Wednesday I attended an English Language Learner Institute at Region XIII. I love the location of the building; high on a hill overlooking Texas's hill country. A lot of growth has sprung up on the other side of the hills since I was here 3 years ago. This building has a wonderful positive energy and everyone is very friendly. (Noted: The Statesman says that Region XIII is one of the top ten places to work in Austin)
The Keynote speaker was Kathleen Kenfield who walked around to meet the attendees. My table mate and I both noted our surprise at this, as we had never seen the keynote personally introduce herself. Maybe it was the informal atmosphere at Region XIII that facilitated this. I looked around for other teachers I might recognize, but none where there except a parent of a student I had at NYOS. My table mates included two elementary teachers from Liberty Hill, one of which was also the part time ELL coordinator; a middle school teacher from AISD; and an ELL coordinator for Harmony Charter School in San Antonio.
Kathleen began speaking about Sheltered Instruction, which I had some training on from Capital City Public Charter School. I have studied the Sheltered Instruction book Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners: The SIOP Model by Echevarria, Vogt and Short and have learned wonderful strategies to help students learning English as a second language. The Sheltered Instruction Model, or SI model literally helps do exactly what its name says: It is designed as a way to ensure that students at various levels of English acquisition understand a lecture, in short, to shelter them and support them with differentiated lessons to help them comprehend and learn as much as possible, but at their own level. Kathleen called this their "i+1". "i" stands for their individual level as assessed by the TELPAS or what ever assessment you have used to determine their level of listening, speaking, writing and reading in English. Then the "1" is "plus a little stretch." Kathleen stressed, "You only aquire language that is within your reach." She scolded teachers that stretch students to a "+20" which leads, among other things, to wasted instructional time and frustrated students. I would believe that this also leads to frustrated teachers, "Why aren't they getting it?" or "I wish they would just take them out of my class." This develops a sense of lack in confidence as a teacher and spirals out of control. On the other hand, teachers who are confidently applying SI have success with their lessons and this creates a happy, but exhausted teacher ready for summer break! The strategies are common best practice strategies that all teachers should use since the levels vary among all students, even those not learning a new language: Visuals, graphic organizers, gestures, repeated vocabulary, cognates, and modeling. Kathleen gave us a lesson on Hawaii in Spanish, which she is fluent in, and afterwards had us analyze the strategies used to get us to understand what she was saying. It was awesome! But, yes...good teaching does take a lot of energy. I like to compare a good teacher to a masseuse: I always want to be the first massage of the day so that my masseuse isn't tired from giving 4 hour long massages all day, but when I asked about using all her energy up in one session, one reminded me that they know how to spread the wealth and manage. Balance is key.
As I looked around the room, I was surprised by how many attendees there were. At nearly 230, districts from all over Texas had sent teams of teachers to learn about how to use SI. I wondered who was already using these strategies, and who was already exhausted by other pressures in the schools, such as new assessment systems like STARR and an increasing number of schools that have less staff support. I spoke to a middle school teacher who teachers ELL and she was irate at the new expectations of ELL newcomers to take the STARR assessment on their grade-level even though they would likely be too frustrated to complete the test. Who cares that they get to use a dictionary...they will be translating the entire test! I was reminded about the level of work that goes into being a teacher. I looked around and hoped that these teachers were thinking about their students and not about these other pressures. There were breakout sessions for the second half of the day: I learned about some IPad applications that could be fun to use someday, but it wasn't very realistic as most teachers don't have this technology in their classrooms due to district funding; and the strategy called MAP and VOCAB, which I could use in my small groups.
In the end I hope that all of us forget about that one day when our students will be forced to take the STARR (which doesn't "count" this year, but, my peer reminded me that she will most likely will be judged as competent or incompetent based on the scores) and they will forge ahead and use at least three new strategies to teach with better success and less frustration for all.
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