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Rumi in the Language Classroom Vol 6: Learner Differences

Rumi in the Language Classroom Series Vol 6

See Vol 1 here
See Vol 2 here
See Vol 3 here
See Vol 4 here
See Vol 5 here

In this sixth volume, we will explore another story by Rumi in “Masnavi-e-Manavi” called “the Duckling in the Hen’s House.” This is the story of a duck egg which was sent to a hen’s nest by chance. The duckling was ignored since he was completely different. This continued until the hen wanted to warn her chickens about water and the danger of being drowned in case of falling into the lake. At this moment, the different chicken, which in fact was a duckling, dove into the water and swam.

This story can illuminate individual differences in language classrooms. The world’s history is full of stories of geniuses who were neglected in schools or dropped out, among whom Albert Einstein, Mary Curry, Steve Jobs can be named.

Gardner’s (2011) multiple intelligences is a very related concept here. He defines various intelligences by which people are born. It is important at teachers to not only to accept these differences in but also to welcome them. The world is beautiful with these differences, and the world of ELT is as well.

To me, the chicken coop is a metaphor for an ELT classroom in which the hen is the teacher, chickens are normal learners, and the duckling is a student with special abilities or even needs. So, the teachers need to accept the students as they are and respect their differences. This is the only way to make sure all the talents are taken into consideration.

The implication of this story for language teachers is that we need to consider different learners in our lesson plans and design activities to meet different learners’ styles and needs. Having done this, we can make sure that the learners, even with special needs, can benefit from our classrooms.

References

Gardner, H. E. (2011). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. Hachette Uk.

Creating a Culturally Responsive Teaching Ecosystem

Culturally responsive teaching (CRT), a research-based approach that makes meaningful connections between what students learn in school and their cultures, languages, and life experiences, should be a priority for districts in today’s society. Not only is our nation’s population becoming more diverse, but events like the Black Lives Matter movement, the global pandemic, and the shift to more remote learning have all brought further attention to the need for CRT at the K–12 level.

As districts look to deepen and expand their work around the tenets of diversity and inclusion, CRT serves as a foundation that schools can use to build an ecosystem for equity that transcends all the verticals in the workplace. Whether that means learning a student’s first name, embracing his or her bilingual capabilities, or creating district-wide guiding CRT principles for everyone to follow, these are all steps in the right direction.

This article highlights three steps that they can be taking now to either launch a new CRT initiative or improve upon their existing efforts.

We’re All in a Challenging Place

Current events have pushed more districts to think about what they’re doing to develop young minds. These events also show the importance of considering the backgrounds, ethnicities, and beliefs of students as assets to be respected. Essentially, current affairs have highlighted why educators should accept students for who they are instead of viewing students as having a deficit or focusing on who they are not. This is the reason we refer to the learner who is learning English as an emergent bilingual.

We believe that the heritage language a learner knows is an asset and understand that by learning English, the learner is on their way to becoming bilingual. Indeed, the learner could be on their way to becoming multilingual. The point is to focus on what the learner knows as a starting point. With so many students now learning from home, there’s little question that emergent bilingual students who are trying to master the English language can benefit from this asset-model mindset.

These bright young minds no longer have the support of a “live” teacher in the classroom to help them achieve their academic goals. Some students don’t have access to the hardware, software, or Wi-Fi at home that they need to complete their schoolwork. Layer in the lack of exposure to and/or interaction with academic English, and growing language proficiency becomes an even steeper mountain for students to climb.

The Black Lives Matter movement opened the eyes of the average U.S. citizen to the racial inequities that exist in our society. As citizens stood up and took a stand against unfair treatment and police brutality, our educational system began to take a harder look at itself and to seek out ways to create equity and dismantle systemic racism in schools. The question now is, what can educators do in 2021 to support the positive momentum toward equity, justice, and fairness?

Three Steps to an Effective CRT Ecosystem

The COVID-19 virus put a brighter spotlight on equity issues that were already in place long before the global pandemic emerged, particularly in terms of identifying students who weren’t getting the things they needed in order to succeed in school. The push to help individual students succeed has become an even bigger priority because every single student is facing some level of struggle right now—from the first grader who previously worked at or above grade level to the tenth grader who has long struggled with core subjects like English and math.

