do they think about school, what do they think about their home life? And all of those things are super important to understand. It’s so important, especially since we know that most teachers are middle-class. Regardless of race, being middle class versus being poor is different. And we bring that subconsciously into our teaching, and we expect students to want to be that way. And when they’re not, we tend to see that as negative instead of seeing it as different. So knowing who your kids are and being able to compare that to how you think about the way you want students to be could help you be more open to how they behave, what they do, how they respond and react to things. And it will allow you to think more about how you then respond to what they do and what they say, and it would probably create a much stronger classroom if you are able to do that. Your goal as a teacher is to think about what are the opportunities I provide to get to know my students? Do I have multiple ways to know who they are, to see them outside of the classroom, to talk to their parents, to talk to them at lunchtime, or talk to them in the hallway, to get to know who they are in a way that goes beyond the teaching realm? And it’s difficult. It’s much easier in elementary school when you have twenty-five kids all day. You can get to know them within a month, get to know a little bit about all of them, and get to know them all well probably by Christmas. But in middle schools and high schools, it’s much more deliberate on the part of the teacher to go out of their way. We encourage our teachers to join clubs, to be coaches, to even go to community sporting events where the kids are playing, to visit activities that are happening on the weekends. You get to see the kids in a different environment. You get to see them interacting with parents. It takes time, but the end result is worth it. It’s just that you have to persevere and put yourself in a situation where you can get to see all these things happening.