Hena Khan is Pakistani-American author of children and young adult books, including favorites such as Night of the Moon, It's Ramadan, and Amina's Voice. As a writer, Ms. Khan has taken on the enormous task of representing Pakistani-American children which, as she explains in a brief interview with Colorín Colorado, is a pivotal educational experience for children.

Ms. Khan often visits schools to introduce children to her stories. She has found that the “kids are very receptive to the messages and to the topics [she brings] up,” asking many questions and engaging in the experience, even if it’s not quite their experience. While Ms. Khan delights in teaching children about other cultures and languages, she finds it especially gratifying to see students represented in her stories: “It’s also really rewarding to see… a bunch of kids point to the little boy who’s squirming in his seat because he has a name that I mentioned in one of my books, or he celebrates that holiday too.”

Representation in books and in curricula is substantial to a child’s educational experience, as children are more engaged if they can relate to the subject matter. As Ms. Khan has realized, “[the students] feel confident when I’m there, to share and to speak up;” that is, these students, often starved for representation, now have the opportunity to engage with the material and can engage with confidence because they know that Ms. Khan is Pakistani-American too.

Ms. Khan relays her experience with the school staff: “I’ve had fantastic conversations with educators after I’ve visited schools and people come up to me and tell me how important they think it was that I was there, how it made them think of things in a different way, or how they wanted to continue the conversation with the kids.”  As educators in TWIN-CS, we understand the importance of representation in curricula and the significance of representation in staff, and hope to see more writers such as Hena Khan!

Continue to follow the blog for more!


-Melissa Hoppie, Graduate Student Researcher

The TWIN-CS and Roche Center are always pleased to share resources and materials with the Network. Today we feature the National Dual Language Forum and its website. An initiative of the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), the NDLF states that its mission is "to promote the benefits of dual language education and foster collaboration among key organizations and individuals dedicated to dual language and bilingual education across the country.The NDLF has two distinct activities: hosting of a dedicated website of information and resources and convening of experts to develop and present white papers at member conferences on important issues around dual language and bilingual education."

The NDLF website provides a rich array of resources, from downloadable white papers to directories of bilingual programs. In its partnership with Santillana USA, NDLF also provides access to curriculum materials that may be of interest to the TWIN-CS teachers.

-Mary Bridget Burns, Assistant Director for TWIN-CS

In the final installment of DLL Data Gaps, a New America blog series, Janie T. Carnock discusses key data findings and recommendations for state policy leaders “to more equitably serve dual language learners (DLLs) in early care and education (ECE).”

Ms. Carnock, a policy analyst with Education Policy at New America, member of the Dual Language Learner National Work Group, and former second grade teacher, has examined a multitude of policy data reports during the course of this blog series. In her detailed examinations, Ms. Carnock surmises that policy leaders “cannot access high-quality, complete information about these children, [and therefore] struggle to make policy decisions and investments in ECE in strategic, effective ways.”

To better include DLLs in state policy, many states must improve their policies for data collection:

1. DLL Enrollment

According to the blog post, most state-funded pre-K programs are unable to track the participation of DLLs, nor can they identify the number of children who speak a language other than English at home. To combat this, states should do the following:

• Adopt a uniform protocol, such as conducting a family interview and language screening, to identify DLLs and collect this data across state ECE programs.

 

• When identifying DLLs, screen for language abilities in both English and a child’s home language to collect more complete data.

     2. ECE program quality for DLLs

Quality Rating and Improvement System, better known as QRIS, is a state-implemented system which tracks the quality of a given state’s ECE services. Ms. Carnock has concluded that “most states are failing to include any criteria that specifically evaluate how providers are responsive to DLLs’ unique needs,” in addition to the “barriers to participation in QRIS for immigrant and multilingual providers serving DLLs, [and] the accessibility and clarity of public QRIS data for DLL families.” To this point, Ms. Carnock suggests that we do the following:

• Adopt and prioritize DLL-related indicators in QRIS.
• Provide technical assistance and outreach to linguistically diverse providers to encourage their participation in QRIS.
• Translate state websites that publish QRIS ratings to increase accessibility for DLL parents.
• Publicly report a DLL subscore that bundles all DLL-related indicators into one rating.

