To prepare our students to be global citizens they need to learn from teachers who represent the global diversity of culture and language (Rueda & De Neve, 2009)

 

 My work as director of Multicultural Education Programs in the College of Education at USM is helping to design and develop educational pathways for culturally and linguistically diverse individuals who reside in Maine. At present, there are 3 pathways in place that include: 1) a partnership with Portland Public Schools to assist educational technicians working toward an Ed Tech III certificate (90 credit hours) and/or a Bachelor’s degree (120 credits); 2) Bachelor’s degree students who require a few credits in their content areas to be certified as teachers; and 3) students in Newcomer Extended Teacher Education Program (Newcomer ETEP) who are working towards Maine State teacher certification. For a closer look at these programs: http://usm.maine.edu/cehd/Multicultural-Education Programs/.

 

For the past ten years, USM has been actively engaged with our local communities to target the recruitment, preparation, and retention of teachers of color, specifically refugees and immigrants who are culturally and linguistically diverse. The need to have teachers who represent the diversity of the student population has resulted in the creation of Newcomer ETEP that provides talented, experienced, and educated individuals the opportunity to become acclimated to and qualified to teach in Maine schools. In Portland the teaching force, as in many communities, is primarily Caucasian. There are proportionally many more students of color than there are educators of color. Of great concern is the fact that the gap between the groups appears to be widening. Programs designed to put more teachers of color into classrooms, such as Newcomer ETEP, can encourage students of color to aspire to become teachers themselves.

 

Newcomer ETEP is a two-year teacher preparation program designed to give students of color the necessary study and experience to acclimate to the American school system. Many of the Newcomer ETEP students arrived with higher education degrees and experience from their home countries. Some were teachers in fields for which there is great need in American schools (mathematics, science, foreign languages and special education). Yet due to language barriers and certification requirements, most of these individuals have needed support to integrate into the American education system and pursue a career in education in Maine.

 

Through Newcomer ETEP, USM has recruited over 30 potential teacher candidates of color, of whom 12 have been admitted to the graduate ETEP program and all 12 have graduated. Seven individuals obtained teaching positions with our partner schools and they all continue to teach up to eight years later. Graduates of Newcomer ETEP are viewed as teachers who excel in the field of teaching and become leaders in the profession. These teachers serve to advise, counsel and address the barriers faced within their own teaching communities.

During the past year, while serving as supervisor for a Newcomer ETEP student placed in a high school French class, I realized two things. The identification of student need early on, coupled with the refinement of student supports is crucial for their school and classroom integration and on-going success, and for their overall preparation as teachers. I observed that the student appeared to be missing some of the subtleties of being in the classroom. The expectations that he had from his mentor teacher, his supervisor, and from his students were not explicit when meshed with the demands of leading a lesson and being actively involved in a dynamic classroom. I learned to be watchful, to ask questions, to give concrete advice, to provide follow-up, to make time to talk in two and three way conversations in order to dispel any assumptions or to ease any miscommunications, and to gauge progress towards identified goals.

 

In order to focus more firmly on this area of perceived student need, I decided to write a grant to the Maine Community Foundation’s People of Color Fund, one that was funded and named the Educational Leadership Project for Future Teachers of Color. The goal of the project is to ensure that students of color who participate in Newcomer ETEP are provided the very supports and experiences necessary for their success in the program and careers in teaching, through a peer coaching and leadership model. This grant work will focus on assessing the cultural and educational needs of participants and to design and implement a pilot project to address these needs through peer coaching and leadership roles assumed by current and past Newcomer ETEP participants

 

This fall, a peer coaching model will be developed and implemented, with a former Newcomer ETEP participant and current teacher of color serving as coach for student entering years one and two.  A variety of survey tools will be developed to gather information that is both observational and reflective. This information will be valuable to the overall programmatic growth and on-going development of Newcomer ETEP.

Linda Evans
Director of Multicultural Education Programs
College of Education and Human Development
University of Southern Maine

NNETESOL President

 

 

This summer I’ve been struck by the rise of nativism in our country.   I imagine much of this is motivated by loss of jobs, declining standard of living, and perceptions of lost privilege.

 

This fearful nativism affects our students. The kids that we as English language teachers teach.

 

As we have all seen in the last month, there is talk of changing the 14^th Amendment to eliminate automatic citizenship to those born in the US.

 

We’re living in a time, once again, when politicians see easy political gain to be had from attacking new arrivals.  Some native-born Americans are angry and these politicians see profit in attacking the least enfranchised; among them are our students.

 

I question what happens as it becomes more difficult for new arrivals to come to this country. What does this mean for us as English language teachers?

 

I think political advocacy is essential; political awareness is a requirement for our jobs because the act of working with English language learners is a political act. We are enfranchising and educating in ways that teachers who work with mainstream students simply don’t.   

 

I think it is important for all of us to become politically aware and I would like to see greater political advocacy on the part of our professional organizations. We need to be part of this conversation.

 

It is also important for us to act locally to write letters to the editor, and to talk to our neighbors.

 

To not respond to the demonization of immigrants, to the railing against the least enfranchised, is a breach of our professional responsibilities.

