By teachers

by Justin Minkel

When I asked the 7th graders to write about their goals for our summer program for at-risk English Learners, I expected something along the lines of “Get better at reading,” or “Learn more math.” Marco, who arrived in Houston from Cuba one day before the program began, wrote one line: “Yo quiero triunfar en este país” (“I want to triumph in this country”). It struck me then that English Learners’ first experience of a foreign language and a foreign culture is deeply shaped by their first experience of school. A teacher’s responsibility is weighty enough — I still think back on my first-year class of 4th graders and hope that they somehow made it in life despite my first-year fumbling. How much weightier it is for those of us who teach kindergartners from China, 8th graders from Mexico, and high-school students from Afghanistan.

We know that, on one hand, our students need the same thing from us that all kids need from their teacher — the new three R’s, rigor, relevance, and relationship, augmented by the fourth R that my friends who teach art and music remind me to include: richness. My 2nd graders, all born in either Mexico or the Marshall Islands, need a rigorous curriculum in math, science, and every other subject — even those kids who are still in the silent stage. They need a curriculum that’s relevant to their lives — and while a unit on “El Día de los Muertos” is great, sometimes a unit on Pokemon or Dragonball-Z is more relevant. They need that often-dismissed but essential relationship with a caring adult, who will respect them and listen to them. And they need richness — immersion in all the color and passion of literary and artistic works, some that reflect their culture and some that are as foreign to me as to them.

My students also need much that is specific to English Learners — a greater emphasis on vocabulary through visuals and objects, home-language support, opportunities to remain fluent in Spanish or Marshallese, immersion in receptive language, a low-risk environment for trying out expressive language, explicit instruction on how their language is the same as English and different from it, and so on. It’s not easy, as my friend Adam discovered in his first year of teaching ESL I in Oakland; when I asked him how it was going, he said, “Well, it’s been a very multicultural experience. I now know how to say ‘Screw you, teacher,’ in Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.”

But we’ve woken up in recent years to the fact that our jobs are even more complicated than that. We’ve realized that we’re no longer living in 19th century agrarian America, but in 21st century whatever-comes-after-the-digital-age America. For the first time, the younger generation is more adept than the older generation at the technology that gives you power in society. Memorizing the state capitols seems a little less important now that Google can get you the information in less time than it takes to reach for an encyclopedia. Our students need 21st century skills — comfort with technology, but also application of that technology to those 21st century competencies that have been left behind in our bubble-crazed fixation on testing basic skills; things like creativity, higher-order thinking, design skills, and open-ended problem solving.

I confess that technology has always been my Achilles Heel as a teacher. I like the feel of mud beneath my toes, the squelch of Play-Doh in the kids’ grubby hands, and the musty smell of favorite books. But you have to “love what you hate,” and I’ve come to realize that if I’m going to meet my English Learners’ needs — preparing them for their future rather than my past — to try to teach them without the use of technology would be like my 2nd grade teacher trying to teach reading and writing without the use of paper, pencils, or books.

We know that English Learners, like most kids, tend to get more chances in school to be receptive than to be expressive. I make Writers’ Workshop a central, daily event in my 2nd grade classroom, with a literary magazine we produce once a month. My 2nd graders publish their final drafts in Microsoft Word, learning all those tools and tricks that most of us don’t even think about anymore — centering the title, changing font size and style, cutting and pasting, using spell-check, and inserting tables or graphics. I also ask them to make oral presentations about once a week, and one of my goals is to start having them make those presentations in PowerPoint, so they can work with digital images of our classroom, their homes, their families, and the annual trips they take to Mexico or the Marshall Islands.

Just as my students need to read at home as well as school, they need to be using Microsoft Office and building Web literacy with their families. (For those kids whose parents don’t have computers at home, our school makes the computer lab available after-hours.) The best website I know of for families is ¡Colorín Colorado!. The site is bilingual, so it helps to eliminate one of the two pieces of that double barrier that many Spanish-speaking families face: the language divide and the digital divide. The website is colorful, constantly updated, and user-friendly, and the information is wonderful. For parents, there are ways to support their kids’ academic progress at home, lists of great books in Spanish to read to their children at home (a great boon for those parents who are literate in Spanish but not English), and information on English Learners with disabilities. For teachers, there are tips on conducting parent-teacher conferences with parents who don’t speak English fluently, guidelines for assessment and placement, and ideas for teaching content areas to ELL’s. And for kids, teachers, and parents alike, there is an extensive library of videos and podcasts, including conversations with authors of color like Alma Flor Ada and Pat Mora.

I recently discovered two more bilingual Web sites: Maya & Miguel for younger kids and, for older students, a website on The U.S.-Mexican War. Maya & Miguel has multicultural activities, like a game where kids can mix music and learn about instruments from all over the world, printable resources, like a board for the math game Mancala, and a cooking link with easy international recipes the kids can make at home. The site on the U.S.-Mexican War presents a perspective on the war that is much more complete than the typical nationalistic U.S. view, with research from Mexican-American and Native American historians, biographies of protagonists on the Mexican side, like Miguel Hidalgo and General Santa Anna, and an interactive timeline linked to a map of both countries. All the information is accessible in Spanish, making it an ideal resource for research projects or as a supplemental text for kids whose academic skills are stronger in Spanish than in English.

If we’re going to prepare our ELL students for 21st century America, we need to link best practices for English Language Learners with technology, and we need to use that technology in a way that addresses the full spectrum of 21st century skills, including problem-solving, design skills, and higher order thinking.

Whether you have one or two Chinese and Hmong students in your kindergarten class, teach ESL at a middle school with two dozen languages, or teach in a bilingual high school, I’d love to hear your responses to the questions below:

• How do you integrate technology in your classroom?
• What Web sites or technological tools have you used to help your English Language Learners succeed?
• Thinking at a school or district level, how can we use resources like computer labs to meet the needs of ELLs?
• What ideas do you have for involving families in technological literacy?
• What have been some of your biggest successes (units, projects, strategies, daily routines, or individual success stories) with your students?
• How do your ELLs’ general academic needs intersect with their needs for 21st century skills?
• What challenges are you facing in your classroom right now?
• What else is on your mind?

We have a big job, but it’s always encouraging to know we’re in such good company. Thanks for your thoughts, your questions, and all you do each day to ground our students in their past, meet their needs in the present, and prepare them for their future.

¡Adelante, siempre adelante! (Onward, ever onward!)

-Justin