ESL training fostering faculty, student growth

LANGUAGE SCIENCE: Central Falls High School physics teacher Alison Murray has begun correcting her students’ English mistakes. “I’m more in tune to how critical it is. And it’s making me more highly qualified as a teacher.” / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
LANGUAGE SCIENCE: Central Falls High School physics teacher Alison Murray has begun correcting her students’ English mistakes. “I’m more in tune to how critical it is. And it’s making me more highly qualified as a teacher.” / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

One day in mid-March, Central Falls High School physics teacher Alison Murray asked her ninth graders to write about how the forces at work in building a bridge would make the bridge stronger.
It was a routine assignment, but because she is taking courses to further her professional development through a master’s in education degree in teaching English as a second language, she expanded the assignment from a single sentence to a paragraph, took the 120 paragraphs home, and proceeded to correct “every single English error” that classes full of Spanish-speaking, Cape Verdean and Portuguese students made.
The exercise enabled her to pick up on mistakes consistent across cultures – for instance the difficulty Spanish students have in matching the tense and agreement between subject and verb. They will write “he go” instead of “he goes,” for instance, she said.
“Normally, I wouldn’t go through their English and correct it,” she said, “[thinking instead], ‘Why do we have to teach literacy? I teach math and physics: Isn’t that enough?’ Now, I’m more in tune to how critical it is. And it’s making me more highly qualified as a teacher.”
Getting professional development in teaching might have historically meant climbing the ladder toward administrative posts, but in Central Falls, through an innovation lab in which the district is partnering with Rhode Island College in Providence, one focus is on getting certified or pursuing a master’s in education for teaching English as a second language.
The result: teachers are digging into their existing careers and broadening their skills – with the long-range goal of improving their students’ standardized test scores.
School District Superintendent Frances Gallo and high school Principal Joshua LaPlante have spearheaded the focus on high school-level professional development, three years after Gallo fired all the high school teachers to spur better performance. Months of unrest followed, drawing President Barack Obama into the dispute as he supported Gallo’s action as justified to help underserved students. An agreement between the parties ended the controversy, allowing all of the educators to return to their jobs – and most did, said Gallo.
“Central Falls was really struggling,” recalled Murray, a retired industrial physicist and former college professor. “The two reasons I came here were: I thought there was great need here, and [the] opportunities here because of the need.”
Gallo estimates that about two-thirds of the students in the district either speak English as a second language today or were ESL learners recently who have since tested as proficient. But the focus on professional development in ESL, whether through certification structured by the R.I. Department of Education or the master’s degree program provided by RIC, is based not only on that population but standardized test scores, she said.
“Our scores are some of the lowest scores in the state,” she said.
Despite speaking English in class, she said, “when you walk the corridors the kids are still going to be talking in these languages. It’s very hard to be speaking in English in the classroom when the students are immediately reverting back to their native language outside the classroom.”
Today, new hires must carry ESL teaching certification. And the 13 Central Falls high school teachers participating in the innovation lab professional-development instruction are the first of 70 at the high school and 300 in the district who will eventually get that training, she said.
“Our commitment is to cycle through groups of between 10 and 15 until all of our veteran teachers are certified,” she said.
RIC education professor Nancy Cloud is director of the Master of Education in Teaching English as a Second Language Educational Studies program.
“What everyone is more aware of is that going to little workshops might change your practice, but more likely what would change your practice is intensive study in a particular area, sequential professional development that’s connected and over time deepens your understanding and your skill set,” said Cloud in reference to high school teachers now engaged in this type of training. RIC professors are also bringing instruction directly into the school district, as opposed to teaching on campus, she added.
“It’s a refreshing chance for me to renew my own understandings of things that really matter when you’re an urban teacher,” Cloud said. “It’s helpful to be in their context, their setting. And when you do it as a school, in the school, when they progress together like this, it’s so much more impactful.”
Toni Janik, a 27-year-old algebra teacher, agrees, and said her commitment to professional development is to grow as a Central Falls teacher, not climb the administrative ladder. For her, studying for certification has led to understanding about some simple things that native English speakers take for granted – like the sound of the “h” in “th.” Spanish students have trouble pronouncing the “h” because there is nothing corresponding to it in their language, she said.
“It might seem like a pretty silly thing, but for me, I said, ‘Oh … it makes so much sense,’ ” Janik said. “It’s affected my outlook on how it’s not such a simple thing for them to learn the language and sitting in a class is not necessarily how they learn. The majority of the learning they acquire is through social interaction, with family and friends who speak their native language and not English.”
LaPlante, the high school principal, says teachers developing careers in districts where immigrant populations are pronounced must be willing to learn and adapt themselves to the needs of the community.
“It’s important for educators to engage in conversations about cultural responsiveness, teaching practice, linguistics and literacy,” he said. “All content teachers in communities like Central Falls are language teachers. Within [subject areas], we need to support language acquisition.”
As for where the high school and school district are headed, LaPlante doesn’t mince words.
“In five years, if people aren’t willing to take advantage of this incredible opportunity we should restructure our school and reconsider the people we have in these teaching positions,” he said. •

No posts to display