 

I think a roundtable discussion at the fall conference on political advocacy might be a way to start this conversation at the regional level. Anyone who is interested in this can contact me at jcwhiting@plymouth.edu

James Whiting,

New Hampshire State Representative

By Rita MaAlthough our Boston TESOL Convention was months ago now, the excitement engendered by a few presentations continues to infuse my work with teachers in local schools, most notably the presentation by Andrea Honigsfeld and Maria Dove on co-teaching, based on their article ESL Coteaching and Collaboration: Opportunities to Develop Teacher Leadership and Enhance Student Learning in the March 2010 issue of TESOL Journal. In both their article and their presentation, Honigsfeld and Dove make clear the disadvantages of the pull-out model of ESL instruction and advocate a move toward selective coteaching and collaboration in the gen ed classroom. They make clear that the fragmentation in content lessons and the relative disengagement between the ELL and the classroom teacher cost ELLs dearly and slow their learning at a time when they need to be learning at twice the rate of their English-speaking peers. In response to the often-heard objection from administrators (“We can’t afford enough ESL teachers to have one in every classroom.”), they provide examples of staffing patterns that, through selective placement of students and ESL teachers, maximize the benefit of ESL teacher knowledge and skill for colleagues and students without increasing ESL teacher time or teaching load.

 

The topic of coteaching seems to be gaining interest, and I’m so glad! We have known for many years that the pull-out model is the least effective approach to ESL instruction, yet many ESL teachers and school administrators have not had the opportunity to explore alternative models. In schools where the ESL population has reached ‘the tipping point’ and everyone has had ample opportunity to experience the high cost of the pullout model (monetary cost, teacher isolation and blurred lines of responsibility, fragmentation of student learning), faculty are experimenting successfully with various models of coteaching. Rather than the “ESL teacher in every classroom’ model feared by those responsible for the school budget, we see an ESL teacher coteaching social studies in the fifth grade classroom, math in the third grade classroom, and science in the fourth grade classroom, while doing explicit instruction for low-level ELLs in a newcomers classroom. This is very different from what some have called the ‘push-in’ model, where the ESL teacher gathers the ELLs into a corner and, in whispered tones, teaches something parallel to the ongoing lesson. Instead, as coteachers, the ESL and gen ed teacher plan the lesson together, mix ELLs and others into different small groups, and share responsibility for all the students in the room throughout the lesson. This way, gen ed teachers learn the scaffolding strategies needed to make lessons comprehensible and effective for ELLs, ESL teachers are able to identify and teach the necessary academic language of that content area, and all students in the room benefit from the explicit focus on language development.

 

In each setting in which I’ve coached and observed coteaching teams, teachers remark that all of their students benefitted, and both teachers express their pleasure in having learned from one another. If you’re interested in learning more, I recommend Honigsfeld and Dove’s book, Collaboration and Co-Teaching: Strategies for English Learners, to be released in August from Corwin Press. I’ll bet you’ll be as excited as I am about the new possibilities!

 

--Rita MacDonald,

Vermont State Rep.

I retired in June of 2009 as the ESL teacher of the Wells-Ogunquit CSD.  It’s been a good year with a first visit to Italy and lots of grandparent time.

Last month, one of our most giving and steadfast members, Ruth Dater, asked me to substitute for her for the last three weeks of school because she was scheduled for a knee operation in late May. 

“You’ll love my little kids,” she said.  Not needing any more persuasion than that one statement, I took the job. 

Now I knew that Ruth teaches in the Berwicks and also in Lebanon.  What I didn’t know is how spread out these southern Maine towns are.

Last Monday and Tuesday I job-shadowed Ruth.  We drove to Lebanon on Monday, which is very close to the Maine/New Hampshire border.  After spending the day with her students there, we did the Berwicks on Tuesday.  I quickly saw that Ruth puts in long, arduous days just getting to her students and then spending quality time with each one of them.  All together she sees students in five different schools in three separate towns.

“How am I ever going to find all these schools?”  I thought to myself.  Not to worry!  Ruth was methodical about giving me directions, using the “show and tell” method.  She even drew me a map, which I resorted to on one occasion later in the week when I was on my own.

As far as teaching her ESOL students goes, I’m having a wonderful experience with her K through 8 “little kids.”  Of course, some aren’t so little, but they’re all dear, I’m finding out.  I don’t need to make up lesson plans because Ruth has been meticulous in her planning.  Her kids are self-motivating learners, by and large.

Ruth takes advantage of a variety of teaching settings in these rural communities.

She “pushes in” with some of her students and utilizes a combination of “pull out” and RTI with other students.  This requires a lot of collaborating between her and many classroom teachers.  When she’s not arranging a summer tutor for an 8^th grader, she’s talking about language and grammar transfer issues with a 4^th grade teacher.

For your information, Ruth is doing well after she had her new knee put in this week. 

“Next September I’ll be running up and down these stairs with you,” she told her students.  Meanwhile I’m having fun running around for another two weeks. 

Linda Lucas,

NNETESOL Secretary

 

Hey, everybody.

Bing (new Microsoft search engine) has a new site that lets you remember a teacher and put him/her on the map:
http://discoverbing.com/education/teacherappreciation/?fbid=RXn_UYZxiy7&wom=false

(Mine is in Goodland, Kansas, if you want to read an example...) Once you do this, you will get a code to give $5 to a worthy DonorsChoose project, say, for example, mine:

http://www.donorschoose.org/bethevans

DonorsChoose, for those of you who don't know, is an organization that lets teachers write grants for things they want for their classrooms. Last year, I wrote a grant for digital recorders and biographies. This year, I wrote grants that have been funded for tiny Body Sox and for a steel cage for an LCD projector in the gym. I will be writing another one soon for a ceiling mount for said LCD projector, and then we will be all set for professional presentations!

I encourage you to check out my teacher page, possibly to fund my project to get some netbooks to help differentiate instruction, or to write your own grants.

Thanks so much!

Beth