With its broad brush, the pandemic took a swipe at our entire educational system. As a result, what worked in the past for students simply doesn’t work anymore. It also presented an opportunity to start conversations about how to help all students achieve and attain their educational goals.

The resultant efforts definitely require extra work, particularly when it comes to tackling problems like unconscious bias and systemic racism.

The good news is that there are ways for schools to make strides in this area by developing CRT ecosystems. Here are three course-correcting steps that administrators and teachers can start using now to get on the right path.

Step One: Work to Uncover Unconscious Bias

No teacher wants to be thought of as someone who has a preconceived bias against a specific student (or a group of students), but traditional thinking unfortunately pushes us in this direction, whether we like it or not. Defined as social stereotypes toward certain groups of people, unconscious bias is usually based on the tendency to organize social worlds by categorizing people according to their social or identity groups.1

Knowing this, schools can lay out the framework for a CRT ecosystem by working to uncover, expose, and then eliminate as much unconscious bias as possible. This needs to start at the ground level because even the most advanced CRT plan will fall short if the instructor doesn’t acknowledge his or her own unconscious bias before delivering a lesson.

One place to start is by acknowledging that unconscious bias exists and that it can be eradicated. In terms of emergent bilingual students, we can start by viewing their heritage languages as assets instead of deficits. For example, I’ve heard teachers refer to an emergent bilingual child as “having no language and not knowing anything.” In reality, that student already speaks one language and is on their way to becoming bilingual.

By viewing the heritage language as an asset or even thinking of it as background knowledge, an educator can leverage the first language to help the student learn the second language. Flipping the conversation to the positive includes the teacher as well; they can also be viewed from an asset perspective and focus on being the person who teaches the learner English, which suddenly becomes an honor. This shift will help propel thinking forward in a new and positive way.

In fact, extending this thinking further, we can question the designation of learning English as an intervention. For most of my career, I have heard English learning referred to as part of the tiers of intervention. However, if I view language learning from an asset model, it helps me to see that when learners in other scenarios (the student in China learning English, the dual-immersion student, the person learning at home with an app or a program like Rosetta Stone) begin their language journeys, they are met with praise and enthusiasm. I think that this same sentiment should be afforded to our students who are learning English, even though they have traditionally been relegated to the ranks of intervention students. We can change this point of view by applying the asset-model mindset. The fact is, all students learning a second language are experiencing the opportunity of bilingualism, and it should be praised.

To address the issue of racism and unconscious bias and build an effective CRT ecosystem, schools can start by acknowledging that we each have our own unconscious bias to contend with. If we strive for honest conversations and use the asset-model mindset as our guidepost, we can change our thinking, be more inclusive, and get better results immediately.

Step Two: Develop Guiding Principles 

Most school districts have a mission statement, guiding principles, or both. You can either start from scratch or revisit the ones you currently have, which may be found in your English Learner Master Plan or other documents. These guiding principles are designed to be a living, breathing document, meaning they shouldn’t be in a book on a shelf somewhere but instead be a reference point for every decision being made.

If you want to develop guiding principles, we recommend starting by reflecting on your student body. For this, we can learn from what some of our favorite brands do.2 For example, Starbucks refers to customers as “partners,” and they have carefully crafted verbiage describing how the partner should be treated. For a district, we can carefully consider who the learners are, what they’re trying to accomplish, and how we can help them achieve these goals. Be honest with yourself about how you’re serving students and helping them work toward their individual accomplishments (and through their challenges). You can use technology to your advantage during this exercise; having the data about students from the time they stepped onto campus is a big plus.

That data will also help you understand why a student is labeled an emergent bilingual and at what point that label was applied, how many students are at or above grade level, how many of them are designated as special education students, and so forth. Drilling down into this data is the first step. The next step is to get to know your learners better by asking questions about individual students: what was their life like before they started school? What were their parents thinking and feeling? How do they feel knowing that their children are becoming bilingual? How do they feel about learning English?

With this information in hand, you can create some generic yet deep student profiles that, in turn, will help you think creatively about what can be done to support those learners. The more you get to know yourselves and your students, the better the outcome.

When we first built our guiding principles for creating curriculum, we followed the
outline above, which resulted in these:

  • Design learning experiences from an asset-based orientation toward learners and learning.
  • Design learning experiences in which multilingualism and language variance are valued and seen as resources.
  • Design learning experiences in which diverse cultures and identities are valued and seen as resources.
  • Design learning experiences that honor and strategically leverage the school–family connection.

