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Erik Kost

As found on adlit.org in the article, “ Engaging ELL Families: 20 Strategies to for School Leaders,” there are a lot of potential difficulties that parents of ELL students may experience with regard to being able to participate in their children’s schoolwide activities.  It is important for teachers to take a little time and effort to find out about the background and experiences of the parents as the family may have just escaped a war-country as refugees and may be experiencing extreme limitations in economic resources like having the sufficient financial means necessary to secure proper food, shelter and clothing to sustain the family’s needs.  Also, it is possible that the parents themselves may be experiencing the psychological aspects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and may need access to therapeutic resources for coping.  Additionally, beyond the obvious roadblocks in communication, they may feel as if they are not wanted or welcome or needed in the environment of their children’s school – or perhaps even, that they are not valued in any way.

Furthermore, they may want to know what is happening with their children at school, but may not be able to communicate with anyone other than the child about it – and the child may not be the most accurate source to go by.  Additionally, parents may have difficulties with transportation access, social services access, knowledge about how to help their children at home, and profound distress and frustration resulting from all of the above.

It stands to reason that coming to the U.S. from a very different culture and overall way of living may mean a dramatic culture shock for families.  As Americans, we often run the risk of ethnocentrism in that because we think that the U.S. is the center of all things, or the leader of the world (or even THE model for other nations) this is very likely to not be true.  We might think that because the world is now instantly connected by the internet, that cultures, societies and languages for that matter may have become more diffuse.  We often think of English as the world’s essential language.  But many around the world are likely not to even remotely feel this way or have the ready access to the internet that most Americans do.  We need to guard against our ungrounded beliefs and false expectations.  We are driven by a culture that values itself above all others and this can be more of a hinderance than a benefit in thinking.  As educators and thinkers, we need to open ourselves up to the other and learn from them as often we have just as much if not more to learn about the world as anyone else.  We need to relish in the fact that we are a nation built on immigrants throughout the centuries and that things are progressing now as they have always been here.  We are on course and aiming towards the future of better social integration.  As teachers we are the frontline where this can happen in the most positive of ways.

The second article, found on colorincolorado.org titled, “How to Reach Out to Parents of ELLs,” suggests that teachers can seek to seek to communicate in the parents’ native language by way of utilizing an adult translator, make every attempt to have written exchanges (i.e. letters home or emails in the native language) and teachers are even encouraged to learn some of the language themselves.  This can do  much to show parents they are welcomed and that you are genuinely receptive to their needs – especially if showing the initiative of learning some of the language.  If ELL parents are made to feel welcome and important, their confidence with participating will grow and this will have a direct positive impact on the student.

Additionally, parents can put teachers in touch with bilingual staff at the school and even other ELL parents of the same language and culture who have already begun to participate with the school.   Teachers should also help the parents understand how the American school system works and the nature of its culture.  It is important to keep in mind that many ELL parents may come from a culture in their homeland in which parents differ all knowledge and expertise to the teacher – however, it should be clarified that here in the U.S. parents are valued as takin a central role in being the experts about how their children learn, their habits and some of the areas and interests that they are most driven by.  This can do much to help the teacher in the classroom to understand how to implement effective strategies for the student according to their learning style.

Furthermore, parents should emphasize the value of having parents involved in the classroom setting with introducing cultural materials, stories, etc. and encouraging use of their native language at home with their child so as to equally celebrate their heritage, but also to help their ELL student carryover into English the language gains and understandings they have acquired in their own language.

The recommendations presented here make a lot of sense because parents may inadvertently make choices that are completely the opposite of what would actually be most helpful for helping their child learn and adapt to the new language and culture.  They make believe that by limiting the child from the dynamics of their own native language and customs that the child is likely to do better with their language acquisition of English and/or cultural integration.  What they do not realize that they should be continuing the use of their native language at home and their customs so that the child can grow to have a rich understanding how the language elements can cross over with learning and have a richer more meaningful cultural identity, rather than a disjointed and incongruent one.  Further, it is absolutely critical to enable direct communication between them and the teacher so that they may  understand what is going on and actively engage with the learning process of their child in school.

References

Engaging ELL families: 20 strategies for school leaders.  (n.d.)  All About Adolescent Literacy Resources for Parents and Educators of Kids in Grades 4-12. (December 8, 2016). Retrieved from

http://www.adlit.org/article/42781/

How to reach out to parents of ELLs.  (n.d.) Colorin Colorado. (December 8, 2016). Retrieved from

http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/how-reach-out-parents-ells

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Research: Reaching out to Latino Families of English Language Learners

Reference

Campos, D., Huerta, M. E., & Delgado, R. (2011). Reaching Out to Latino Families of    English Language Learners. Alexandria, Va: Assoc. for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Summary:

Reaching out to Latino Families of ELLs is an Ebook created by English language learners of Latino descent. The authors recount their stories as ELLs in the United States. Through their experiences they are able to identify the cause and effect of the lack connection between Latino parents and their children's’ school teachers. They also go into depth about why the link between parents and teachers is so important. The book goes into detail about ELL demographics, why parent involvement matters, what teachers need to understand about Latino families and what they can to do improve the ELL’s education.

Evaluation

This Ebook goes into detail about having meetings with the ELL parents. It also gives suggestions on how to learn about your ELL’s culture. Some of those suggestions are exploring the ELL’s community, learning popular songs by popular Latino artist like Marc Anthony, watching Latino movies,etc. The Ebook gives suggestions as to what to find out about the ELL’s family and why it’s important. For example the ebook states that the teacher should find out if the ELL is living with their parents and siblings or if they live with members of their extended family. The reason they advised that this is important is because the teacher must find out who plays an important role in the child’s education at home. The ebook even has resources such as common Spanish vocabulary to learn, and different types of letters that can be sent to the home of the student in order to communicate with their guardians about their education.

Reflection

This Ebook is a great tool to have, especially if I were a teacher of Latino ELLs. This ebook gives so many suggestions on how to start exploring your ELL’s culture and life at home. There are introductory letters in English and Spanish that only require you to fill out your name, the student’s name, and your contact information. This makes the teacher’s life so much easier. The teacher would be able to just simply fill in the blanks of the English and Spanish letters exactly the same and both the teacher and the parents will be able to understand each other. The book also contains home surveys that the teacher can use during home visits. It already has all of the questions there for you. The ebook contains invitations to parent teacher conferences in English and Spanish. The list goes on.

Research:

Reference:

Promoting ELL Parental Involvement: Challenges in ... (n.d.). Retrieved November 29, 2016,  from http://www.bing.com/cr?IG=D6CAABF6170843E1BCA1BF412EFBDC52&CID=19789786FEE16A102EFE9E5BFFD06BCD&rd=1&h=i0u3d6xfXTGl578_VhGJyDAR2i9sK3u9hSXgFa7px64&v=1&r=http://www.greatlakescenter.org/docs/Policy_Briefs/Arias_ELL.pdf&p=DevEx,5084.1

Summary

This is a policy brief that describes the ever-changing demographics of the U.S. student community. This brief was written in 2008 and it states that, at that time, more than 80% of ELLs were native Spanish speakers which is part of the reason that this brief summarizes the factors that inhibit latino parental involvement and their view of their role as a parent. This brief also talks about how ELLs have become isolated segregated by language, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Most of the latino ELLs live in a community of other native Spanish speakers and attend schools where three fifths of the students are latino ELLs as well which does not give them and opportunity to be  exposed to English. The brief also describes that half of the ELL’s parents have less than a high school education. It also touches upon the views that teachers at schools with high levels of ELLs might hold against them.

Evaluation

This brief talks about many programs that have been successful and what their ideals were. The Children’s Literature Project and the Intergenerational Literacy Project are example programs that have successfully improved parent literacy outside of the classroom by providing literacy classes. This enabled the parents to be able to learn about what their students were learning in school. It also addresses the traditional and non-traditional approaches to promoting parent involvement. A traditional example they provided was that the school could incorporate the parent in the school as a volunteer or part of an audience. The non-traditional approach to that same example is that the school provide parental education which includes literacy and understanding the school community.

Reflection

I think this policy brief has many good tips to use when promoting communication between the school and the parents. They list traditional and non-traditional approaches to promoting this communication and good reporte. They also list programs that have been successful in this goal. Having this information will help me as a teacher because I will be able to look up programs that have successfully helped the ELL community and I will be able to either get involved or model their ideals and procedures in my classroom.

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Challenges ELL Parents Face and How to Involve Them
The two resources that I found are a short article on the TEFL website and a short video on youtube. Both are short, sweet, and to the point which I think is always helpful in this ever busy world that we live in.

The Importance and Challenges of Parental Involvement for Young English Language Learners In Terms of Supporting and Sustaining:
Summary: Research has found that regardless of family background, students who have parents that are active in their education are more likely to have higher grades, better school attendance, good social skills, and go on to postsecondary education. However, parents of ELLs face several challenges and barriers preventing them from involvement. Parents can feel isolated from the school community due to factors such as language, cultural expectations, isolation, personal or family trauma, and other social factors that can discourage or block one from becoming an active parent. If a school is culturally insensitive or lack the resources needed to help parents with involvement, this may be seen as unwelcoming and will further push parents away from being involved. There are a number of ways that parents can become involved however communication is key. Parents should be able to communicate with their children, their children’s teachers and other school personnel, and should express their concerns (if they have any) to administration.

Evaluation: I think this was a very helpful article for teachers to read to learn about some of the challenges that parents of their ELL students may be facing. It’s a somewhat short article but it has a plethora of information and all of the sources are listed at the bottom. I really like that the author listed the challenges that they identified and then further explained them one by one. However, the one thing that was confusing to me was that it was just one big paragraph where everything ran together. I think it would have been helpful if it was broken up into sections and organized a little better. I’m not sure if this is due to the website it was on or the author just wrote it that way. Other than that, I thought this was a very helpful article.

Use of Resource: I would use this resource because as I stated above, it has a plethora of information. I think it’s a good place to start as a teacher or school personnel to at least broaden your perspective on the challenges that the parents of ELL students face. I couldn’t find an author listed for the article but whoever the author may be took the time to search through other sources that they could use to write this article because they are all cited at the bottom of the page; should you not glean enough information from this article you would be able to go to the other sources and read up more. ELL students are the fastest growing population in America therefore we are all likely to come across one in our classroom at some time. This is why I would recommend this article to others, because I think it’s helpful to be prepared for any situation. You could at least form a base knowledge from this article.

Fostering ELL Parental Involvement:

Summary: Immigrant families are often forced to transform their lives so that they fit the “norm” and the expectations of those in their environment. There are a number of things to take into account when thinking about whether or not schools should expect parents to comply with the schools’ expectations and culture or if the school should take the parents’ expectations and cultures into account; single parent households, language barriers, comprehension of their expectations, parents that have two jobs, and parents that are attempting to learn the language themselves. It’s helpful for teachers and schools to use Epstein’s traditional model of parental involvement which describes six areas that schools can focus on to help families and communities become informed about and involved in educational activities. Those are assisting families with parenting and creating home conditions to support learning, communicating with families about school programs and student progress with two-way communications, recruiting efforts to involve families as volunteers and audiences, involving families with their children in learning activities at home (including homework and other curricular-linked activities), including families as participants in school decisions, governance, and advocacy through councils and organizations, and collaborating and coordinating with the work and resources of community based agencies, colleges, and other groups to strengthen school programs. To help in the classroom, teachers can be attentive, organized, have structure and allow for participation Some helpful things teachers can also do are to encourage the use of ELL parent workshops, establish open communication, create a warm environment, provide handouts in their native language, do not focus on what is not being accomplished, realize that everyone is not the same, don’t limit participation, and don’t stereotype.

Evaluation: The video is less than five minutes long but it has a lot of helpful information. I really like that it starts at the very beginning. First it explains what defines parental involvement, the requirements from NCLB, excuses you may hear from parents, and what you can do to help. I also like that the compiler of the video didn’t just randomly select information from various sources, they used information from actual studies like Dr. M. Beatriz Arias and Dr. Milagros Morillo-Campbell’s study Promoting ELL Parental Involvement: Challenges of Contested Times. One thing that I think would have been helpful is if there was a narrator for the video rather than just text on the screen and music playing in the background. The complier of the video didn’t leave the text up long enough for the person viewing the video to read and comprehend it before moving on to the next thing. These are simple details easy to be changed though, I really liked all of the information that was provided.

Use of Resource: I would use this resource because as I stated at the beginning it’s short, sweet, and to the point which is helpful in our ever busy world. Teachers have limited time as it is with all of the lesson planning and grading that they do so it’s helpful when something just gets straight to the point. I also would use this resource because I think it has a lot of helpful tips for teachers. I would share this resource with others because I liked that at the end of the video there were dos and don’ts for teachers. I thought these were helpful reminders that teachers can take the time to understand.

Resources
TEFL. (n.d.). The Importance and Challenges of Parental Involvement for Young English Language Learners In terms of supporting and sustaining. Retrieved November 29, 2016, from https://www.teflcorp.com/articles/esl-resources/the-importance-and-challenges-of-parental-involvement-for-529/
Bettis, N. (2012). Fostering ELL Parental Involvement. [Video File]. Retrieved November 29, 2016 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV3jF4B5GDc

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Ethnolinguistically Relevant Pedagogy: Empowering English Language Learners in Physical Education

Burden, J., Columna, L. H., & Martinez de la Vega Mansilla, P. (2013). Ethnolinguistically Relevant Pedagogy: Empowering English Language Learners in Physical Education. Quest, 169-185.

Summary:  Though this article was designed with Physical Educators in mind, I found it to be quite useful for general educators as well.  It is an article on how different cultures interpret languages and gestures differently.  It is an advocacy paper on promoting ethnolinguistically relevant pedagogy, which is a blending of intercultural language education.  The article discusses strategies for implementing these ideas, specifically for the physical education classroom, but can be tweaked for general education as well.

Evaluation:  As a bit of a research junkie, I loved this article. This is a very well put together, if overly academic way, of promoting a slight amount of forethought when dealing with other cultures and the language barriers we will all someday come across.  This article also gives a brief history of the fight for ELL’s to be treated in a fair manner when dealing with educators.  The authors go through a fairly specific range of ideas that include preparing teachers for student diversity and the three ethnocentric views when it comes to ELL’s and cultures (other than our own) in general.  Most importantly it has a section detailing a lack of teacher preparedness, which is enforced (although, unintentionally) by school districts, by not giving teachers the information they need beforehand to be effective ELL teachers.  It also calls to the mat teaching programs that usher students out the door woefully unprepared to deal with cultures and languages that are not their own.

