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The Metaverse and Language Education

In the 1990s, the animated television series The Magic School Bus became well-known for its louder-than-life main character Ms. Frizzle, who took her students on wild and zany field trips that defied all logic. Ms. Frizzle’s class went on a voyage into outer space, had an in-depth exploration of the human digestive system, and even took a trip back in time to visit the dinosaurs. At the time, the cartoon seemed like little more than fantasy. But with the recent buzz around the metaverse—something the New York Times has called a “convergence of… virtual reality and a digital second life”—it’s possible that these sorts of adventures could become reality for school children across the world.
Virtual reality, that is.

In February, the Center for Universal Education at Brookings (CUEB) released a policy brief on the metaverse and its potential to interface with the education system. The report outlines several key points about the gamification of learning activities and how best to use the metaverse as an effective tool in a classroom setting.

“Make no mistake that the metaverse is coming,” the report reads. “It is our job to specify how engagement in this always-on, virtual universe augments education rather than detracts from it and how it can preserve the key socially interactive qualities that are core to how humans learn.”

The concept of the metaverse first rose to notoriety in the latter half of 2021, when Facebook rebranded itself as Meta Platforms, but it’s actually been around for a while. Essentially, the metaverse serves as a virtual reality platform on which users can create a three-dimensional avatar to interact with other users.

Tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg see the metaverse as the next major horizon of computing—Zuckerberg has been quite vocal about his vision of the metaverse as a means of synthesizing one’s own physical reality with an all-encompassing virtual life.

“You can think about it as the successor to the mobile internet,” he told The Verge in July 2021. “You can think about the metaverse as an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content—you are in it.” When it comes to the metaverse’s educational applications, the benefits seem clear—history teachers might use the metaverse to engage students in virtual realities that depict key historical events. Language teachers, on the other hand, can employ the metaverse to create cultural enrichment activities that immerse students in the target language and its culture.

But not so fast—in order to ensure that educators use the metaverse in a productive and engaging fashion, the CUEB’s report emphasizes the fact that educational technology developers must learn from the mistakes of other edtech platforms, like the two-dimensional educational apps and video games (think Duolingo or Rosetta Stone) that rose to popularity in the last couple of decades.

“By 2015, when our research team first wrote a series of guiding principles for developing truly ‘educational apps,’ the market was already flooded with more than 80,000 so-called educational apps,” the report reads. “The vast majority of these apps had no research behind their design or implementation that was linked to the science of how children learn.”

The CUEB has identified several key components of an educational gaming experience that can have a genuinely positive impact on children’s learning outcomes. When developing gamified educational experiences, the CUEB reports that the following principles are crucial:

  • Games should be active, rather than passive. That is, tapping buttons or swiping to identify the correct answer is simply not enough for children to acquire new knowledge.
  • Games should engage the students, rather than distract them. Every quality of the game or app must be carefully curated to ensure that they are not distracting, but rather aid in immersing the student in the lesson and/ or storyline.
  • Games should be meaningful, in the sense that the child should be able to connect the setting at hand with content they’re already familiar with, rather than it being a completely unknown environment.
  • Games should be social—children shouldn’t be playing in complete isolation but should collaborate with peers and educators to solve the game’s challenges.
  • Gaming experiences should be iterative, meaning that children should be able to test out different hypotheses in their attempts to solve a given problem.
  • Gaming experiences should also be joyful—simply put, students should be able to have fun and enjoy themselves while learning.

“Together, the principles of active, engaged, meaningful, socially interactive, iterative, and joyful coalesce in what we called ‘playful learning,’ an umbrella term based in science that broadly incorporates how children learn through both free play and guided play,” the CUEB writes in its recent report. According to the CUEB report, most of the education apps available to children these days do not effectively incorporate all of these principles—in a 2021 analysis of the most-downloaded apps for young children, the CUEB deemed 50% low quality in terms of how well they incorporated the above principles.

Researchers in the field of second language acquisition have long questioned the potential role such apps and games can play in acquiring a second language. Language-learning apps have seen a large increase in popularity over the last couple of years, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Duolingo claimed that it saw about twice as many new users joining the platform as usual during the early months of the pandemic. But to what extent are these apps effective in helping individuals—particularly children—in achieving high levels of performance in the target language? Duolingo, for instance, may not be the most active or social of educational gaming experiences, but it does a decent job of touching on some of the other principles of playful learning. A 2019 case study of English-learning children in Indonesia suggests that Duolingo can be an especially effective tool if parents or teachers provide some sort of collaborative oversight. That is, by enhancing the collaborative and social nature of the platform and encouraging children to learn in the company of others, students may be able to hone their language skills further than they would while using Duolingo on their own. Rosetta Stone, like Duolingo, is also a popular language-learning application, but it suffers from the same downfall—it’s extremely asocial, in the sense that users engage with the tool in near isolation, with little input from peers or collaborators. When developing language-learning tools for the metaverse, it’s clear that developers must think of ways to create a social experience for children to learn from.

While the metaverse holds a lot of promise for exciting and engaging educational experiences, if its presence in educational settings is indeed as inevitable as the CUEB’s report suggests, then edtech developers must learn from the flaws of past efforts at gamifying language education. “The metaverse is but a context—an immersive one—that can in principle bring the best of digital technologies to bear on education if and only if it is done right, with the science of learning and real children in mind,” the CUEB report reads.

