Blog 4-EDU 411 Advocating for ELLs

I have worked as a teacher at Head Start for 6 years. In the past three years the my classroom has completely transformed. When I started teaching I worked with 34 English speaking families. I now work with 5 Arabic speaking families, 2 Swahili speaking families, 3 Kirundi speaking families, and 24 English speaking families. The families that speak languages other than English have very limited English language skills, yet the services I am to provide for them are identical to the services I provide for the English speaking families. From the first year working with these families I became an advocate for them. It was easy to tell that we were ill prepared for the influx of refugee families speaking languages we had no support services for and that is where my journey began. I reached out to the families, visiting their homes when I knew older siblings would be present to help me speak with parents and writing notes to send home that would allow them to take the note to someone else for translation or to have a child translate and help them respond. I invited them to come to the classrooms, come on field trips, attend meetings encouraging them to be as active as possible in their child's education. I encouraged them to continue to speak their native language at home but also to take ESL classes. And I switched my specialization here at Kendall from Special Education to ESL. I don't anticipate that this trend will reverse itself and as an educator I feel it is crucial that I am able to work effectively with these students and families.

We send home surveys at the end of the year for parents to fill out asking them to rate our program and give feedback. Several of my ESL families sent back their surveys. Their comments were very similar; thank you for teaching my child, thank you for teaching my child English, please be patient while we learn English, we try very hard to learn. This is the same message I hear at meetings and conferences.    

This year I have had my first sibling of one of my first refugee families, so I have had the privilege of teaching two of their children. This family received a Habit House this year and I have been volunteering on Saturdays at the construction site. As I have been working, I have been able to serve as a go between with the family, who is more comfortable with me now, and the construction team, who are unfamiliar with working with ESL adults. I can help the crew communicate with the family because I am familiar with them and also I understand how to communicate, that I have to use basic vocabulary and gestures and patience. It has given me more insight into what this process is like for these families and how difficult it really is.

These families need to be empowered in multiple ways. First they need to learn English so that they can support their children's education. Next they need help in understanding that they have rights and certain guarantees in this country, which most likely was not the case in their country. We need to extend a hand to them in educating them, as well as their children, and this often means thinking way outside the box because of the language barriers. Most importantly we need to be vocal about what these children need in our classrooms.

 

Blog 3 EDU 411 - Advocating for ELL's

These past two weeks I was able to meet with a family resource worker, a site supervisor, health and wellness coordinator, and the special needs coordinator for our Head Start program. I observe these people on a daily basis in the field and we meet as a team once a month to discuss family situations, student needs, and other issues. They all have struggles working with our ELL families that are similar to those we see in the classroom environment. One common thread we see is cultural barriers. Head Start is unique in its social service piece and in the program we work to see that all children have physicals, dental exams, dental treatment as needed, and if there are nutritional concerns or health issues we work closely with the families to see that services are provided.   I have one child in my class that failed her vision screening and we have referred the family to a clinic for further testing. However, dad refuses to take her because he does not want his daughter wearing glasses. He also informed us that he is on a strike from doctors. In the team meeting, one of the administrators said “They are in America now. They chose to come here. They need to change.” And there you have it… this is where the struggle comes to a head. Two opposing views, neither side wanting to give in, and a huge communication gap that none of us are equipped to fill. Heavy sigh.

                Assessment materials that accommodate diverse learners can make a huge difference, even in the case of vision screening. Our screening is done with English alphabet symbols, by English speaking screeners, that the children are unfamiliar with. This child is Arabic speaking. The symbols were unfamiliar to her and her vision may be fine, it could very well be the setting and use of unfamiliar materials to screen. When I try to present the point of lack of background knowledge I am met with a lack of background knowledge by the adults. Each encounter I have with these situations just proves to me that there really is a need for advocacy in so many areas for our ELL’s.

                A little additional experience I have had the past two weeks has been volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. One of my African families has qualified for a Habitat home and I am volunteering to help them reach their 300 hours. They don’t have family here and a select number of community members that are able to help. I have been working four hour shifts the past two Saturdays. The parents have been working both weekends also and they have brought two or three male friends with them each time.  The crew in charge of the home will dictate to volunteers what needs to be done and then we just do it. Well, the crew is obviously unaware and unprepared for the language barrier. They will ask one of the men to get a ladder or bring them plywood and a dialogue of hand gestures, body language, and pointing follows until they get it right. After a few of these encounters, the crew just starts avoiding the volunteers because it is hard, they are on a time schedule, and they don’t understand. When I am there I serve as a go between, demonstrating, or guiding, the men so they can follow the directions. The father wants so badly to work on his home that he spent half of last Saturday sweeping the cement foundation. And anytime they see me (I have had children from all of the families in my class over the past three years) going to move or lift something they all come to tell me no and do the work.  Last week I spoke to the two leaders while I was out there. I told them which of the men spoke the most English and explained that even when they say “yes” or nod, they may still not understand. If they could show them once, then the men would be able to do it as needed.  I pointed out how the home owner was doing anything to stay busy and work on his home. I know this doesn’t directly relate to my thesis about assessment with ELL’s, but it all relates because the lack of understanding permeates the schools as well, even to the highest levels of administrators. And it is heartbreaking.  Advocacy is the answer, patience will be needed, it will take time, but the effort is worthwhile.    