Use of resource:  This is a well written article that points out some glaringly obvious issues that education has with ELL students.  I would use this as a reminder that I may be teaching persons that are not of my culture and I need to take that into account.  It also works as a heads up that whenever a new school year starts, you may need to do a little research on your students.  I would also recommend this article as a starting point for other research into the theme.  The 50+ references for a 15-page article is immense and certainly goes towards reinforcing the ideas held within.

ESL teacher advocacy beyond the classroom

Haneda, M., & Alexander, M. (2015). ESL teacher advocacy beyond the classroom. Teaching and Teacher Education, 149-158.

Summary:  A study of 34 United States elementary schools that show that most of the advocacy done for ESL students is done by multilingual teachers.  The article also has ideas about how non-multilingual teachers can still work as advocates for their ELL’s.  It also has a great, albeit short, section on using Families as partners.  This is a short article, as it is only five pages in length before it gets to the statistics, but those five pages are jam packed with ideas and information on what works (statistically) and what doesn’t.

Evaluation:  This is a short article whose second half is entirely about tying in statistics to the writing in the first half.  However, even when tying in the statistics, it remains relevant to the main point: that advocacy works and it’s not just multilingual teachers that can (or should) do it.  However, it is not for the statistically blind.  It involves a lot of numbers correlating to the writing in the first half of the paper.  It can shed a lot of light on what certain communities and school districts are doing to help progress the education of ELL’s.

Use of resource:  A well-researched paper that has several very credible resources attached to it.  I would use this as a building block paper; a paper to help push me towards a way of embracing the teaching of ELL’s and, even though I am not multilingual, how I too can be a force of change for them.  I would point this work out to others who are of similar mind set to me.  I would also use this paper as a foundation for an argument for connecting families and communities to their school districts as it is shown, quite thoroughly, that the connection between school/communities and ELL families allow for greater enhancement of the education of all children.

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L. (2013). Success with English Learners. Retrieved November 27, 2016. from http://lexingtoninstitute.org/success-with-english-learners-parental-involvement-is-essential/

This article focuses not only on how to get the parents of ELL students involved, but why they may not be involved already. Knowing why the parents are not participating can help us to discover things that may work for these parents. The article provided the obvious reasoning of language for the lack of parental involvement, but there is much more to it than that.   Many of these families hold two or more low income jobs. The long hours prevent the parent from being home and helping the child. Low income jobs lead to struggles with poverty and family mobility, meaning the parent either, can't be at the meetings, or doesn't want to. One struggle that I didn't know was that parents of ELL students are more trusting of the school, and they are less likely to complain.

Bilingual Family Night for ELL Families (n.d.) Retrieved November 25. 2016, from http://colorin coloado.org/article/bilingual-family-night-ell-families

This article was an excellent example of what the school staff can do. There were ideas for multiple activities that the parents of an ELL student could do. Something that stood out to me was an exercise involving post it notes. The exercise is a visual representation of how many ELLs finish high school or college, and at what age ranges things start to drop off. It is best to show parents representations like this because things can be lost in translation when you simply tell parents. These spark an emotional response in parents, and it forces them to be more involved. Each strategy in the article had step by step instructions. The tips were simple, but the were also thing that are commonly overlooked, like providing food for parents. When poverty is an issue a free plate may be enough incentive for some.

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Involving Immigrant and Refugee Families in Their Children's Schools: Barriers, Challenges, and Successful Strategies

Adult Learning Resource Center. (2003). Involving Immigrant and Refugee Families in Their Children’s Schools: Barriers, Challenges, and Successful Strategies. Bridging Refugee Youth & Children’s Services. Retrieved from http://www.brycs.org/documents/upload/InvolvingFamilies.pdf

Summary: The Adult Learning Resource Center drafted a report detailing effective strategies that can be used to help immigrant and refugee families overcome the barriers and challenges they often face when attempting to be involved in school-wide settings.  The report brings light to six challenges including language (particularly the challenges that parents face when bilingual staff are not available), cultural expectations, isolation, busy personal lives, family trauma, and lack of welcoming atmosphere in some schools.  School staff may misperceive parents’ level of interest in their children’s education due to cultural misunderstandings.  Also, the parents may have preconceived ideas of what type of role they should play based on prior cultural expectations.  The report also describes the personal struggle parents may face related to living separate from the community, working multiple jobs, and experiencing family trauma (i.e. – refugees may experience the effects of war and torture).

Evaluation: The barriers and challenges the report discusses is organized in a well-structured manner for easy reference.  It is broken down into the aforementioned categories in terms of difficulties the families of ELL students face.  The lives of ELL students and their families can be complex.  The common challenges should be studied carefully, and this resource is an insightful synopsis of what the ELL parent may face.  It truly helps educators and school personnel see the ELL parent’s experience from a more personal perspective.

Reflection: There were some difficulties ELL parents face that I was familiar with prior to reading this report, but I would recommend this resource because it encourages the reader to think more deeply about what the ELL parent may be experiencing.  I could see how from a teacher’s perspective it may be easy to just think that an ELL parent is not very interested in their child’s education.  In reality though, that parent may be working two or three jobs, working night shifts, not able to find childcare so they can leave home to visit the school, and may not have access to transportation.  Moreover, the parent may avoid the community because of limited English skills or due to an undocumented status.  I also found the resource enlightening because it touches on an area that every educator needs to be aware of which is the possibility of refugee and other families dealing with PTSD and other related trauma.

Response: Building Relationships with Families of ELLs

Ferlazzo, L. (2016, January 30). Response: Building Relationships with Families of ELLs [Blog post]. Education Week. Retrieved from http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2016/01/response_building_relationships_with_families_of_ells.html

Summary: This blog post consists of the responses of six educators addressing the question, “What are some of the ways teachers can actively involve & connect with English Language Learners’ parents?”  The educators impart pertinent strategies for ELL parental outreach.  Common themes of focus include effective communication strategies, ways to connect through culture, how to alleviating parents’ concerns, and ways to get parents involved and engaged in projects.  Examples of projects that showcase parents’ cultures and heritages include cooking, planting a school garden, inviting parents to a classroom re-design day, and welcoming parents to share their interests and talents with the students.  The blog post also highlights technology tools that can be used for communication such as Class Dojo, Class Story, Google Translate, and Remind.

Evaluation: This resource compiles many useful strategies and ideas based on educators’ experiential knowledge communicating and working with families of English Language Learners.  While there are common themes the educators write about, each does so in his or her own unique way and offers complementary advice that is very useful for beginning teachers.  All the contributors offer advice on ways to welcome and invite the parents of ELL students to the schools and classrooms in ways that are creative and move beyond traditional strategies.  The ELL parent is seen as a person who the teachers and the students can learn a great deal from and should take an active role in his or her student’s life.

Reflection: I personally was drawn to this resource due to the focus on creating a welcoming environment for ELL parents that connects the teacher, ELL parents, and students through culture.  One strategy I would like to try is creating a class calendar on which students can mark down their holidays and traditions.  The class as a whole will take the time to learn about the holiday or event to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation for each other’s backgrounds and heritages.  I also am drawn to the idea of learning from the life experiences of the families of my ELL students.  I am training to be a Social Studies teacher.  I find history fascinating on the micro level, the human level.  I plan to take the time to learn the stories of my students and their parents.  Not only do I find this fascinating on a human level, this will enable me to be a more effective educator for my ELL students.

References:

Adult Learning Resource Center. (2003). Involving Immigrant and Refugee Families in Their Children’s Schools: Barriers, Challenges, and Successful Strategies. Bridging Refugee Youth & Children’s Services. Retrieved from http://www.brycs.org/documents/upload/InvolvingFamilies.pdf

Ferlazzo, L. (2016, January 30). Response: Building Relationships with Families of ELLs [Blog post]. Education Week. Retrieved from http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2016/01/response_building_relationships_with_families_of_ells.html

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What teachers or school personnel can do to assist ELL parents’ inclusion

Video: Parenting with Latino parents

Reference:Mora, P. (Narrator). (2012). Partnering with Latino parents [Online video]. Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8mj1F0zLiw

Summary: As educators is important to understand how different cultural groups respond to education, each culture has a particular perception of the school as an institution and educators according to their cultural believes. Depending on the parent heritage the perception about school and teachers will be different. In the case of Latino parents, it is important that educators understand that this culture caries deep respect for education, and because of this the educator is consider an expert that will guide the student for the best rout. A factor that might influence the connection of the teacher with the parent is that some families might not have a literacy tradition. The best way to address families is to give the parents ideas, projects, strategies that they can do to get involve, For example: an school can give the parents and students a project to work together and then display it at the school, in this way the parents will participate and will feel part of the school. Often schools have myths about ELL parents because they do not know their culture or background.

Evaluation: The author of this video encourages educators to understand ELL parents from their perspective before approaching them. It is important to know that every culture has a different perspective about education and teachers, because of their cultural believes parents respond different to the education system. As a viewer, I appreciated that the author took the Hispanic culture to reflect about the influence of the ELL parents to schools. In the Hispanic culture there is a deep respect for educators, so this is why they prefer to not get too involve in school because they know that the teacher is the expert. I think that the information in the video is of extremely good value for any educator, and it encourages them to start thinking on understanding the ELL parents’ culture to approach them with accuracy.

Reflection: As a future educator, I found a lot of relevant strategies in this video. One of them was getting ELL parents more involve in school activities, and this is something that I can do from my own classroom. The idea of doing projects and activities that require the parents’ participation I think that is something that I can use, like the author said a project that can be display can be very helpful because it might help parents feel that their participation is important and their contribution is relevant to the school. From the video, I think that the keep element to approach ELL parents is to get to know them and understand them from their culture to be able to give them spaces of participation that might help the ELL parent and students self- steam. I recommend this video to all educators because it will help them to understand the Hispanic community, but specially to reflect about strategies to approach different cultures and made then active members of the education community.

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Involving ELL Parents
A Parent Involvement Guide for Educators of English Language Learners. (n.d.). Retrieved November 27, 2016, from http://www.state.nj.us/education/bilingual/resources/Title3ParentInvolvement.pdf

Summary -
Parents of English Language Learner students should be given the opportunity to participate in school events and in their child’s classroom.  One difficulty when it comes to this is that some ELL parents do not know how to become involved and so they need guidance from the teachers and the schools.  Teachers can discuss with the parents different ways that they can help their child at home such as reading with them.  The parents can also obtain information about various programs for their children and how to interpret different notices and reports that they may receive.  While this is an important job for the teacher to be able to communicate with the parents, the school also needs to take the initiative in setting up programs and hiring specific faculty members that can help with facilitating parental involvement, understanding and communication.  It is also important that schools practice specific communication guidelines as is required by Title III.  While working with ELL families, there are questions that schools and teachers should keep in mind.
Evaluation –
This resource seems to provide substantial information that can be used by a teacher from any content area.  It gave me something to think about as I read through the suggestions and questions that were provided.  There is no one way to approach a situation with an English speaking student and I believe that the exact same thing could be said for ELL students even more so.  Many families do not understand the workings of the schools or how to communicate with the different faculty members at the school and this seems to explain it in a way that we can reach out to the families.  It also provides information on Title III which I think is important for teachers to be aware of.
Reflection-
I think that this article provides some really great guiding questions that all teachers should be keeping in mind as they work with ELL students and their families.  They might have different practices and ideas that they are used to when it comes to schools and so they may not know how to approach the teacher with a question that they might have or they may not understand some of the letters or reports that are being sent home.  This reading provides examples on what teachers should be suggesting to parents and ways to communicate with them so that they can become more involved with their children.  One great aspect of this is the ideas that are presented when it comes to the schools getting involved.  It stresses that the schools need to keep the lines of communication open and to provide as many resources as possible to meet the needs of the students and in turn their families.  The author provides suggestions on ways that this can be accomplished.
ELL Parent Challenges
Breiseth, L. (2016). Getting to Know ELLs' FAMILIES. Educational Leadership, 73(5), 46-50.
Summary –
When we think about parents of students, there is that stereotypical role of parents always being involved ad attending every event for their child.  What is often times not taken into account is that ELL students’ parents are not always able to be involved due to other responsibilities such as working multiple jobs to provide for their family or taking care of the rest of the family.  This does not mean that the parents do not want to be involved, instead it means that they just cannot be.  There is also the possibility that parental involvement in schools is not a common practice from where they are from and so they do not know how to become involved or how to respond to this new environment with new customs.  One way to help these families is to open lines of communication and show them that they can be involved.  There is more than one way that parents and families can be involved in their child’s education.
Evaluation –
There are so many different reasons why parents are not involved and various challenges that they face.  This article brings up ones that we might automatically think of when someone mentions challenges, but it also brings up ones that we may not think about.  To help remedy some of these challenges for parents, the article makes some suggestions on how teachers can involve parents more even if it is simply sending an email or making a phone call.  In some cases, it may not always be that easy and it also suggestions some other solutions such as meeting outside of the classroom setting for conferences.  There are different approaches that teachers can take to ensure that ELL parents are understanding what they are being told and how they can involve themselves.
Reflection –
I think that this article provided a lot of useful information for educators.  It really made me think about the different views and practices that ELL families may have compared to ones that I am used to seeing.  It showed me ways that I could reach out to these families, and I think that many other people could benefit from this whether they are educators or even other students and parents.   It suggested realistic approaches that would make families feel included and more comfortable in these new settings.  It also provides ways to communicate so that the students can succeed because these different conversation starters also include ways to gather information about the student so that we can help them in the best way.

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Pieces to a Positive Environment

Patel, N., & Stevens, S. (2010). Parent-Teacher-Student Discrepancies in Academic Ability Beliefs: Influences on Parent Involvement. School Community Journal, 20(2), 115-136.

The article focuses on teacher to parent communication within the schools, based off of surveys from elementary and middle school levels from the students’ families, and the grades from students during that time. It shows the variety of teachers out there that will either welcome the parents of English learners or try their hardest not to have to contact the family. The article from the school community journal from 2010 written by Nimisha Patel and Sharon Stevens.