      3. DLLs’ kindergarten readiness

Many states are utilizing the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA) to “measure a child’s knowledge and abilities across multiple domains, including math, literacy, social skills, and physical development.” However, in many of the states which implement this assessment, the KRA is only offered in English which “creates major validity concerns for DLLs whose development is spread across two or more languages.” Overall, testing accommodations should be made for DLLs:

• Assess DLLs bilingually on kindergarten readiness assessments (KRAs).  
  • Invest in the development of valid bilingual assessment tools in home languages.
  • Invest in expanding access to bilingual assessors.
• Improve and increase professional development and guidance for teachers on administering KRAs with DLLs.
• If publicly reporting data by DLL status for KRAs, provide guidance and explain limitations of these data to users.

According to Ms. Carnock, to provide equitable data collection, and therefore equitable education practices, states should try to implement these changes. As she concludes, “with one out of every four preschool-aged children considered a DLL, it is important—now more than ever—to design policies that work for this growing population of learners.”

-Melissa Hoppie, Graduate Student Researcher

Corey Mitchell, a contributor for Education Week, discusses the recent publication of Migration Policy Institute, The Language of the Classroom: Dual Language Learners in Head Start, Public Pre-K, and Private Preschool Programs. In his brief article, Mr. Mitchell comments on the research which shows that early childhood educators “should do more to embrace the differences that the nation’s youngest English-learners bring to the classroom.”

This study, which focuses on interviews with teachers, program directors, focus group discussions, family surveys, and classroom observations, surmises that the most efficient teaching methods and policy recommendations for young English learners include the following:

• Cultivating strategies to help teachers support English and home-language development.
• Collecting detailed information regarding families' linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
• Creating national and state policies that explicitly support the inclusion of home languages.

A particular teaching method which helps ELLs in superdiverse settings includes “incorporating students’ home languages in classroom rituals and routines.”

But much research is yet to be done. While the Migration Policy Institute is tackling the big issue of acknowledging and attempting to rectify neglectful school practices for superdiverse ELLs, Mr. Mitchell recognizes that “public policy, research, and teaching methods have not adjusted to accommodate the nation’s increasingly diverse English-language-learner population.”

Please continue to follow the blog for more information on the latest research on bilingualism and elementary education!

-Melissa Hoppie, Graduate Student Researcher

America the Bilingual is a podcast website dedicated to “the pursuit of bilingualism in America as one path to a healthier, stronger nation.” With monthly podcasts, America the Bilingual discusses the current issues of bilingual education and research, and often invites specialists for interviews. In this podcast, our hosts Steve Leveen and Fernando Hernández examine dual language education.

The podcast begins with a well-known quotation by Gregg Roberts: “Monolingualism is the illiteracy of the 21st century.” To this point, our hosts acknowledge that, if this is the case, most of Americans would be considered illiterate. To counteract monolingualism, how can we establish bilingual education in American schools?

“Imagine there was a new way of teaching that results in most students becoming truly bilingual and biliterate before finishing high school. Imagine if this new way of teaching also helped American students rise up in academic achievement overall. And finally, imagine if this new way of teaching could also help students develop more empathy toward others, others both in our own country and abroad.”

“We might call that a revolution.”

Mr. Leveen and Mr. Hernández consider how dual language (DL) instruction, particularly immersion education, has been proven through research to be the most effective method of acquiring another language. Mr. Roberts, in an exclusive interview, comments that “Most experts out there today agree that there are three major goal areas for dual language: one is academic achievement, one is bilingual/biliteracy, and other one is cultural competency.”

Cultural competency, a standard with which TWIN-CS schools are very familiar, is considered a pivotal quality for the development of empathic relationships. During an interview at La Cosecha, an annual DL conference, Jim Lyons, former executive director of the National Association for Bilingual Education and current senior policy advisor to the Dual Language Education of New Mexico, illuminates why cultural competency is fundamental to our global world:

“But there is something even more important and fundamental [than becoming better competitors in a global market] – you can better collaborators. And the real challenge is our children will face can only be solved through international and world collaboration. And until you understand someone you can’t really be a good collaborator.”

As the United States joins the growing global world, bilingualism becomes necessitous. Consequently, DL instruction will inevitably revolutionize teaching in America and create the “student of the future.”

Please listen to the complete podcast here!

-Melissa Hoppie, Graduate Student Researcher

Think Bilingual Austin is a nonprofit organization that “serves the public by providing free access to information and local resources and programs that promote bilingualism, bilingual education, and multiculturalism,” according to the website. Think Bilingual Austin hosts a podcast in which bilingual educators nationwide frequent and share their perspectives on bilingual education.

