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The Positive Impact Of English Language Learners At An Urban School
(accepted for publication by "Language Magazine")
By Ted Appel & Larry Ferlazzo
Luther Burbank High
School, Sacramento’s (CA) largest inner-city high school with 2,000 students,
and the school with the largest number of English Language Learners in the
entire region (over half of our students are ELL’s), recently became one of the
few high schools in the nation to come out of Program Improvement (PI) status
after having been a PI school for six years. Program Improvement is the designation
assigned schools by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) if they have not met a
number of academic benchmarks.
Approximately forty percent of our student body is Asian (largely, but
not exclusively, Hmong, including 200 pre-literate refugees who came to our
school three years ago and whose scores are included in NCLB rankings), twenty
percent is African-American, and twenty-seven percent is
Latino.
There were many causes
for this turn-around, including dividing our school into Small Learning
Communities with about 300 students each who stayed together, and with the same
group of teachers, for their four-year high school career.
It’s also important to
highlight what we did not do – we didn’t “teach to the test.” Instead, we specifically focused on
developing life-long learners recognizing that while there might be short-term
pain in terms of test scores, there would ultimately be long-term gain for
students and the school.
We believe that having
large numbers of English Language Learners did not inhibit our escaping NCLB
sanctions. On the contrary, we
believe that having to address the needs of our large number of English Language
Learners had a very positive impact on instruction for all of our students. Looking at ELL’s through this
asset lens is very different from the deficit lens through which
they are usually perceived.
PROFESSIONAL
DEVELOPMENT
All of our teachers
have had to learn how to effectively teach English Language Learners simply
because all of our classes have significant numbers of ELL’s in them. Graphic organizers, visual
supports, cooperative learning, modeling, and accessing prior knowledge are just
a few of the instructional strategies that are used
school-wide.
Of course, all of
these teaching methods are effective with any type of struggling student,
whether they are struggling because of language or because of some other
challenge.
Our large number of
English Language Learners pushed our school and faculty to invest in
professional development so that our teachers would learn and refine these
skills. Time and resources have
been made for extensive in-service training and peer-to-peer support, including
observations and weekly “study teams” where groups of teachers meet to enhance
their professional practice.
CREATING LIFE-LONG
LEARNERS
As we mentioned
earlier, we have been very intentional about not “teaching to the test.” We are committed to having our
entire curriculum both accessible and academically stimulating and
challenging.
All of our incoming
ninth graders, for example, immediately begin to learn strategies and not
just skills in their classes.
Someone once said that a skill is knowing how to put your key in a lock
and turn it. A strategy is knowing
what to do when you can’t find your keys. This is emphasized from our
Beginning ESL classes to our advanced International Baccalaureate ones. Because of this school-wide
commitment to higher-order thinking development, our teachers need to use
effective ELL teaching strategies to ensure that all our students – ELL and non-ELL – develop this
capacity.
Our ESL program (know
in California schools as ELD – English Language Development) has hundreds of
students at Beginning and Intermediate English levels. Teachers and students in those
classes initiated educational technology projects (see Language Magazine, August
2007) and international online collaborations that are now not just being
considered for replication by other non-ELD classes in our school, but by
schools around the world. In
addition, The Write Institute () writing curriculum for English Language
Learners was found to be so effective in our ELD classes that portions are now
used in a number of other classes on campus.
Burbank also has an
International Baccalaureate (IB) program, and we do not recruit students to
participate in IB from outside our attendance boundaries. We are committed to making the IB
curriculum accessible to all our students, including our English Language
Learners.
STUDENT & PARENT
RELATIONSHIPS
Social capital, the
value placed on trusting and valuable interpersonal relationships, is being
recognized more and more by researchers as a key component of a successful
school. Burbank prides itself on
the supportive relationships teachers develop with their students, and those
that students can develop with each other, through being connected in the same
Small Learning Community for four years.
There are other ways
where those relationships are nurtured, specifically connected to English
Language Learners.
A number of our ELD
classes have “sister classes” within our school – connections to classes that
have more native English speakers.
For example, one ELD class uses a Dialogue Journal, a tried and true ELL
teaching tool where students typically write to their teacher and then the
teacher writes a response.
Somewhere within that response the teacher includes something the student
wrote, but in the correct “ form.” The idea
is that the student will learn without feeling that he/she has been corrected,
and will continue to feel comfortable taking writing risks.
The difference in this
case is that the Dialogue Journal is written to a pen pal in an eleventh and
twelfth grade class whose teacher uses it as a component of writing instruction
for her students. Both classes get
together periodically as well, and work together on a variety of other
projects.
Burbank has also
developed parent engagement programs particular to the needs of English Language
Learners. Working with parents and
a local university, one hundred parents, many monolingual in their native
language, meet regularly to learn and discuss topics that they choose, ranging
from immigration issues to how they can best help their children succeed
academically. The
meetings/workshops are run in multiple languages through a simultaneous
translation system with headphones.
In addition, ELL
parents and students worked with Burbank staff to develop a family literacy
effort where we provide home computers and wireless Internet service to assist
in English study at home, which was awarded the 2007 International Reading
Association Presidential Award For Reading and Technology. Finally, hundreds of home visits are
made with interpreters by teachers and other Burbank staff each
year.
SCHOOL SUPPORT OF HERITAGE
CULTURES
Hmong for Hmong
speakers and Spanish for Spanish speakers are popular classes on campus, and
research shows that increased academic mastery of a heritage language leads to
higher academic achievement.
In addition, we have
student leadership classes (for credit) both during and after-school that are
multi-racial as well also culturally-specific, including Latino/Latina
Leadership, Hmong (and Men’s) Women’s Circles, Hmong Cultural Club, and the
Pacific Islanders club. We have
similar classes for African-American students.
We do not have
specific data that points to which of these elements have contributed to a
larger or smaller degree to our academic success. However, we can say that
our rate of absenteeism compares quite favorably to other high schools, and we
can say that we are no longer a Program Improvement
school.
So, we can say
we must be doing something right….
Ted Appel is the principal of Luther
Burbank High School in Sacramento, California. Larry Ferlazzo teaches English and
Social Studies at Burbank.