Reference
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Zosh, J. M., Shwe Hadani, H., Michnick Golinkoff, R., Clark, K., Donohue, C., and Wartella, E. (2022). “A Whole New World: Education meets the metaverse,” Brookings Institution, www.brookings.edu.

Andrew Warner is a writer based in New York City, where he’s currently pursuing a master’s in applied linguistics at Columbia University. A lifelong language lover, he enjoys writing stories about the intersections of linguistics and technology. He’s worked with Language Magazine, MultiLingual Magazine, and Sactown Magazine.

Campus Talk

Dushku, S., & Thompson, P. (2021). Campus Talk: Effective Communication Beyond the Classroom. Edinburgh University Press.

It is difficult to find a truly all-in-one textbook for ESL/EFL oral communication courses. For instructors who aim to teach authentic language through interactive and contextualized lessons, they often need to draw heavily on supplemental materials, combining content from multiple textbooks and scouring the internet for real-world language examples. Campus Talk: Effective Communication Beyond the Classroom (Dushku & Thompson, 2021) is a comprehensive two-volume textbook series that may offer these teachers a welcome change. This corpus-informed series addresses the research-identified oral communication needs of upper-intermediate and advanced English language learners in and outside of academic settings. The target audience includes undergraduate and graduate international students, international teaching assistants, and visiting scholars. I’ve found the content to work well for general adult ESL/EFL courses as well.
Each volume contains four instructional units divided into three topic- or skill-related parts. The units cover key speech acts (e.g., making requests, giving compliments, complaining, apologizing, storytelling) alongside conversation management strategies—an important feature of oral communication skills often overlooked. Through awareness-raising activities, detailed explanations, and engaging dialogues, students observe and practice authentic lexico-grammatical patterns of spoken English in context. Each unit includes clear learning goals, speaking- and listening-based interactional tasks, and a usage-informed vocabulary list. Each unit also culminates in a unit quiz, final speaking task, and self-assessment. Learners will have no lack of opportunities for practice as the online workbook provides even more activities and resources. Several units also contain corpus investigation tasks, where learners use online corpora to analyze the use of relevant language forms.
With Campus Talk, teachers have access to ample authentic and interactive materials to help their students become pragmatically aware and self-reflective communicators in the classroom and beyond.

Kelly Katherine Frantz
Teachers College, Columbia University 
[email protected]

EdShed Literacy Resources

Spelling Shed offers teachers with a fun way to deliver weekly spelling tests and a variety of activities for students to practice their words, providing teachers with a full spelling curriculum for each grade level K-5 developed by applying Science of Reading research and following a systematic progression. The assignment feature allows teachers to assign weekly word lists to students while tracking student progress during the week and intervening accordingly. Teachers have the option to create a full year’s worth of assignments with a few clicks of the mouse or can create weekly assignments to target the needs of specific learning groups. Used by over 10 million students worldwide, Spelling Shed provides several levels with many of their activities, allowing students to work at a level at which they are comfortable and successful.
www.spellingshed.com.
Phonics Shed is a complete explicit and systematic phonics program that aligns with the Science of Reading. It covers sound awareness in pre-school and leads into a core phonics curriculum that integrates into Spelling Shed’s complementary SoR spelling system. Narrative-driven: Through an original series of storybooks set in the Phonics Shed garden with Joe as a guide, children are introduced to the first 40 most commonly-used high-frequency words and all 44 phonemes of the English language. Each storybook introduces a new character and its associated phoneme-grapheme correspondence, allowing children to develop in their phonics attainment as they get to know the characters and progress through the series. Phonics Shed can be used in an intervention setting, as a digital-only resource, or as a core phonics curriculum.
www.phonicsshed.com

Impact Literacy from Day One

IMSE, a provider of Structured Literacy Professional Development and Classroom Programs, has launched its new IMSE Impact Structured Literacy Programs. Implementing feedback from districts and school administrators as well as educators, the IMSE Impact Structured Literacy Programs deliver more value to districts, schools, educators, and students. They have also been streamlined to make the transition from teacher training to literacy instruction easier for teachers and more effective for students. Based on the latest research in the Science of Reading, the programs incorporate the Orton-Gillingham methodology and all five pillars of literacy—plus language comprehension, spelling, and writing—to drive measurable gains for all students, enabling educators to impact literacy from day one. IMSE Impact is a suite of three Structured Literacy programs, each of which includes evidence-based professional development and aligned student materials and coursework. It includes Comprehensive Orton-Gillingham Plus, designed for anyone learning to read, from elementary to adult, as well as Morphology Plus, designed for anyone reading to learn, and Phonological Awareness for all grades, addressing all of the key elements of literacy instruction in the classroom. Once trained, IMSE educators can teach year after year with what they have learned and the classroom support provided, making it a long-term investment in teachers. In addition, there are new free digital materials to help keep classrooms engaging and fun, as well as access to trainers and cohort members for support and questions.

https://imse.com/

Lectica

The University of Maryland National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) has launched Lectica, a free language learning app designed to engage users in language and culture simultaneously.

