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Teachers Don’t Add Up

Instead of further denigrating the education profession by suggesting that teachers double up as armed bodyguards in the wake of the latest school shooting, we need to be taking radical steps to improve their conditions, pay, and status to ensure not only that the next generation has enough teachers but that those teachers have enough expertise to cope with the extraordinary educational challenges expected within the next few decades.

Across the nation and overseas (the UK saw a 7% drop in candidates accepted on teacher training programs last year), the shortage of teachers is becoming a crisis. Despite a healthy economy and new recruitment efforts, here in California, the teacher shortage is becoming more severe in many communities, according to a recent report from the Learning Policy Institute (learningpolicyinstitute.org).

Over the past two years, California has spent nearly $70 million on a range of initiatives to tackle the shortage, including a program that underwrites the cost of a teacher-preparation program for classroom aides and other paraprofessionals already working in a district.

This program is designed to encourage the earning of a teaching credential, but it will take three to five years before these efforts have any real impact. Some of the state’s strategies include expanding blended teacher-preparation programs, which allow undergraduates to get their teaching credentials in four years, rather than the more typical pathway that takes five or six years.

Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school district, has reported that 40% of its new recruits were not fully certified. Disproportionately affected by the shortage are schools serving students from low-income families and students from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, according to the report. Teachers on “emergency-style” credentials are three times as likely to teach in California’s high-minority schools and twice as likely to teach in high-poverty schools.

There are already shortages of all types of language teachers nationwide—in 2016, 32 states reported not having enough teachers for English learner students, while world language and bilingual educators are in desperately short supply in almost every state. For the third year in a row, more than 40 states plus the District of Columbia have reported a teacher shortage in world languages, an all-time high for the subject area since the Department of Education began collecting data over 25 years ago.

These shortages may be compounded by changes in the requirements of our educational systems. At last month’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jack Ma, billionaire philanthropist and cofounder of Alibaba, China’s biggest website, called for fundamental educational reforms to take into account his prediction that in a few decades, robots will be carrying out many of today’s popular jobs. Ma believes that humans need to concentrate on creativity and the arts, like communication skills, to maintain their competitive edge over robots.

What can we do to reverse this trend? Obviously, we need to attract more, qualified candidates into teaching, so salaries and benefits must increase, especially in low-income schools. Clear career advancement opportunities that provide increased compensation, responsibility, and recognition need to be created.

We need to offer service scholarships and student loan forgiveness programs; develop teacher residencies; create multiple pathways into the profession; strengthen hiring practices to ensure decisions are made as early as possible with the best candidate pool; revise timelines for voluntary transfers or resignations, so that hiring processes can take place as early as possible; build training and hiring pipelines for new and veteran teachers, while monitoring and reducing teacher turnover and reducing unnecessary barriers to entry for mobile teachers; invest in high-quality induction programs; invest in the development of high-quality principals who work to include teachers in decision-making and foster positive school cultures; listen to teachers to assess the quality of the teaching and learning environment and to guide improvements; and incentivize professional development.

Technology offers many ways to help teachers but will not replace them. If our children are to be more productive than robots, they will need the direction of highly qualified, creative educators. We need to attract the most talented, forward-thinking, passionate candidates into public education so that kids being born today are empowered to take advantage of technological developments rather than compete against them.

Instead of criticizing our schools and demeaning public educators, we must strive to nurture a generation of teachers who will make the most of our diverse pool of students by teaching them to capitalize on their innate creativity.

Latino Teachers’ Perspectives

To build and maintain a teacher workforce that is representative and capable of serving an increasingly diverse student population, district leaders must pay as much attention to understanding and creating the right conditions to retain Latino teachers as they do to recruiting them. This starts with listening to, and learning from, Latino teachers, according to a report by the Education Trust, “Our Stories, Our Struggles, Our Strengths: Perspectives and Reflections from Latino Teachers.”

Despite the fact that Latino students make up 25% of the U.S. student population, only 8% of the nation’s teachers identify as Latino. And while greater numbers of Latino teachers are entering the classroom, they (like other teachers of color) are leaving the profession at higher rates than their peers.

“We should do everything we can to attract and retain more well-prepared, effective, and well-supported Latino teachers in our classrooms,” said John B. King Jr., president and CEO of the Education Trust. “Students of color benefit from having teachers who can serve as positive role models and illustrate the potential of what they can be. But diverse educators matter for all students. As a nation, we must do more to support and recognize the experiences of teachers of color at all points across the pipeline so students today can benefit from and become the teachers and mentors of tomorrow.”

