 Hi, I'm Michael Morris, Superintendent of the Amherst Public Schools, and welcome to the latest edition of Window into Arps. I'm so pleased today to be joined by two members of our English Language Learner Department. And what's particularly notable about today's episode is this topic came from parent request. Parent Guardian in our district watches many of the Window into Arps episodes and said, hey, you haven't seen, you haven't talked much about English Language Learner teachers and my sons in English Language Learner has benefited so much from that department that I think you should write an episode on it and here we are. So thank you both for joining us and I think for much in the community, for many people in the community they know that we have English Language Learners in the district and they don't necessarily have all the insight into what our programs and services and how we support that community so I'm so glad that you're both chosen to join us today. So why don't you each tell me a little bit about yourself, where you work and what, how you came to become an ELL teacher in the district in Amherst. Okay. Would you like to start, Sue? I'll start. I work at the high school. I've been there for quite a while. I, when I moved I, I went to UMass actually but then I, I went overseas and did a master's degree in Cairo. I'd always been interested in learning languages and my master's was in teaching English as a foreign language and then when I came back to the states I moved back to Massachusetts and heard that Amherst was a strong district and applied for a job and knew that there was a strong ELL program even back then which was 1989 and got hired. So that's my story in a nutshell. Thank you. I know we'll, we'll, we'll dig in a little deeper in the, later in the, in the conversation. Terry? Well I was born in Minnesota and went to college there. After college I spent about a year and a half in Chicago studying urban education and volunteering in a preschool with Latin American kids from Latin America. Went back to Minnesota and taught in the Spanish Immersion Program. So I did the opposite of what I'm doing now. I taught Spanish to mostly English speakers. Then we moved out East in 2008. I worked in New York and then transitioned into ESL. That's the job that was open for me. So I had my coursework in ESL so I became licensed and taught ESL in, in New York. And then we moved here in 2010. I taught first at Fort River and then I've been at Crocker Farm since 2010. Great. Fantastic. And both of you touched on this a bit but what motivated you to decide to work with this particular specific population of students. The nomenclature keeps on changing but the current nomenclature that we're using is English learners. And I think it's worth noting that, you know, it used to be ESL, English is second language and for so many of our students English is not their second language. They have multiple languages that are coming and which is a huge strength to our district with. But what was it that made, that's something that you were interested in, in studying and then eventually having as your vocation, your profession. Either of you can start. John. I'll go. So I've always been interested in languages and language acquisition and I was a Spanish major as an undergraduate so I love using languages and the idea of how to help somebody learn another language has always intrigued me. And knowing Spanish has also been a great asset in working with families in schools. So that's a big draw and I think also it's quite rewarding that children learning languages, they learn it by leaps and bounds. So it's one of the most wonderful things in my job I think is especially working with kids. I'm working with kids now who I've worked with since kindergarten. So to see the growth from a kindergartner to a fifth grader or even to see a beginner's growth from the beginning of the year to the end is one of the best things that I like about my job. Yeah. Thank you. Similar for me, I was always interested in language and culture. I was a French major as an undergrad but I also studied Spanish and Arabic in college and then as I said, I lived in Cairo and I'm also of Lebanese ancestry so I grew up around a different culture in language and food and music. So going to really wanting to live in Egypt and then getting into this program is what started me down this path and it's been incredible just getting to know the students and their families and learning. I've learned so much over the years. And one other thing that I remember now and I didn't realize it then was that when I was in high school I tutored students from Columbia and I helped them with English back then and I had no idea then that I was going down this path. And I think one of the interesting things that I get often from visitors to our district is they assume that our English learner population come with one language or two languages and be I think helpful for the community to hear a little bit of what languages you see in the students that you're working with. Yeah, currently we see a lot of Spanish speakers. We have a lot of Cape Verdeans who come with two languages already usually Creole and Portuguese. We have Chinese speakers, Arabic speakers, French. We have students from Africa that speak a number of different languages and it varies from year to year. We never know. When I first started we had a lot of Cambodian and Vietnamese students and you just never know. And at Cracker Farm about 20% of our students are English language learners or get support from the ELL program. Spanish speaking is the biggest number. We have lots of families from El Salvador and then some from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador. Then