Closing the Opportunity Gap for Our English Learners and Plurilingual Scholars

Equity in EducationTeachFX Impact
Written By Guest User

TeachFX is on a mission to promote more meaningful and equitable student voice in the classroom. 

One of the fundamental reasons we do this work is the primacy of student voice. We know that students need to talk in order to learn.

This is particularly true for English learners as they develop their English language progression.

Yet, oftentimes, it’s our students like plurilingual scholars, who benefit the most from speaking in class but get the fewest opportunities to do so.

In that spirit, we hosted a conversation with Dr. Renae Bryant about practices for closing the opportunity gap for our plurilingual scholars.

Dr. Renae Bryant is a leading practitioner in English Learner, Multilingual Services, and Supporting our Plurilingual Scholars

In her current role as Director, English Learner & Multilingual Services, 7th -12th grade, for the Anaheim Union High School District, she’s striving to increase access for plurilingual learners and to make sure they have equitable opportunities to learn and grow and be ready for the world.

Prior to joining Anaheim, Dr. Bryant worked in a neighboring district, one that’s home to the largest community of Vietnamese immigrants in the nation. There, she led a team to launch the first dual immersion program in Vietnamese in California. And in 2017, that program was honored with a Golden Bell Award.

In Anaheim, she's expanded her work in dual immersion programs to include both Vietnamese and Spanish immersion. Their program has been honored with multiple awards. And it’s drawn the attention of other school leaders across the nation who’d like to see how they might emulate this work.

Setting the legislative context for our conversation

When the state of California passed Prop 227, the state essentially mandated that all instruction in our classrooms would be in English.

More recently, California passed Prop 58, which opened the door to more choice, both for schools and for parents. It became easier for parents to say, “I want my child in a dual immersion or bilingual program.”

Even the title of the bill, the California Multilingual Education Act, sent a clear message. 

It shows that California has evolved. And many of us in education have evolved in our multilingual mindset.

So, that’s where our conversation began.

As you read through this fireside chat, consider these questions for reflection.

  • What unique challenges are you seeing, or differentiated needs, among your own plurilingual learners?

  • How has your mindset changed – since you were a student, or since you became a teacher  – when it comes to this asset-based thinking around language?

  • How are you creating opportunities to embrace the asset-based mindset? How are you thinking of your team or your school or your community?

Fireside Chat: Closing the Opportunity Gap for Our English Learners and Plurilingual scholars

Debra Russell: Dr. Bryant, how do you see the evolution of the multilingual learning mindset among educators? Where are we today?

Dr. Renae Bryant: We definitely have come a long way, as they say.

I started my career before Prop 227. So I was part of transitional bilingual programs in San Bernardino City Unified School District.

Those programs used the existing research to provide the best they could then, which was a transitional bilingual model of K-3 in the primary language. And then kind of just dropping them into English in fourth grade.

Then Prop 227 came about. We had to sit down with parents and have them sign waivers if they wanted to be in transitional bilingual programs. It was very limiting. 

Educators had to work hard to help our parents understand that dual language immersion is the best option for their students — not English only.

Brave districts kept their dual language immersion programs alive, as well as transitional bilingual programs.

Now, there’s so much work being done to make sure all of our families understand. Because the first ones to sign up their children for dual language immersion are usually the teachers, the administrators, doctors, attorneys.

Dual language immersion is to help our students be completely literate in their primary language or another language. It’s about equity. And making sure that our plurilingual students, known as English learners, can have that heritage language and be completely plurilingual, be literate in it. 

We’ve come a really long way. With all those dual language immersion programs coming up to the secondary schools — Korean, Mandarin, and I’m sure Arabic is on the horizon.

Some people think you can only start language immersion in kindergarten. We allow our students to assess into the program. If they're ready, they're in. It's perfect for our newcomers and students who have that plurilingualism from Spanish catechism or from weekend language and culture school that we know exists in the Arabic and Mandarin and Korean speaking communities. 

Anaheim Union now has four schools that offer secondary dual language immersion – Spanish and Vietnamese. Without having an elementary school feeding into us. Our kids test in and start junior high. That's a testament to the power of language, the power of giving opportunities and access.

Debra: That term plurilingualism – it might be new to some. How do we transition from bilingual to multilingual?

Dr. Bryant: We've gone from this deficit thinking around language acquisition, to now being more asset -based around language acquisition.

Back in the day, we had limited English proficient, a completely deficit-based term.

Then, we moved to English Language Learner, which was better. Then, English Learner. And, with the English Learner Roadmap, California 2030, we had these huge visions for multilingualism, we moved to a more asset-based focus with terms like emergent bilingual.

And the work that California has done, towards a seal of bi-literacy for students. Not just dual language immersion students, but any students that can show a proficiency in reading, writing, listening, speaking – at that intermediate level – can earn that.

That’s put a spotlight right on the asset-based framework around multilingualism.