The report presents findings from a series of nationally representative focus groups, adding rigorous qualitative data to the ongoing national conversation about teacher diversity. The purpose of these focus groups was to better understand Latino teachers’ experiences separately from the broad category of teachers of color, including why they teach, what they believe they bring to the classroom and the field, and what challenges they face in the workplace.

“First and foremost, what we found is that Latino teachers are a diverse group. In every discussion, we heard educators identify by their country of origin, their immigration status, their language, and their race. It was a continuous reminder that the Latino teacher experience in our country is based on cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds that not only differ from other teachers of color, but also from each other,” said Ashley Griffin, PhD, report author and Ed Trust’s interim director of P–12 research.

“Yet, despite their differences, they held a common passion for teaching, sharing their culture with all students, and creating empowering spaces and encouraging students to do the same.”

“Our Stories, Our Struggles, Our Strengths” expounds on the challenges of Latino teachers, who:

  • had a penchant to connect to and teach Latino students well, but, at the same time, were often viewed as inferior teachers and restricted to only teaching Latino students;
    were often belittled or perceived as aggressive when they incorporated Latino culture or Spanish language in the classroom, especially when advocating for Latino students and parents;
  • often accepted additional roles, most often as translators (even when they did not speak Spanish), but were overlooked for advancement opportunities; and
  • related well to all students and served as role models for Latino students especially, but still felt they had to validate their ability to teach.

“While research shows that students from all races benefit from being taught by an educator of color, our study shows that the discrimination and stereotyping that Latino teachers face leave them feeling discouraged and perceived as unqualified to be professional educators, which hurts the teachers and in turn students,” said Griffin. “By listening to and learning from Latino teachers, school leaders can start to create and implement supports and working environments aimed at increasing the number of Latino teachers and retaining them.”

The report is available at http://www.edtrust.org/LatinoTeachers.

Linguists Become Aware of Previously Unrecognized Indigenous Language in Malaysia


A language previously unknown to linguists has been discovered by Swedish researchers. The language, Jedek, is spoken by only 280 people on the Malay peninsula. The language was discovered to be spoken in a town that was previously studied by anthropologists. The language first became known during a linguistic survey called Tongues of the Semang.

The project aimed to study the Aslian group of languages, a branch of the Austroasiatic language family that is spoken in the Malay Peninsula.

With its low speaker population, Jedek is considered an endangered language variety. According to researchers Joanne Yager and Niclas Burenhult, this is not a new development, however. The number of Jedek speakers was probably never large, and researchers infer that the number of speakers may even be greater now than during the time when speakers resettled into their current geographical location 40 years ago. Children in the community still learn the language as well, so while Jedek is endangered, it appears not to be going extinct anytime soon.

The discovery is still optimistic for protecting the language. Burenhult and Yager say, “Like other unidentified languages, Jedek bears witness to the existence of not only undocumented but also entirely unrecognized linguistic diversity. It also reminds us of the existence of urgent but undiagnosed cases of endangerment. Linguistic surveying was critical to the discovery of Jedek. Although not typically a prioritized aspect of language documentation funding initiatives, surveying is clearly fundamental to the galvanization and regeneration of the documentation enterprise and to maximizing informed future coverage of the poorly charted corners of the world of languages.”

The community in which Jedek is spoken is different than Western societies, and that is reflected in the language. For instance, the community is gender equal, has almost no interpersonal violence, encourages children not to compete, does not have courts or laws, and does not have professions. The reflection of this is that certain words that describe occupations, courts of law, and the acts of borrowing, stealing, buying, or selling all do not exist in the language. One reason the language went undetected for such a long period of time, says Yager, is because there was not a consistent name for the language, possibly due to the nomadic nature of the speakers.

“Jedek is not a language spoken by an unknown tribe in the jungle, as you would perhaps imagine, but in a village previously studied by anthropologists,” said Burenhult. “As linguists, we had a different set of questions and found something that the anthropologists missed.”

ABC Airs Half-Chinese Sitcom

Last month, an episode of ABC’s primetime sitcom Fresh Off the Boat, called “Ride the Tiger,” broke ground by being about 50% spoken in Mandarin.

Writer Jeff Chiang explained the rationale behind it to the Hollywood Reporter: “As a first-generation Chinese-American who grew up in the 1990s, I didn’t see a whole lot of Chinese people in American pop culture… Although there weren’t many Asians on TV back then, it didn’t stop me from devouring every sitcom I could watch. And now, I look back on the shows that I loved with a more critical eye and see that beyond the fact that they were hilarious, I enjoyed them because of the universality of their specificity. They were honest to the life experiences of their writers and, because of that, a diverse audience who may not have lived the same lives as the characters on those shows still felt like they could relate to them in a very personal way.