Lectica currently offers a total of 420 lessons across seven languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, Korean, Persian, Russian, and Spanish. All lessons and content were prepared by native speakers. The NFLC’s director of Second Language Acquisition Connie DiJohnson, recently told The Diamondback (UM’s paper) that many language learning apps on the market feel like a game, where they max out at a certain level and don’t delve into how native speakers use language. Lectica’s curriculum is designed, created, and written by native speakers using authentic content, passages and texts so people using the app can engage with the language they are learning the way native speakers do. For example, you can learn fashion tips in Persian, how to make Lanzhou beef noodle soup in Chinese, safety rules for riding scooters in French, how to read a job posting in Arabic, learn about National Tango Day in Spanish, K-pop group BTS in Korean and what it’s like buying an apartment in Russian. “This is the way the language is used in real life,” she said. Lectica is currently available on the Apple App Store and will be available on Google Play in summer 2022. NFLC plans to make 12 more languages available on the app soon.
https://lectica.app/

Connecting the Community

I’m the principal at Brookwood Elementary, where we serve more than 1,200 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. Approximately 10% of our students are English language learners (ELLs). That may not be an especially high percentage (my previous school was 25% ELLs), but our ELLs speak many, many different languages. We have two students from Romania who speak zero English. This morning, I met a family that just arrived from China. None of them speak any English at all.

We’re an elementary school, so these kids are eleven and under, and they’re coming into a school where they know no one and they don’t know what people are saying to them. I tell my staff that if we can help these kids feel safe, happy, and successful enough in communication that they can contribute to the classroom, I think that’s a success story.

At Brookwood, we have a Positive Learning Environment Committee that chooses a theme for every school year. For this year, the theme is “we are connected,” so our common goal is for everything we do as a school to inspire every single teacher, student, administrator, and employee in our building to feel that sense of interconnectedness. Here’s how we’re using this mindset and other social-emotional learning (SEL) principles to not only overcome the language gap our ELLs face but to make all of our students feel that they are part of the same supportive community.

Recognizing the Diversity of ELLs
As educators, we often use “ELL” as a category for all of our students who don’t speak English as their first language. When you’re dealing with little kids who are new to a school, though, you have to remember that all ELLs are not alike.
In my previous school, Mashburn, almost all of our ELLs were Hispanic students. Because these families were mostly Spanish speaking, we tailored how we welcomed both students and parents to the school and the community. We always made sure we had somebody who could speak Spanish, and my teachers and I made a point of doing cultural activities related to the Spanish-speaking countries our kids came from.
At Brookwood, we make welcoming our diverse population of ELLs part of everyone’s job.

Our Whole-School Welcoming Committee
When students arrive here in Georgia from all of these different countries, they often lack social awareness. They don’t yet understand our customs and norms. They don’t feel at ease because they don’t know their place in the classroom. Of course, language plays a big part here. These students may not know how to go up and make a friend because they don’t know the right words to even introduce themselves. Relationship skills are one of the cornerstones of SEL, and from the first second an ELL student arrives at our school, we do everything we can to model how to create emotional connections with people around them.

Before we meet a new student from abroad, we make a point to learn a little bit about their culture. How do they greet each other? How do their families function in relation to the educational system? Some cultures believe that school and home are separate entities, while some believe in a partnership. We’re working to provide all of our families with what they need from us, without making them feel like we’re intruding on their privacy.

When I say “we,” I mean the whole staff. When families come in to register, our secretary will let us know what language they speak, and we’ll work together to make them welcome. When we’re placing kids in homerooms, their teachers will look to see if there’s another student who speaks the same language so they’ll have each other. If we happen to have a teacher who speaks their language, she’ll teach the other teachers some common words.

Empathy First, Language Second
When these students first arrive and don’t have much English vocabulary, we work to make a connection with them and help them to feel safe and successful. I tell teachers that if, on their first day, a student can tell you that they need to go to the bathroom and they can play with somebody on the playground, it’s a good day.

We use an SEL curriculum, 7 Mindsets, in all of our classrooms, and with every new arrival, we teach our English-speaking kids about empathy. We ask them, “What would it be like for you if you were at a school in Romania? Or in China? Or Russia? How would it feel? Wouldn’t you want somebody to come up to you and just take your hand and walk you over to a swing and say, ‘Let’s swing’?”
Those ELLs who are new to the school and the country may not know the words “let’s swing,” but playgrounds are universal. Kids chasing each other and playing ball is universal. Playgrounds break down just about any language barrier, because kids don’t need language to play. For our ELLs, having one kid be a friend to them and help them play makes their day complete. Once they feel welcome and safe, then they can start learning the language.

Turning Language Barriers into Language Bonds
We do whatever it takes to overcome language barriers. When kids first arrive, we use Google Translate to learn basics of their language like “bathroom, “welcome,” “Do you need help?,” “Are you feeling okay?,” “Are you hungry?” We have one fourth grader all of whose tests are given one on one so that a teacher can help him understand. But really, kids are amazing. When you create a culture in a classroom where kids feel connected and want to support each other, the kids who don’t speak English will learn it very quickly.

We also empower our ELLs to teach us their languages and cultures. When they help the rest of the class learn, they feel like they don’t have to completely be somebody they’re not—and at the same time they fit in more. Every October, we have Heritage Night, a festival where families can sign up to perform. Kids get onstage and do everything from hip-hop dancing to playing instruments that I’ve never seen before. There are all kinds of amazing things we can learn from each other.

