This book provides the most up-to-date research on identity safe practices and how to ensure that they occur both at home and at school. Today's schools serve students and families with a diversity of identities. While diversity enriches the school community, educators are becoming increasingly aware of the vast number of students subjected to ......
This book provides the most up-to-date research on identity safe practices and how to ensure that they occur both at home and at school. Today's schools serve students and families with a diversity of identities. While diversity enriches the school community, educators are becoming increasingly aware of the vast number of students subjected to ......
Essential principles, practices, and structures for multilingual learners Much has changed in the ten years since this book was first published. A celebrated triumph, it provided state, district, school, and teacher leaders with a comprehensive guide to support multilingual learners to reach their full potential. From selecting the appropriate program model to partnering with families and infusing federal and state laws governing the education of multilingual learners and the rights of their families into all we do, the key messages that made the first edition of this book a renowned success have been re-examined in the second edition with a robust lens to meet these demanding times. This second edition supports educators to design and enact policies, practices, and structures for multilingual learners (MLs) to feel a sense of safety, belonging, value, and competence. Topics explored in the book include: a discussion of the changes to federal and state policies and their impact on MLs and their families strategies to move from a deficit- to an asset-based approach that values multilingualism nine principles to design and deliver high0quality lessons in multiple languages and across disciplines practices to identify and support MLs with learning differences and disabilities steps for building long-lasting family-school partnerships Reflecting changing trends in leadership, this new edition supports superintendents, principals, curriculum supervisors, coaches, mentors, teachers, and other stakeholders in their collaborative efforts to create and sustain successful language assistance programs.
Overcoming Linguistic and Cultural Inequities in Communities, Schools, and Classrooms
What are some lessons learned from the pandemic? We learned that, in times of crises, the humanitarian needs of students, families, and ourselves must be a top priority. We learned that forming effective partnerships with families and communities is essential to the health and well-being of our children. We were offered a blunt reminder that a system designed to serve the interests of a privileged few was destined to fail our historically underserved students, especially our millions of multilingual learners. Above all, we learned that the "normal" many of us have yearned for was never good enough-that we must envision a "better world," where we build on our multilingual students' unique assets and cultivate their inner brilliance. Only then will we deliver on their promise. It's this "better world," a world in which communities, schools, and classrooms work together as a "whole-child ecosystem," Beyond Crises: Overcoming Linguistic and Cultural Inequities in Communities, Schools, and Classrooms sets out to create. Taking a look from the outside in, Debbie Zacarian, Margarita Calderon, and Margo Gottlieb address three critical arenas: 1. Imagining Communities describes how to design and enact strengths-based family and community partnerships, including the critical importance of identifying, valuing, and acknowledging each member's assets and competencies, and the ways recent crises have amplified their struggles. 2. Imagining Schools takes an up-close look at policies, structures, and now irrelevant ways of schooling that call for change and how we might reconfigure professional development to ensure every teacher and administrator is dedicated to the well-being and success of our multilingual learners. 3. Imagining Classrooms demonstrates how to optimize learning opportunities-both virtual and face-to-face-so our diverse students grow cognitively, linguistically, and social-emotionally, and accentuate their talents in knowing and using multiple languages in linguistically and culturally sustainable environments. "Student and family, classroom, school, and local community are not silos unto themselves," Debbie, Margarita, and Margo insist. "They are part of a larger whole that is interrelated and interconnected and, even, interdependent on each other. By forming stronger alliances, we can realize the power of truly working, socializing, and flourishing together." Beyond Crises is the first critical step forward.
It was a dark and stormy night in Santa Barbara. January 19, 2017. The next day's inauguration drumroll played on the evening news. Huddled around a table were nine Corwin authors and their publisher, who together have devoted their careers to equity in education. They couldn't change the weather, they couldn't heal a fractured country, but they did have the power to put their collective wisdom about EL education upon the page to ensure our multilingual learners reach their highest potential. Proudly, we introduce you now to the fruit of that effort: Breaking Down the Wall: Essential Shifts for English Learners' Success. In this first-of-a-kind collaboration, teachers and leaders, whether in small towns or large urban centers, finally have both the research and the practical strategies to take those first steps toward excellence in educating our culturally and linguistically diverse children. It's a book to be celebrated because it means we can throw away the dark glasses of deficit-based approaches and see children who come to school speaking a different home language for what they really are: learners with tremendous assets. The authors' contributions are arranged in nine chapters that become nine tenets for teachers and administrators to use as calls to actions in their own efforts to realize our English learners' potential: 1. From Deficit-Based to Asset-Based 2. From Compliance to Excellence 3. From Watering Down to Challenging 4. From Isolation to Collaboration 5. From Silence to Conversation 6. From Language to Language, Literacy, and Content 7. From Assessment of Learning to Assessment for and as Learning 8. From Monolingualism to Multilingualism 9. From Nobody Cares to Everyone/Every Community Cares Read this book; the chapters speak to one another, a melodic echo of expertise, classroom vignettes, and steps to take. To shift the status quo is neither fast nor easy, but there is a clear process, and it's laid out here in Breaking Down the Wall. To distill it into a single line would go something like this: if we can assume mutual ownership, if we can connect instruction to all children's personal, social, cultural, and linguistic identities, then all students will achieve.
