Chapter 5: Understanding Academic Language - 4

Focus on Use

If the students learn their math and Academic Language enough to get good test scores, but never use the logical skills of math or the persuasive skills of Academic Language outside the classroom, then their education remains in the classroom, and has no connection with the rest of their identity. Therefore students must use these skills for authentic purposes. As Cummins says:

Language must be used to amplify students' intellectual aesthetic, and social identities if it is to contribute to student empowerment, understood as the collaborative creation of power.
(Cummins, p. 144)

So we have to make sure that students are actually using this language. For math, this would have been an alien concept not too long ago. Students worked problems, including word problems, which require a certain mastery of English, but they never wrote more than a geometry proof. Nowadays students may be expected to keep a Math Journal, where they keep track of the steps to do various problems, for example, and maybe even are asked to reflect on how a math concept can be used in real life. By using written Academic Language, according to Cummins:

• Students must ... figure out sophisticated aspects of [English] ...to express what they want to communicate;
• [Students and teachers become aware of] ... what aspects of language they need assistence with;
• [Teachers get] the opportunity to provide corrective feedback...
  (Cummins, p. 144)

Although Cummins recommends such great literacy tools as drama/role play, creative writing and critical autobiographies, these will always play a smaller role in a mathematics classroom. However, using language in structured groups to provide and strengthen background knowledge and in various forms of journals can be used in math. Asking students to explain the steps they have taken to solve a problem in writing, much like writing geometry proofs, can help activate Academic Written language, which is useful for all students, not just ELLs. Using more authentic projects for learning math is certainly a challenge to a first-year teacher like I will be, but is by far the best way for students to see how both math and Academic Language can be used outside the classroom.

ELLs might be permitted to discuss a topic first in their L1, if there is more than one speaker of that language in the classroom, and then produce a written report in English. They may even be permitted to write their outline in their E1 first, while they are gathering their thought. In my experience, however, they should be discouraged from trying to write first in the L1 and then translating to English, because they will translate idioms directly.

Scott J. Cech in another Education Week article, Weigh Proficiency, Assess Content, discusses NCLB requirements that ELL students test scores be included for adequate-yearly-progress purposes after only one year, although most research would indicate that students need up to seven years to master English at a level with their peers, even in math.

Students whose state NCLB test grades are consistently lower than their peers are automatically in for feelings of inferiority. Their schools have difficulty reaching expected results when their total scores are pulled down because of their lower scores.

The obvious thing, of course, is to set in everything to figure out how to bring these scores up, but the article can only report on a few practical studies, where different approaches have been used to improve ELL students' Academic English. For everyone agrees that that is the path to be taken.

Education Week has been running a blog by Mary Ann Zehr called Learning the Language, which "will tackle difficult policy questions, explore learning innovations, and share stories about different cultural groups on her beat." The most interesting post I read from recent times is High School for Newly Arrived ELLs Opens in San Francisco. The school is part of the Internationals Network for Public Schools which has 11 schools in New York and more recently one in Oakland and now San Francisco. Their students have all lived fewer than four years in this country. This is what their website says about their Approach:

At International high schools, a badge of prestige replaces the “stigma” of immigrant status for students, families, and faculty. It is understood that near native fluency in English and proficiency in a second language are valuable resources when it comes to achieving professional and social success in the United States and the global economy and participating fully in democratic society. Within our network, every teacher is a language teacher as well as a teacher of academic content and skills. The educational process takes place in a heterogeneous, learner-centered, collaborative, and activity-based environment. Students are organized in diverse clusters that work with the same team of teachers over 1-2 years. Classes are mixed according to age, grade, academic ability, prior schooling, native language, and linguistic proficiency. They are interdisciplinary and rigorous, and the curriculum includes literature, social studies, math, science, the arts, technology, and physical education

The Internationals’ pedagogical approach to educating English language learners is based upon five major tenets:

• Heterogeneity and collaboration: schools and classrooms are heterogeneous and collaborative structures that build on the strengths of each member of the school community to optimize learning
• Experiential learning: expansion of the 21st century schools beyond the four walls of the building motivates adolescents and enhances their capacity to successfully participate in modern society
• Language and content integration: strong language skills develop most effectively in context and emerge most naturally in a purposeful, language-rich, interdisciplinary, and experiential program
• Localized autonomy and responsibility: linking autonomy and responsibility at every level within a learning community allows all members to contribute to their fullest potential
• One learning model for all: every member of our school community experiences the same learning model, maximizing an environment of mutual academic support. Thus all members of our school community work in diverse, collaborative groups on hands-on projects; put another way, the model for adult learning and student learning mirror each other.
  (Internationals, Our Philosophy - my emphasis)

These students are learning English while they are learning content. They are not being held back until their English is good enough. The schools emphasize their bilingualism as a "badge of prestige" and empowers them to become active citizens.

What an exciting place to work and learn, and what an inspiration! I will continue to explore their website. It has a wealth of inspiration!