Education Exploration: Multicultural Learning and Teaching

It’s that time of year–everyone is concerned about the academic progress of their students and how they are going to manage the next grade (seven months away).  While I understand the frustration of well-intentioned teachers who see their students struggling to keep up and want to “do what’s best” for them, I am very sceptical that retention is the solution.   Although I do believe there are isolated instances when it may be justified, it is my opinion it rarely helps, and often has a negative outcome.

I have begun looking at retention statistics for Massachusetts and have noticed a few trends.  Since 1995, retention rates have been climbing–from 2.0 to 2.6 (2005).  Consistently, boys outnumber girls–about 3.0:2.0.  Consistently, Hispanics have the highest retention rates followed by African Americans–more than twice as high as whites, who have the lowest retention rates.  I find these trends disturbing, though not surprising. 

I’ve been trying to find research-based articles that look at both sides of this issue so that my position will be well-informed, and possibly altered.  If anyone has good information on this subject, I would appreciate your passing it on. I will continue to research this topic…

I found this on Beth Knittle’s site and found it fascinating for teachers, students, parents, everyone…

http://scottmcleod.typepad.com/dangerouslyirrelevant/2007/01/gone_fischin.html

then click on “streaming flash movie”

I think you’ll enjoy it!

The other day someone posed the question: “In a perfect world [of unlimited resources, countless highly qualified teachers and no beaurocratic hurdles], what would you like the ELD program to look like in Barnstable?”

After pondering this a while, this is the scenario I imagined.  Each classroom with English learners would have a co-teacher for a least part of every day.  She would help the classroom teacher differentiate instruction, modify lessons, activities and homework assignments so that ELLs would be able to understand academic content.  In addition, there would be pull-out English instruction for beginners, early intermediates and intermediates–according to state guidelines (beginners and early intermediates 2.5 hours-full day, intermediates 1-2 hours).  Every classroom teacher with ELLs would be trained in all four categories (language acquisition, shetering English, listening and speaking, and teaching reading and writing to ELLs) as the state requires.  There would be time for collaboration and planning for teachers and ELD staff. 

Schools with significant ELL populations would have interpreters/community liasons to communicate with families and relay the message of acceptance and inclusion.  Families of ELLs would be welcomed into the school community and be made to feel comfortable participating in their children’s education and bringing their language and culture into our schools.

Most of all, everyone would take delight in the ELLs and the diversity they bring, treating them with patience and respect as they take on the monumental task of learning a new language and culture and adjusting to an entirely different way of life.

I am trying to find statistics comparing bilingual vs. monolingual English approaches to teaching English language learners.  From what I have read, teaching ELLs academic content in their primary languagage while providing them with quality English instruction makes the most sense, but I like to look at all sides of the issue.  I am having trouble finding convincing arguments/research to support elimination of primary language instruction.  I would appreciate any suggestion of websites–Thanks