Blog 2 - EDU 411

For this blog, I observed ESI screenings being conducted in an Early Childhood setting and spoke with the Child Development Manager and the Mental Health Coordinator in regards to assessment in ELL’s. After observing the screening process my belief in the necessity of conducting screenings in the child’s native language was only enforced.  On this particular day the screenings were done by teachers, over a four hour period, as parents brought their children in to be screened for the next school year. The children were taken by teachers into a separate area to be screened. There were English speaking teachers and Spanish speaking teachers and the materials were available in both English and Spanish. Children have to follow directions to complete tasks, repeat key words, finish sentences, describe objects, copy pictures, match pictures, and do several large motor skills per directions depending on age. These screenings could not be completed for non-English or Spanish speaking children.  Observing the Spanish speaking teachers screen those children who spoke Spanish demonstrated the need for materials in all languages, and/or screeners in those languages. In this setting, the Spanish speaking children flourished and were easily supported.   The process was not unnecessarily stressful for them and the screenings were able to be completed.  I spoke with a teacher that has been teaching for 15 years and she recalled a time when screenings were only available in English and the children were all screened in English. She is pleased with the progress that has been made, one thing leading to another, and now we have bilingual screenings, bilingual classroom, and ESL classrooms. This teacher was one of the first Spanish speaking teachers hired for Head Start in Rockford and now nearly half of the staff is classified as bilingual.

After speaking with the Child Development manager, it is apparent that screening capabilities in other languages are not in the works. Lack of resources, lack of screeners, and I believe a lack of advocacy, contribute to this not being on the priority list.  As a teacher with many ELL’s in my classroom, this is absolutely on my radar and a priority for me. My ELL’s are immersed into an English speaking classroom and the uphill climb begins. I can’t assess them, usually, for at least a year. These children come in with no English language, without being screened, and sometimes without the ability to communicate with others. Right now I have a 4 year old girl that speaks Arabic and she is the only Arabic speaking child in my class. Unless her and I sit down and look at my Beginning Arabic Dictionary, she is unable to have any dialogue over the three and a half hours.  When we work in the book, her face just lights up and yet we are limited to words, individual words, labeling common objects where I can support with English and try to pronounce it in Arabic. Sometimes she laughs a lot at my Arabic.   

The Mental Health Specialist confirmed my concerns and experiences, saying that essentially when screenings the ELL’s without a translator it is a matter of going through the motions to demonstrate on paper that an attempt was made to screen a child. I guess, as long as a paper trail demonstrating attempt is acceptable to the powers that be, change will be slow.  

After conducting this field work and considering my classroom experiences, I think that for the purpose of this paper I will focus on assessment. It is a concrete topic and there is definitely a need for advocacy and education regarding assessing ELL’s.  I believe that I will be able to focus on this topic, find enough research to write a paper demonstrating the need and possible solutions, and then eventually put something into action in the second part of this course.    

Advocating for English Language Learners in ECE

This is a topic that has become close to my heart as I have watched the diversity in my classroom change from white, black, and Hispanic children to African children speaking Kirundi, Swahili, and French and Arabic children and Burmese children speaking Karen, along with white, black, and Hispanic children. I have had the experience of teaching in a classroom that was bilingual (English/Spanish) and there was a teacher that spoke English (myself) and a teacher that spoke Spanish ( my assistant). This was an ideal setting and a rich environment for all children and families. We were able to combine cultures, languages, and experiences in a way that all children were able to benefit, see themselves represented in the classroom, and all children were supported in their native language.

I interviewed several teachers and family resource workers that have experience working in bilingual programs and asked their thoughts on this topic. Everyone agrees that native language support is a critical aspect for the progress of children in the classroom. If you are teaching a child in English and they have no way of connecting what you are saying to anything they know due to the language barrier, you are not teaching them. Visuals and gestures may help to bridge the gap but they do not replace spoken language. I see this first hand in my classroom. If I am working with a child that speaks Arabic and I show them something that is black and say black, giving them the labels, it means nothing to them. But if I am able to show them the same color, label it in Arabic, aswad, now it has meaning. Once I know they have learned to label the color in their native language I can then connect the English word to the Arabic word, now it has meaning. Aswad = black. Until you have experienced these exchanges in the classroom or tried to communicate with families to no avail you really can't understand the impact this has on the entire classroom community.

So where do we find all of this native language support? And how do we make it available to the children in multiple classrooms? And how do we extend this to families? I would need a Kirundi speaking support person, an Arabic speaking support person, a Swahili speaking support person, and someone that knows ASL just for my classes this year.

Of the teachers I interviewed, none are aware of advocacy efforts outside of the Spanish speaking population. However, we can see the progress that has been made in this area by the efforts of Spanish speaking families, teachers, and support staff and perhaps we can find ways to create the same levels of awareness for all of our families. I can see the importance of becoming involved in organizations and especially staying active in seeking professional development in these areas but I also desire to empower families to seek the best experiences for their children. And that can be done through advocacy. Now I need a plan of action.         

Internship

This blog is required for my Internship Course. So here we go.