Summary:  Student achievement and even Teacher achievement depend on family involvement. With some teachers not wanting to include some families because of the cultural and language divides, the students suffer. The article talks about the six modes of parental involvement; “Parenting support, school-home communication, school-based volunteerism, home-based activities, participation in school governance, and the use of community resources” (Patel, Stevens pg.118) These six modes represent everything that the student needs to succeed with a positive environment surrounding them. From the article it shows that teachers need to have a positive outlook on communication with family members and not only as a negative reaction. There should be a call home once in a while when a student succeeds to show that the teacher cares and then for parental recognition once the student is home.

Evaluation: The article uses some great examples and variations of the information that make it easy to read and understand. It also shows the links between families and teachers as well as the teachers and the students. Remember the classmates who could not wait for parent teacher conferences? That is a huge example of how a teacher can have a positive outlook on the student which can then link the parents in, based on their children’s excitement and determination to succeed in their education. I would recommend this article to others for its flow, and main ideas which can be used on mostly any part of the educational sphere.

Reflection: Using this article was a great choice, I like articles that have a personal connection to the reading. You can really feel like someone is sitting in front of you teaching the information. It also gives me a lot of ideas for how the parental involvement can really shape how teachers and students communicate. Looking into the future I am afraid of those parents who are always on the defense and want to have nothing to do with talking to the teacher. This article showed me ways that if you can’t get through with one form of communication then try the next.

Baird, A. a. (2015). Beyond the Greatest Hits: A Counter story of English Learner Parent Involvement. School Community Journal, 25 (2), 153-175.

The article is a grouping of research that correlates English learners success in their education to the amount of family involvement within their education. It notes certain parts of legislation from the Improve American Schools Act of 1994 and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. Direct correlations to a families involvement and student success is the main Idea of this article.

Summary:

Throughout the history of education there has been an increasing amount of expectations for schools to invite and include families in a student’s education. The amount of family involvement from English learners is on a different curve, the reasoning behind this is cultural differences and language barriers. Many families have come to the United States to better not only their own lives but their children’s futures. The article brings up a good point that sometimes you don’t always see the family involvement, many cultures have different approaches and expectations. Families are just as important to a student’s success as the educators, without the expectations at home pushing the motivation in the classroom success is only as strong as the student is.

Evaluation: The author of this article Ashley Simpson Baird had a great theme to presenting the information; The Greatest Hits. Making it seem like there is a list of success recipes for students, and their families. It takes a lot of percentages and correlations that for me do not have an impact on every classroom. Each classroom has a different make up of students and their cultures, languages, and personalities. Can you use different parts of this research to help others? The answer is yes, the need to piece together the perfect puzzle for each class out of the Greatest Hits surrounding parent involvement is essential. I would recommend this article to anyone not sure of the history of how our schools have changed because of legislation's. It is a great way to remind and help clear up the history of parental involvement before NCLB which is as far as I remember.

Reflection: This article puts a lot of the legislation questions I have had in perspective, it shows how with each new form of legislation the responsibility of student success was shifted, not completely but partially from the teacher to the teacher, families, and community. The article was a real eye opener for me to see how the different correlations go into effect when you add in parental involvement. Looking at both articles and tying them together shows how it is not just the teacher and the students, it is the teacher, student, family, and community that make up a student’s environment. We all hope that it is positive, but sometimes you have to strengthen one tie to offset another.

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Challenges ELL Parents Face

Research: ELL Parents’ Perceptions Matter

References:LUECK, C. E. (2010). ELL Parents' Perceptions Matter. Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin, 77(1), 9-16. http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.proxy-calu.klnpa.org/eds/detail/detail?vid=1&sid=824568e0-5f29-4a3a-8819-2877dd99b39f%40sessionmgr4008&hid=4102&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=53792247

Summary: This article summarizes a research done to ELL parents in which was evident the challenges that they face because of their lack of information about the English- as- a Second- language program in elementary school. ESL programs are based on achievement scores from federal, state, and locally-mandated assessments. The article describes that in ELL parents the biggest obstacle they face is the lack of knowledge about the school programs, and this cases a disconnection between the parents and the school. The results of the research determined that the majority of parents did not have a clear understanding of the programs offered by the school, and this was a result of the schools not been able to offer available information. An example of this disconnection is that most of the parents in the research program were unaware that the school offered ESL programs for their children. In conclusion, this study results show that the involvement of parents and the school is often affected by the lack of information about programs, to improve this the researchers proposed having a website directed to this parents to help them be informed.

Evaluation: This article was written based on a research study done by the author. The research started as a personal question about the involvement of ELL parents, and to try to find out why ELL parents refuse to receive language support services for their children. As mentioned by the author, her research shows that the reason for these actions is the lack of information by the parents, and the inability of the school to provide clear information. The research provides an understanding of why there is a disconnection between ELL parents and the school; however, the article does not provide farther information about why the ELL parents are uninformed. It can be a result of parents not understanding the English language, or maybe parents that work too much, or maybe cultural background reasons, or maybe because the school does not seek the connection between school and parents. The only reason for this disconnection presented in the article is the inability of schools to provide clear information; however, as a reader I wished to know farther details of why the information is not clear enough for parents. The author came to an interesting conclusion, but the article lacks of more specific details that can be beneficial for the readers.

Reflection: I chose this resource because I wanted to know from the parents perception what was the cause of the disconnection of ELL parents and the school. From the research results it is evident that the reason for this disconnection is lack of information; however, as a reader I wished the study went in deep about why the information provided by the school is not good enough. In the article is mentioned that parents struggle to find the information resources, but as a reader I might think this can be the result of other factors such as language barriers, cultural believes that keep the parents away from the school as a sign of respect, or oversaturation of information that impairs the ELL parents to truly understand what matters. The article concludes that the lack of involvement by the parents is due to unclearness about the programs offered by the school; however, I wished to know farther details of why this is happening.  I comment this video to all educators because it will allow them to reflect on providing clear information resources to ELL parents so they can get closer to their children education.

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How to Reach Out to Parents of ELLS. (n.d.). Retrieved November 28, 2016, from http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/how-reach-out-parents-ells

This online article provide tips and advice to teachers in dealing with parents of English Language Learners and the challenges they face.  The ideas outlined in this article revolve around four categories.  They are; Using their Preferred Language, Educate Parents on the U.S School System, Arrange Home and Community Visits, and Welcome Parents into your School.  Within these categories there is information on the difficulties these parents face and the correct teacher response.  Outside of this particular article, the Colorin︠ Colorado website provides various resources on a multitude of subjects concerning educators and families of English Language Learners.  Although this webpage references Spanish directly, its application can be spread to any language and culture.

This article is simple to read and easy to understand.  It provides thoughtful, detailed and incredibly helpful advice when dealing with the parents or guardians of an English Language Learner.  Throughout the webpage itself are links to other videos, articles, and supporting websites all dedicated to improving the interactions between teacher, parents, and the English Language Learner.  It is not overly long or verbose, yet, it gets the points across.  All in all I think this an excellent resource that can begin building a teacher’s educational repertoire.

I believe this resource to functional and appropriate when dealing with both the English Language Learner and the subsequent parent or guardian.  It helps align and maintain both teacher and parent expectations of the overall relationships.  I would use this resource in conjunction with other found sources.  It is helpful, but may require additional research to delve deeper into the provided areas of topic.  I would recommend this article and website as a solid source when researching information on the challenges faced by teachers and parents of English Language Learners.

Striskovic, C., Wait, L., & Kramer, J. (n.d.). Teaching English Language Learners: What classroom and content teachers need to know about English Language Learners. Retrieved November 28, 2016, from Ohio Department of Education: http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Other-Resources/Limited-English-Proficiency/ELL-Guidelines

In this article, provided by the Ohio Department of Education, the authors discuss topics related to the instruction of English Language Learners.  Topics include identification of ELL, Stages of Language Acquisition, knowing your student, comprehension input, use of native language, culture, modifications of instruction and assessments, and strategies of instructing English Language Learners.  It is detailed and very informative. This webpage provides a thorough breakdown within each category and the website provides various links and resources on ELLs as well as education overall.

This webpage article is user friendly and the information is perfect for providing information to classroom and content teachers regarding the instruction of English Language Learners.  It also gives links at the bottom of the page that connect to additional research about providing feedback to ELLs and finding opportunities for ELLs in Common Core English and Literacy Standards.  As this is a website created by the Ohio Department of Education I find its information to be accurate and legitimized.

I chose this article because I believed it to be an excellent resource for detailing instruction of English Language Learners by classroom and content teachers.  Out of the entirety of this article I especially enjoyed the suggested strategies for instruction.  There are a dozen of helpful and comprehensive approaches one should use during the teaching of ELLs.  I would definitely recommend this source, in connection with other research, to current or future educators when looking to gain a better understanding to providing better instruction to ELLs in their classrooms.

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Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370-396. Retrieved from http://www.researchhistory.org/2012/06/16/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs/

Summary: This article is a proposal, that basic human needs are placed in a "hierarchy of relative prepotency" (Maslow, 1943, p 375). Maslow's theory is built on the assumption that any theory of human motivation would need to satisfy a set of 13 propositions. These propositions include the assumption that some needs require the fulfilment of other, prerequisite needs, such as the satisfaction of hunger and thirst before that of property ownership or health (hence the "relative prepotency"). The article goes on to describe the five different needs, including  the physiological, those regarding safety, love, self-esteem, and finally self-actualization. In addition, there are listed further characteristics of the needs, and how people react to them.

Evaluation: Maslow's article is not without its flaws. One might say that the hierarchical pyramid presented is an over-simplification of human need. The idea that humans simply fulfil one need an neatly move on to the next appears to present the issue in a tidy box. However, the author does address this to an extent, describing how in actuality, a typical person has all of his needs partially filled, and unfilled, simultaneously. The degree to which they are filled, is described by Maslow as having "decreasing percentages of satisfaction as we go up the hierarchy of prepotency" (Maslow, 1943, p. 388). Other issues are also addressed by Maslow, including alternating prepotency, such as those who prefer to improve self-esteem before familial relationships. However, the paper will inevitably suffer from being 70 years old. There are descriptions of a physiological homeostasis that is undoubtedly outdated by modern nutrition or health standards.

Reflection: I chose this article because of the specific mentions of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in the PDF on ELL family involvement. The primary purpose of this mention appears to be as a framework to help explain some of the issues with school involvement of ELL families. Since most immigrant ELL families live in high poverty areas, it is likely that they will need to fulfill physiological or safety needs before they are able to move on to the less necessary needs. In other words, the parents need a stable job and household before they can commit hours of their lives to PTA meetings. The article is a way of identifying likely needs of ELL students' families, so that in the future I can look for ways to satisfy those needs.

Chambers, E. C., Fuster, D., Suglia, S. F., & Rosenbaum, E. (2015). Depressive symptomology and hostile affect among Latinos using housing rental assistance: the AHOME study. Journal of Urban Health, 92, 611-621. Retrieved from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.proxy-calu.klnpa.org/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=9773459c-800a-4328-b5d4-19d6aed8ab5e%40sessionmgr4009&vid=1&hid=4102

Summary: The journal article investigates the effects of federally subsidized rental assistance on mental and physical health. It discusses the failures of public housing programs to provide healthy environments that would be able to promote appropriately healthy behaviors. In contrast, so called section 8 housing programs allow the renter to choose from separate physical locations, allowing for the required space for a healthier overall lifestyle. Some of the issues with public housing, as opposed to federal rental vouchers, include overcrowding, deteriorating physical conditions, outlying temperatures, and even mold outbreaks. Those living in the low quality housing and poor neighborhood conditions are more likely to suffer from "depressive symptomology and hostile affect" (Chambers et al, 2015, p. 612). The article goes on to describe its methodology, especially the terminology used (hostility, neighborhood environment) and associated definitions. The study shows that social-cohesion is associated with better health outcomes, while physical disorder is associated with adverse health effects.

Evaluation: Some of the faults of the study lay in its methodology, namely the questions and definitions used to determine the results of the study. There are many subjective issues with these questions, surrounding topics such as perceived crowding, social cohesion, or physical disorder. However, the writers believe that these measures are reliable due to the variety of questions which were used. Measures were taken for the interviewee's housing, neighborhood, hostility, and depressive symptomology. The authors came to an interesting conclusion regarding the need for affordable housing options and whether these options have negative effects, especially with the growing Latino population in the U.S.

Reflection: I chose this resource because of the continuing theme of ELL families fulfilling safety needs before academic ones. It would be prudent for educators to assist the families of students in acquiring housing so that they may move on to the opposite end of the hierarchy of needs. In order to do this, the educator should know as much as possible about housing, and the effects it has on its inhabitants. Students living in poor housing and neighborhood environments may have a higher rate of hostility and depression. Therefore an educator must be able to identify the positive features of housing, and avoid negative features that are associated with public housing, and choose instead to search through more appropriate, like federal housing vouchers.

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Biliteracy and Schooling in an Extended-Family Nicaraguan Immigrant Household: The Sociohistorical Construction of Parental Involvement

Summary:

This resource discusses the research done by following two sisters-in-law who are Nicaraguan immigrants with children enrolled in public school in California. It discusses specific challenges that parents of ELLs often face, including limited availability of bilingual education and the common practice of teachers only accepting “anglo” methods of parents involvement, such as parents reading to their children and attending meetings and school functions. The article suggests that, while parents of ELL students are often viewed as having the same culture, ELL and immigrant groups even within the same family or from the same hometown are quite heterogeneous and changing, and rely primarily on resources as they become available. Furthermore, the article suggests that while there is a stereotype that ELL parents may be uninvolved, especially in the Latino community, parents of ELLs are able to draw on their own educational histories and the expectations for education in their own countries to encourage and assist their children’s success in US schools. While teachers should not necessarily change their best practice approach to educating ELLs based on this article, teachers should realize that just because a parent’s involvement does not match traditional US standards for involvement, it does not mean that parent is cold or uninvolved.

Evaluation:

This article was researched and written by a graduate student who took the time to interview these two sisters-in-law and mothers on various occasions and in their own language. She notes that she was frequently referred to as “teacher” throughout her research and notes that her results may be appropriately interpreted as what ELL parents want schools to know. The method that this research was completed gave the participants their own voice and validated their involvement in their children’s schooling. The author did extensive social histories on each of the participants and took time to understand their personal educational histories in their home country and also the influence that Nicaraguan politics had on their educational experience. She also reflected on how these issues influenced their attitudes about education as passed on to their children.

