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Teaching Written Expression to Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners By Anne W Graves & Robert Rueda

Major Takeaways

There needs to be an understanding amongst teachers that students with low proficiency in English do not equate to a diminished or inadequate cognitive or academic ability. Instead, teachers need to diversify their tool kits to meet the needs of diverse learners.

Language is a part of identity, and it's our job to foster and cultivate a safe environment in which students' unique identities are celebrated.

To create a plan of instruction for students, you must first understand their unique backgrounds, such as their cognitive needs, cultural practices, and literacies, language barriers and needs - plans of intervention, motivation, and social interactions.

Culturally sustaining pedagogy requires teachers to look at students as valuable contributors to the classroom.

Questions

For content classes like social studies, how can we incorporate more journaling exercises that allow both freewrites and connection to the content? ( Do you grade journals, if so .. based on what ?)

Although our classroom should be supportive and flexible to student diversity and needs, how do we combat standardized testing and school-wide assessment protocols? How do we grade a student's effort?

Connection

To make our classroom socially sustaining, we need to teach from a social justice perspective and use resources such as literature to foster collaboration so that students can analyze identity markers like race, class, gender, and various intersectionalities. To challenge racism, sexism., heterosexism, and ableism. Conversations that surround power, discourse, privilege need to be a priority. To encourage safety and kindness in the classroom, norms and expectations need to be established not only for students but also for administration. It so often that diverse learners are treated as burdens rather than essential contributors to a classroom. I believe without confronting that straight on; we allow power hierarchies in learning to persist.

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Juliet E. Hart’s article, “Strategies for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students With Special Needs” provides various research-based academic and behavioral strategies that teachers can incorporate in the classroom in order to better support culturally and linguistically diverse students and students with disabilities. For example, our classroom environment should be flexible and supportive by encouraging students to use their native language(s) during instruction, collaborative work, and discussions. Hart explains, “The use of the native language by teachers conveys an unspoken appreciation for and respect of the students’ home language and culture” (p. 199). We need to help students sustain their native language(s).
In my classroom I encourage my students to use their native language(s). I talk to my Spanish-speaking students in Spanish, I identify cognates for my students, and I also note-take in Spanish. By doing this, I have conversations with my students where we share our cultural experiences, family stories, and I get to know them even more.

Another research-based strategy is exposing activities or task to students before they engage with them with their peers—“Priming permits the student to be exposed to the new content in a context free of the pressure to perform” (p. 200). This not only promotes engagement, but it also helps CLD students gain confidence because they can share knowledge about the topic or task and even be an expert “when the content is introduced” to the whole class.
It is imperative that we design instruction and teach content in ways that will be accessible for all students. Ensuring that we provide extra support to the students that need it, incorporate multiple modalities, and honoring their diverse identities and literacies.

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For this week’s choice article, I decided to read Juliet E. Hart’s Strategies for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students With Special Needs as it discusses a growing population of students that deserve the utmost amount of attention and change in our classrooms, but are receiving very little. The CLD (culturally and linguistically diverse) student population is rapidly growing in the United States, but is often misunderstood through our current assessment and instructional practices. Due to flaws in multiple areas of teaching, CLD students are being inaccurately placed into special education environments when their gaps are not necessarily in learning, but in their language.

There were many conversations in the article that I found interesting, but perhaps the most intriguing was the author’s mention of research-based academic and behavioral strategy of Spontaneous Language Use in the classroom. The first thing that Hart discusses in this section is the support for students to code switch as a way of promoting language use. What was interesting about this mention of code switching wasn’t what Hart discussed when it came to students utilizing another language, but what she mentioned with educators using phrases that they were familiar with in other languages. Hart states, “Further, the monolingual special educator can use simple words and expressions such as sí (yes) and y que mas? (and what else?) as prompts to encourage students to continue communicating (Brice & Roseberry-McKibbin, 2001) even when their speech production is limited” (Page 199). This brought me back to my experience of teaching in Spain where the teachers, as well as the students, consistently code switched between English and Spanish to achieve their academic goals together. In addition to this suggested technique, Hart added other suggestions for special and general educators to note as they planned for differentiation in their lessons. A few “tips and tricks” that I feel like every educator should adopt are “Highlight key terms through repetition, increased volume, and slight exaggeration, and write them on the chalkboard” and “Use gestures, facial expressions, voice changes, demonstrations, modeling, visuals, props, manipulatives, and other cues to communicate and convey the meaning of new words.” (Page 199). This technique does not only serve as differentiation for CLD students, but can be a genuinely effective instructional strategy to guide all students in their learning.

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Jones et al.'s "Reading Instruction in Tier 1: Bridging the Gaps by Nesting Evidence-Based Interventions within Differentiated Instruction" was a frustrating article for me. On one hand, it demonstrates the importance of being consistent in the use of research-backed strategies to guide learning. On the other, it emphasizes the role of support systems from administration and counseling in order to understand what students need. I'm thinking about this article in context of the 10th graders I see; I mostly teach in an ICT setting with a co-teacher, and in most classes we're working at that tier 1 or 2 level where our strategies are enough to support them. But I also have a 15:1 class that I see for 2 subjects (one of them as just in-person support). and these students are essentially at a tier 3 level, while my co-teacher and I try to adapt lessons from the regular 10th grade english teacher and, quite frankly, receive very little support in terms of planning assignments they can complete successfully.
In recent months, some teachers have been exploring the Windows and Mirrors approach to literature-- essentially, modeling diversity in literature as a means to represent the whole school community to minority students, and express the experiences of minority groups to students who may not be part of them. This has actually resonated well with some students at the tier 3 level of support, and they have had success in their work. Other students have had no response to it, and it ultimately drives the question for my coteachers and I of what will actually connect with them in order to raise interest and comprehension in a way that facilitates their learning.

