Chapter 8: Collaborative Empowerment

At the Preschool, Elementary and Secondary Levels

Our assignment permits skipping "Chapter 7: The Deep Structure of Educational Reform," which probably goes beyond "that which we can change;" "Chapter 9: From Doublethink to Disinformation: The Academic Critics of Bilingual Education," an attempt to give the other side the word and "Chapter 10: Babel Babble: Reframing the Discourse of Diversity," also a chapter on policy, which would be very useful to some, but not first-year math teachers. So I have not read these chapters now, but may come back to them some time.

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In Chapter 7, Cummins gives practical examples of several schools at various levels where the concepts he has developed here are carried out in practice as inspiration to the rest of us. I quote first from his conclusion, and then return to the various schools to pick out certain practical elements I find particularly interesting.

They show also that empowerment is generated only through interactions that affirm students' identities and extend their conceptual horizons. The creation of power in these interactions is at the core of genuine educational reform.
One reason why much educational reform has remained at a safe surface level ... is that genuine reform ...is not safe.; it threatens structures of privilege and status within the society. Faced with the escalating rhetoric of diversity as the enemy within, it takes courage for educatios to assert the rights of children to develop their home languages and the importance for the nation of fostering these multilingual resources....
(Cummins, p. 253)

Cummins tells about a preschool run on Montessori principles developed by the Foundation Center for Phenomenological Research, which is apparently now the National Council of La Raza which now has a number of different programs, including the one linked here on Early Care & Education Programs. The major difference in the preschool in Winters, CA, described by Cummins is that the school recruited members of the community with no educational training, and taught them Montessori methods, creating a school that is part of the community, provides jobs for community members, trains whole families in health and literacy, and in general perpares the small students well for the school career. The students and their parents become empowered by the program and strenghten their identities as Latino/as and Americans. From the website I cannot determine if this school still exists nor any studies on its results.

For the Elemenary level, Cummins highlights the work of several different schools:

• The Oyster-Adams Bilingual School in Washington. D.C.is primarily Spanish/English, but also enrolls both Asian and African American students, as well as Spanish speaking students from many countries, making it very mulit-cultural, while retaining the students' identities.
  

  [The] School offers a ... bilingual program for grades pre-k to eighth. All instruction and school activities are conducted in a dual-language immersion environment, with equal weight given to learning in English and in Spanish. Both ... faculty and ... student body are balanced 50%-50% between native English and native Spanish speakers. In addition, by enrolling children from many neighborhoods, nationalities, cultures, and economic circumstances, Oyster provides a heterogeneous social environment that is essential to its multicultural mission. Oyster enjoys an unusual dual status as a DCPS neighborhood public school and as a school entirely devoted to a specialized program. Accordingly, all "in-boundary" children have a right to attend grades K-8, while "out-of-boundary" and pre-k applicants are admitted according to the school's selection criteria.
  (From school website)
  

• The Dual Language Program of Manhattan's District 3 has at least three types of bilingual education. Cummins was particularly interested in their pioneering Dual Language program.

  Bilingual
  Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) programs provide language arts and subject matter instruction in the student’s native language and English as well as intensive instruction in English as a Second Language (ESL). As the student develops English proficiency, instruction in English increases and native language instruction decreases.
  Dual Language
  Dual Language programs educate ELL students in need of English language instruction alongside English-speaking students who are interested in learning a second language. Programs continue to develop ELLs’ native language and English language skills throughout their schooling while enabling English-speaking students to become bilingual as well. Both groups provide good linguistic role models for each other, and through their interactions, support language development in both languages. Students receive half of their instruction in English and half in the target language.
  ESL
  Freestanding English as a Second Language (ESL) programs provide all classroom instruction in language arts and subject matters in English through the use of specific instructional strategies. Native language support is available to help students accelerate their understanding in subject areas. Native language assistance is supported by such activities as encouraging students to discuss subject matter with peers in the native language, allowing students to use the native language to write explanations of what they understand, and making native language textbooks, libraries, dictionaries, reference materials and technology resources available for students to use in the classroom.
  (PDF from District Website)
  

• The Bilingual Bicultural School, which occupies part of a larger school in East Harlem, uses multi-subject projects to teach both English and Spanish dominant students in both languages. They have been particularly known for the use of technology for these projects.

  The Bilingual Bicultural Mini School's Mission is to provide a performance standards-based curriculum that is of exceptionally high quality, challenging and intellectually enriching for all our students. OUR MISSION WILL BE ACHIEVED THROUGH THESE GOALS: 1) Students, parents, teacher, and administrators are treated with respect; 2) Trust, faith and belief in our children are ever present; 3) We recognize that all our students have gifts and talents; 4) Provide higher level of knowledge in all subject areas; 5) The integration of technology across the curriculum; 6) An arts program that gives all students access to art, music and dance instruction; and 7) Parents participate in schoolwide activities that emphasize scholastic growth for their children.
  (From school website)
  

At the Secondary School level, Cummins finds that the situation for bilingual students is acute for several reasons:

1. Students risk running out of time before they have caught up sufficiently in academic English...
2. traditional departmentalized high schools are organized in rigid way that often track ELL students into lower-level programs, and construct their bilingualism as an academic deficiency.
3. a large majority of secondary school teachers have had minimal training to eneable themto teach ELL students effectively.

The three programs profiled [in this chapter] have one major element in common: they all acknowledge that bilingual adolescents have "so much to say" ... and they provide organization of structures and interpersonal spaces within which students' voices can find expression.
(Cummins, p. 245)

• A Navajo-English Applied Literacy Program encourages students to create "specific products for specific audiences," such as their community. They produced articles about the community in both Navajo and English for the community weekly paper, and videos in both languages for the local TV station among other activities. By reporting on their community they learned more of their own culture, strengthened their Navajo language, and most importantly developed empowerment based on their Navajo/American identity.
• At a high school in Oxnard, CA, a single teacher, Bill Terrazas, encouraged students to have long dialogues around round tables to help them find their identities and position in the community. His students formed an organization called Students for Cultural and Linguistic Democracy, which I, unfortunately can find no current references for.
  
• The International High School at Laguardia Community College in NYC is truly international, with an ethnic break-down of 35% Asian, 48% Hispanic, 3% Black and 14% White of different nationalities. 63% have ELL status. As part of their Mission Statement, they list
  

We are committed to the following educational principles:

• Limited English proficient students require the ability to understand, speak, read and write English with near-native fluency to realize their full potential within an English-speaking society.
• In an increasingly interdependent world, fluency in a language other than English must be viewed as a resource for the student, the school and the society.
• Language skills are most effectively learned in context and emerge most naturally in purposeful, language-rich interdisciplinary study.
• The most successful educational programs are those that emphasize high expectations coupled with effective support systems.
• Individuals learn best from each other in heterogeneous, collaborative groupings.

(From school website)


• To this I would like to add the Internationals Network for Public Schools that I discussed in a post about Chapter 5, September 11, and Oakland International High School, which I discuss on Sept 27: Oakland campus caters to refugees.
  

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This is the completion of my interactive journal about the required chapters from the book Negotiating Identities. However, if I should find something else related to this topic in the future, I will return with a new post. I consider this, like all journals, as a work in progress.
I would very much appreciate your comments, suggestions or additions to my posts. Perhaps, for example, you are working with a program that should be included here.