we also have a sizable group from China whose parents are studying at UMass. Usually they're just here for a year or two. Then we have other students whose parents are also at UMass but might be in a longer program. We have several Arabic speakers, Tamil, Tibetan, Farsi, Portuguese, Cape Verde, Creole, French, Nepali. So one of the things that just hearing you both talk about the wide array of languages, how do you approach, I mean no one can know all the languages that your students speak or I think it'd be hard press to find someone who can do that. So how are you able to integrate all those different languages into the school setting where at least at this point the primary language is English? I don't know if you had any thoughts on that wide array because I think it's really different than certain districts that have visited where there's a large ELL population or English language learner population but everyone speaks, that population itself is pretty monolingual, whether it's Spanish or Korean or Chinese and that's not the case in Amherst. I don't know if you've ever given some thought to how to integrate all those different languages, language backgrounds I should say into your classes. Well we, I mean actually the wider the array the better for teaching English because the students are forced to communicate with each other. I mean it's helpful to know the students languages but we don't have to know their languages to teach English. So we at the high school we have a very well established curriculum that you know we use, we test the students when they first get here and we place them in classes based on their level of English from beginner to intermediate to advanced. And our classes are English language classes but they're also content classes. We're teaching them what they'll need to be successful once they get into regular English and social studies classes. We also teach social studies in my department. So you know we have, we're with the students for you know two or three years sometimes more so we really develop a community and we get to know a lot about each other through presentations the students do, through journal writing and many different things. So it's, it's, it's great. The diversity is a real plus. Yeah I've seen that in one of my favorite things I get to do in the spring is go to the ELL, the picnic that the high school puts on and it's amazing to see the number of languages, English being one of them that's spoken routinely because of the diversity of languages. But also the most important thing that I get to see is a community that's built by yourself and the other staff members who you know when the seniors are leaving there's genuine sadness not just in the staff but but also for the younger students who that's part of their community that's graduating and it's bittersweet or obviously happy that students are graduating but that doesn't come naturally so I really want to thank you and the staff at the high school for for working on that. So kind of connected how do you approach either of you approach the task of helping students acquire English while they're still learning the content of the courses and you mentioned some I didn't know you work in similar areas so you know they're learning English and at the same time there's content that's not about language that's being integrated as well and so how do you approach that task? Sue mentioned that she teaches social studies and part of my work in previous years and a little bit this year is also working with social studies in sixth grade so right now they're studying early humans and so there is the content about cave dwellers and their characteristics and their capabilities but we're also able to integrate language using the language of compare and contrast so students are learning how to use phrases like the Lucy the biped was similar to humans in that she are another frame she was different because so we're teaching language structures at the same time as introducing content or in third grade my students are writing realistic fiction but they're needing to use the past tense so we'll be working on past tense irregulars you know ran and run or bring and brought yeah that's really helpful yeah we have content you know throughout our English classes and even from the very beginners we're teaching them you know how to write a paragraph topic sentence concluding sentence you know literature character you know developing characters and explaining plot and things like that so it's all intertwined and the folk but but you know we are developing their English language yeah that's great thank you um what are some of the challenges for the English learner population you know that you see in the district whether it's you know during the school day or broader challenges that the community faces well one thing that my students face is a lot of testing kids in general in massachusetts get tested a lot they take mcast starting at third grade mcast in ELA and in math and our ELL students also have to take the access test in january and then we've started a new progress monitoring that they also take so i feel like i feel bad for them and that they have to sit through a lot of testing um but then they also miss out on some instructional time because they're taking a test or because i'm administering the test then i can't be teaching them in the classroom so one challenge i think they face is just a lot of tests yeah yeah same thing at the high school and at the high school on top of that the students face a lot of pressure because they're they only have a limited amount of time some of them come with no english at all they need to earn credits towards graduation they need to pass the mcast tests