“I think that’s why writing for Fresh Off the Boat is a very meaningful experience for me. Working as a TV writer, I never thought there would be a primetime network sitcom centered on an Asian family. The fact that I get to work on it and pull so directly from my childhood, being a half-Chinese kid raised in a Mandarin-speaking household, is still hard to wrap my head around.

“So, to answer the original question, why did we do an episode that features an entire storyline spoken in Mandarin? Because on a TV show about a Chinese family, we can. And hopefully people will enjoy it.”

Michigan Passes Official English Bill

Without any prior discussion, the Michigan House of Representatives has passed a bill, HB 4053, making English as the state’s official language of government. The vote was mainly along party lines with the Republican majority in support of the move.

 

6% of Michigan residents are immigrants
but 11% of its healthcare workers were born abroad

The bill requires that English be the official language used in all public documents and in all public meetings, but it does not prohibit state departments from translating official documents to languages other than English as long as the original documents are filed in English. There are some exceptions for tourism, business promotion, and the court system.

Michigan Democrats criticized the bill as divisive. “This is a fundamentally wrongheaded and exclusionary effort. It excludes people who are deaf and who use sign language and people who are immigrants,” said Rep. David LaGrand, D-Grand Rapids. “If we start signaling that we shun differences, this is a dark moment for our republic.”

Erin Parris-Dallia, president, Michigan World Language Association, was adamant in her opposition to the bill, “We oppose this bill and any other legislation that seeks to minimize the value of our state’s linguistic diversity, which is one of its great strengths. Proficiency in more than one language is no longer a “nice-to-have” skill, it is a “must-have” in today’s interconnected world. We are troubled by the message this bill sends to Michiganders who speak, study, and teach languages other than English, as well as to those outside our state who recognize the value of these skills.”

The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Potterville), commented, “Are we so divided that we can’t get 55 people to acknowledge that English is the fundamental language of this state? Diversity with no shared values drives us deeper into our different corners and silos.”

Nathan Bootz, English department chair at Alba Public Schools in Lansing, Michigan, described the move as “both folly and foolish,” adding: “Michigan has always been a diverse population across both peninsulas, and to say that English is the official language is a waste of time and resources. Does it really matter? Will this help unite our country or state? Will it improve the economy? Will it help protect our natural resources? Will it improve the situations of the impoverished? Let’s hope our lawmakers have a better plan to bring Michigan to greatness, than by making English our official language.”

The bill now moves to the state Senate in Michigan, where it is expected to pass, as the Republicans hold a 27-11 majority.

 

 

Learn English with Ted Talks

Video-Based Learning App Supports English Language Learning Courses

National Geographic Learning (NGL), a Cengage company, has announced the release of Learn English with TED Talks, an app developed in partnership with TED designed for students enrolled in programs to learn English as a second or foreign language.

The Learn English with TED Talks app gives students the English learning support they need to understand popular TED Talks and express themselves confidently in English. Designed to be used with any English course for young adults and adults, the app is accompanied by a classroom presentation tool and lesson plans that enable instructors to integrate independent student work on the app with a meaningful classroom experience.

“TED Talks inspire students, while modeling and motivating communication. This app will make it easier and more effective for English learning teachers to integrate TED Talks into their programs,” said Dennis Hogan, general manager of National Geographic Learning.

“Technology and innovation have enabled the learning experience to transcend the walls of the traditional classroom, as well as geographic boundaries,” said Alexander Broich, president, Cengage International. “We are pleased to partner with TED to further engage English Language Learners and help them find their voice in English.”

“TED is dedicated to spreading ideas, and creating a global community of people who want to engage with those ideas and share their own,” said Colin Helms, head of media at TED. “Our partnership with National Geographic Learning expands that community and helps students acquire skills that can change their lives for the better.”

National Geographic Learning offers a wide range of English Language Teaching materials that support instructors and engage students with content and digital learning tools. Its mission is to bring the world to the classroom and the classroom to life—including the world of ideas found in TED Talks. The Learn English with TED Talks app is available on the Apple 9+ and Android 5.0+ operating systems. For more information on the partnership, visit ngl.cengage.com/ted.

 

Celebrate Mother Language Day!

On International Mother Language Day 2018, celebrated on 21 February every year, UNESCO reiterates its commitment to linguistic diversity and invites its Member States to celebrate the day in as many languages as possible as a reminder that linguistic diversity and multilingualism are essential for sustainable development.