The Shared Language of SEL
All of our students are part of our Monday and Friday meetings, in which we focus on SEL. On Mondays, the whole school does the same mindset lesson. Then, on Fridays, we do a follow-up class meeting during that time. Our fifth graders partner with our kindergartners once a month to work together on a mindset. There’s not a fifth grader or a kindergartner who wants to miss that. It’s beautiful, and it’s a powerful way to model the mindset “we are connected” for our new students. Our students love this time together, and the proof is in the attendance figures. Our Mindset Lessons start at 7:40, and we’ve actually seen a decrease in tardiness on Monday mornings, because the kids want to be there.

But our approach to SEL is much more than those two meetings, and it goes beyond the walls of the school. We want to make parents feel like they’re part of the community, too. Even if they don’t speak much English, we can all share the common language of SEL. We send all of our parents a “Mindset of the Month” video so they can see what their kids are learning and they can talk about it at home. Every Wednesday, I send a weekly newsletter called the Brookwood Beat. I’ll include inspirational videos or something that touched my heart that I think will touch theirs.

We embed the vocabulary of social-emotional learning into everything we teach. Even when our ELLs go to their pullout classes to work on vocabulary and schema, the teachers talk to them about mindsets like “everything is possible” and “acting and adjusting.”
A great example of acting and adjusting would be if an English-speaking student asked an ELL, “In the U.S., this is how you ask somebody if they want to play. How do you do it in your country?” Making the new student feel a part of the school isn’t something we can teach in one lesson, though. It has to be in everything we do.

Tracey Smith is the principal of Brookwood Elementary in Forsyth County, Georgia.

The 3 Es of Using Translated Materials

Social–emotional learning (SEL) has gained traction in education over the last 20 years. Over the previous two years, it has held a prominent place in the headlines as a top concern of teachers, due primarily to the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, educators are now focusing on identifying high-quality, evidence-based programs for their schools.
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), which is a go-to for all things SEL, defines SEL as “the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.” CASEL identifies five competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship management, and responsible decision making.
A meta-analysis of 213 studies found that there are significant benefits to implementing SEL programming, such as:

  • Increases in academic test scores by eleven percentile points
  • Improved classroom behavior
  • Improved ability to manage stress and depression
  • Improved self-esteem
  • Improved attitudes toward peers
  • Improved positive attitude toward school

The bottom line is that implementing high-quality SEL programming leads to student success.
However, there is one major drawback for language educators—of the 36 programs that achieve CASEL’s highest recommendation (SELect), only a few are fully translated into other languages.
In Canada, French and English have equal rights and privileges—“official bilingualism” at the federal level, as guaranteed by Canada’s constitution. All provinces offer some services in both languages and some publicly funded education up to high school. The province of Québec is alone in declaring itself unilingually French. However, all English-language schools in Canada offer French language classes.
To implement high-quality SEL programming, the teacher in French-speaking classrooms often has to translate material “on the fly,” which is less than ideal.


We’ve identified the three Es to make a case for adequately translated materials:

  • Ensuring program fidelity and effectiveness
  • Equity in education
  • Ease of use

Ensuring Program Fidelity
To receive CASEL SELect status, SEL program providers ensure that the learning outcomes for their programs promote students’ social and emotional competence in the following categories:

  • Improved positive social behavior
  • Reduced problem behavior
  • Reduced emotional distress
  • Improved student-reported identity/agency
  • Improved school connectedness
  • Improved school climate

To this end, program designers bring in experts across various disciplines to create effective programs. Significant funds are needed to research the program’s effectiveness to meet the CASEL standards. When translating the PATHS® curriculum into French, our trained translators debated the nuances of words to ensure that the intended meaning were accurate and reflected the intentions of the program design.


A teacher translating the material in the classroom “on the fly” does not benefit from this background information. This on-the-fly translation may not truly reflect the original content and may therefore impact the learning outcomes.


Given that there are close to 80 million French speakers with a projected increase to nearly 500 million by 2025, French content is in demand. After English, French is the only language spoken officially on five continents. Just as there are varieties of the English language, so too are there different dialects of French. Ensuring that the translated content is appropriate for the target audience is crucial to ensure that the lessons are delivered as intended and communicated appropriately. Parisian French is taught in schools in Canada, but many French speakers use Quebecois. There is no difference in the writing of the language; however, the spoken language is quite different. Again, allowing teachers to translate on the fly may mean that the translation is inconsistent with learning goals.


Implementation of programs is subject to various considerations. Of significance is teacher buy-in. If teachers are not on board with the implementation or do not understand why the program is important and what it can do to improve student success, their implementation of the program suffers. They do not want to be put in the position of having to translate materials. When teachers deliver content to students, they want to see the content in their native language.


Teaching is a difficult job, and it is only made more difficult when content is not translated into the language in which it is to be delivered. This lack of access to content in their native language can impact the teacher’s efforts to deliver the content in a meaningful way. Couple this language barrier with the fact that social–emotional learning content is not always a comfortable topic for all teachers.
Few teacher education programs in Canada include training on what social–emotional learning is, how to deliver it to students, and how to develop and improve the teacher’s own social–emotional skills. There is often teacher resistance in implementing SEL programming. Getting teacher buy-in is necessary, and adding an additional barrier, such as the lack of fully translated programs, undermines successful implementation.

