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Alex Shevrin Venet. (2021). Equity-centered trauma-informed education. W.W. Norton & Company.

Elizabeth Birr Moje, Afflerbach, P. P., Enciso, P., & Lesaux, N. K. (2020). Handbook of Reading
Research, Volume V. Routledge.

Lapp, D., & Fisher, D. (2011). Handbook of Research on teaching the English Language Arts. Routledge.

Reutzel, D. R., & Cooter, R. B. (2019). Teaching Children to Read : The Teacher Makes the Difference. Pearson Education NY.

Shanahan, T., & Lonigan, C. (2017). The Role of Early Oral Language in Literacy Development - Language Magazine. Language Magazine. https://www.languagemagazine.com/5100-2/

Supporting emergent bilingual children in early learning. (n.d.). https://www.edc.org/sites/default/files/uploads/Supporting-Emergent-Bilingual-Children_English.pdf

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"Even more vexing is the fact that teachers — the most important source of language input in preschool classrooms — have a history of using language in ways that may not be consistent with the interactions found by research to be conducive to language learning. Teacher’s interactions that best encourage language learning include having conversations that stay on a single topic, providing children opportunities to talk, encouraging analytical thinking, and giving information about the meanings of words."

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"Put simply, readers must translate print to language and then, much as in listening, they must interpret the meaning of that language. Numerous studies support this approach by showing that word reading and language comprehension are relatively independent skills, but that each contributes significantly to reading comprehension" (Shanahan & Lonigan, 2017).

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"In the end, making strides in this area of a child’s educational development can begin with a very simple exercise-shared book reading. Although various approaches have been found to improve young children’s language, the approach of shared book reading has gained the greatest research support thus far, particularly when such reading is carried out dialogically, that is, with much language interaction between the reader and the child. Combining shared book reading along with other language activities with explicit decoding instruction in the context of a supportive and responsive classroom, can make the difference between a child whose literacy development is at or above standards or one who struggles with reading, writing, and literacy throughout his or her K-12 education."

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Early Literacy Development from Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts

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Early Literacy Development from Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts

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Reading this article made me reflect on when I was looking at daycare facilities to send my twins after a year at home together. They were born premature, spent a lot of time in the NICU, and I worried about when they would reach their milestones. I didn't look at the different daycare facilities with an evaluation of where they were child-centered or skills-based in their approaches. But I now know that where we ended up was a combination of the two.

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Article: "Supporting Emergent Bilingual Children in Early Learning"

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Article: "Supporting Emergent Bilingual Children in Early Learning"

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I think most research shows that English Learners do best when they are supported in their acquisition of English via dual language programs. Unfortunately, we do not adhere to this approach in most public schools.

This becomes especially difficult at the secondary level, as students enter our school system with a variety of prior educational experiences. Without much support, they are enrolled in grade-level classes and expected to do grade-level work when they are new to our country and the English language.

Teachers are pretty much left to their own devices when determining how to help, teach and evaluate their English learners. In the English department at my school, there are several viewpoints. One viewpoint that several teachers have is that they do not know how to help their English Learners, they do not have the time or resources so they choose to do nothing. Also, they argue, if the district and state is requiring students to learn grade-level content and be evaluated on grade-level standards, even with remediation, many of our English Learners will not (yet) be able to meet these standards.

Other teachers do modify curriculum. Students may be required to read several articles and write an argumentative essay. For the English Learners, students are given translated versions of the articles and asked to produce a sentence or paragraph. Students pass their classes with a "D" letter grade.

I have spoken with teachers on our campus that use translation apps via student phones - which translates what the teacher is saying in real time.

One of our science teachers meets with newcomers to his class and shows them how to have Google automatically translate all content into their home language.

Much of this assumes students are literate in their home languages. I have found that this is not always true.

I often reflect on a book I read called Equity-Centered Trauma Informed Instruction by Alex Venet. The author states that we should not assume that students bring traumatic experiences with them to school. We should consider how students may experience trauma at school. The more we work to examine how our schools can be equitable, the less traumatic it will be for students. I think it can be pretty traumatic to move to another country and experience a very monocultural school setting.

Before school started I approached our new principal with the proposal that the daily morning announcements be read in different languages on different days. He ultimately turned this idea down as being "too disruptive". He instead opted to having the announcements be run on screens in the office, library and cafeteria. The announcements will also be translated into different languages. For me, I wonder what if our announcements are in English only a few times a week? What if on other days they are read in Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, Dari, Pashto? In a really big "disruptive" way the announcements signal to our student body that we are not a monocultural school. All students can be welcomed. All students receive information in their home language. All students are invited to participate fully in their education. It can be a small step toward equity.

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"It is apparent that success in early literacy is crucial for survival. Those
who are literate earn more than those who aren’t. Those who are literate are less likely to have social problems or get in trouble
with the law. Those who are literate are less likely to be chronically ill. If a child’s language is not appropriately developed at age 3 and he/she does not attend a quality preschool with a language and literacy focus, it is likely that this child will have trouble learning to read. If a child does not learn to read in by the end of third grade, we can predict that this youngster is likely to drop out of school. Ninety percent of the children who do not read on level at the end of grade 3 will never reach grade level. Preschool and kindergarten are the time when literacy gaps can be closed and those who are at risk can catch up. As a result of these facts, early childhood is increasingly seen as a vitally important time for learning phonemic awareness, beginning phonics, listening and beginning reading comprehension, increasing vocabulary and concept development (Hart & Risley, 1999)