How Student, Family, and Community Partnerships Advance Engagement and Achievement in Diverse Classrooms
Harness the power of teacher, student, school, family, and community partnerships to promote student success Teaching effectively in diverse classrooms has become more complex than ever. The authors of this practical, compelling, and inspiring book propose that understanding the spheres of influence that connect students with teachers, peers, family members, and the broader community significantly increases the odds that every student will succeed in school. In clear, practitioner-friendly language with examples from an inspiring range of K-12 educators, the authors explore how tapping into the rich resources of teachers, students, families, the school community and the community-at-large can make the work of learning more successful for all involved. Richly detailed vignettes and concrete, evidence-based strategies help you systematically: Build coalitions of support around learning and engagement Develop positive relationships with students, their families and their communities Foster positive, reciprocal partnerships Promote peer-to-peer relationship building Support students and families from marginalized populations Learn to draw from the rich resources found within your learning community to build bridges to academic success for all learners. This comprehensive book shows you how! "Building meaningful relationships in education can be difficult, particularly when the parties involved are different from one another in identity, experience, and other ways. As a result, although in principle collaborations and partnerships in education are universally lauded, in practice they are often ignored. What we need are examples of partnerships that work. In it Together by Debbie Zacarain and Michael Silverstone suggests productive ways to work with, learn from, and form authentic relationships with diverse communities. Combining their abundant experience in classrooms and schools, and using examples from caring teachers in diverse classrooms, the authors demonstrate what it means to really be "in it together." Teachers, administrators, and everyone who cares about the future of education in a diverse society will benefit from the strategies they suggest." -Sonia Nieto, Professor Emerita University of Massachusetts
A legacy of the No Child Left Behind legislation of 2001 is that the significant achievement gaps between language minority students (ELLs and other speakers of non-Standard English) were made painfully visible to educators and the general public. Unfortunately, disaggregating data or 'exposing the cracks beneath the wallpaper' (Johnson/Avelar La Salle, 2010) alone is an insufficient remedy. Addressing these gaps remains a salient theme of our nation's school reform agenda and will be for years to come. Over the years, Corwin has published a number of works that aim to help close achievement gaps between ELs and non-ELs as well as children of color and their White counterparts. Some of these titles are aimed at school leaders and suggest that a 'top down' approach emphasizing culture shifts and policy changes are the most effective starting points. (see, e.g., Lindsey et al., Cultural Proficiency: A Manual for School Leaders, Singleton, Courageous Conversations about Race, and the upcoming Walking the Equity Walk by John Browne. Other titles start with changing practices at the classroom level, e.g., Bonnie Davis' How to Teach Students Who Don't Look Like You. The proposed title which falls into this second category highlights the importance of mastering Academic Language as a key to school success and closing achievement. It is grounded in an originalafour-pronged framework that describes how academic language learning is a (1) sociocultural, (2) literacy learning, (3) academic, and (4) a cognitive (higher order thinking skill) process.a Written in a teacher-friendly voice, the book emphasizes what can be done to strategically plan and deliver high quality learning, school and parent engagement environments using this four pronged framework. It is also well-suited to the work of teacher teams and includes a number of reflective prompts and professional development activities.
Put all English learners on the path to success-right from the start! Beginning English learners are at risk of being lost in a system that doesn't know how to reach them. With more and more ELs entering. schools every year, educators need to act quickly to create school- and classroom-based programs that work. Veteran educators Debbie Zacarian and Judie Haynes provide templates and tools-along with vignettes illustrating real-world challenges-to help teachers and administrators: Learn strategies for teaching beginning level ELs across the curriculum Create a welcoming environment for English learners and their families who are unfamiliar with the American education system Reach out to students from literacy and non-literacy-oriented homes Engage parents to become a part of the school community Develop instructional models for students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE) Build sensitive practices for students who have experienced trauma The Essential Guide for Educating Beginning English Learners provides a realistic and comprehensive framework for effectively reaching and teaching this growing population.