Equity in Education
It is arrogant to assume that all French-speaking teachers speak English well enough to provide translation during a lesson. Therefore, many teachers and students are excluded from effective, evidence-based SEL content and the significant benefits of using these programs without properly translated materials.


Learning to speak French and English is both an opportunity for and a right of all Canadians. There are various educational choices, from French language classes to French immersion classes within an English-speaking school to entire French-speaking schools. In each case, French-speaking students are not afforded the same opportunities as their English-speaking counterparts when fully translated programs are not available.

Ease of Use
Classroom teachers have to take on many roles, such as psychologist, behaviorist, nurturer, mentor, curriculum specialist, orator, artist, and conflict negotiator, to name but a few. To add to this extensive list by asking teachers to be translators is unreasonable.


French, like Spanish, translations of English are 15–20% longer than the English original text and do not contain the same sentence structure style. Teachers trying to translate on the fly are put in the precarious position of translating the content accurately while simultaneously trying to deliver a smooth, well-reasoned lesson and meet a variety of learning needs—an impossible task.


The job of a translator is equally skilled, and teachers are not translators trained in translation best practices. Not only does it require the translator to be fluent in more than one language but it also requires knowledge of the cultures involved.


In the case of technical translation, knowledge of the relevant field and access to experts within the discipline are needed. It is essential to fact-check word usage and determine the appropriate word choice to reflect the original content and meaning within the parameters of the translated languages.


The translators we worked with to translate the PATHS curriculum have years of experience in translation, cultural awareness, and education. To assume that a teacher has the skills and experience necessary to adequately translate an SEL program effectively, in real time in a classroom, is unrealistic—especially given the other teaching priorities listed above. Social–emotional learning programs are proven to provide numerous health and educational benefits to students and to improve school culture. Choosing correctly translated, evidence-based programs that address the three Es makes sense, ensures effectiveness and equity for all students, and relieves the burden on teachers by making the program easy to use.

Anna-Lisa Mackey, MEd, CEO of PATHS Program LLC, is an SEL expert with more than 20 years of experience in SEL training and professional development, student behavior, academic performance, and personal skills. She has worked with Head Start Cares and the Canadian Mental Health Association on two large-scale implementations and trained school staff and mental health professionals in Canada and the US. Ms. Mackey has also presented on social and emotional learning at numerous conferences. She is the author of the upcoming book The Social Emotional Classroom: A New Way to Nurture Students and Understand the Brain (Wiley, 2022) and the Social Emotional Us podcast host.

Educator Confidence

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) recently released its seventh annual Educator Confidence Report, which found that educators’ confidence is down due to the state of the profession and concern for students’ emotional well-being, but confidence in using learning technology is up. According to the report, only 38% of teachers reported a somewhat or very positive view of the state of their profession—down from 49% in 2020. Even more notable, 37% of educators reported thinking the pandemic would increase respect for teachers this year, a significant decrease from 63% in 2020.

HMH chief research officer and former teacher Francie Alexander answers questions about the report and what it can tell us about the future of the classroom.

How can teachers keep up with technology and transfer their confidence to students, especially those from minority or underprivileged communities? How can we boost the tech confidence of the remaining third of teachers?

This is the first time educators have been focused on the same challenge at the same time as the nation responded to a pandemic and all schools delivered instruction remotely. We’ve been on a learning journey together and have achieved a lot, starting with the very basics such as the deployment of devices. Educators, families, and communities did an admirable job of increasing access to technology, and we closed in on the long-term goal of one-on-one computing.

However, we realize that some students were underserved, including students with multilingual backgrounds, with special needs, and who had fewer resources already. Some have described the situation some of our children and youth have experienced as “underconnected.” This is when devices are shared between children in a family and when Wi-Fi and access to tech support are erratic.

Teachers were not at the same stage of readiness to teach fully remotely either, but those in HMH’s studies and professional learning sessions tell us they’ve learned a lot. One fourth-grade teacher I met started her remote teaching by sharing that she received two degrees online and that her students were going to be very ready for the future. Storytelling was one of the ways teachers engaged students, stayed connected, and dissolved the screen—and language teachers provided great examples of this. No matter how prepared they were, teachers did share the sentiment (73% in HMH’s Educator Confidence Report) that digital resources would help them be more effective. As teachers are the most critical factor in student success, this is very promising. Also, teachers were less concerned about “being replaced” by technology.

None of this growing confidence was easily come by as school proceeded in fits and starts and safety issues remained paramount. HMH also conducted a teacher ethnography study with Kelton International prepandemic that revealed that teachers used digital resources in four main ways: productivity, social networking, data analytics, and instruction. The latter was the laggard, and when we reinterviewed the teachers during the pandemic, instruction had become most prominent. This was also identified as an area for continuous improvement through professional learning opportunities.

Our journey continues, but lessons learned will help us get there. Here’s what we can do now:

Use new funds to build a robust infrastructure for providing equitable access to digital resources. This includes being sure no students are underconnected and all families and communities have the necessary Wi-Fi and IT support. Also, there is a need to ensure universal access to devices, with plans for repair and updating.