These principles might seem standard, even generic. But they inform every single decision we make. One example I often talk about is our work with speech recognition engineers, in which we had the option to use machine learning to push the erroneous notion of “Standard English,” the idea that there is an ideal accent for speaking English.

In reality, we know that English is spoken all over the world and is pronounced based on the heritage language the speaker knows. We had conversations and referred to our guiding principle “Design learning experiences in which multilingualism and language variance are valued and seen as resources,” and we knew that we would not use artificial intelligence to try to create a false sense of a standard accent. Instead, we accept English as it’s spoken by our learners and seek to improve their accuracy with grammar and syntax. We know that pronunciation is subject to heritage language, and as long as a person can make themselves understood, we consider accent variety the spice of life.

We encourage you to re-examine your guiding principles or create new ones. As part of your guiding principles, you’ll also want to include your goals as educators (e.g., to help all learners achieve academic success). And if students aren’t reaching that goal, you will use the guiding principles to help you find solutions to support them.

The good news here is that there is a lot teachers can do to be more inclusive. There are straightforward steps you can take today to help learners feel included. For example, our guiding principle “Design learning experiences in which diverse cultures and identities are valued and seen as resources” can be easily adopted in the classroom—it essentially means to get to know your students. One easy way to do that is to learn their names. For example, I met a teacher once who decided to call a student Sarah because her name, Sarai, was difficult for that teacher to say. She basically refused to say the student’s name, which sent the message to the learner that she was unimportant and that the teacher’s comfort was more important than the student’s.3
Knowing a student’s heritage language and how to say his or her name may sound basic, but research shows that this simple step can significantly reduce school dropout rates.4

This is just one example of a reversable problem that can be solved through strong guiding principles that are reinforced and iterated upon.

Step Three: Put Your Guiding Principles into Action

Your guiding principles will be able to lead your school or district down the path of success and inclusion, if they are put into action, iterated upon, and reviewed regularly. It’s not enough to say you have principles. Much like a company’s mission statement is useless if not upheld by leadership and employees, a district’s CRT ecosystem won’t function properly if its guiding principles aren’t taken seriously.

The principles should also be integrated into every aspect of your institution—from the time you hire a new employee to the procurement of new curriculum to the way teachers interact with students in the classroom and/or online. If you’re starting a new after-school program, for example, consider whether it aligns with the guiding principles and make sure that everyone working in the after-school program knows the guiding principles and adheres to them.

When it comes to new curriculum, think about how the programs are safe, nonjudgmental, and culturally responsive. For example, when Lexia Learning introduced Rosetta Stone English in 2020, it did so with the emergent bilingual student in mind. The program has culturally and ethnically diverse characters who engage with and encourage students throughout their learning journeys as they build the linguistic competence and confidence needed for academic success through academic conversations.

It’s important to involve all departments in this exercise—from the school nurse who treats sick children to the cafeteria employee who feeds them to the librarian who works with them in the media center. Each of these roles is just as important as the individual teacher when it comes to upholding and acting on the guiding CRT principles.

Finally, be sure to revisit these principles on an annual basis to ensure that they continue to reflect the needs of your student body, employees, and changing world environments.

If your school is experiencing a shift in the cultural makeup of its student body, for instance, your existing principles may need to be modified to reflect these changes. A great way to manage this annual task is by assigning it to a group or committee that becomes responsible for making sure the principles are up to date and relevant for the school.

Ready, Set, Go

The learning environment is ripe for change right now, with culturally responsive teaching expected to play a leading role in the online and offline classroom for years to come.

The genie is out of the bottle and isn’t going back in; we all have to stand up and take responsibility for seeing that our diverse student bodies make it over the educational finish line.

Links

https://diversity.ucsf.edu/resources/unconscious-bias
www.fastbusinessplans.com/business-plan-guide/mission-statement-and-guiding-principles.html
www.transact.com/blog/bilingual-name-identity
http://teachingonpurpose.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Glenz-T.-2014.-The-importance-of-learning-students-names.pdf

Maya Valencia Goodall, MA MEd, and Kristie Shelley, MEd, are both senior directors of emergent bilingual curriculum at Lexia Learning (www.lexialearning.com).
Maya is an entrepreneur and educator dedicated to helping people become bilingual. Her passion exists at the intersection of theory, curriculum design, and practical use in the classroom.
Kristie has spent the last two decades helping bridge the education gap through language and literacy. She’s an educator, entrepreneur, and advocate, elevating educational equity every step of the way.