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The article “Culturally Responsive Practices for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students with Learning Disabilities” posits that culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students are referred for special education at higher rates in part because the cultural disconnect between their communities and the school building. These cultural differences lead to different learning styles, which are not often honored in the classroom, and to harsher disciplinary measures that result in suspensions and lost classroom time. It follows then that in order to better serve these CLD students, teachers must practice culturally responsive pedagogy.

Overall, this article provided a good summary of what CRP is and how it can support all learners. While this is not something new, the biggest takeaway for me is that to be culturally responsive and sustaining, teachers need to continuously reflect on their practice and how it is impacting students. I think this is especially true when it comes to students with disabilities. The authors state that one reason why CLD students are failed by schools and teachers is that teachers assume “...that the failure of a child to thrive intellectually is due to a deficit in the child rather than a deficit in teaching.” Too often, if a student is struggling in a class, the teacher will refer them for a special education evaluation rather than asking themselves what they could be doing differently in their class to support them. This is why differentiation and UBD are so important for all teachers, not just special education teachers. This also reminded me of an article from The Atlantic called “What Anti-racist Teachers Do Differently.” In the article, Pirette McKamey argues that anti-racist teachers see and know their Black students and view their success “as central to the success of their own teaching.” I think it is important to think this way about students with disabilities, too.

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For this week I read an excerpt from the book Teaching Composing written by Anne W. Graves and Robert Rueda called, Writing Linguistically Diverse Learners. In it, they argue for the importance of journaling as a form of supporting and levering their funds of knowledge along with their identity. The idea these authors propose is to have the students do journaling and for the teachers to respond to these entries in writing to model the discourse. The authors state that journaling can serve as a tool that can promote the development of writing, as students get to practice the skill. Through their research, the authors found that journaling can improve motivation and the quantity and quality of writing. As students practice the skill and become more invested in writing, this practice can attend to specific cultural and discourse norms.

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“Differentiated Instruction for English Language Learners: Strategies for the Secondary English Teacher” by Laura Beacher was a very insightful read. In the past year, one of my areas of focus has been differentiation; the logic being not having to focus on areas of classroom management that deal with behavioral issues would give me more time to think about the classroom management that is embedded in my lesson planning. The article broke down the three different ways in which differentiation can be implemented content, process and/or product.  This year I used an abridged version of the first ten chapters of A Long Walk to Water to accompany the actual novel, they also had the audio of the book available at all times on Google Classroom. This would be an example of content adaptation that has proven very successful with my multilingual learners (MLL). Another part of this particular article was about knowing your students and avoiding using stereotypical texts or making assumptions about the students. Instead, the article suggests understanding the students in your classroom to provide other modes of support. For example, once you understand who your students feel most comfortable working with, you can pair them together. This is a form of differentiating process; since the students get to work together they are able to exchange ideas and expand their understanding of the content. Finally, differentiating products; while this one I have tried, it is often difficult to develop within my curriculum without losing some of the skills required for a task. An example would be when we wrote our argumentative essays and some of my students (not limited to MLLs), were not required to write a counter argument paragraph due to the fact that they had either struggled with the other components of the essay or needed more time to work on their other paragraphs. I guess my question would be; How is it possible to differentiate an argumentative essay when an important piece of this process is to acknowledge opposing viewpoints?

Also a quote from the text that made me feel stronger in my position to push back was the following, “Elitism or inflexibility on the part of the teacher should not become a barrier to a student’s access to active learning” (Breacher 2011, pp. 69). In other words, if you are holding back on differentiating because you feel like you are “watering down” the material, you are setting limitations that will continue to recreate a lack of engagement and success within your classroom. Ultimately, you are the “barrier” to your students’ success, not the language.

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After reading Cheryl A Utley's "Culturally Responsive Practice for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students with Learning Disabilities", I was once again reminded that the real work of educating begins with the educator. Recognizing that the cultural and linguistic needs of my learners are ever-shifting, we (as educators) must consider how we are meeting these demands. Before we (as educators) do the work of delivering instruction and differentiating, we must "recognize that we are all cultural beings with our own beliefs, biases, and assumptions about human behavior" (12). In doing so, we acknowledge that there are differences in power, access, and ability in all individuals within this social structure. By this point, we can begin the real work of engaging in practices that critically examines the structures at work in hopes of guiding our young people to realize their potential, find entry into society without giving up what they brought into it, and disrupt discriminatory ideologies. It's clear to me that what precedes any rich activity or brilliantly designed lesson must be the work of building a safe and inclusive environment where the cultural experiences of students are valued. Only then will educators be able to build/differentiate instruction around the learner.