Teachers need personalized professional learning that builds their confidence in integrating technology into all aspects of their work. After all, they are doing arguably the most important work in our society. We have come to value everyone’s contributions as we’ve experienced this pandemic together and we have all benefited from the teachers in our lives. The technology and teaching goals reinforce each other and can serve as the basis of a new era in education—one that is both high-tech and high-touch.

It’s great that we’re recognizing increased SEL issues. How can teachers and administrators let students know their concerns are being heard? How can teachers incorporate SEL into their daily curricula?

This year’s Educator Confidence Report made it clear that the number-one priority of teachers and administrators was the well-being of the students in their care. Even before the pandemic, educators were increasing emphasis on addressing social and emotional needs. The National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development called out this critical area as “the substance of education itself” in 2018.

It is more important than ever to pay attention to how everyone in the education ecosystem is doing, starting with students but also not forgetting the adults—we are in this together. I read about phrases that are frequently requested for translation by the Google app, and one is simply “How are you?” We are all trying to start from a place of empathy, and asking that question early and often will help. We shouldn’t have preconceived ideas but should listen and notice carefully. The research tells us that a whole-child approach integrated into the academic, social, and physical activities at school is best. The positive effects are not only observed in personal well-being but also in academic performance. The educators in our survey understood this and overwhelmingly supported “well-integrated” and schoolwide social–emotional programs. No one wants to feel like “kindness” needs to be a scheduled class but rather to read about the impact of kind behavior in literary works through the lens of character development in English language arts (ELA) and to find other opportunities throughout the entire curriculum. When visiting schools, I’ve seen kindness and prosocial behaviors embedded in classroom culture, from A for “agency” to Z for “zest,” with qualities like M, “mindset,” R, “resilience,” and everything in between. I’ve seen creative displays on bulletin boards, in mission statements, and on report cards. It’s time to organize and coordinate so that our children, school staffs, families, and communities provide for the social–emotional needs of all and specific interventions from counselors and health care professionals are given when needed. We are better together.

Now that parents have firsthand experience and appreciation of their children’s education, how can teachers keep them involved, especially if their own education was limited?

The relationships between families and schools have been altered forever by the pandemic experience, but this can become something very positive going forward. The instant-messaging shorthand “POS” (parent over shoulder) is more than just an alert between students to let one another know a parent is nearby when they are chatting rather than studying. It is now a fact of life while students are learning from home. With a direct digital window into the classroom during remote learning, family members came away with a new appreciation for what teachers do, and teachers found ways to forge deeper contacts well beyond the traditional back-to-school nights and family conferences. These two mainstays have already been transformed to be more inclusive and accessible. Not all kids were represented by family members at these traditional in-person events before the pandemic due to childcare challenges and work obligations. One teacher friend told me that in the future all BTS presentations would be recorded. So, now some families can participate in real time and in person when that option is available, and all families can watch the recording at their convenience. No one is left out. Conferences at grading periods were starting to include students more prominently, and student-led family conferences are becoming more common. With or without students, these meetings can be in-person or online depending on transportation and other matters.

On a less optimistic note, disparities have also been revealed when devices aren’t adequate or Wi-Fi isn’t optimal. This is an infrastructure issue that needs to be addressed so that all families can participate equitably.

Another challenge to navigate is ensuring access in the home language to families of multilingual learners.

As we work to meet the educational needs of multilingual learners, we are finding out that an asset-based approach works best. Already knowing a language is an advantage when learning another. Reading together is a great opportunity for bonding and forming a view of oneself and the world. This can happen in any language. Oral storytelling can also render the same benefits. No parent is expected to be a teacher, but all can help students by finding out how they are doing and encouraging them to ask for help if needed. Knowing when to ask for help is often observed as a characteristic of successful people. When I taught, I sometimes used a gold strip of ribbon as a symbol of the connection between the home and my classroom. With recent events, that home–school connection has become very tangible via digital devices keeping us connected in unprecedented ways. This is an opportunity for all of us to work more closely in service of the children in our care.

Concern Grows Over School Staff Shortages

A new national survey finds deep public concern about the K–12 school workforce—83% of Americans express concerns about public school staff shortages, while 81% are worried about workforce burnout. Most Americans (89%) say K–12 public school staff deserve more respect, and they indicate that better pay (92%), healthcare benefits (89%), and pensions (86%) would help address workforce shortages. 
These are the findings of “Americans’ Views of Public School Teachers and Personnel in the Wake of COVID-19,” a report from the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS).
“Recent years have been grueling for the K–12 workforce—from a rapid pivot to virtual learning, to heated debates on masks and vaccines, and now polarized disagreements on curriculum. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that staff are running for the exits,” said Dan Doonan, NIRS executive director. 
“But even more troublesome is that the K–12 workforce problems go much deeper than the pandemic. Teachers were frustrated before the pandemic, and there have been fewer people going into the profession since the financial crisis created severe budget pressures. Now, we’re facing an urgent need to retain existing staff, draw experienced teachers back to schools, and figure out how to make the profession more enticing to young people. It’s a complicated problem without easy fixes, but a failure to develop meaningful solutions will have far-reaching consequences for the nation’s well-being and competitiveness.”
“Our research finds that the public understands that teacher pay and benefits are key levers for addressing the K–12 workforce crisis,” Doonan explained. “Americans overwhelmingly agree that providing educators with financial and health security in the short and long term can help rebuild the education workforce.”