Los Angeles Gives Extra $700M to Schools Most in Need

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board has voted 6-1 to distribute an additional $700 million in the 2021-22 academic year to schools using the Student Equity Needs Index (SENI). The SENI is a formula used to inform the allocation of funds so that LAUSD can efficiently address the achievement gap. Passage of Board Member Monica Garcia’s “Equity is Justice 2021” Resolution means all 650,000 students across the district, especially the 161,000 English Learner students, will benefit from these dollars, and LA’s high- and highest-need schools will have increased access to the essential resources to level the academic playing field. 

In the current school year, 2020-21, the district invested only $282 million through SENI despite starting with a budget of approximately $9 billion. Approval of $700 million in additional funding through SENI means that the Board has more than doubled SENI allocations in one budget season, and schools serving communities like Watts, Boyle Heights, and South LA will be gaining hundreds of thousands — or millions — of additional dollars effective immediately. These funds will provide critical support for under-resourced schools, including psychiatric social workers, intervention coordinators, attendance counselors, planning time for teachers, and other vital interventions which school communities can use to respond to the specific needs of individual schools. It is especially gratifying to see these funds approved now so that Principals have the time they need to implement these critical services and supports as schools are reopening and we immediately strive to combat structural inequities exacerbated by COVID-19. 

“We are excited about the commitment the district has made to the highest-need schools in LAUSD, which serve essential families who have sacrificed their health and lives to keep our city and county moving and thriving. These same families live in parts of the district, like South LA, that for far too long have experienced disinvestment and been ignored. The Board has made the Student Equity Need Index (SENI) the vehicle for equity, and this $700 million investment sends a strong message,” states Aurea Montes-Rodriguez, Executive Vice President of Community Coalition.

“We applaud the LA Unified School Board for supporting the expansion of much-needed resources for our highest need schools. All budgets are a reflection of values, and more than ever before, we need the district’s resource allocations to reflect transformation for our young people and our communities,” says Maria Brenes, Executive Director of Inner City Struggle. “We cannot allow for the opportunity gaps that have harmed Black and Brown students to deepen. Thank you, Board Members Garcia and Franklin, for your leadership! And thank you, Board Member Brown, for your voice!’

“We commend LA Unified’s Board for passing the Equity is Justice 2021 Resolution, which will provide immediate, much-needed, flexible funding to our highest-need schools, including 19 schools in the Partnership’s network,” says Ryan Smith, interim Chief Executive Officer for the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools. “What’s more, this flexible funding allows school communities to respond to the specific needs of individual campuses, targeting the dollars where they will have the most impact and the best outcomes to continue to close opportunity and achievement gaps for our scholars.”

“The LAUSD now serves as a beacon of light and hope for students by making a $700M equity investment in schools with high needs. California’s success and prosperity depend on our public schools’ capacity to offer pathways of equal opportunity,” states Karla Pletiez Howell, Chief of Policy and Programs at Advancement Project California. “We applaud Board Members Garcia, Ortiz Franklin, Melvoin, Gonez, Schmerelson, and Brown for leading the charge and recognizing the voices and needs of students and families.”

Call for Sweden to Recognize Elfdalian

Sweden’s magical forests are home to Elfdalian, an ancient, endangered language

A Swedish parliamentary representative is calling for action to preserve an extremely vulnerable language spoken in Sweden’s forested countryside: Elfdalian (älvdalska in Swedish and övdalsk in the language itself). Currently, the Swedish government only recognizes Elfdalian as a dialect of Swedish, despite the two languages sharing very little mutual intelligibility. Peter Helander, who hails from the region where Elfdalian is spoken, has called for the government to give the language minority status and determine whether or not the language is truly a dialect of Swedish more objectively.

“Even the Council of Europe has taken the position that Sweden should have an independent investigation into whether Elfdalian is a language or not. It is a language that is at risk of dying out and Sweden should take responsibility to protect this remnant of the Old Norse language,” Helander said in a recent parliamentary meeting, according to Swedish news outlet The Local.