Reflection:

I liked this article because it challenges the idea of families of ELLs as a homogeneous monolith, and it reminds us as educators and humans that people who are immigrants have a personal socio-cultural history that likely includes a significant amount of political unrest and/or upheavals. It also reminds us that just because a parent does not meet our expectations of “involvement” in traditional means, does not mean that that parent is not involved. I also very much like that it was developed by talking to the parents of ELL students themselves, in extensive personal interviews, versus impersonal methods. It allows us to see the struggles faced by those parents and to see them as multi-faceted people that are worthy of inclusion in our academic community. I think this is useful for anyone going into the field of education to read.

Building Relationships for Student Success: School-Family-Community Partnerships and Student Achievement in the Northwest

Summary:

This article discusses the role that parent and family involvement in schooling and community has on a child’s success in school. It is, of course, overwhelmingly positive. The article goes on to give practical examples and suggestions on how to involve parents. These suggestions include a curriculum that encourages family involvement, building a shared community, and having high expectations for student achievement. One suggestion that I particularly was interested in was to use folk tales, folklore, and family stories as part of the curriculum to involve parents in their children’s education. I also liked that the article encourages schools to help families not only to meet the school’s goals, but to develop their own as well as encouraging schools to look at students on a holistic level and help them meet their social and economic needs as well.

Evaluation:

This article gives practical advice in how to communicate and engage families of ELL students. The idea seems to be to offer a significant amount of support and recognize that the family’s culture and experience is important and valuable and should be honored. Similarly, it encourages schools to be explicit and up front in their expectations for parents and for students, taking much of the guesswork out of school involvement for parents who are not used to participating in education in the US culture. It also encourages schools to support families in finding their own niche in that culture instead of only adhering to the existing educational culture.

Reflection:

This article would likely be helpful both for individual teachers and for school administrators who are looking to make school-wide changes in their approach to ELL family engagement. It also would be helpful for schools who work with students from a variety of ELL backgrounds in order to address the various cultural needs of the families they are serving. The specific examples included throughout the article provides multiple model ideas to use in an implementation of an engagement program. I would further recommend this article to anyone seeking to help support immigrant families who are transitioning and adapting to U.S. culture. The activities mentioned could be useful in an adult ESL or counseling sort of setting where whole family engagement is important.

References:

Dorfman, D. and Fisher, A. (2002). Building Relationships for Student Success: School-Family-Community Partnerships and Student Achievement in the Northwest. Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. Retrieved from:

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED474379.pdf

Menard-Warwick, J. (Jun 2007). Biliteracy and Schooling in an Extended-Family Nicaraguan Immigrant Household: The Sociohistorical Construction of Parental Involvement. Anthropology and Education Quarterly. 38. Retrieved from:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/25166612 �5��cV=6~

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Four Strategies to Engage English Language Learners’ Parents

Summary: Research shows that parental involvement is beneficial for all students regardless of family background (Mansori, 2016).  Students with involved parents have a higher performance and graduation rate as well as better attendance and social skills.  Parents of ELL students may face challenges when trying to be involved at their child’s school so it is incredibly important that teachers find a way to create an inviting environment for this particular group of parents.  Mansori (2016) offers four suggestions to make ELL parents feel welcome at school: be open-minded, honor cultural differences, address communication challenges, and consider logistical obstacles.  Under each heading there are some ideas on how to accomplish each suggestion.

Evaluation: This article gives some concise information about how to involve ELL parents.  In general, the article gives useful information and suggestions, but only a few specific ideas.  Some of the specific ideas that I found especially useful are for communicating directly and effectively with ELL parents.  Speaking straightforward and avoiding jargon, student-led conferences, using videos and hands-on demonstrations at curriculum nights, and encouraging students and parents to read books together in their home language were some of the ideas I took away from this article.  When I was reading the article, I found it interesting that most of the ideas I read about for communicating with ELL parents were very similar to strategies that we have covered throughout this course for working with ELL students.

Reflection:  I would use this article at a staff meeting to get teachers thinking and brainstorming ideas on how to involve our ELL parents.  The conciseness of the article lends itself to a quick read to get teachers thinking.  It offers some general ideas that may spark new ideas for our specific population of students and parents.  By reading this article and collaborating, teachers would be able to evaluate the extent to which ELL parents are involved and what is currently being done to promote their involvement.  Also, the article stresses the importance of honoring cultural differences.  Teachers can work together to find ways to strengthen this area so that parents will feel more welcome and respected.

Mansori, M. (2016). Four strategies to engage English language learners’parents. VIF International Education, 3(8). Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/news-events/p21blog/2021-four-strategies-to-engage-english-language-learners-parents

ELL Parent Engagement in Middle School

Summary:  This video features a middle school teacher discussing her experiences with ELL students and their parents.  Specifically she talks about the challenges her ELL parents face with involvement in literacy development.  In the school district that she teaches in, there are over 100 languages represented.  The lack of interpreters for each language can create barriers for parent involvement.  Another challenge that some parents face is that they have limited literacy skills in their first language so helping their child with literacy skills in a new language is doubly difficult.  This video gives some excellent ideas for communicating with ELL parents and promoting parent involvement in their children’s literacy development.

Evaluation:  Several simple, yet thoughtful suggestions were given throughout the video to better communicate with ELL parents and to promote parent involvement.  It was suggested that all parent information be sent home in English and the student’s home language, if possible.  However, some parents don’t read or write in their native language.  In this case, the teacher suggested calling the home and leaving a message, speaking slowly and clearly so that someone else may translate for the parents at another time.  Also suggested were several ways to involve parents in their child’s literacy development even if they do not speak English or read in their native language.

Reflection: As a Reading Specialist candidate, I found this video particularly useful as it addresses how ELL parents can be involved in their children’s literacy development.  Involving ELL parents does not have to be some huge production.  It can be as simple as requiring students to take books home and share them with their parents.  I also had not thought about encouraging parents to read with their child in their home language.  Many literacy skills transfer from the first language to the new language being learned.  Reading in any language also encourages meaningful discussions, builds background knowledge, and increases vocabulary development.  Parents that cannot read in any language, can use illustrations to tell a story, make predictions, and have meaningful conversations with their child.

Prentice, A. (2012). ELL parent engagement in middle school [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoKVYcNwg_8

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Arias, M.B., & Morillo-Campbell, M. (2008). Promoting ell parental involvement: Challenges in contested times. Retrieved from: https://greatlakescenter.org/docs/Policy_Briefs/Arias_ELL.pdf

Summary: In this resource, the authors identify how the ELL population has changed over the years. The number of languages that students speak have increased; a reflection of the increase in ELLs in American schools. The authors go on to identify barriers that confront parents when they try to get involved in their child's education. These barriers are both school-based, and personal obstacles that must be overcome. They not only identify the barriers that parents face, but offer ways that these barriers can be overcome.

Evaluation: The authors identify the barriers to parental engagement as school-based barriers, the lack of English language proficiency, parental educational level, differences in home and school cultures, and logistics. Each of these barriers present a different set of challenges for parents and their involvement in their child's education. While there are difficulties on each side of the barrier, it is each sides responsibility to try to overcome these challenges in order to help the ELL to be successful in the classroom. The authors also identify traditional and non-traditional approaches to ELL parental involvement; both approaches are necessary for parental involvement to be successful. When parents and educators are able to work together in the best interest of the child, the ELL gains confidence in their education and their parents can actively participate.

Reflection: I would highly recommend this resource to fellow educators as well as parents of ELLs. I feel that the authors have presented the challenges that the parents of ELLs face as their child enters the classroom; and offer ways to overcome these challenges. They discuss documented family literacy programs that actively work in making a home-school connection for the ELL. The authors also address each barrier individually that parents of ELLs face, and offer several ways educators can promote increased parental involvement. This resource would be a useful tool for educators in trying to bridge the gap between themselves and the parents of the ELL that are desperate to be involved in their child's education.

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Breiseth, L. (2016). Getting to know ells' families. Educational Leadership, 73 (5), 46-50. Retrieved from: http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy-calu.lknpa.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=fbe2ff4b-114e-4ae3-a881-cba09a7dd6e0%40sessionmgr107&vid=8&his=123

Summary:  In this article, Breiseth discusses the risks and the lengths that parents will go to in order to provide a better life for their children. While these choices affect the adults, they greatly affect the children as well. For these reasons, it is important that educators find a way to help parents get involved in their child's education in a manner which works with their obligations in this new culture. These cultural differences can sometimes become barriers, preventing parents from being as involved as they would like in their child's education. This article offers ways that educators can overcome these barriers and develop relationships with ELLs' families.

Evaluation: I feel that the author made a strong point when she identified the fact that due to cultural differences as well as newfound obligations on the part of the parents, making the home-school connection may not fit into the "parent involvement" structures that are in place in our public schools today. She emphasizes the fact that in order to find out how involved the parents of the ELL wants to be, we must go above and beyond to try and make a connection. She also warns that while this process is comprised of trial and error, and can often be a long one, it is worth the time and effort put forth in the end. When working with ELLs in the classroom, no one knows them and their needs better than their parents. For this reason, it is important to make the connection; it not only improves your ability to provide a quality education for the ELL, but it also helps to make the ELLs learning experience more meaningful and successful.

Reflection: I would highly recommend this source to educators of ELLs and their parents alike. I think that the author has done a thorough job in providing eight suggestions that educators and parents can use to break down the barriers that make the home-school connection difficult to attain. She also includes six outside resources that offer ways for educators to get to make a connection with their Ells' families. Often times, the perception of the school is that it is a government building; many parents are reluctant to visit the school as this may not be considered acceptable in their native country. It is important to make the family feel comfortable and welcome; to provide them with opportunities for them to get to know you while you are getting to know them. When parents of Ells' are able to be involved in a way that they are comfortable with, it builds confidence and gives them a sense of belonging and the ability to help their child succeed in the classroom.

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Acquiring a Second Language for School

Collier, V. P. (1995). Acquiring a Second Language for School. Directions in language and education, 1(4), 10-14.

Summary: This resource closely examines the process of learning English as a second language through school curriculum, as opposed to acquiring it as a taught second language subject area. This paper places special focus on the language minority student whose home language is different than the dominant language of the society that they are currently immersed in. The author has developed a conceptual model that is comprised of sociocultural, linguistic, academic, and cognitive processes. Additionally, the challenges that parents face, as well as steps that they can take to help assist with English language learning, are also examined. External societal factors and their impact on language acquisition are also briefly addressed.

Evaluation: The author combines original research with existing information into a synergistic amalgam of useful information. As we have previously learned, the degree of possible second-language development is heavily influenced by the degree of first-language comprehension. One challenge that parents will face is the decision whether or not to include second-language use at home. Interestingly, while many would assume that using the second language at home would assist with mastery, the opposite is often true. According to Collier (1995), “When students switch to second language use at school and teachers encourage parents to speak in the second language at home, both students and parents are functioning at a level cognitively far below their age. Whereas, when parents and children speak the language that they know best, they are working at their actual level of cognitive maturity. Cognitive development can occur at home even with non-formally-schooled parents through, for example, asking questions, solving problems together, building or fixing something, cooking together, and talking about life experiences” (p. 7). Essentially, the author is stating that it is better to use the first language ‘well’ at home, than to speak a ‘dumbed-down’ version of the second language, which is likely to hinder language development.

Reflection: The information that I mentioned above is something that I haven’t come across so far in my ELL studies. I speculate that most would assume that the more exposure to L2, the better, regardless of its quality. I certainly would’ve felt that way. I would gladly use this resource, as well as suggest it to other teachers of ELLs, because addressing L2 acquisition misconceptions and correcting them is likely to help bring forward real results. Additionally, this source provides a lot of evidence that cognitive and academic development in L1 is highly necessary if L2 proficiency is to be had. These findings are crucial for all teachers of ELL students.

Implementing the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach: CALLA in Arlington, Virginia

Chamot, A. U. (1995). Implementing the cognitive academic language learning approach: CALLA in Arlington, Virginia. Bilingual Research Journal, 19(3-4), 379-394.

Summary: This article presents the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA), which is an instructional model aimed at increasing academic achievement for those learning through a second language. Through examination of program goals, curriculum and materials development, teacher education, instruction, native language support, parent involvement, and assessment and evaluation, CALLA implements specific science and math programs in Arlington Public Schools. Arlington Public Schools is made up of about 17,000 students, many of which are linguistically diverse, so a decent sample size is used. It is worth noting that the majority of ELLs in this distract are Spanish speakers.

Evaluation: While this article addresses several different facets of ELL instruction and classroom integration, I found that the information concerning parental involvement to be the most insightful. According to Chamot (1995), “The most important reason for building a parent-school relationship is to make parents aware of their own voice in their children’s schooling, even though that schooling is being conducted in a language in which the parents may not be proficient themselves… Difficulties encountered include the fact that many parents have two jobs, leaving little time for attending meetings, others have no access to transportation, and others may feel intimidated about becoming involved in an unfamiliar situation” (p. 387). Chamot (1995) mentions that using bilingual school personnel during meetings is the most effective way to attract parents to workshops/meetings. Chamot says, “teachers [can] suggest family math activities to be conducted in the native language, or ask parents to watch a science program on TV with their child and then discuss the program in their native language,” and that “the effect of these joint parent and student activities is to provide additional avenues of communication between parents and teachers, between students and parents, and between students and teachers” (p. 388). These quotations may be anything but succinct, but they are a good representation of the overall content, quality, and insight that this article provides.

Reflection: Like the other resource, I would utilize this article because of the relevant information that it contains. For this reason, I’d also suggest it to all other teachers of ELL students. Being that the methods mentioned in this article were carried out at Arlington Public Schools (about 17,000 students), we know that the results were formulated from a large sample size, as opposed to other article that contain anecdotal evidence from small sample sizes. The sound evidence supports much of what we already know about ELL instruction, so the content is ‘tried-and-true,’ as well as trustworthy. The only negative aspect that I can find in this article (as well as the other one), is that the info is from 1995. That being said, the information contained in this article is evidence-based and still relevant.

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Engaging Parents of English- Language Learners

Borovoy, Erin Amy. (2015, Dec. 22). Engaging Parents of English-Language Learners. [Video File] Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/bQiIBM6GvlY

Summary: This short video follows the approach of one Kindergarten teacher to involve parents in the classroom. Douglas Wheeler is the educators name and he teaches mostly English language learners. Doug's approach is to have parents come into the classroom and work with their child. Doug states that this creates a trusting relationship and allows parents to see what goes on in the educational setting. Doug discusses the benefits of this approach which are that it improves communication between parents and teachers, and it creates more learning opportunities. This video showcases parents in Doug's classroom siting next to their child and working with them as the teacher instructs in the front of the room. In conclusion, this video displays one teachers approach to involving ELL parents in their child's education.