The report’s key findings are as follows:  

  • Americans are deeply concerned about teachers and public school employees. Eighty-three percent are worried about staff shortages, 81% are concerned about staff burnout, and 81% are concerned that fewer people are going into education. This concern is high across party lines.
  • Americans value K–12 employees. Nearly all Americans (95%) say public school teachers and personnel are important to their community, while 89% say they deserve more respect. Eighty-eight percent say their pay should be increased.
  • Better pay and benefits, student loan forgiveness, and more school resources would help attract and retain teachers and school personnel. Ninety-two percent of respondents said better pay would help drive more people into the profession. Eighty-nine percent pointed to more generous healthcare benefits, while 86% said more generous pensions would help. Eighty-eight percent responded that more funding and resources for schools would be a key factor, while 75% indicated student loan forgiveness would be important.
  • Health care and retirement benefits are viewed as magnets for attracting and retaining K–12 school personnel, and these benefits should be funded and protected. Ninety-two percent of Americans indicated health care benefits are a good tool to attract and retain teachers and school personnel, while 91% agreed pensions also help. Ninety-four percent of respondents said elected officials must ensure teacher and school personnel pension and health care benefits are sufficiently funded. 

Creating Welcoming Classrooms

Supporting social and emotional learning (SEL) in schools is essential for the growth and success of all students, and this is especially true for multilingual learners (MLLs). MLLs face unique challenges that make social and emotional support essential. Beyond the stress that comes with learning an unfamiliar language, many MLLs and their families who have immigrated to the U.S. are likely facing the isolation of leaving their home and social support groups behind, difficulties navigating new cultural norms, and/or the financial and legal stress associated with resettlement (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). Educators need to be aware of these unique stressors and how they can impact the schooling experience of MLLs in order to offer appropriate support and help to ease their transition into the school community. The following are examples of culturally responsive SEL practices that educators can use to welcome MLLs into their classrooms.

Building Cultural Awareness
Cultural awareness is the act of being “cognizant, observant, and conscious of similarities and differences among and between cultural groups” (Goode et al., 2006). Building both educators’ and students’ cultural awareness is an important step in making MLLs feel welcomed and included. When educators familiarize themselves with their students’ varying cultural contexts, they are better able to understand and connect with their students in meaningful ways (Fly Five, n.d.). ]

At the beginning of the school year, educators are encouraged to learn about the customs, values, and traditions of the cultural groups represented by all the students in their classrooms.

Doing some research online, speaking with students and their families, and holding classroom activities in which students can share about their backgrounds are great ways for educators to build their own understanding of each student’s cultural context and help create a culture of empathy and belonging throughout their classrooms (Responsive Classroom, 2001).

Another facet of promoting cultural awareness is ensuring that the learning materials students are using include representations of a diverse range of cultures and identities. When students can see people who look like them alongside people from other cultural groups reflected in the material they are learning, they will be able to form deeper connections to the material while also building empathy and understanding for those who are different from them (Fly Five, n.d.). For MLLs, seeing cultural concepts they are familiar with in their curricular materials can help them to feel more comfortable as they learn, and it can help their classmates to form an understanding of their backgrounds. Take a look at the textbooks, assigned reading, and other resources that students will be using during the school year. Are students being given the opportunity to interact with a range of cultures and backgrounds—ones that would allow them to better identify with the concepts they are learning? If not, consider adding materials that will help fill in these gaps.

Establishing Routines
Setting up predictable routines helps students know what to expect when they enter the classroom, which can help MLLs feel more comfortable as they make the transition into a new environment. One strategy, a foundational practice of the responsive classroom approach, is the morning meeting. In a morning meeting, used in grades K–6, everyone in the classroom comes together for 20 to 30 minutes at the start of each day to greet each other and proceed through four components: greeting, sharing, group activity, and morning message (Responsive Classroom, n.d.). The morning meeting is a useful tool in helping MLLs to feel comfortable and welcomed, as it combines the familiarity of routine with the opportunity to interact informally with their classmates, an element that has been shown to aid the social–emotional development of students adapting to new environments (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2008).

While the morning meeting is a great way for students to share and speak with their classmates, it can certainly be overwhelming for MLLs who are still in the beginning stages of learning English and common U.S. cultural norms of communication. To help MLLs participate and feel more included in morning meetings, invite them to use simple greetings that require only one or two words, or even just a wave and smile (Responsive Classroom, 2015).

Using greetings in the form of repetitive songs or chants can also help MLLs to join in and become comfortable with new phrases (Responsive Classroom, 2015). Additionally, having all of the students learn greetings in the MLLs’ native languages is a great way to make the MLLs feel at ease while also giving their classmates some insight into their cultures and the difficulty that comes with speaking in an unfamiliar language (Responsive Classroom, 2015).

Encouraging a Growth Mindset
Encouraging MLLs to adopt a growth mindset about their education is a powerful strategy to help these students recognize that they are capable of achieving success with consistent effort and dedication (Fly Five, 2021). A growth mindset guides students to view learning as an ongoing process and requires them to understand how to put effort into their work and when to seek help from others (Dweck, 2015).