Although Elfdalian and Swedish are both members of the North Germanic family of languages, Elfdalian shares more similarities with conservative members of the language family such as Icelandic, as the language has historically been spoken in rural communities that are isolated within a densely forested region of the country. On the grounds of mutual intelligibility alone, Elfdalian is a separate language from Swedish. Helander has asked Sweden’s Culture Minister Amanda Lind to reconsider the language’s status as a dialect of Swedish, considering the two languages’ distinct historical development and usage.

Acknowledging Elfdalian’s status as a language, rather than a dialect, could be key to boosting preservation efforts. Currently, Elfdalian is spoken by a very small community, with most recent estimates of the speaker population ranging between 2,000 and 3,000. There have been some revitalization efforts in recent years, contributing to more interest in the language, however it is still mostly spoken by an older population—only around 60 individuals under the age of 18 have been reported to speak the language fluently.

School programs have been developed to increase the population of younger speakers, and since 2016, local kindergarten programs in the municipality of Älvdalen have been conducted entirely in the language. When Älvdalen students reach the ninth grade, they can also receive a government stipend if they are able to prove their proficiency in the language, as part of a program to incentivize the younger generation to learn and use the language regularly.

Help Fund World Language Education

Funding for the World Language Advancement and Readiness Act (WLARA) Grants Program is critical. Reach out to your Senators and ask them to sign onto the Senate version. This letter is addressed to Senate Appropriators and requests $15 million in FY22 funding for the WLARA through the forthcoming Department of Defense Appropriations bill.  The deadline for final signatures is May 14th. To expedite this process, the Joint National Committee for Languages has drafted a letter for you to send with one-click through its Legislative Action Center.

‘Iconic’ Sounds May Be Missing Link to Language

‘Iconic’ sounds, rather than gestures, could be key to birth of language

The missing link that helped our ancestors to begin communicating with each other through language may have been iconic sounds, rather than charades-like gestures—giving rise to the unique human power to coin new words describing the world around us, a new study reveals.

It was widely believed that, in order to get the first languages off the ground, our ancestors first needed a way to create novel signals that could be understood by others, relying on visual signs whose form directly resembled the intended meaning. However, an international research team, led by experts from the University of Birmingham and the Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS), Berlin, have discovered that iconic vocalizations can convey a much wider range of meanings more accurately than previously supposed.  

The researchers tested whether people from different linguistic backgrounds could understand novel vocalizations for 30 different meanings common across languages and which might have been relevant in early language evolution. These meanings spanned animate entities, including humans and animals (child, man, woman, tiger, snake, deer), inanimate entities (knife, fire, rock, water, meat, fruit), actions (gather, cook, hide, cut, hunt, eat, sleep), properties (dull, sharp, big, small, good, bad), quantifiers (one, many) and demonstratives (this, that). The team published their findings in Scientific Reports, highlighting that the vocalizations produced by English speakers could be understood by listeners from a diverse range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Participants included speakers of 28 languages from 12 language families, including groups from oral cultures such as speakers of Palikúr living in the Amazon forest and speakers of Daakie on the South Pacific island of Vanuatu. Listeners from each language were more accurate than chance at guessing the intended referent of the vocalizations for each of the meanings tested.  

Co-author Dr Marcus Perlman, lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Birmingham, commented: “Our study fills in a crucial piece of the puzzle of language evolution, suggesting the possibility that all languages—spoken as well as signed—may have iconic origins. The ability to use iconicity to create universally understandable vocalizations may underpin the vast semantic breadth of spoken languages, playing a role similar to representational gestures in the formation of signed languages.” Co-author Dr Bodo Winter, senior lecturer in Cognitive Linguistics at the University of Birmingham, commented: “Our findings challenge the often-cited idea that vocalizations have limited potential for iconic representation, demonstrating that in the absence of words people can use vocalizations to communicate a variety of meanings—serving effectively for cross-cultural communication when people lack a common language.”  