A recent podcast with Ms. Rose Potter, a lifelong Spanish language educator, discusses introducing and cultivating support for world languages in our schools. In this brief 17-minute podcast, Ms. Potter examines the many facets of world language education in elementary and secondary schools, deliberating the best ways to introduce bilingualism into the lives of our students.

Ms. Potter begins with a brief history lesson on the American perspective of bilingual education: “I think, first of all, we need to think historically of how Americans have viewed foreign languages – we do call them foreign, like you are not here, you’re not part of us.” To Ms. Potter, our vocabulary surrounding world languages actively affects our perception of those languages. That is, changing the discourse from “foreign languages” to “world languages,” diminishes the exclusion of languages other than English.

Bilingualism serves all populations and those who do not participate are “at a huge disadvantage…[because] it is not simply words you learn, you learn all the different variations within a culture that speaks that language because culture and language are intrinsically bound together.” Just as in TWIN-CS, we know that the introduction of world languages can broaden our perspectives to a worldlier one and promotes cultural tolerance.

Ms. Potter reflects on pragmatic tactics to introduce bilingual education into our schools such as cost-effectiveness, changing methodology, recent studies that discuss cognitive benefits, the growing global world, etc. As she states, being bilingual is more than being fluent in two languages, but involves being culturally fluent and bringing that knowledge to the classroom.

Ms. Potter concludes by praising immersion education. She emphasizes that immersion education, like TWIN-CS, not only assures multilingualism, but offers a refined perspective to including other cultures in the classroom and expands upon the knowledge of both students and faculty, working together to create a better, global world.

Please continue to follow the blog for more!

-Melissa Hoppie, Graduate Student Researcher

​Azul Terronez, an educator for over 24 years, asked his students the following question: what makes a good teacher great?
 
Mr. Terronez has received over 26,000 student responses from eight very different schools, “from the poorer schools in Los Angeles, to suburban schools in Texas, to elite private schools abroad,” and still is contemplating the best answer to this question.
 
Some students replied that “a great teacher eats apples,” so Mr. Terronez started to eat apples. As he began eating apples for breakfast, between classes, in the hallways, the students “would smile, and I would smile back. It wasn’t until I understood that kids wanted to see me as someone who was willing to receive a gift from them. That the apple was a symbol for our relationship. There was goodness in that, and trust.”
 
Several students said that “a great teacher sings,” and so one day, Mr. Terronez sang his agenda for the day, operatic-style. “The classroom erupted in cheers and applause,” and one student, on his way out of class, put his hand on Mr. Terronez’s shoulder and said, “I told you a great teacher sings.” Mr. Terronez demonstrates how great teachers can, and should, “make themselves humble before their students,” by taking risks and putting aside “their fear to try.”
 
 Overall, Mr. Terronez concludes that students want teachers who listen. According to Mr. Terronez, children have “a way of communicating, and adults haven’t spent the time listening.” He recalls a struggling student who often challenged him, but always completed the work in class. One day, this student stopped turning in homework. Mr. Terronez approached the student about the missing homework, to which the student replied, “I’m trying.” Days passed and the homework showed up, half-completed. Mr. Terronez spoke with the student again and the student explained, “I normally do my homework in the bathroom because it is the quietest place in my house, but this week the electricity was turned off and it’s dark in there. I had a candle, but it burnt out and I’m sorry.” Mr. Terronez heard the student say “I’m trying,” but he forgot to listen.
 
So, what makes a good teacher great?
 
“Great teachers notice when there’s a struggle. They don’t make assumptions about what kids can and cannot do. They wait and watch and they rescue them when they’re stuck. Good teachers hear them, but they don’t listen.” Mr. Terronez encourages all teachers to become active listeners, to engage with their students beyond the classroom doors, and to take more risks in the classroom. Most importantly, Mr. Terronez wants teachers to ask their students “What makes a good teacher great?” and to listen, not just hear, the answer.
 
Continue to follow the blog for more inspirational stories!
 
-Melissa Hoppie, Graduate Student Researcher

Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news outlet for education throughout the United States, has recently published an article about the troubling statistics of early education programs for English language learners (ELLs). Chalkbeat contributor Amanda Rahn regards early education programs in Michigan in a very insightful article, utilizing available data to conclude that there are large discrepancies in the treatment of English-speaking preschool students and ELL preschool students.