Evaluation: I feel this video shows educators an interesting approach to involve parents in the classroom. Doug's approach would be one way to engage parents. The video shows how to implement Doug's strategy. I do feel there is an elephant in the room of this video. As an educator, you must be confident in having parents come into the classroom. The elephant is the comfort level of having parents come into the room while you are teaching. Doug focuses on all of the positives but I couldn't help but think of all of the negatives such as being scrutinized, judged, and the parents causing a distraction. However, through Doug's evidence this is a way to encourage parent involvement and create a trusting relationship so the benefits may outweigh the negative aspects.

Reflection: I would recommend this resource to educators and parents of an educator that was going to implement this strategy. I think the video shows the process working and tells the benefits of this strategy. I believe there isn't any better way to involve parents then to put them right in the middle of the classroom. This will allow ESL parents to see how the school system works. Personally, I feel Doug's strategy would be best implemented with a confident teacher because it would be difficult to teach with many parents in the room. Also, parents may be working during the day therefore some parents may not be able to come into the classroom and work with their child. I do think this is a 21st century way to engage parents in their child's education.

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Why Didn't They Show Up?

GUO, Yan. (Oct. 2006). Why Didn’t They Show Up? Rethinking ESL Parent Involvement in K-12 Education. TESL Canada Journal, [S.I.], p. 80 – 95. ISSN 1925-8917. Retrieved from: <http://teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/article/view/29/29>.

Summary: This journal is about the barriers that ELL parents face when becoming involved in the school setting. It discusses reasoning behind parents not showing up to school obligations. Some of these reasons that the author lists are language differences, parent unfamiliarity with the school system, teacher attitudes and instructional racism, different views of education, and culture differences concerning home-school communication. Examples and evidence are given to essentially back up the author's ideas of why ESL parents aren't involved in the school setting. With communication barriers, Guo explains of a personal experience where the translator witnessed a child translating wrong on purpose. ELL parents also face challenges with culture backgrounds and ideas on the education system. Teachers want parents to be involved, however, in China, parent involvement is not expected or practiced. Some Asian parents don't attend school functions because in their culture it is unacceptable to challenge a teachers authority.  Guo also discusses some ideas to break the barrier between parents and teachers such as school socials and clubs. He also touches on specific court cases where California and the UK sued to get rid of ESL programs. Overall, this journal is mainly about the barriers that ELL parents face in the school setting and why they don't show up.

Evaluation: This journal brought about many intelligent ideas on the barriers that parents face. The author really put into perspective why parents don't get involved or are hesitant in the school setting. He focused on more than just communication barriers. He went on to explain cultural differences, different views, and unfamiliarity on the school system. This journal provided relevant examples and evidence to back up the author's point. In conclusion, this journal entry was a relevant source because it looked at more than just communication barriers as to why parents aren't involved or struggle to get involved in the school setting.

Reflection: I would use this resource to recommend to other educators because it showcases why parents are struggling to get involved in the school setting. I think this would be helpful for teachers because it gives an outlook from the parents perspective. Honestly, this resource is lengthy. It was 16 pages long. If I really wanted to get the point of the article across, I would recommend pages 4-8 which really focus on the specific barriers. I would recommend this resource because it focuses on more than just the normal communication barriers. It looks at and describes cultural backgrounds and parents ideas on the school system.

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ELL Family Involvement

Espitia Mendoza, V. (2016). The Challenges Latino Parents of English Language Learners Encounter in Their Child’s Schooling: The Politics and the Praxis. Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences, 76. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy-calu.klnpa.org/ebrary/docview/1658240815
This article is based on the research of parents of ELLs who live in a border community.  The research showed that the ideas of the school personnel did not align with the ideas of the parents of the ELL students.

This article includes information from a study involving Latino families who live in a border community and their involvement in their child’s school.  The author reminds us that the United States Department of Education has found that positive home-school relationships contribute to student success, and the Department of Education has developed nation-wide policies to support this fact.  Although these policies have been created, many challenges still exist for parents of ELLs.  The research on which this article is based involved a survey of Latino parents of ELLs and school personnel; it also involved parent and school personnel interviews.  It was found that the school personnel’s idea of what they offered to parents did not align with what the parents reported they were provided.

When evaluating this resource, I found it to be reliable and useful.  The research seems to be thorough and accurate.  The study provides an important look at the home-school relationship.  Schools personnel and parents may have different understandings and expectations, so it is imperative for the school to make every effort to provide an inclusive educational experience.  The study also revealed a lack of cultural awareness in the school personnel.  The author made the challenges ELL parents face when trying to be involved in a school-wide setting very clear.

I would use this resource and recommend it to others based on the validity of the research and the issues that the results bring to light.  It is important for educators to understand the implications of their actions and perceptions and how these relate to the home-school relationships.   This study showed that certain perceptions affected the students and the home-school relationship.  If we understand the importance of this relationship, we should make a concerted effort to ensure it is a positive one for our ELLs.

Empowering ELL Parents & Families at Home. (n.d.). Retrieved November 26, 2016, from http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/empowering-ell-parents-families-home
This article from Colorin Colorado provides several suggestions for parents of English Language Learners.  It outlines ideas for developing literacy skills at home and helping children with homework.

This article includes suggestions for teachers working with parents of students who may only speak Spanish and not know how to read or may only speak and read in Spanish.  If this is the case, these parents still play an important role in their child’s literacy development.  Parents can use storytelling, “read” wordless books, or say rhymes and sing songs to develop vocabulary and oral language skills.  Parents can also engage in meaningful conversations with their children, watch educational television programs, and take trips to the local library.  Parent can practice their native language and work to develop English with their child.  Parents can also read books in their native language as well as bilingual books.

When evaluating this resource, I found it to be useful.  I thought that all of the suggestions provided were well explained and easily achievable.  It did not suggest that parents of ELL students participate in any overwhelming difficult activity.  It was also a positive article that encourages the use of a student’s first language at home.  It emphasizes that using this first language can help a student’s literacy development in his/her first and second language.  It is important for teachers to reiterate this when working with parents of ELLs.

I would use this resource and recommend it to others because it clearly outlines several suggestions that teachers could relay to parents.  It is necessary for teachers to emphasize the importance of a student’s first language as he/she develops a second language.  This article provides realistic suggestions for students reading at various levels.  It also provides practical homework suggestions for parents who do not speak English.  I think this would be a common concern for those parents, and this article provides several great ideas to help the teacher create an inclusive environment.

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Widen, M. (2014, October 15). Teaching ESL Students in the Classroom[Video File]. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/ii1ZE5DhWFQ

Summary:
This YouTube video is about teachers and other school personnel can help not only ELL students but also their families.  The video goes over the challenges, the number of non-English speaking people not only in the US but in countries all over the world, and how teachers can help.  Sometimes ELL students are mainstreamed even without knowing English so it is important that every teacher has some sense of how we should educate these students.  Not only should we know how to educate them but we should also know how we should communicate wither their families as well as include them in their child's education. In this video there are tips and strategies for teachers to use in case they are ever in a situation such as this.  Watching this video allowed me to see just how important taking this class is because I can use the skills I learned in this class to help me in my future career as an educator.

Evaluation:
Being able to watch this video and seeing different specialist and educators speak upon not only the challenges ELL students go through but also the challenges the parents go through.  Some, but not all, teaches know how they should communicate with ELL students and their families but I personally believe that every teacher should learn how to do so.  Families coming to the USA and not knowing English is a rising occurrence.  We are experiencing more and more migrants everyday.  With some of these people needing to attend school it is critical for teachers to know how to educate these students and how to communicate more easily with their families.  Having this background knowledge will give teachers an advantage if they should ever deal with a situation where an ELL student is involved.

Reflection:
This video was very informational.  It allowed me to see as a future teacher what I should expect to experience if an ELL student should come into my classroom.  I should know strategies to be able to teach them, strategies to communicate with their families, and strategies to help them feel welcome in my classroom.  Any teacher would benefit by watching this video because it will allow them to see what teachers go through when they have this type of situation in their classroom and how they handle it.  The more knowledge and information a teacher obtains about ELL students and their families, the more beneficial it will be for their career.

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Conner, C. (2010, September 19). ESL Parent Involvement[Video File]. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/EPUrtSEQ760
Summary:
This YouTube video shows an expert ESL specialist being interviewed.  In the interview, the specialist goes over why parents should be involved in their children's education and the challenges and struggles they will endure while trying to do so.  If parents are involved in their children's learning it is more likely that they will attend school, do their homework/class assignments and overall work harder.  If their parents are not involved then it is likely they will be less motivated to do well.  The challenges the parents will go through make it extremely hard if their child is an ELL student.  More then likely, if the child does not know English then the parents will not either.  The parents could have a difficult time communicating with the teacher and school board in order to speak upon how their child is doing in school.  These challenges often make a family not want to try to be involved with the school but it is important they do so for their child.

Evaluation:
Watching this video and being able to see a specialists intake on parent involvement really opened my eyes.  Throughout this class I have spent a lot of time thinking about the challenges any ELL student will face but I forgot about what the parents would have to go through as well.  Most, but not all, parents bring their child to this country to get a better education so they are adamant about getting their child into school.  Parents will either have to struggle between the language barrier while trying to communicate with school administration or they will have to find a translator to help in the process.  Either way, they have a very tough challenge to go through in order to get their children/child educated.

Reflection:
This video is not long or very entertaining but it is extremely informational.  Before hearing the specialist speak on certain points it first asks a question.  During the time the question was on the screen I would pause the video and try to answer the question for myself and then I would press play and hear how the specialist answered the question.  This allowed me, and everyone else who watches this video, to test myself not only on my own knowledge but how I am beginning to think as a teacher.  I would recommend this video to anyone studying ESL or know an ELL student or family.  You will learn a lot about the struggles and challenges they all face.

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Leong, H. (2014, June 28). Supporting parents of ELLs [Video file]. Retrieved https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRvKUz-yZys
Approximately 11% of the student population in American public schools are English Language Learners (ELLs) (Leong, 2014).  The parents of ELLs that are not proficient in the English language are not usually highly involved in their children’s education (Leong, 2014).  They do not assist their children with schoolwork or converse with the teachers (Leong, 2014).  ELLs’ parents can learn English by helping their children complete specifically designed homework assignments (Leong, 2014).  Furthermore, the parents’ level of education influences their involvement in their children’s education, too (Leong, 2014). Another challenge that ELLs’ parents may experience is unfamiliarity with the school system in America (Leong, 2014).  They may also have difficulty managing everyday issues, such as child care (Leong, 2014).  The parents may believe, based on their personal experiences, the climate of the school is uninviting (Leong, 2014).

The video is a trustworthy source of knowledge.  In addition, the information is current and valid.  The information is relevant because it pertains to making teachers aware of challenges that ELLs’ parents deal with when attempting to be involved in the school-wide setting.  The presentation has a professional appearance because there are no spelling or grammatical mistakes.  However, the presentation should have explained ways for teachers to help parents of ELLs cope with daily issues.

Nevertheless, I would recommend this resource to others.  After viewing the video, I now realize that obstacles make it difficult for ELLs’ parents to be actively included in their children’s education. By having the parents collaborate with their children to complete the tasks, students’ academic achievement is improved.  In addition, the increase exposure to English improves the parents’ and children’s English proficiency.  Creating significant connections with ELLs’ parents, makes them feel welcome at school.  Since I am consciously aware of the barriers, I can help parents achieve what is best for their children.

Academic Learning Community. (2011, September 20). 6 strategies to get parents involved with your ESL students’ education. Retrieved November 23, 2016, from https://velazquezpress.com/blog/6-strategies-get-parents-involved-your-esl-students%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%84%A2-education
Since the parents of English Language Learners (ELLs) do not usually attend teacher-parent conferences, they are unable to learn their children’s progress in school (Academic Learning Company, 2011).  Teachers should have the conferences at convenient times during the day and in the evening, which provides ELLs’ parents with more opportunities to attend the meetings (Academic Learning Company, 2011).  When inviting the parents to the teacher-parent conferences, include in the invitations a picture of the students in the class and mention numerous interpreters will be present at the meetings to answer their questions (Academic Learning Company, 2011).  Also, give the phone numbers of the interpreters in the invitations, so that parents can contact them to discuss concerns they may have about the meetings (Academic Learning Company, 2011).  To encourage parents to attend the meetings, explain in the invitations that food they enjoy eating will be provided and small prizes will be given away (Academic Learning and Company, 2011).  Since students often times do not give their parents the invitations, offer them a few extra credit points as an incentive (Academic Learning Community, 2011).
The website is credible because it is affiliated with a trustworthy organization.  Therefore, the information found on the site is reliable.  The goal of the resource is clearly, concisely stated.  In addition, contact information is available to clarify misunderstandings.  Although the information on the site has not been updated for several years, the facts are unlikely to change.
I would recommend this resource to others because it describes practical ways to support ELLs’ parents in the school setting.  For example, having the meetings happen in the day and in the evening shows parents that you are willing to work around their schedules, and that they are essential to the educational success of their children.  By using small tangible rewards, parents are motivated to partake in the meetings.  Moreover, serving ethnic meals shows parents that you value their traditions making them feel safe and comfortable.  This helps to close the gap between the culture at the school and the students’ home.  The interpreters eliminate the language barrier for the parents of ELLs allowing them to learn the school system in America.  Subsequently, the techniques described in the article increase the parents’ involvement in their children’s education (Academic Learning Community, 2011).

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This article points out the facts that many teachers in the US are not ready to work with students and families who speak little/no English. However, since schools are the ones who are responsible for the education of the students, teachers are constantly seeking out help and guidance to try to hep the students in any way they can. This article mainly shows the results that occurred whenever teachers placed greater emphasis on family involvement practices and the effective strategies they used for enhancing ELL learning. (Chen, 2008)

The second resource I used was one I found to be particularly insightful on inclusion of ELL students. In this article, they discuss how often times English language development is separated from content instruction, because it is thought that English language proficiency is needed for subject matter learning. However, the study they performed shows that the integration of of inquiry science and language acquisition enhances learning in the domains of both. (Stoddart, 2002) I personally would like to try out the five-level rubric they mention in their article to try to help any ELL students I would have in class, since I am directly science based, and this would fit very well into my own content area. I personally feel like a solid foundation of English language proficiency is needed to learn a language also, however, if what they are finding is true, then this could be slightly revolutionary in the way  we approach teaching ELL's.