This year UNESCO also commemorates the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its bold statement that “no discrimination can be made on the basis of language” and celebrates its translation into more than 500 languages. This is also supported in the 1960 Convention against Discrimination in Education which prohibits any discriminatory practices in education, notably discrimination based on language

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay in her message for the day said: “A language is far more than a means of communication; it is the very condition of our humanity. Our values, our beliefs and our identity are embedded within it. It is through language that we transmit our experiences, our traditions and our knowledge. The diversity of languages reflects the incontestable wealth of our imaginations and ways of life.”

UNESCO has been celebrating International Mother Language Day for nearly 20 years with the aim of preserving linguistic diversity and promoting mother tongue-based multilingual education.

Importance of mother tongue in education  

About 40% of the world’s population does not have access to an education in a language they speak or understand. Nevertheless, progress is being made in mother tongue-based multilingual education with growing understanding of its importance, particularly in early schooling, and more commitment to its development in public life.

Multilingual and multicultural societies exist through their languages which transmit and preserve traditional knowledge and cultures in a sustainable way.

UNESCO uses the day to focus on linguistic diversity and multilingualism as an integral part of sustainable development, and in particular to realize targets 4.6 and 4.7 of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) on education.

The SDGs depend on linguistic diversity and multilingualism as a vital contribution to Global Citizenship Education as they promote intercultural connections and better ways of living together.

The event will be marked at UNESCO Headquarters, Paris by a language experts’ debate on the theme “Our languages, our assets” in collaboration with the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (link is external). There will also be a presentation of the Global Education Monitoring Report on Language of instruction and literacy in multilingual contexts. Download the programme

The idea to celebrate International Mother Language Day was the initiative of Bangladesh. It was approved at the 1999 UNESCO General Conference and has been observed throughout the world since 2000. In Bangladesh the 21 February is the anniversary of the day when Bangladeshis fought for recognition for the Bangla language.

New Zealand Pushes for English as Official Language


A new bill has been submitted in New Zealand to make English the official language. New Zealand First submitted the bill. The nationalist, populist political party recently formed a coalition with the Labor Party, which currently holds the Prime Minister seat with Jacinda Arden. The proposed bill, titled English an Official Language of New Zealand Bill, would give English the same legal status in New Zealand as te reo Māori and New Zealand Sign Language.

While English is the de facto official and predominant language, much how it is in the U.S., it currently does not have official legal status. The te reo Māori became the first official language of New Zealand in 1987. The language is spoke by the indigenous Māori people, which make up around 15% of the population. In 2006 New Zealand Sign Language also became officially recognized.

New Zealand First MP Clayton Mitchell drafted the bill, and thinks that the proposal makes sense for the country. “It’s common sense to officially recognize the language that the vast majority of New Zealanders use on a daily basis,” he said.

ESL Students Outperforming Native Speakers in England


Pupils with English as a second language (ESL), outperform pupils whose mother tongue is English in the UK General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), data shows. Data released by the Department of Education shows that ESL students have a higher attainment score than native speakers by the time they are 16.

The Department of Education measured English skills in terms of what is called Attainment 8. Each student is given an overall score based on the GCSE grades they received in 8 subjects (with English and math counting twice). Each grade is given a certain number of points that are tallied up. This year, the average Attainment 8 score of children who speak English as a second language was 46.8, and it was 46.3 for native speakers.

The figures also showed that many secondary schools in England are underperforming, with 365 falling below the government’s minimum standards. London has the lowest proportion of underperforming schools while the North East had the highest.

Meeting Teachers’ Needs to Help Dyslexic Students Succeed

Shantell Thaxton Berrett explains why teachers need targeted professional development and resources to best serve students with language-based learning disabilities

The beginning of a new year always brings new education policies and strategies. U.S. educators currently find themselves in a rapidly changing time for dyslexia legislation, and many schools are in the process of transforming the type and level of support they offer to these students. In 2015, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services created a policy identifying dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia as specific language disabilities.

Today, 39 states have statewide dyslexia laws, and many others have handbooks or resource guides. Although schools are taking steps to help dyslexic students, change does not happen overnight. State mandates, unfortunately, are not always funded, which makes it difficult for schools to obtain the resources they need to help this group of students.
As a literacy specialist and a parent of a child with dyslexia and dysgraphia, what I have found most successful to help my child succeed has been a solid relationship with the school and learning as much as I possibly could about the language disability. For teachers, too, knowledge is key. The results from state-mandated screening provide schools the information they need to identify gaps in phonological awareness and decoding, allowing districts to identify what type of intervention will be the most effective to help students with dyslexia succeed.

