Education Week - Moving Beyond the Mainstream - October 30, 2013 - S9

Standards and
English-Learners:
It Takes a Village
Collaboration may be the new norm
for teachers of ELL students
I
t started with a simple after-school conversation last spring between two
teachers.
Barbara Page, a veteran English-as-a-second-language teacher, and Mer-
edith Vanden Berg, an 8th grade science teacher, were discussing a student
from Somalia who had just arrived from a refugee camp in Yemen and
landed at their ethnically diverse middle school in Beaverton, Ore.
Ms. Vanden Berg wanted to know what more she could do to help the girl-
who was just beginning to learn a few words of English-understand what
was going on in her science classroom.
"I don't like when I see students staring off into space when I'm teaching
and I know it's because of the language," said Ms. Vanden Berg. "I needed
to take a look at my own practice. What could I be doing to
convey the core concepts without completely losing her?"
That discussion was the spark for what has evolved
into a much closer collaboration between ESL and content
teachers at the 600-student Meadow Park Middle
School as they fully embrace the Common Core State
Standards in English/language arts and mathematics
this academic year. Along with their math teacher colleague,
Allison Shultz, Ms. Vanden Berg and Ms. Page
have begun picking apart the standards, stripping them
down to the essential concepts, simplifying the language,
and developing strategies that all of them can use to support
English-learners in both content and ESL classes.
It's a kind of collaboration and discussion that educators say needs to happen
at schools across the country as teachers now stand on the front lines
of helping an increasingly diverse student population meet the demands of
the new standards. Every student, whether a native English-speaker or a
second-language learner, is expected to engage in conversation and discourse
in the classroom, read and understand complex texts, and make effective oral
and written arguments, among other high-level language practices in the new
standards.
Both Ms. Shultz and Ms. Vanden Berg credit Ms. Page with helping them better
understand how their own language of instruction can pose a major barrier
to students whose English proficiency is still low.
"I really see now how much we as content teachers take for granted," said Ms.
BY
LESLI A.
MAXWELL
Vanden Berg. "It takes a lot of freaking words to explain the periodic table or
an atom."
Shifting Relationships?
Photo by
LEAH NASH
for Education
Week
The nation's roughly 45,000 ESL teachers-many of whom split their time
among schools with little chance to co-teach or plan with content teachers-
have expertise and strategies that experts say all teachers will need to ensure
that English-learners are not shut out of the rigorous, grade-level content that
the common core envisions will prepare all students for college and careers.
Special education teachers, too, say schools need to foster closer collaboration
between them and content teachers to support students with special needs.
But what role will ESL teachers play in this groundbreaking shift to the common
core? Will there be a broader move to co-teaching or tighter collaboration
between ESL teachers and their academic-content colleagues? What, if any,
common-core professional development are ESL teachers receiving, and how is
their expertise being tapped?
Earlier this year, the TESOL International Association, the professional
Moving Beyond the Mainstream: Helping Diverse Learners Master the Common Core > www.edweek.org/go/diverse-report | S9

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Education Week - Moving Beyond the Mainstream - October 30, 2013

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