In evaluation of my resources, I feel like the first is extremely important, because it specifically goes over exactly why parent involvement is important when teaching ELL students. Teachers are reaching out to families in an effort to try to make the learning experience seem more connected to a student's cultural background. Plus, they acknowledge the challenges ahead of them, so they are able to overcome them and work with the families in order to do this. The second article is important, because it outlines the importance of ELL inclusion in classrooms, by trying out new methods to try to help them learn, even without proficiency in the English language. By doing tis, they are able to have ELL students involved in the classroom, and try to have them learn the same materials, rather than having them confined to specific English learning classes, and not being able to participate with their peers.

In reflection, I'm glad we had to do this assignment, because the more we know about English language learning students, the better we'll be able to help them and assist them in the long run. By looking at the importance of having families involved, we're able to see that we need to take the time to reach out and have the families assist in any way possible, because all everyone wants is for the students to receive a great education. Inclusion of the students is also extremely important. By doing this, we're making the students feel just as important as the other students, instead of feeling like they are struggling or having an awful time in school because they aren't understanding the language or what is going on. I personally feel like these are two of the most important topic we could cover in regards to ELL's.

Sources Cited:

Chen-Ting, Chen. (2008).

Helping Teachers Work Effectively with English Language Learners and Their Families, The School Community Journals, Volume 18, Issue 1, pages 7-20. Retrieved from: http://search.proquest.com/openview/00f937ec6c0ea8d56df7e4d9af1fdb7b/1?pq-origsite=gscholar

Stoddart, Trish. (2002, May). Integrating Inquiry Science and Language Development for

English Language Learners, Volume 39, Issue 8, pages 664-687. Retrieved from: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tea.10040/epdf?r3_referer=wol&tracking_action=preview_referrer=scholar.google.com&purchase_site_license=LICENSE_DENIED_NO_CUSTOMER

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Brown, C. E. (2015, October 22). Parental Involvement in Any Language. Retrieved November 23, 2016, from http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/10/22/schools-need-to-ensure-inclusion-of-ell-students-and-parents

Summary:

This link is to a news report on US News’ website. It is a document written first hand by a parent that had to move their child to the United States and help them with being non-native English speakers. The parent discusses their desire to be involved in their child’s academic life as much as possible, but the difficulties they faced along the way. The mother discussed where the difficulties were, and help us realize what we need to do as a teacher so they don’t face the issues in the future. This website helps make the reader aware of an experience of a parent, along with the numbers showing that this parent is not alone.

Evaluation:

Seeing this is written by a parent who actually experienced such situation that we have been studying all semester makes it seem that much more realistic to me. I was engaged while reading the article the entire time, as my heart broke for this parent who wrote the article. It is a good article to read for anyone because it points out what is hard for parents with students who are ELLs. You can only study ideas for so long, but seeing it actually happen to someone makes it that much more important. This article easily opened my eyes about the topic of ELLs the most this semester.

Reflection:

This link is my favorite of my two sources I chose this week. This is my resource that addresses the challenges ELL parents face when trying to be involved in school-wide settings. I would certainly recommend this article to be read by any of my peers so they can read the powerful story. We are able to take what we read and make appropriate changes so that parents of our students will never need to write an article like this. Since I read this article, I feel even more prepared on what I need to do for an ELL and their parents, as well.

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What teachers and Schools can do to assist ELL parents.

Summary:
This resource Supporting Parents, Family, and Community involvement in your school describes the importance of family involvement.  The article goes over all of the positive advantages that a student’s family can have on their success.  It then gives suggestion on how teachers can get parents to be a large part of the school community.  It list the reason and process in step like fashion such as assembling a team, gathering data, how to communicate both ways (home and school).  It helps the teacher learn how to communicate with parents who may not speak English, so that they understand the teacher’s expectations, along with letting the family’s know that we understand they have expectations as well.  This article helps teachers and administers to make family’s a large part of the education process in order to help the student succeed.

Evaluation:
This article can be beneficial to teacher and administrators in helping to make a connection with the community and students families.  It provides with research based information on how and why families should be involved in the schools.  Supporting parents, Family & Community involvement in your school has been written to lead a teacher or administrator through the process of incorporating all families in to the school.  It is written in a way that you can follow its step by step process. Not only does it explain why and how but also different ways of completing the various task.

Reflection:

As a soon to be teacher I like the portion where it explains how to communicate with the parents.  I understood that a good line of communication is important, but the article provides different methods that may help.  I think that many of ELL family’s believe that they are not knowledge able enough of the English language to become part of the school community.  This article explains why teachers need to encourage parents even if they are not fluent in English to be part of your classroom.  It helped me to see that as a teacher I need to make the extra effort.

References:
Davis, D. (2000, June). Supporting Parents, Family & Community involvement in your school. Retrieved November 23, 2016.

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The challenges ELL parents face.
Summary:
Challenges This video  from AESAP in Scenario : 4 ELL parents Dilemmas explains the different challenges that ELL parents and teachers face.  It explains why some parents are unable to talk throughout the day.  Other issues of why these parents and teachers become frustrated is due to the lack of communication between teachers and parents.  Many of the parents may know some English but the teacher is uninformed of this information, so they have the special education teacher make the phone call home.  Finally is the amount of time that it takes to find an interpreter to translate what for both teacher and parent. This is a short video but gives many of the issues that can be seen with in a school and why parents and teachers do not communicate with each other.

Evaluation:

This video is a good short training for teachers who will be receiving students that are ELL.  It helps to answer some of the important questions that a teacher may have before the student arrives.  It also explains what a family may be going through while accumulating to their new surroundings.  Many of the families have to start over find new jobs or have both parents work in order to make ends meet.  Not all teachers understand that these students family life is being rearranged which can cause behavioral outburst.  It also answers the question of who can translate and why.  It is taught that interpreters can be anyone who speaks both languages, but this video explains why friends and family should not get involved.  Overall it is very helpful and will educate a new teacher on some of the aspects of ELL students and their families.

Reflection:
This video helped me to understand some of the growing issues and question that I may have as a teacher.  That as a teacher I should ask question to get as much information about the students as possible.  Some of the questions should be does the parent speak any English, How should I contact the parent, and when would be a good time to make contact.   It is not always the special education teacher’s responsibility and parents should hear from the actual teacher if there is an issue. I now can see why teachers need to take time and try to figure out why the student may be acting out.  Are they being a behavioral problem or are they acting out due to major changes in family structure at home.  It also allowed me to see why family and friends should not be interpreters.  I would hate to be the teacher who helped to tear a family further apart because my student did not want to do their homework.  This video has helped to answer some hard issues when it comes to teaching students that are ELLs.
References:
AESAP. (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2016, from http://faculty.virginia.edu/aesap/scenarios4.html omza}CTsB

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Strategies to Increase ELL Parent Involvement. (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2016, from http://www.bing.com/cr?IG=EEDF1B2AE95746199A4FEA0B40F176FB&CID=0D2DFF5D34986D781340F68B35A96C9C&rd=1&h=g3iP9aH9HX8RCIUd1DpQQNOkZANVigsKEjs0qLdV6jk&v=1&r=http://www.luc.edu/media/lucedu/education/pdfs/languagematters/Seidler%26Strauts-ELDL.pdf&p=DevEx,5036.1

Summary:

This website has various documents in one that focus on English Language learners and how to make their transition easier. It begins with tips for school personnel on how to communicate, educate and support parents with their children coming into a school.  It then lists different strategies to be used with the parents to avoid any issues with them. There are also songs to teach the students and to show the parents what they are working on and the songs are catchy tunes that maybe the parents could relate to. The last two parts I found important for this website is it provides English and Spanish cognates, and also a teacher self-assessment on themselves with English Language Learners. This website focuses on ELLs in general, and how to get them more involved, as well as their parents to support them in their new adventure.

Evaluation:

The tips and strategies provided in this website are those in which I may have never thought about on my own. I think reading through this website and highlighting what are the key parts for myself can be a useful tool when I become a teacher of an English Language Learner. The website consists of many different strategies with ELL’s and I do wish that it was more consistent or at least organized. I also wish there were explanations for why certain items were placed on the website, I can see their usefulness, but would also like to see the thoughts from the authors perspective on how they would like us to approach them. This website is more focused on younger learners than older, but the main points on it are what I find to be useful that are not age specific.

Reflection:

As I said earlier, the website provided me with many ideas that I certainly would not have come up with on my own. I would recommend this website to a friend or peer for them to view the tips and strategies to get their own ideas that maybe they, too, would not have considered. I think that anyone could take the main idea of this website and modify the ideas to make it their own so that they fit in their own classroom. The items inserted into this website may be scattered, but I find that they are a one stop website for answers and resources for a class. I would tell a friend to head to this website for cognates, songs, and strategies when dealing with English language learning parents and students.

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Academic Learning Community. (2011, September 20). 6 strategies to get parents involved with your ESL students’ education. Retrieved November 23, 2016, from https://velazquezpress.com/blog/6-strategies-get-parents-involved-your-esl-students%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%84%A2-education

Given that the parents of English Language Learners (ELLs) do not usually attend teacher-parent conferences, they are unable to learn their children’s progress in school (Academic Learning Company, 2011).  Teachers should have the conferences at convenient times during the day and in the evening, which provides ELLs’ parents with more opportunities to attend the meetings (Academic Learning Company, 2011).  When inviting the parents to the teacher-parent conferences, include in the invitations a picture of the students in the class and mention numerous interpreters will be present at the meetings to answer their questions (Academic Learning Company, 2011).  Also, give the phone numbers of the interpreters in the invitations, so that parents can contact them to discuss concerns they may have about the meetings (Academic Learning Company, 2011).  To encourage parents to attend the meetings, explain in the invitations that food they enjoy eating will be provided and small prizes will be given away (Academic Learning Company, 2011).  Since students often times do not give their parents the invitations, offer them a few extra credit points as an incentive (Academic Learning Community, 2011).
The website is credible because it is affiliated with a trustworthy organization.  Therefore, the information found on the site is reliable.  The goal of the resource is clearly, concisely stated.  In addition, contact information is available to clarify misunderstandings.  Although the information on the site has not been updated for several years, the facts are unlikely to change.
I would recommend this resource to others because it describes practical ways to support ELLs’ parents in the school setting.  For example, having the meetings happen in the day and in the evening shows parents that you are willingly to work around their schedules, and that they are essential to the educational success of their children.  By using small tangible rewards, parents are motivated to participate in the meetings.  Moreover, serving ethnic meals shows parents that you value their traditions making them feel safe and comfortable, along with closing the gap between the culture at the school and the students’ home.  The interpreters eliminate the language barrier for the parents of ELLs allowing them to learn the school system in America.  Subsequently, the techniques described in the article increase the parents’ involvement in their children’s education (Academic Learning Community, 2011).

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The first article, “Success with English Learners: Parental Involvement is Essential”, breaks down the low graduation rates across the country and focuses on the even staggering numbers that ELLs have when compared to the average student.  English language learners are a large and fast-growing part of our student population in education (Prosise, 2008).  The success rate for ELL’s increases dramatically when schools are able to recognize and provide support for ELL’s early in the educational process rather than later on.  This success is due to a myriad of factors, including good teachers, more instructional time, curriculum, class size, and a research-based literacy program based on teaching in English with additional support (Prosise, 2008).  The article goes on to discuss the importance of parent involvement in the educational process for ELL students and how crucial of a role they play in the development of the ELL student.  Also, the article discusses the various barriers that can hinder involvement and strategies to increase parental involvement as well.

Involving an ELL’s parent is often times easier said than done and often times has been a struggle in our education system.  The challenge goes well beyond language differences – poverty and family mobility are more common with the parents of ELL students (Prosise, 2008).  Culturally, these parents seem to be more dependent on the school system and trust it a lot more as well. They seem to just go with the flow rather than question the practices of the school or ask questions about the programs that their child is involved in.  The article goes on to talk about to discuss about the different strategies to promote parent involvement.  Some of the strategies include; promoting parental communication between parents and staff, holding parent education workshops, having a translator on site to help with communication efforts with parents with language difficulties, have ELL parents serve as teacher/school aides or clerks, and providing assistance for families who are in need of services but do not have the resources for them.

I would use this resource because I feel that it provides the reader with an in-depth perspective of issues that ELL families face and resources to remedy the situation.  The article is reader friendly and provides crucial information to help create awareness for all families not just ELLs.  I like the different ideas that the resource gives to the families to help involve them and create awareness in the community about ELLs.  I feel that a majority of residents in schools just are not aware of the challenges these students face on a daily basis.   The more exposure to a language, the greater the likelihood of successful language acquisition (Prosise, 2008). Therefore, interaction between all students should be encouraged, and segregation of all types must be vigilantly guarded against (Prosise, 2008).  The article preaches that the more involvement that parents have in their child’s ELL education then the success rates increase as well but as I stated previously it is easier said than done so we must stay persistent and continue to raise awareness about ELL education to parents.

The second article, “Welcoming ELL Parents into the Classroom”, discusses how teachers can try incorporate parents of ELL students into school and keeping them engaged.  The article preaches teamwork between both the school and the parents but it is not always easy to get parents involved, especially those with language issues (Flannery, 2010).  The article gives you four simulated modules on how to deal with situations of difficult parents.  The four scenarios are: “Do your parents return phone calls?”, “Do they attend parent-teacher conferences?”, “Do your parents contribute in meaningful ways to the classroom?”, and “Do you think your parents just do not know how to help?”.  Each specific way gives the teacher alternatives to handle parents to try and incorporate a more welcoming culture both in and outside of the classroom between the parent-teacher relationship.

The first prompt was: “Do your parents return phone calls?”.  The alternatives the module gives the teacher is to mail information to the parent, call the parent on the phone, and physically go to the parent at home or work to discuss about the ELL student (Flannery, 2010).  I feel all of them ways will help to create a better relationship between the parent and the school.  The second prompt was: “Do they attend parent-teacher conferences?”.  The module recommends that you get a basic overview of the student/parent situation so make sure you have a translator, childcare, involve extended family, and schedule during a time that is convenient for all parties (Flannery, 2010).  The third prompt asks: “Do your parents contribute in meaningful ways to the classroom?”.  Teachers need to institute culture into the curriculum (Flannery, 2010).  The last prompt was: “Do you think your parents just do not know how to help?”.  Teachers need to figure out what parents can do to help their ELL student, teachers can advise parents can take literacy classes to improve their skills to help their children, and teachers need to be able to teach parents how to help with homework/advocate for their students.