To cultivate a growth mindset in MLLs, encourage them to focus on what they can control (Fly Five, 2021). Many aspects of their transition into U.S. schooling may feel overwhelming at times, but reminding students that there are always elements of learning new skills that they can manage, no matter how small, can help to keep them engaged and motivated. One way to give students a greater sense of control is to show them how to develop an actionable plan, such as a SMART goal, to achieve their new objectives (Dweck, 2016). Creating such a plan will provide MLLs with a clearer understanding of the specific steps they can take to achieve their goals and will make the pursuit of these goals feel more manageable.

Another strategy to encourage a growth mindset is to connect students’ schoolwork to a greater purpose or practical application in their lives (Hulleman and Happel, 2019). Guiding students to see the connections between what they are learning in school and how they can use their knowledge and skills outside of the classroom can help them to persist when they encounter setbacks and to find enjoyment in their schoolwork (Fly Five, 2021).

One way to make these connections is by creating a dialogue with MLLs about their interests and cultural backgrounds and to relate parts of the curriculum and instruction to practical applications that are relevant to their lives outside of school (American Psychological Association, 2017). This will help keep students engaged and thinking deeply about the material.

Partnering with Families
Staying in communication with MLLs’ families is an important part of making sure these students have the support they need both in and out of the classroom. Maintaining an authentic partnership with families can help educators gain valuable insight into their students’ lives outside of school, including their interests, the types of learning that have worked well for them in the past, and any struggles they may be dealing with as they adjust to a new language and environment.

When engaging with parents, educators can create more genuine connections by viewing them not only as parents but as people with their own challenges (Starker, 2020).1 If the family has recently relocated to the U.S., it is likely that the parents are facing their own struggles as they acclimate to a new place, and it is important to keep this in mind and approach conversations with empathy and understanding. Instead of educators talking “at” parents and focusing only on the information they want to relay, taking the time to actively listen to parents’ concerns and allowing them to take the lead in the conversation can help to make them feel heard and create a stronger sense of partnership (Bickhart, 2020).

Forming these connections with the parents of MLLs is also an opportunity to involve families in the classroom. Having parents volunteer in the classroom can put MLLs more at ease by providing the comfort of a familiar face as well as an opportunity to take language breaks with someone who can speak with them in their native language. Additionally, some parents may feel comfortable speaking with the class about an aspect of their culture or even offer something as simple as teaching students to count to ten in their native language. This is a nice opportunity for students to get to know more about the MLLs’ backgrounds and to make the MLLs and their families feel heard and appreciated (Berger, 2020).

Creating the conditions under which MLLs can thrive as they adapt to a new language and new customs is an essential component in helping them achieve long-lasting success in and out of school. SEL strategies offer powerful tools educators can use to make sure that each student feels welcomed and appreciated as part of the classroom community.

Note
For the purposes of this article, parent refers to, in addition to a birth parent, any legal guardian or caregiver responsible for a child’s welfare.

References
American Psychological Association (2017). “Social Emotional Learning: Teaching principles for creative, talented and gifted students.” www.apa.org/ed/schools/teaching-learning/top-twenty/creative-talented/social-emotional

Berger, L. (2020). “Working with Families: Meet them where they are.” Journal of Social and Emotional Learning, 2(5), 32–33.

Bickhart, T. (2020). “Taking the Time to Listen Well.” Journal of Social and Emotional Learning, 2(5), 15–17.

Responsive Classroom (n.d.). “Principles & Practices.” www.responsiveclassroom.org/about/principles-practices

Responsive Classroom (2001). “Welcoming Second Language Learners.” www.responsiveclassroom.org/welcoming-second-language-learners

Responsive Classroom. (2015). “Adapting Morning Meeting Greeting for ELL Students.” www.responsiveclassroom.org/adapting-morning-meeting-greeting-for-ell-students

Dweck, C. (2015). “Carol Dweck Revisits the ‘Growth Mindset.’” Education Week. www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-carol-dweck-revisits-the-growth-mindset/2015/09

Dweck, C. (2016). “Growth Mindset Doesn’t Promise Pupils the World.” Student Experience Research Network blog. https://studentexperiencenetwork.org/growth-mindset-doesnt-promise-pupils-the-world/#

Goode, T. D., Dunne, M. C., and Bronheim, S. M. (2006). “The Evidence Base for Cultural and Linguistic Competency in Health Care.” Commonwealth Fund. www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2006/oct/evidence-base-cultural-and-linguistic-competency-health-care

Fly Five (2021). “The Growth Mindset and SEL.” www.flyfivesel.org/the-growth-mindset-and-sel

Hulleman, C., and Happel, L. (2019). “Three Mindset Shifts That Can Help Students Succeed.” Greater Good Magazine. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/three_mindset_shifts_that_can_help_students_succeed

Fly Five (n.d.). “Representation in the Classroom and the Curriculum.” www.flyfivesel.org/research/representation-in-the-classroom-and-the-curriculum

Starker, S. (2020). “Building Solid Relationships: A personal journey.” Journal of Social and Emotional Learning, 2(5), 22–23.

Suárez-Orozco, C., Suárez-Orozco, M. M., and Todorova, I. (2008). Learning a New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society. Harvard University Press. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for English Language Acquisition. (2016). Newcomer Tool Kit. www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oela/newcomers-toolkit/ncomertoolkit.pdf

Katie Shea is a content specialist for Center for Responsive Schools, a nonprofit educational development organization, where she writes articles, blog posts, and marketing copy promoting social and emotional learning.

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