An online experiment allowed researchers to test whether a large number of diverse participants around the world were able to understand the vocalizations. A field experiment using 12 easy-to-picture meanings, allowed them to test whether participants living in predominantly oral societies were also able to understand the vocalizations. They found that some meanings were consistently guessed more accurately than others. In the online experiment, for example, accuracy ranged from 98.6% for the action ‘sleep’ to 34.5% for the demonstrative ‘that’. Participants were best with the meanings ‘sleep’, ‘eat’, ‘child’, ‘tiger’, and ‘water’, and worst with ‘that’, ‘gather’, ‘dull’, ‘sharp,’ and ‘knife’.   The researchers highlight that while their findings provide evidence for the potential of iconic vocalizations to figure in the creation of original spoken words, they do not detract from the hypothesis that iconic gestures also played a critical role in the evolution of human communication, as they are known to play in the modern emergence of signed languages.  


Sound files from the University of Birmingham:  

Cut – https://mfr.osf.io/render?url=https://osf.io/ejzr9/?direct%26mode=render%26action=download%26mode=render

Tiger – https://mfr.osf.io/render?url=https://osf.io/euwyn/?direct%26mode=render%26action=download%26mode=render

Water – https://mfr.osf.io/render?url=https://osf.io/85ysk/?direct%26mode=render%26action=download%26mode=render

Good – https://mfr.osf.io/render?url=https://osf.io/7wrcy/?direct%26mode=render%26action=download%26mode=render  

‘Novel Vocalizations are Understood across Cultures’ – Aleksandra Ćwiek, Susanne Fuchs, Christoph Draxler, Eva Liina Asu, Dan Dediu, Katri Hiovain, Shigeto Kawahara, Sofia Koutalidis, Manfred Krifka, Pärtel Lippus, Gary Lupyan, Grace E. Oh, Jing Paul, Caterina Petrone, Rachid Ridouane, Sabine Reiter, Nathalie Schümchen, Ádám Szalontai, Özlem Ünal-Logacev, Jochen Zeller, Bodo Winter, and Marcus Perlman is published in Scientific Reports.

Indigenous Language Institute to Host Webinar Series

The Indigenous Language Institute (ILI) has announced that it will be hosting a webinar series to support its language communities while COVID restrictions are still in place.

The first webinar will feature a presentation by Christi Belcourt nehiyaw apihtâwikosisâniskwêw (Cree Métis). The presentation will be approximately one hour with Q&A to follow.

TOPIC: Tâhtimiwewin – Intonation and the musicality of sound in Anishinaabemowin and Nehiyawewin, and evolving strategies within Indigenous language revitalization efforts
DATE: Wednesday, May 26, 2021
TIME: 7 AM Alaska/ 8 AM PST/ 9 AM MST/ 10 AM CST/ 11 noon EST
DURATION: Approximately 1.5 hours
PRESENTER: Christi Belcourt

Participants must register and pay $50 to secure their seats:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_FcP1syzhTyqL9slb3NoNIQ 

Upon registering, participants will receive a confirmation email with a link to the webinar. This will be open to the first 400 registrants. Once those seats are filled registration will close.

PRESENTATION DESCRIPTION
In this presentation Christi will be sharing some of her initial observations on the study of intonation and the “musicality” of first language speakers’ speech patterns within Indigenous language learning that learners often overlook. While presenting images of speakers’ voices charted into musical scores, she will be discussing how the study of intonation along with the study of minor sounds not captured within writing systems may help learners in their desire to sound more like first language speakers. Her presentation will also cover her observations as a grassroots language learner on the current realities of various community based Indigenous language education initiatives and the importance of strategic approaches to language revitalization. Although she will be presenting her findings and observations based upon her experiences as a learner specifically within the context of Anishinaabemowin and Nehiyawewin, the information may also prove interesting and useful to language learners, educators, those involved in the ongoing development of evolving writing systems, and community organizers beginning or involved in the design of language revitalization programs.

Applications for 2021 ALAS Scholarship Award due Sept. 30

The Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents (ALAS), in partnership with Curriculum Associates, is now accepting applications for its 2021 ALAS Scholarship Award. Applications for this award, which provides a $10,000 scholarship to support the continuing education of an ALAS member, are due September 30, 2021.

“We believe the best way to support our Latino youth and their communities is through education,” said Maria Armstrong, executive director of ALAS. “This is why at ALAS we focus on developing the leadership capacities of Latino educators so they can drive positive change in their schools and districts. This scholarship provides an amazing opportunity to help an ALAS member build their leadership skills and advance their career in order to best serve our youth and communities. We are grateful for the support of Curriculum Associates, which has been a strong advocate for our Latino-serving leaders and the students they serve.”