The Necessity of Dyslexia PD

One in five students has a language-based learning disability, the most common of which is dyslexia. Students with dyslexia are often not identified until they are older, so they are not offered proper services and intervention until after the ideal time for intervention (kindergarten and first grade) has passed. This is called the dyslexia paradox.

There is a very strong connection between pre-literacy skills and reading skills like emergent literacy skills, phonological processing, alphabetic knowledge, print concepts, rapid automatized naming, and language skills. To be truly effective, teachers should be measuring these skills when students are in K–1, during an early screening assessment, which is part of the mandates that some schools are working to implement.
Even at this young age, students will begin to demonstrate signs of dyslexia, which teachers can be trained to identify.

Some indicators may be:
difficulty in learning the alphabet, including the names and sounds of letters;
difficulty recognizing rhymes;
difficulty telling left from right; and
not being able to remember instructions they have been given in class.

However, no two people with dyslexia are exactly the same, and each student may manifest different combinations of signs. This is why it is important for teachers to have comprehensive preparation in identifying these students, so they can provide them with the best instruction possible.

Instruction: What, How, and Who

In 2000, the National Reading Panel established five core components for literacy instruction. Many mainstream classrooms and schools are trying to follow these but are using phonics instruction that is more implicit, is part of a core reading program that addresses it more incidentally, or is not necessarily aligned with science-based reading research.

Phonics instruction needs to be explicit, systematic, and sequential. Educators may think they are covering phonics, but may not be aware that the way the phonics is instructed is what determines the level of success for students, particularly those with processing deficits such as dyslexia. Because of this, students are still at risk of not developing core language and literacy skills and falling behind as they move up grade levels.

The good news is that some new laws come with funding for certain specialists. In the past, if teachers wanted to seek dyslexia certification, they had to find their own funding. With the recognition of dyslexia as a language disability, more schools are providing professional development through short seminars.

Resources for Teachers

District-level administrators are supposed to be the ones enforcing and implementing these new mandates to support dyslexic students, but they sometimes struggle due to lack of government support and funding—as well as lack of knowledge. Some administrators I have worked with are hungry for “the right answer” in supporting these students to meet the mandate, but there is no one action schools can take to support these students. While research has shown that the one thing that does need to happen is explicit, systematic, sequential phonics instruction, there are also other elements that need to be in place. Teachers’ knowledge about the disability is key for students’ success.

One resource that has been extremely helpful for administrators is the Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading, created by the International Dyslexia Association. It is a very specific guideline for K–3 educators, providing a standard of what students need to know and how teachers can support them. The research shows a high correlation between teachers’ knowledge and students’ outcomes, which should be a huge motivator for districts to provide sufficient professional development to all educators.
I have committed my career to helping students with dyslexia succeed.

After my child was diagnosed, I recognized my own need for more understanding to better help those individuals with dyslexia, which led to me completing my MA in education for reading science, as well as earning a dyslexia certification. I now serve as the dyslexia specialist for Reading Horizons. For teachers to support dyslexic students, they need in-depth professional development on teaching core reading skills including phonological awareness, decoding, an understanding of structured language, and literacy in general.
To provide the professional development that teachers need, we created new online training modules that are spread out over an entire year.

The online modules provide flexibility so educators can complete the courses on their own time and deepen their knowledge around general literacy and research to support students with dyslexia.

Administrators, educators, and parents can all contribute to supporting these students and ensuring their success both at home and at school. Knowing that there are support, resources, and new mandates for students with dyslexia and other language disabilities gives me hope that change within the educational system is possible.

References

https://www2.ed.gov/policy/speced/guid/idea/memosdcltrs/guidance-on-dyslexia-10-2015.pdf
http://www.dyslexiacenterofutah.org/dyslexia/statistics/
https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/16/06/fixing-failure-model
https://www.readinghorizons.com/reading-strategies/teaching-reading-strategies/
https://dyslexiaida.org/knowledge-and-practices/
https://www.readinghorizons.com/accelerate/online-professional-development

Shantell Thaxton Berrett is the lead professional development and dyslexia specialist for Reading Horizons. She has a BA in English teaching and an MA in education with a reading science concentration and dyslexia certification. She is trained in LETRS, CERI, and both basic and advanced training/certification in Orton-Gillingham. She is a featured speaker at dyslexia conferences, sharing effective reading strategies for every learner. She is passionate about raising awareness about the importance of effective reading instruction for every student, especially for individuals with dyslexia.

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