I could see this resource being a valuable asset in the classroom.  It gives the teacher ideas on how to involve parents of ELL students into the classroom.  The resource gives the teacher various outlets of scenarios and plans if the first option does not work.  This article seems to emphasize the importance of the parent and teacher relationship and how important teamwork is for the future success of the ELL student.  We as teachers need to realize that communication is vital between both parties and we need work in tandem with parents in order for our ELL students to reach new academic heights.

References:

Prosise, R. (2008). Success with English Learners: Parental Involvement is Essential. Retrieved November 22, 2016, from http://lexingtoninstitute.org/success-with-english-learners-parental-involvement-is-essential/

Flannery, M. E. (2010, January). NEA-Welcoming ELL Parents into the Classroom. Retrieved November 22, 2016, from http://www.nea.org/home/37022.htm

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Rachel Myers-Engaging Latino Families : Learning from an Autism Screening Program at a Community Based Clinic

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Rachel Myers-Engaging Latino Families : Learning from an Autism Screening Program at a Community Based Clinic

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Linas, K. & Soto, S. (2015).
Engaging Latino families:
Learning from an Autism
screening program at a
community based clinic.
Retrieved from www
.colorincolorado.org/article
/engaging-latino-families
-learning-autism-screening
-program-community-based
-clinic
This article is about Latino families' perspectives of communication disorders such as Autism Spectrum Disorder. The authors suggest building a good rapport with families, gathering information about cultural perspectives related to disabilities and education, and providing appropriate supports. ELL families need to be able to trust the people assessing and treating their children, and they also need to know that those people have their children's best interests in mind. Service providers must understand ELL families' definition of appropriate development for their children, their expectations for appropriate behavior, and their communication styles with authority figures. Language barriers must be considered and overcome by utilizing translators and interpreters when appropriate. It would be beneficial to provide contact information to people who can provide services in the child's school to determine whether a disorder such as Autism is present and to treat the disorder.

This is an excellent resource that applies to multiple fields, including health care, speech-language pathology, and education. It discusses an  aspect of ELL parental involvement in their child's education. This discussion is conducted in a culturally-sensitive manner that takes ELL family members' unique perspectives into account. ELL children with communication disorders have additional educational barriers beyond those associated with limited English proficiency and require the support of their family members more than their non-disordered ELL peers. This resource provides several ideas for getting ELL families involved in the identification and treatment of communication disorders in the context of the educational setting.

I would use this resource, because it is personally relevant to me as a future speech-language pathologist (SLP). This article considers the impact communication disorders have on ELL families as well as the resources these families have in their child's educational setting. Its specific focus is on getting ELL families involved in the identification and remediation of their child's communication disorder by communicating effectively and compassionately with these families. I would recommend this resource to SLPs and future SLPs, because it is comprehensive and culturally sensitive. This article also involves real-world examples of challenges inherent in identifying and treating communication disorders in the ELL population.

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Rachel Myers-Increasing ELL Parental Involvement in Our Schools: Learning from the Parents

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Rachel Myers-Increasing ELL Parental Involvement in Our Schools: Learning from the Parents

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Panferov, S. (2010). Increasing
ELL parental involvement in
our schools: Learning from
the parents. Theory Into
Practice, 49. Retrieved from
suzannepanferov.faculty
.arizona.edu/sites
/suzannepanferov.faculty
.arizona.edu/files
/IncreasingELL_0.pdf
This article is a case study of two ELL families and focuses on their experiences with the educational system. Challenges of these families in getting involved with their children's education included limited English proficiency, which negatively impacted family members' abilities to assist with schoolwork or communicate with their children's teachers. An additional challenge was limited or different formal schooling, which may have negatively impacted parents' perceptions of the educational system of the United States. Family members with limited formal education may not be able to help their children with difficult academic tasks. Families with academic experiences different from American education may view American education and teachers negatively. Family members may have also had differences in the estimation of the value of literacy and education in general, considering literacy to not be their role or to not be as valuable as other skills. Finally, families may have had limited access to resources such as printed materials to promote literacy or technology that would enable them to be in contact with teachers.

This resource is thorough and carefully considers the differences between two ELL families and their experiences with getting involved in their children's education. It is clear that these two families were chosen for their distinct differences, with one family being more involved than the other one. This was due to cultural differences, familial makeup, personality differences, and motivations. One family also had more resources and a better education in their home country than the other family did. It was interesting to see how all of those factors combined to determine how involved a parent could, and would, be in their children's education.

I would use this resource, because it is a comprehensive reflection on the factors of parental involvement of ELL students. As a future speech-language pathologist (SLP), I value parental input, because parents are a child's first language teachers. Parents also help with the carryover, or the lack thereof, of new skills. It is therefore important to me to know what impacts ELL families' involvement. I would share this resource with other future, and current, SLPs, because they would also benefit from learning why parents do and do not get involved in education and how to get them involved in education.

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Aaron Stepanik – How to Assist ELL Parents’ Inclusion

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Aaron Stepanik – How to Assist ELL Parents’ Inclusion

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The article gave many ideas on how to connect with ELL parents so that the parents feel that they are contributing to their child’s success.  For example, teachers must be creative communicators.  They must find out how ELL parents preferred to be contacted and they can use a bilingual translator if necessary.  Teachers must find ways to meet with ELL parents such as parent-teacher conferences.  Teachers must make the parents feel comfortable when communicating.  Teachers must find out information about the ELL student’s home life.  Invite parents to share information about their child and tell the parents something positive about their ELL student.

Parental involvement is essential for student success.  Many teachers may feel that ELL parents do not care about their child’s academic success.  However, ELL parents do care about their child’s academic success.  Families who are willing to come to America for a better life surely care about all aspects of their child’s life including their education.  After reading the article, I realize that it is the teacher’s responsibility to welcome ELL parents into the classroom.  Teachers must make the extra effort to ensure that ELL parents are important contributors to the success of their child’s education.

I chose this article because it gave many great ideas on how to connect with ELL parents.  I have a much better idea on how to welcome ELL parents into my classroom.  I recommend this article to other school personnel because they will learn ways to connect with ELL parents.  As mentioned in my other post, ELL parents may feel intimidated when talking to teachers; therefore, teachers can use the tips provided in this article so that the parents will feel welcomed.  Overall, if teachers are empathetic to ELL parents, then a positive connection will be made.

Reference

Breiseth, Lydia.  (2016, Feb.).  Getting to Know ELL’s Families.  Educational Leadership, volume 73, issue 5, page 46-50.  Retrieved from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.proxy-calu.klnpa.org/eds/detail/detail?vid=1&sid=aa250cc4-a44b-4dff-a341-e3196af428ac%40sessionmgr107&hid=117&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#db=voh&AN=112867390

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Aaron Stepanik - Challenges that ELL Parents Face

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Aaron Stepanik - Challenges that ELL Parents Face

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A study was done on the parents’ of middle school ELL students in a town located in the south-central portion of a Western state of the U.S.  The parents who were also English language learners met with the teachers during an ELL parent night at the middle school.  The parents spoke with the teachers one-on-one.  The researchers wanted to analyze the parents in the following question:  How do you feel about interacting your child’s teachers?  The results of the study concluded to three themes.  First, the ELL parents believed that the teachers judged them as having low intelligence because they can’t speak English fluently.  Second, the ELL parents believe that they have no influence on the teachers’ decision-making and that they felt intimidated to talk to the teachers.  Third, the ELL parents feel that there will be negative repercussions if they speak up.

The researchers in the study did a great job to realize how ELL parents feel when talking to teachers.  However, the study should have also evaluated the parents of students who natively speak English as well so that the researchers can compare the similarities and differences between all parents. For example, maybe the parents of students who natively speak English feel intimidated or less intelligent when talking to the students.  By knowing how all parents feel when talking to teachers, the researchers can tell if the ELL parents are in fact treated differently in comparison to the other parents.  Finally, the ELL parents were all from the same school.  Therefore, a bigger sample size of ELL parents would give a more accurate assessment of how ELL parents feel when talking to teachers.  Evaluating ELL parents from other middle schools would have given valuable input.

I chose this resource because teachers and school personnel must understand how ELL parents feel.  The school faculty must make ELL parents feel that they are important in their child’s academic success.  According to the study, the parents do not feel welcome by their child’s teachers.  The teachers in the study are intentionally or unintentionally making the ELL parents feel unimportant and intimidated.  Therefore, this article is a great resource for future school personnel because they will hopefully realize how their actions/words affect the emotional state of many ELL parents.

Reference

Shim, M. Jenna.  (2013).  Involving the Parents of English Language Learners in a Rural Area:  Focus on the Dynamics of Teacher-Parent Interactions.  Rural Educator, Vol. 34, Issue 3, page 18-26.  Retrieved from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.proxy-calu.klnpa.org/eds/detail/detail?vid=1&sid=edc983e3-fdbb-4012-aa17-a66ec6fbacbc%40sessionmgr4009&hid=4202&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#db=eue&AN=94637477

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Fran Chopp - How to Reach Out to Parents of ELLs

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Fran Chopp - How to Reach Out to Parents of ELLs

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Colorin' Colorado. (n.d.). How to reach out to parents of ELLs.  Retrieved from http://www.colorin colorado.org/article/how-reach-out-parents-ells.

This article was adapted from the book, Calderon, M. & Minaya-Rowe, L. (2003). Designing and implementing two-way bilingual programs.  A step-by-step guide for administrators, teachers, and parents.  Thousand Oaks, CA:  Corwin Press.
This article begins with the statement that ELLs benefit greatly from their parents’ involvement in their education, but parents may feel apprehensive about getting involved due to several challenges:  Limited English skills and  little to no familiarity with the American culture and public school system.  Included in the article is a link to another article, Talk with your child’s teacher, which highlights additional concerns/challenges that ELL parents may face with respect to talking to school teachers and administrators.   The article continues with a focus on how educators and administrators can reach out to ELL parents and boost their participation in their child’s education.  The article provides tips for dealing with the language barrier, providing information to educate ELL parents on how the U.S. school system works, hours, holidays, rules, progression, administrative hierarchy, curriculum, teacher and school expectations, parental rights, language programs, etc.  Teachers are encouraged to arrange in advance with school district/union and parents for participating in after-school home and community visits.  Discussions regarding the use of interpreters, welcoming parents into the school through special activities, recruiting parents as volunteers, presenting opportunities for adult learning and available resources are provided in this article as well.  Further, in this website article is a bonus video, by Pat Mora about the benefits of teachers reaching out to their Spanish speaking ELL’s parents.  This website article provides solid information that teachers should consider when reaching out to their ELL students’ parents and families.  While I do not believe the list of recommendations is a complete list, it does, however, contain vital foundational points/tips for helping parents feel comfortable and able to participate in their child’s education.  I consider this article a starting point for developing a checklist or a tool box of ideas for helping ELL parents feel welcome and included.  One of the ideas worth highlighting involves a suggestion for welcoming the ELL parents by arranging for them to receive a school tour.  The article prompts the use of an interpreter to explain and answer questions about state standards, assessments, teacher and school expectations, etc., to facilitate a better understanding of the school system.  The tour can also be used to introduce family members to key school administrators.  I would recommend this article to other teachers and administrators as a starting place for becoming familiar with some of the challenges facing ELL parents and how to bridge the language gap.  Also, this article provides information in a clear and simple manner, designed to be a quick read to garner the basics in support of teacher-parent partnerships.  The link to the article, Talk to your child’s teacher,  provides teachers and administrators with critical insight into some of the questions and concerns ELL parents may have along with clear answers that they can utilize when talking with ELL parents.  After reading these recommendations, teachers and administrators will be better armed to provide ELL parents with the information they need to help their students be successful learners in the American school system.

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Fran Chopp - Tips for Successful Parent-Teacher Conferences with Bilingual Families

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Fran Chopp - Tips for Successful Parent-Teacher Conferences with Bilingual Families

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Roberston, K. (2007).  Tips for successful parent-teacher conferences with bilingual families.  Colorin' Colorado.  Retrieved from http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/tips-successful-parent-teacher-conferences-bilingual-families.

This article provided multiple tips to help teachers bridge the language barriers while providing for cultural expectations and providing the information parents and family members need about their children’s progress in the classroom.  The article begins with a scenario that helps teachers see some of the ELL parents and family’s challenges with learning about a new school in a foreign country.  The article raises multiple ELL challenges that are faced by ELL parents such as language, culture, student expectations, how communication with teachers and administrators is accomplished, how to get interpreters, and differences in philosophy regarding parent involvement.   Not mentioned in the article is the fact that the ELL parent may not have a good education and they may feel unqualified to discuss their student’s learning.  In light of these ELL parental challenges, this article provides information on how educators can help parents overcome these challenges through the parent-teacher conferences.  The article breaks this topic into four categories:  What to do before the conference, during the conference, after the conference, and provides a section for hot links to help ensure a successful meeting.  The before the conference section provides tips on how to make an appointment with bilingual parents and to help ensure the parents will be able to attend the appointment.  In this section, in addition to other practical information, the article stressed the need to arrange for an interpreter in advance of the conference and provided options for low-incidence languages or a lack of official interpreter availability.  The tips provided for during the conference section covered how to speak with parents and make them feel welcome, the use of clear documents with visuals, topics for discussion, ways to help their child be successful in school, provision of translated information, local support resources, and a reminder to leave time for questions.  The section on after the conference stressed the need for sending thank you notes and tips for what should be included.  In the last section of this article provided digital links to information that may help bilingual families with future school interactions.   This article is an excellent resource for providing teachers with practical tips to will help bilingual parents feel welcome and encourage them to be involved in school activities and their child’s education.  Also, the article was comprehensive in the information that should be considered when planning a parent-teacher conference.  There was one point about enlisting help to find an interpreter, if necessary, that caused me to raise my eyebrows.  Specifically, the article mentioned that if another bilingual parent offers to serve as an interpreter, to make sure that the conference parent is comfortable with this.  I was slightly concerned considering the amount and extent of training that is involved in preparing for bilingual interpreter duties.  However, the article also said that the teacher should make sure this idea of enlisting another bilingual parent’s help does not violate privacy policies in the teacher’s school district.  As a future teacher, I plan to take this information and convert it to a living checklist to use in preparing for all meetings with my potential ELL parents.  The information seems reliable and consistent with other reputable sites that provide information on ELLs and teacher and ELL parent partnerships.  The information is written clearly and concisely and provides tips that should be used during any engagement with bilingual parents.  The article provides of some of the challenges faced by bilingual parents and provides a great outline of ways teachers can help parents get engaged in their student’s education through teacher conferences.  I would not hesitate to recommend it to other teachers, parents, and family members.  Finally, the hot link section provides additional helpful information and provides clarification of issues that could be confusing with these additional sites.