According to a 2017 study by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), “Michigan was one of only three states to meet all 10 quality benchmarks designed,” for preschool education, some of these benchmarks including student-to-teacher ratios, teacher training, and quality of curriculum. However, with respect to ELLs, “the state met only one out of 10 benchmarks for English language learners.”

In fact, the only benchmark Michigan met for ELLs is “permitting bilingual instruction in the state-funded preschool program.” As reported in the article, "Michigan did not meet benchmarks for assessing children in their home language, allocating more money for English learners, or making sure staff are trained in working with students learning English."

To this point, Steve Barnett, co-founder of NIEER, states, “For all children, the preschool years are a critical time for language development. We know that dual-language learners are a group that makes the largest gains from attending high-quality preschool. At the same time, they’re at elevated risk for school failure.” According to the article, “about a quarter of early education students nationwide are English learners,” as a result, in ignoring our state’s educational deficits, we are effectively robbing a population of a sufficient education.

TWIN-CS, in our mission to educate the whole child, uses two-way immersion to ensure the development of second language acquisition and the sustainment of heritage and culture. With TWIN-CS, students not only acquire English language proficiency, but they maintain (or in some cases acquire) fluency in a second language.

Continue to follow the blog to hear more about DL programs throughout the country!

-Melissa Hoppie, Graduate Student Researcher

​

Joel Stice, contributor for Education World, wrote an article about the necessity of sustaining bilingual programs and bringing dual language teachers into the classroom. Mr. Stice begins with some detailed, but incredibly informative statistics of English language learners (ELLs) in the United States today.
 
According to recent research by the Pew Research Center, “The U.S. Hispanic population accounts for 56 percent of the country’s population growth since 2000…[meaning] that roughly five million of one out of every 10 school children are classified as English language learners.” We know that most ELLs are not immigrants, but many of these students come from homes in which English is not the primary language spoken. As a result, the “potential for them to easily fall behind in school,” rises exponentially.
 
Mr. Stice quells the notion that ELL populations are limited to certain areas of the country. For example, according to a 2015 study by the Migration Policy Institute, “Washington and Oregon are in the top 10 states that have the highest ELL student density,” even though states such as Texas, California, and Florida seem to have the highest Hispanic populations.
 
The growth of the ELL population, especially in districts that were not prepared for such a population, demands dual language teachers now more than ever. States such as Oklahoma and Oregon are actively pushing legislation to support more dual language teachers and to develop a school community in which dual language teachers are standard.
 
As the United States becomes increasingly multilingual, we must have teachers readily available to support the growing population of students who need bilingual education. In TWIN-CS, we not only have dual language teachers, but we provide an educational space that sustains equity and heritage language learning, while promoting the acquisition of English.
 
Continue to follow the blog for more about bilingual education and changing demographics in the United States!


-Melissa Hoppie, Graduate Student Researcher

In one of many webinar meetings, English-Spanish bilingual students from St. Leo the Great, located in Texas, performed a ballet folklorico dance for their English-Mandarin bilingual peers located all the way in New York!
 
As members of TWIN-CS, St. Leo the Great and Most Holy Redeemer Catholic School are two-way immersion schools with a focus on sustaining equity and heritage. As one can see from St. Leo’s performance, TWIN schools prioritize learning in an exciting, supportive way! These two schools meet via webinars as often as they can, sharing their knowledge of language and culture across the country. TWIN-CS illustrates the benefit of a whole child approach to school, demonstrating the immense success of sharing culture, celebrating language, and having fun while learning! 
 
Continue to follow the blog for more exciting events from our member schools!
​
-Melissa Hoppie, Graduate Student Researcher

April was National Poetry Month and Edutopia published an article about the benefits of poetry-learning in an ELL classroom. Writer and teacher Meriwynn Mansori tells us how. By using “the very things that make poetry challenging — its structure, the precision of its language and young learners’ unfamiliarity with it,” one can create stimulating lessons that center on “language, culture, and self-expression.” Here are five ways to incorporate poetry into your lessons with ELLs:

1. Show students they are surrounded by poetic language
Showing students that poetry surrounds them will peak their interest, and “we can help students connect with poetry by reminding them that the songs they listen to are poetry, but set to music.” For instance, Ms. Mansori had her eighth-grade class read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, then compare and contrast its construction with Bruno Mars’ “Just the Way You Are.”
2. Encourage students to use their own words
Having students use their own words (and their first language) can help student express themselves through poetry. Ms. Mansori suggests that “poetry’s formal aspects [provide] them with the structure they need to create highly expressive poems that are infused with their own personal voices and varied cultural experiences,” with Biopoems and Diamante poems working most effectively in elementary and middle-school classrooms.
3. Use personalization strategies to stay relevant
Ms. Mansori references using particular poetic strategies to maintain a culturally relevant classroom: “My English language arts co-teacher used the book ‘If You’re Not from the Prairie’ to inspire students to create a variation of a bio-poem in which students began their poem, ‘If You’re Not…’” in which students would fill in the blanks with information about their heritage, culture, or language.
4. Use blended poetry to connect better with students
Using poetry to open a discussion about sensitive matters may be delicate, but it helps students connect with the lesson. For instance, Ms. Mansori’s classroom lesson about human rights in poetry struck a chord with her students, many of whom are immigrants. They connected with a particular poet whose “tale of loss and survival and of separation from family and country,” helped the students to craft their own poems about their feelings toward immigration and family. In Ms. Mansori’s classroom, “this activity resulted in a global lesson in which students revealed their feelings of empathy toward someone from a different time and culture, and saw their own lives reflected in her experiences.”

5. Publish your students’ poetry. 
And lastly, publishing the students’ poetry will “instilled them with a sense of purpose, pride and ownership,” having even the most reticent or reluctant writers, “want to make finishing touches on their work.”
Poetry may seem complicated, even to seasoned English speakers, but its flexibility allows for students to use their own voices in writing. Poetry also allows ELLs to practice reading skills, comprehension, and speaking (if they present their poems aloud), all while connecting their learning to their heritage language and culture.

-Melissa Hoppie, Graduate Research Assistant

The long-awaited Risen Christ video is here! In this seven-minute clip, one can experience the holistic atmosphere that awaits students of TWIN-CS, an educational environment that promises the sustainment of language and culture, and access to a world of possibilities. Michael Rogers, president of Risen Christ, succinctly summarizes their mission as a dual language Catholic school:
 
“These families are entrusting their children to us. They know that when their children go into the classroom […] that teacher is going to honor the faith of the child and the family […] the culture […] and the language of that student. And that is one of the most important things we do here at Risen Christ.”
 
Please take time to watch this wonderful video and join in our celebration of Risen Christ Catholic School!

-Melissa Hoppie, Graduate Student Researcher

​Dr. Pedro Noguera, presently a Distinguished Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA, provides insight and advice to new ELL teachers.  In this short clip, (recorded when Dr. Noguera was teaching at NYU), we began to understand the complexities of an ELL classroom and what we, as educators, can do to make this learning experience a productive one.
 
Dr. Noguera tackles the gross assumption that ELLs are all Spanish-speakers: “We need to just first of all acknowledge that English language learners are a large, diverse population. They don’t all speak Spanish.” In overlooking the vastness of other world languages, educators can further marginalize their ELLs and hinder their acquisition of English. That is, as Dr. Noguera states, “…the basic level of working with a child who’s learning English, there’s a need for patience…It takes an ability on the part of the educator to understand the learning challenge,” which is only accessible if the educator acknowledges the complexities of ELL’s first language and how the first language (L1) influences acquisition of the second language (L2).
 
Moreover, Dr. Noguera suggests that educators should recognizes the nuances of vocabulary:
“[Educators must] recognize that there is a vocabulary that is related to the particular content of what you teach, and unique to that content.” Science vocabulary, for instance, varies a great deal from English vocabulary, and English vocabulary differs from greatly from terminology used in History classes.
 
If we ignore these nuances of languages, the differing vocabularies in a given academic subject and the variations of L1, then ELLs may suffer academically in the classroom. In fact, Dr. Noguera proposes that, “[some schools] actually perceive them to be less capable… [and] think of them as having a kind of learning disability,” because there is a failure to teach ELLs sufficiently. In turn, educators can further marginalize ELLs from their peers
 
Dual language (DL) education can be tricky, but a purposeful and mindful outlook on ELL curriculum may foster a better learning environment for these students. At TWIN-CS, we remain mindful of our students’ varied backgrounds, their cultures, and their environments in order to provide the best kind of DL education. 

-Melissa Hoppie, Graduate Student Researcher