as a graduation requirement and it's it's hard and in addition we are seeing many of our students or some of our students come with strong educational backgrounds in their first language and that's really helpful because they can transfer the vocabulary and just the things that they know of the academic skills that they have they can transfer that to the new language but we are seeing more and more students who are coming with limited or interrupted education and so they are not only needing to learn english but they're needing to learn so much vocabulary and so many just academic skills and so it it's hard it's really hard for them another thing with high school is college so getting kids ready you know like most of them and most of their parents haven't really experienced the whole college process so we actually did start last year a college as it's called step by step to college program where we meet with students once a month during the school day to you know just help them through that process whether they're going to community college or four-year college so that's another challenge yeah and Sue mentioned vocabulary I think that's the biggest key that um research has shown that kids learn social vocabulary in three to five years after coming so most of our students many of them speak without an accent and to hear them you might think oh they they're a native speaker and they're just fine they're not ELL but it takes five to seven years to develop academic vocabulary so a big challenge our students face is is being able to function in the classroom because they're lacking some of the the specific words that they need in order to participate orally or to to write an essay yeah I think one of the things that I think a lot about is just the fatigue of being in a school day where it's not your home language that's being spoken I've had the opportunity to be in a place that where English is not the primary language with someone who could translate for me when I needed it but that gets tiring too even for students who are further along we this experience this year where we the administrative group practices doing observations what high quality teaching is and we watched a seven minute lesson that was in Spanish it was in a dual language school um somewhere far away and uh for most of our administration not all but most of our administrators don't speak Spanish or understand Spanish very well and the big piece of feedback was I don't know how our English learners have any energy left at the end of the day because even this was a seven minute clip low stress environment right this wasn't a test this was just a normal professional development exercise and it was seven minutes long and and people felt like they needed a break you know afterwards so we built a lot of empathy for understanding what it must be like for a student who has six hours of instruction or five hours of instruction in a language that's not their their primary language over the course of a day um so we often wondered about that and on top of that um a lot of the high school students have to work and so we have students that go straight from school to work and they work a lot of hours and um they uh you know they don't get to many of them don't get to connect as well with after school clubs and sports and things like that because they have other responsibilities yeah and so that that can be difficult too yeah and and you know oftentimes the other thing before I go to the next question that I know I've heard from ELL students in the past and I know we've spoken about in different settings is for some of them they play the role because they have more English than their families do they play a larger role at home in supporting families with with lots of um just life events and light and the support they need to give is is larger than in monolingual English-speaking homes yeah yeah so um just recently last year um or in the last in the last year the look act passed in Massachusetts which was intended to reform a bit of the ELL programming across state and offer more flexibility and so I didn't know if you had any thoughts about that it made you know the Boston Globe and our local papers but on a functional level um from a from your perspective were there any implications that that you're seeing um as the as it's still getting implemented it's not done yet but since that law is passed any thoughts you have about that one thing um I know Katie Richardson the ELL director is really um bringing on board is the ELPAC which is a requirement under the look act um it's a parent advisory council of English language learner parents um and the meeting was first meeting was yesterday and we had quite a good turnout in the evening meeting and um so that's exciting I think parents um getting excited about providing education to other ELL parents maybe about American culture or about how to help your children succeed in school um so that's something exciting that will come about because of the act um another thing I think is the seal of biliteracy um where students can prove that they're literate and in two languages and then receive a special recognition for that and um that's something I think ELL teachers have really been stressing for a long time is that bilingualism is a gift and the the additive aspect of learning a second language it's a good thing and so I think it's a it's a great that it's a recognition of that. Yeah and one more thing that seems positive is I is the flexibility that school districts will now have to create the kinds of programs that work best in their districts and I don't know if the new dual language program came out of the look act or it's supported supported by the flexibility absolutely yeah