All ALAS members who are seeking an advanced degree program in education with the goal of becoming a superintendent are encouraged to apply. Applicants must be currently enrolled in or accepted into an advanced degree program in education and must provide a completed scholarship form, personal statement, resume, biography, and three letters of recommendation to be considered. The 2021 award recipient will be honored during the awards banquet at the ALAS National Annual Education Summit in October 2021.

To learn more about the ALAS Scholarship Awards, visit ALASEdu.org/About/17458-2/.

Help Your Students Slide Up, Not Down, Over the Summer

During the summer months, young children lose literacy gains made during the school year, a phenomenon known as “summer slide.” The most important thing teachers can do to reverse this trend is to help families adopt family literacy routines and promote opportunities for families to talk, read, and write together throughout the school year. Some suggestions include:

Get families interested in literacy. Share samples of children’s work and emerging literacy skills. Inform families about topics their children enjoy talking, reading, and writing about.

Promote at-home literacy. Send your students home with ideas such as “Dear Family, At school we are learning about animals. Can we talk/read/write about my favorite animal?”

Host a literacy event. Set up stations that engage families and children in a topic of interest. The topic of “Pets” might include books about pets, a small visiting pet to observe, materials for drawing and writing about a favorite pet, and brochures from a local pet store.

Connect families to literacy resources. Visit the local library for information about available programs and services. Encourage families to obtain library cards and suggest good books.

Start a classroom lending library. Solicit book donations and invite families to check out their children’s favorite books. Provide suggestions on interacting with children during the reading.

This article was updated in May, 2021. It originally appeared in Language Magazine in April, 2017. At the time, Cindy Hoisington was an Early Literacy Specialist at the Education Development Center (www.edc.org).

Every Summer Counts

The largest and longest study of its kind on summer learning programs reveals short- and long-term benefits among students who consistently attended voluntary, five- to six-week summer learning programs. The findings suggest that these programs can be an important component of how school districts support learning and skill development among children in low-income communities.

The study, conducted by the RAND Corporation, followed nearly 6,000 students in five urban school districts from the end of 3rd grade through the spring of 7th grade, comparing students selected to attend the summer programs prior to 4th and 5th grade to those who applied but were not selected. The districts—Boston; Dallas; Duval County, Fla.; Pittsburgh; and Rochester, N.Y.—joined with local out-of-school time intermediaries and community partners to participate in Wallace’s National Summer Learning Project (NSLP), which was launched in 2011 to understand the implementation and effectiveness of voluntary summer learning programs.

Research has shown the summer months, when school is out of session, to be a time of widening achievement and opportunity gaps between low-income students and their wealthier peers–a pattern likely to be exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the uneven success of remote instruction. At the same time, summer could be an opportunity to help address these inequities.

Every Summer Counts builds on previous RAND studies that found that among all students offered the program, there were short-term, statistically significant benefits in mathematics, and that high attenders (those who attend 20 days or more) and repeat attenders reaped the most benefits. After one summer, high-attenders outperformed control-group students in mathematics in the fall and on the subsequent spring state assessment. After the second summer, high-attenders saw advantages in mathematics, language arts and social-emotional skills, with the outperformance in math and language arts persisting through the following spring. The current report includes new data showing that three school years after the second summer, academic benefits had decreased in magnitude and were not statistically significant, but remained educationally meaningful.

Researchers also evaluated the effect of different implementation factors. They found that the amount and quality of instruction influenced the amount of academic benefit that attenders received from the program.

Taken together, the findings reveal that well-planned, high-quality summer learning programs can produce meaningful benefits for students, especially for those with high rates of attendance and consecutive summers of attendance. This is important because research has shown that achievement and opportunity gaps between students from low-income families and their higher-income peers widen during the summer months when school is out.

Based on these findings, the researchers make several recommendations. First, they recommend that urban districts consider offering summer learning programs to improve outcomes among students from low-income families and with low academic achievement, particularly if they can offer these programs over multiple, consecutive summers. Second, districts should offer at least five weeks of programming with at least three hours of academic instruction per day. Third, to increase program effectiveness and maximize return on investment, districts should focus on ensuring strong student attendance, productive use of instructional time and high-quality instruction.

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LanguageMagazine 2023

Language Magazine