Multilingual is a great term. You have multiple languages and you feel good about that.

But plurilingual recognizes this translanguage that happens. It honors the fact that we go in and out of language all day long. People are going in and out of language or thinking in both languages, they are referencing in both languages. That's translanguaging. 

It used to be in our dual language immersion programs, and even in our ELL programs or English-only programs, it was about staying in one language. When you're in Spanish, stay in Spanish. When you're in English, stay in English.

But, in professional settings, people don't do that. They don't stay in one language all the time. So plurilingualism really honors the fact that we translanguage. We go in and out of language.

And plurilingualism considers the context and the culture. It’s an even more assets-based term than the terms that came before.

Debra: Based on all this discussion and this awareness about how language really works, in reality in classrooms and in homes and in communities, is the title of Director of English Learning even accurate anymore?

Dr. Bryant: Yes, we'll probably have to move away from that deficit-term: English learner. 

To be a learner is good. I want to be a learner. I want people to consider me a learner. 

And when we look at our students, we don't always say – you're a math learner, you're a science learner, you’re Korean learner. We only seem to do that with English – you're an English learner. 

So it kind of insinuates that something has to be deposited into them; that we need to give them English. It doesn't really recognize the asset that they bring, that asset of other languages. 

So as we reflect on our departments and what's going on in our schools, if we have any influence to talk to other people and have these conversations about a better term – a term that really celebrates language and is more asset-based.

Even if the term multilingual is better than English learner. And then to get to plurilingualism is awesome.

Debra: I want to bring us now to probably the most important question: How do we close those opportunity gaps? How do we create opportunities in our programs in our schools to live out that asset-based mindset when it comes to plurilingualism?

Dr. Bryant:  Sometimes, we have control over this, and sometimes we don't. But here in California, through our LCAP, we can all have a voice and system creation. 

  1. Create systems and processes to identify opportunities and ensure the work happens

A big part of Anaheim’s success is in creating systems and processes to make sure things happen. And doing that from the very top.

In 2016, Anaheim Union worked with Californians Together to create the English Learner Task Force to bring recommendations. 

That launched things like transcript review. They looked at transcripts at the high school level to see what classes our plurilingual scholars had access to. That’s the first step for discovering issues to address.

We discovered right away that our plurilingual students weren’t getting access, ironically, to world language. Maybe they were getting some intervention courses or remedial courses that were limiting their access. 

Once we recognized that, we set task force recommendations to make sure that our students had access to world language. We made many other recommendations, including of course, some classroom pedagogical recommendations.

We created EL Task Forces at every site. Each one was a team – teachers, admin, parents if they want to be involved – looking at how to make those recommendations real at their site.

Then, we rolled out the B.E.L.I.E.F. Modules, from the Riverside County Office of Ed. The intention of the B.E.L.I.E.F. Modules was to build administrators’ capacity around English learner typology, around designated and integrated ELD, and many other strategies to help increase plurilingualism.

2. Engage in teacher-led professional learning

We next looked at the English learner roadmap. 

We know the research around professional learning is that it’s great if it comes from other teachers, or if teachers are part of the team facilitating that professional learning.

So our teachers rolled out the B.E.L.I.E.F. Modules in teacher-led professional learning.

We took those B.E.L.I.E.F. Modules and modified them for our 5C coaches (they’re coaches at each site who do teacher-led professional learning).

3. Know how you’ll measure whether you’re making progress

If you've done any EL shadowing, plurilingual shadowing, or just shadowing of students overall, you know that the shadowing experience lives up to the research. Our scholars only talk for about six minutes throughout the entire day.

That is awful. That means that our educators are doing the heavy lifting. They're doing most of the talking.

And our scholars aren't having time to reflect, to digest, to communicate, to collaborate, to process, to take that learning further.

So we set the goal of 30% student talk time. But we were in a quandary – how do we measure that? 

The only way you can measure that is to record your teaching, just like you do when you're going to be a National Board certified teacher. You record yourself, you reflect, and figure out – how am I going to get better.

That’s when we decided to launch TeachFX.  

I actually used it when I was delivering professional learning. Because I didn't want to keep talking so much. And I wanted to model the way, to show people – look, if I'm willing as an administrator to be vulnerable to use the app to increase the talk time of y'all, you can do it too as administrators or teachers. 

And the other really awesome thing about it is when teachers listen to the recording, and they read the transcript, they see new things. They have realizations like – ‘Wait a minute, this group of students, they're not actually using that tier three vocabulary that I thought they were.’

And all of the data is kept private for the teachers.

Learn about bringing TeachFX to your district, school, or classroom

Interested in helping your district or school become a TeachFX partner? If you’re pursuing goals like Dr. Bryant is in Anaheim, TeachFX would love to partner with you. Connect with us here to talk with us about your goals.

And, teachers can give TeachFX a try for free right now. Just sign up here.

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