yeah so that's yeah one connected to what Sue said I think being able to provide instruction um in a student's native language especially when they have interrupted schooling so we've had students come with who aren't literate in their own language and being able to instruct them for a short time in their own language in order for them to for example in the alphabet or understand what phonics means um is a is a great gift it is and then research would indicate that's the best practice and yet we in Massachusetts until this law for 15 years prior we hadn't been able to to do that yeah one of the interesting statistics in the dual language research that I did was that well over half the world's child population is raised in multilingual environments so it's it's a very American concept in some ways that you know language learning is a challenge I mean is is something that's not necessarily a benefit um because most of the world grows up it's just not as much in this particular country but I like that statistic because it really reframes the to what you're saying is the the multilingualism is a strength and we're supporting that in students and syllabi literacy I think formalizes that process in a state stamp kind of way which I think is helpful um and just briefly in what ways do you instruct students you know inside the class general a classroom outside the general a classroom what are the kind of different methodologies that you use when working with English learners well we are a general ed program and uh we have our own discrete classrooms at the high school and uh we you know like I said have our curriculum so generally they are um being taught that way um I as as the department had I also do connect with teachers in other departments about how the students are doing in their classes and try to figure out ways to support them if they need it thank you and at the elementary level we have a little more flexibility I do have my own classroom um and we have four ELL teachers on staff so um a couple of them work especially with beginners and they pull beginners who um are just arrived or have been here for a year or two to their classrooms for a small group work um and during my day for example I start out the morning in fifth grade and I push in which means I go and I work with alongside the teacher we alternate teaching lessons to teach fifth grade writing and then I come upstairs and work with sixth graders one-on-one an individual reading tutorial or a vocabulary for a 20 minute vocabulary burst before they go into the regular classroom and then I go back down and teach third grade writing alongside a regular ed teacher and we again share the share the lessons um and then I pull a small group out of fifth grade to do a small group reading and then in the afternoon I again push into a fourth grade unit study so we're teaching social studies and science but it's um to a whole group but when I'm in the regular classroom I support in the classroom teacher with vocabulary um with a word wall or um with visual aids or um working one-on-one with students who need a little bit more support thank you so much I just love to give a shout out to the bilingual interpreters too we are very fortunate to have um be able to hire bilingual interpreters to work with students particularly in science and math classes and they do an amazing job of not only translating but bridging kind of the cultural gap that some students feel yeah thank you it's important to do that right they're on the grounds working individually with some of the students who have just recently arrived um not just amherst but to our country and I know not all districts are able to do that so I'm really fortunate or I feel really fortunate that Amherst is able to do that we visited other schools where they say oh we don't have interpreters and I think wow how do students manage a high school science class yeah I can't imagine um we just have a minute or two left but is there anything else you'd like to share before we have to wrap the program um I was thinking about um what you said earlier about the administrators having the experience of being you know in a situation where they don't uh where they didn't understand and I'm thinking if there's any high school students watching this or any students watching this you know to to like try to imagine what it's like for the ELL students in the district and um you know try just be friendly and try to connect with them I mean they make great connections in you know within the ELL community but for kids that don't do sports for example it's sometimes hard to feel connected to the wider community so um that's that's something I just thought I'd throw in yeah and I just want to connect back to the idea about bilingualism being a gift I think um we mention it to parents whenever we have a parent conference or a parent meeting that um we thank them for speaking another language at home with their children because sometimes they worry that speaking a different language has hurt their child and I just really want to stress to English-speaking parents as well as parents who speak a second language that it's it's great please keep speaking another language at home with your child yeah well thank you both for all the critical work you do and both acclimating students to the Amherst public schools and then working with them to promote their their literacy and fluency um both in the academic sphere but I know there's a lot of what you do that's that's also beyond just the academics so we're deeply fortunate to have both of you on the staff so thank you and thank you so much for tuning in to the latest episode into window into ARPS we'll be back soon with another episode and thanks for viewing