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Why Some Parents Don't Come to School

The authors of the article, "Why Some Parents Don't Come to School," talked with Latino parents and parents in two low-income Anglo neighborhoods to gain more insight about they feel disconnected from schools.  The article states that parents who don't speak English often feel inadequate in school contexts. Cultural mismatches may also occur.  For example, one Latino educator tells how asking young children to translate for their parents during conferences goes against a cultural norm.  It places the children in a position of equal status with adults, which then creates dysfunction within the family hierarchy.  Another culturally-based explanation is that school is something a child needs to do independently.  The parents also provided many suggestions for teachers and administrators to promote parent involvement.

The authors in this article went right to the source to gain more information about why parents are not involved in their children's school.  Even though this research was done over ten years ago, all of the information in the article is still relevant and accurate today.  The parents provided a variety of reasons why they aren't present at school.  In addition, the parents also provided ideas and suggestions on how schools can get more parents involved.  I believe this is extremely beneficial information for schools.  Schools need to hear from the parents and work with them in order to create cooperative relationship between home and school.

I believe this article could benefit administrators, teachers, ELL parents, and even  English speaking parents.  I would use the suggestions provided by the parents to help increase parent involvement in my classroom and in school.  It also provides administrators and teachers with insight into why some parents are not involved. ELL parents could read this article and know that they are not alone.  There are other parents out there that are facing the same challenges they face.  This article would be beneficial for English speaking parents to read because it would provide them with more information on why some parents are not involved.  It would be good for them to see that ELL parents care just as much as they do about their children's education, but there are barriers or cultural differences that keep them out school.

Reference
Finders, M. & Lewis, C. (1994).  Why Some Parents Don't Come to School.  Educational Leadership. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may94/vol51/num08/Why-Some-Parents-Don't-Come-to-School.aspx

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The resource, “A Guide for Engaging ELL Families: Twenty Strategies for School Leaders,” can be summarized as discussing the different challenges and barriers that ELL families often have to go through. This resource breaks down the challenges that ELL families go through into different areas. This resources also provides ways for educators to avoid these challenges for families to enhance the overall experience for the educator, family, and student. Families often face language barriers and challenges when attempting to be involved and engaged in their child’s education. These barriers and challenges often discourage the involvement and engagement of the families. This resource breaks down different ways that educators and administrators can utilize to avoid these challenges.

This resource discussed barriers that ELL families often have to go through and overcome. The resource was broken into six major themes to overcome the challenges to promote the success of the ELL students and their families. Each of the themes explained what educators and administrators need to know. As well as, each of these themes also consisted of four components for the educators to reflect on while providing specific strategies and examples. These strategies can be easily adapted and implemented by any educator to meet the needs of family and student. Adaptions should be made to meet the needs of the specific culture.

I would definitely use this resource in my own classroom, as well as, recommend this resource to colleagues and administrators. This resource provides ample examples in connecting with ELL families, communication, parent participation, parents as leaders, community partnerships, and creating plans to involve ELL families. The resource not only discussed the challenges that ELL families often face, but provided ways and strategies to overcome these challenges. These strategies were specific and concrete that can easily be adapted to meet the need of any family and their corresponding culture. The resource ensures making English language learner success a priority.

The resource, “Five Ways to Engage Parents of ELL Students,” can be summarized as discussing different ways of engaging parents of English language learners in the school setting. The resource states that is often challenging for parents of ELLs to be involved in their child’s education and school experience because of language barriers. The five ways to assist in engaging parents are to connect with the families, ensure effective communication, tailor your approach to cultural traditions, get parents involved in school activities, and create a plan to encourage parental involvement. It is important to connect with ELL families to build and strengthen a relationship to meet the needs of the student, family, and their respective culture. As educators, we need to ensure that there is an effective communication tool for all families, especially ELL’s, while respecting the families’ viewpoints and cultural concerns. When teaching and communicating, we need to consider all families’ cultures and respect these cultures in every thing that we do. Supportive, involved families are the backbone of their child’s education. With this being said, it is important to devise and follow through on plan to encourage family involvement in the classroom and school.

This resource is a great way to break into steps what we as educators need to do to encourage family involvement in our classroom and school. There are five main steps that we need to utilize in engaging our ELL families. This resource broke each of these five steps down to help us as educators to understand and utilize in our own classrooms. Each step had several different cultural view points for educators to understand and relate to. Each step was broken down into terms and viewpoints that all educators can understand, even if the specific culture was not discussed.

I would use and recommend this resource to colleagues about involving and incorporating ELL family involvement in schools. The resource was easy to read and provided examples that all educators and administrators could relate to. The resource broke each way of engagement down and explained it in ways that all teachers can relate to, while providing insight on different cultures. For example, it explained how certain cultures view behaviors in different ways, but this shouldn’t be discouraged. Overall, this is a great resource for all educators to use to incorporate and engage their ELL families in their child’s school experience.

References:

Breiseth, L. (2011). A Guide fir Engaging ELL Families: Twenty Strategies for School Leaders. Retrieved November 20, 2016, from http://www.bostonpublicschools.org/cms/lib07/MA01906464/Centricity/Domain/112/Engaging-ELL-Families.pdf

Teaching Strategies. (2013). Five Ways to Engage Parents of ELL Students. Retrieved November 20, 2016, from http://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/teaching-strategies/five-ways-to-engage-parents-of-ell-students/

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The resource, English Language Learners: A Growing Population by Kathleen Flynn & Jane Hill, can be summarized as addressing the challenges ELL parents face when trying to be involved in school-wide settings. The main obstacle to parental engagement given is that they feel intimidated by the school staff and uncertain of the extent to which they should be involved in their children’s education.   ELL parents have the challenges of language proficiency, knowledge of school practices, and parental values when trying to be involved in the school setting.  They have a difficult time helping their child with homework or talking with the school teachers or administrations and often need to work outside of the home with little time to attend school functions. They are embarrassed by their lack of education and they hesitate to get involved because they regard teachers as the experts. This summary presents a glimpse of the depth of this resource.

This resource from Flynn & Hill can be evaluated highly because of its’ content and descriptions of the immense challenges that ELL parents face, as do the schools, when trying to be involved with the education of their ELL child. This article is clearly written with charts and statistical interpretation of the percentages showing the lack of training, changing demographics, and recommendations that address many of these challenges. The authors list obstacles for ELL parental involvement attributed to their education, socio-economic level, or non-English speaking homes. In addition, activities for promoting ELL parental involvement are given in a workable format. Practical guidance with both traditional and non-traditional approaches to ELL parental involvement are presented for easy comprehension. This resource is excellent for providing suggestions of parental advocacy and empowerment for the ELL child.

I would highly recommend the resource, English Language Learners: A Growing Population, because it contains a plethora of recommendations and approaches based on the challenges that an ELL parent faces when trying to be involved in a school-wide setting. I would use this resource for promoting ELL parental involvement by incorporating the suggested activities of a welcoming attitude, creating an educational environment that accepts diversity, and having meaningful communication with the translation of important documents. The amount of research with credible references and studies provided are important for my decision in using the results and suggestions. The educational techniques given, in order to promote communication between the child, parent, and me, are valuable to each of us for promoting literacy at home and in school. The recommendations given in this resource, are informative for me to use for involving the ELL’s parents in meeting the expectations for their child and also by making the parents advocates in the process of their child’s education.

The resource, Teacher-Parent Partnerships: Enhancing Communications by Jeffrey Gelfer can be summarized as addressing how and what I, as a teacher, can do to assist ELL parents’ inclusion. In order to maintain a bond with the parents, I would accumulate information about the needs of the student and parents so that I could plan educational experiences to provide for the child’s interests and capabilities. I would help the parents increase their understanding of the child’s physical, social, emotional and cognitive development by including the parents in the educational programs and building a working partnership with them. Also, school personnel can inform the parents of any resources available for them. There needs to be a constant on-going two-way process from home to school and school to home to ensure that the ELL’s parents are included for the best interest of their child.

An evaluation of the resource, Teacher-Parent Partnerships by Gelfer, would be rated as excellent. It is clearly written based on research and experiences of the author. The perspective it gives with the ELL parents and their child being interdependent, makes its’ tone authentic. The suggestions and guidelines referring to the involvement of the ELL’s parents in the child’s education are numerous and state the importance of their intent. This resource clearly contains  easy-to-read strategies to implement in order to build strong working partnerships with an ELL’s parents.

I would also highly recommend the resource, Teacher-Parent Partnerships by Gelfer, because it provides activities for parents and teachers to communicate and work together effectively for the welfare of and ELL child. The research with credible guidelines for creating a positive educational experience for an ELL and the ELL’s parents, makes it immensely valuable to include in designing my instructional strategies and assessments. After reading the various ideas and techniques given, this paper will definitely assist me in providing parent-teacher communications and partnerships. The concepts given make me realize how vital it is for the ELL’s parents to be involved in their child’s education and how I can assist in this process. The benefits for the English language learner derived from this resource are commendable and can enable the Ell to attain transferable learning skills.

References:

Flynn, K., & Hill, J. (2005). English Language Learners: A Growing Population - PBworks. Retrieved November 19, 2016, from http://chansenedconsultantaea11.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/50595003/McRelenglishlanguagelearnerspop.pdf

Gelfer, J. (n.d.). Childhood Education. Retrieved November 19, 2016, from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00094056.1991.10521602?journalCode=uced20

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Anthony R. Vorrasi - ELL Family Involvement PADLET ASSIGNMENT

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Anthony R. Vorrasi - ELL Family Involvement PADLET ASSIGNMENT

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When it comes to understanding ELLs one important aspect of this is understanding immigrant families. The first source that I have chosen is called “Children of Immigrants: 2008 State Trends Update” (Fortuny, 2010). This source is all about the facts of how many immigrants are coming into this country, where they are from, what they face etc (Fortuny, 2010). After reading this source it is shocking as to the difficulties that immigrants face. What is also surprising is the challenges the ELLs face due to factors that are out of their control. Numbers and information like this doesn’t lie.

This source to me is a great indicator of what we as future educators may have to deal with when it comes to ELLs. One of the most amazing parts of this source is the information that is given on the education of the parents of ELLs. Many ELL students may have parents who completed education up to the 9th grade, but many of them have not (Fortuny, 2010). There is also a huge issue when it comes to poverty in immigrant families which means the families of ELLs possibly (Fortuny, 2010). These challenges seem to suggest that many ELLs are not just facing the challenges of learning a new language, but they are dealing with much more.

I would definitely use this resource and recommend it to others to understand the families of ELLs. America is a nation of immigrants, but I think that most Americans have forgotten their immigrant past. Unless you’re a Native American you come from an immigrant. We need to understand immigrants as educators because we may have to help them. Reading sources like this will hopefully tell us what some families may not be willing to tell us due to embarrassment.

It is important to understand ELL families, but it is also important to understand ELLs parents feelings towards education. The next source that I have chosen is called “Promoting ELL Parental Involvment: Challenges In Contested Times” (Arias & Morillo-Campbell, 2008). This source gets into topics like the characteristics of ELL students, the difficulties that their parents face when it comes to getting involved in education, and ways to promote involvement (Arias & Morillo-Campbell, 2008). I think that it is very important that this starts with understanding the ELL’s family. That is a good place to start because understanding the family is a good way to understand the difficulties to then apply solutions.

Looking at solving any issue should be done by understanding the problem and considering reasonable solutions. One thing that is great about this source is that it gives traditional and non- traditional models for parental involvement (Arias & Morillo-Campbell, 2008). These two methods are very similar to me in that they are meant to bring the students and their family into a larger family of learning. This is important when it comes to overcoming the barriers that these families face like language difficulties, the parents low levels of education, culture in school and at home, and more (Arias & Morillo-Campbell, 2008). As future educators overcoming these barriers with any solution traditional or non-traditional is vital.

I think I would look at this resource as more of a direct guide as to what ELL students and their families are facing. To be a successful teacher it is vital to understand your students. This is much easier said than done. I would recommend this source to anyone who happens to be teaching at least one ELL student. Any way to help the parents of these students become a positive part of their education is worthwhile for the student and their family. The parts about parental involvement are important in this source, but I think that understanding the barriers is the best way to come up with our own solutions for these students and their families.

References

Arias, M. Beatriz Ph.D., Morillo-Campbell, Milagros Ph.D.. (2008, January). Promoting ELL Parental Involvment: Challenges In Contested Times. Arizona State University

Fortuny, Karina. (2010, September). Children of Immigrants: 2008 State Trends Update. The Urban Institute.

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Kaitlyn Schmid - ELL Family Involvement 

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Kaitlyn Schmid - ELL Family Involvement 

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Promoting ELL Parental Involvement: Challenges in Contested Times

The number of English Language Learners in schools on the rise.  Therefore, it is important to find effective ways to increase the parent involvement of ELL students.  At times, barriers cause it to become a challenging task to get ELL parents and families involved.  These barriers include: school-based barriers, lack of English proficiency, parental educational level, disjuncture between school culture and home culture, and logistical issues. In order to battle these barriers, schools must come up with programs that work to integrate parent involvement in school.

This was an extremely informative article that provided a plethora of information that could be used by teachers, administrators, and families.  The article shows the growth of ELL students in schools on charts.  These charts provide a quick overview of the data.  While this article is from 2008, most of the data still parallels more recent articles.  In addition, the article discusses why ELL parents are less involved and it provides many research-based strategies and programs that help to increase parent involvement.

I would use this article to help me gain a better understanding of the specific barriers that parents and families face.  Only when we know the barriers, are we able to overcome them.  In addition, I would use this article to help develop strategies or programs to implement in the school or district.  I would recommend this article to teachers and administrators who are working with ELL families.  It provides traditional and non-traditional programs that can be used to increase parent involvement in schools.

Reference:
Arias, M. & Morillo-Campbell, M. (2008).  Promoting ELL Parental Involvement: Challenges in Contested Times. Arizona State University. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED506652.pdf