The Alaska State Writing Consortium

NWP 08 ELL (Thursday Morning)
Ann McKay Bryson

(Additional reflections and thoughts from me are in bold. This workshop had two parts. The first focused on professional development ideas to engage teachers in being purposeful, reflective and more public in taking ownership in their daily practice – becoming advocates for ELL – whom they see as all students! The second half is a call to directly, intentionally and effectively face racism in our professional lives, with powerful ideas for the Summer Institute.)

San Diego Model (First half of session)
“If you teach ELL, isn’t that just ‘good teaching’?
How to go from Good to Purposeful, Intentional Teaching!

This compelling session spoke to the need to expand not only our expertise, but our willingness to claim the expertise, of knowing effective methods and strategies for developing writing skills with English Language Learners (ELL). As is generally the case with best practice, what is effective support for ELL is also effective with the rest of the population!

The San Diego Writing Project speakers were eloquent. They had us laughing, talking, writing and thinking together. There was a fire in their mission to support teachers and students in believing that everyone is a language learner and that every educator is a teacher of English Language Learners.

The teacher support efforts began (as so many of ours do!) with requests from teachers for a workshop that would give tools and activities that they could immediately implement. SDWP’s response was, ‘Sure, we can help take care of Monday, but then what about Tuesday?”

In-depth PD evolved. The process included forming practice study groups and book groups. They jigsawed and had teachers from a variety of schools working together to develop curriculum in something of a Socratic seminar manner -- reading and thinking together to deeply reflect on what we do as instructors. Particular attention was paid to the idea that ‘We don’t get everything the first time we hear it or do it, so how will we revisit ideas?”

A particularly important point for me was that of having a lens of each of us being ELL teachers – and that all content discussions were framed through that lens. It took the onus off individuals to be ‘the expert’ and allowed everyone to claim the path to being advocates. (Nice reframe of the language!)

Structure:

Folks got it mildly resentful so director asked every group to think of themselves as teachers of ELL.

Protocol:

Whole group for the first hour; then break into separate groups, in the jigsaw groups
Discuss from a text that binds us together (shared text and/or article)
(Katherine Sandway’s “When ELLearners Write”)
Committed to case studies. Follow two over the year.

SECOND HALF

Great Valley Writing Project. This is their third year of this on-going intentional PD.
• If you teach ELL, isn’t that just good teaching? Go from Good to Purposeful teaching, intentional teaching!
• Engage in conversations. Push past surface conversations to, WHY isn’t that the case, why isn’t that right to say?
How do I apply past ‘good teaching”? We know we’re excellent teachers, but we want to go past that and know more about the work. (YES! Reflecting together, building new ideas together, that’s key.)
Article: Finding the ELL in all that You Already Do (Get from Google or Brandy at Great Valley WP)

If we say it and we mean it, then we must give it time, have the conversations, do the work (not just in a complaining way, bring issues up, but being willing to take on some of the workload) (as a site, in moving from ‘talking about’ the importance of conversations and work re: racism and ELL and into action like their study groups etc)
(So things that start with TCs must be supported by director; shared leadership important.)

One example from study group:
We have (local) experts, texts, to get ideas from…
Fluency activity…

Pre and Post study group (generated the word bank and added it to the Power Writing; added talking to a partner) None of these strategies have hindered any students. Benefit all.
“The one minute of quiet is hard for me, hard for them, but got used to it and hugely beneficial.”

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Thoughts from the site director:
We found that writing the plan, developing the plan, to apply for a mini-grant, whether it gets funded or not, we tend to do the work!

SUMMER INSTITUTE: They dedicate time in Summer Institute to build in coaching for demos, to be able to intentionally surface the ELL strategies) COULD WE BRING SOMEONE LOCAL IN TO DO THAT?? (AND get distance support for that from Mary??) (Mary says yes!)

If you don’t have the critical mass but do have the issues, what do we do?
Response: Summer Institute, it’s a place where you can begin to grow things.
***Race Equity and Linguistic articles moved from fourth to first week. Start with Margaret Wheatley’s article WILLING TO BE DISTURBED.
It’s the first piece they read on the first day – “If you leave here complacent, we will not have done our work.”
That shifts the lens so that these strands are integral to all the rest of the 4 weeks.

Would we want to Budget to send Summer Institute leaders (Joan? Jennifer? Univ & district reps) to GW Summer Institute to experience this?

Planning document. (Have a sample of one filled out from an actual meeting that I’ll try to post on the website.)

(I noticed: how palpable the group identity of sites was and how their TCs interacted as colleagues, meeting and thinking together w/o pay, often, even for study groups, etc.)

Our Debrief on the session: (strategy)
“What are the common threads from today’s presentation?
Ambiguity and discomfort – allow yourself to feel it. Now, let’s draw some common threads between the two presentations and your own site.”
• can’t teach in isolation (importance of reaching out and ending isolation)
• importance of reflection for growth
• importance of commitment
• both groups identified what the issues were and then decided what to do about them
• ‘we’re all ELL teachers”
• willingness to put something into action, even though it feels like a risk (trying something in classroom or with colleagues)
• open to discussion about and changing perceptions
• making efforts to bring in experts who are not from the dominant culture
• both sites focused on research and reading a common text
• value of collaboration and the power of talking to each other (not one expert, all of us improving our knowledge)
• both projects, the impetus from this work came from TCs, not director
• for a lot of this work, the summer institute is really important. Issues arise there, ideas return to that, SI as vehicle to work this in significant ways, how can this feed back to SI?
• realizing that Diversity isn’t one person’s job; want it to be tightly threaded through all of the work in our WP site.
• ONLY place racism is discussed in Univ ed classes or school districts is ‘chicano history’ or ‘black history’ classes.

Some wishes and questions…
Wish we had a similar resource – ELL network Saturday group could help develop…
Identify representative resources, like who would be great speakers; reading suggestions
(Will GVWP post that in an accessible way?? Sign up for the ELL Listserv!)
How to access articles about teacher attitudes and how that influences what goes on in the classroom? (referred to in presentation)
Mahl’s work?? “What do students have that they’re not bringing to the table?”