Tweet Tweet

A reflection on my experience using Twitter.

How can 280 character be so daunting? For a course I am taking, I was tasked with composing 120 tweets over the course of a few months. 

It was difficult for me to produce so many tweets, but it forced me to explore the professional opportunities on the platform. 

After I created my handle, @2_idiomas, I was off and running following organizations that are important to me, such as WIDA, Girls on the Run, Colorin Colorado, Teaching4Biliteracy, and more. 

The most helpful part of this was accessing quick, well designed graphics that I could retweet and share with the teachers I support. For example, I shared the images and youtube video referenced in Nancy Motley's tweet with the teachers I work with. This led to me reviewing the PWIM strategy and modeling it in 3 classrooms this month. This was more impactful than me describing a strategy, and it was a good reminder for me of a strategy that I haven't used in years. 

Finally, the project allowed me to connect with many colleagues within MCPS, but a also a large group of peers outside MCPS. I am now connected with many dual language coaches and consultants across the country, as well as administrators and educational leaders outside of my organization. 

This project pulled me out of my comfort zone. I felt like I was learning a new language as I navigated the norms and culture of Twitter. While I don't envision myself tweeting so frequently after my course is complete, I definitely see myself using Twitter as a professional resource for learning and sharing in the future.

My Thoughts on My Blog:

 

In our vulnerable moments, we learn and grow. 

How Do We Speak About Our Students' Families?

 It is not uncommon to hear me talking about Tan Huynh's blog or podcast when I am working with teachers. Huynh does a beautiful job making his point in a clear, concise way that never loses the essence of the message.

The interviewed guest, María Cioè-Peña, author of (M)othering Labeled Children: Bilingualism and Disability in the Lives of Latinx Mothers, says, "I haven't seen my mother described or talked about in the literature I have been reading... Where are these people? Where are these women? Where are their stories? Why aren't we talking to them?" As she digs deeper, she learns how immigrant mothers who feel othered adapt and overcome those obstacles. 

In this blog post he provides clear examples of how to avoid the "broken" narrative to an assets-affirming narrative when discussing immigrant families. 

We have all caused harm here because we are all conditioned, but the approach we have used to speak to and about families has been through a limited lens. As educators, what responsibility do we have to change the way we gather information and brilliance from the families we serve? How do we rebuild trust to let families know we value their experience and want to hear about it?

When I read how Tan Huynh framed his own mother's narrative as the contributions it provided to his education, directly linking them to curriculum strands, I felt inspired to practice framing my own community's experiences with an asset-affirming lens. We have had a narrow view of what family participation means and we are invited to try something new beginning tomorrow.

Preparing for Conferences with Students' Caregivers

 As we approach the end of the first marking period, teachers are preparing to host conferences with students' caregivers. The pandemic provided us with new learning about what these conversations have the potential to be for our community. 

First, the format has been rethought. We can use technology to connect families who prefer a virtual conference, but now we have the safety measures to be able to re-welcome the community back into the building if that is preferred. 

In addition to logistics, we are rethinking the climate and culture of these conferences. This week, my school's leadership team explored chapters 11-15 of Critical Practices for Anti-Bias Educators published by the Learning for Justice Project.

We took some time to discuss these bullet points from page 14. Listening to the discussion, I recognized the positive intent from my peers, but also the need for time and practice to do many of the suggested points.

As the conversation evolved, I feared that we might feel pressured by structural constraints, as well as a comfort with what we know, that will slow us from moving into new, more authentic, culturally responsive interactions with our community. We have permission to reimagine all of it, but do we want to? Are we ready to?

Which of these comes easiest to you when speaking with caregivers?

When faced with the daunting, outdated constraints of a 15-20 min conversation with 25-50 families over a few days, which of these bullet points bites the dust or gets the short end of the stick?

Which bullet point is a priority for you but not yet a habitual part of your conversations?  

See my next blogpost about viewing linguistic, cultural, and family diversity as strengths!

Source: 

Learning for Justice (2018). Family and Community Engagement. In Critical Practices for Anti-Bias Educators (pp. 14-18). Teaching for Tolerance. 

Sharing my Thoughts: Communication

The Covid-19 pandemic affected nearly every facet of our work in elementary schools. As we exit crisis response, we are able to reflect on what we have learned from the experience. In response to the circumstances, teachers, students, and parents acquired many technology skills in a short time. The school system also worked to engage families, building and maintaining important connections. Last week, I was invited to share my feedback with the MCPS Board of Education Communication and Stakeholder Engagement Committee. I joined a group of my fellow colleagues, fellow MCPS parents, and high school students and responded to questions regarding how families and staff received communication from MCPS in the last year.

I enjoyed the experience and am grateful for the forum to share feedback. My favorite part of the experience was hearing the high school student representatives speak to what is working for them and what they need from the schools. They are reflective and hold high expectations for the system. They are amazing. 

Check out the video of my participation 

What feedback would you have shared about the communication that comes from central office regarding academic achievement, mental health, school safety, and technology?

Bilingual Reading Brain

At the school I work at as a dual language coach, I am surrounded by creative teachers who understand that teaching literacy in a dual language program is not the same as in a monolingual program. Here is an example of a lesson two teachers I work with prepared for their students to help them make connections between the sounds the consonant "c" makes in the two languages they are learning: 

While lessons like this happen regularly in our school, I have noticed that during the pandemic and in the context of urgency that we were met with when we returned to the building, many teachers are reluctant to plan crosslinguistic connection lessons with a co-teacher. 

I recently read The Science of the Bilingual Reading Brain by  Alexandra Guilamo, which summarizes the research on literacy skill transfer for multilingual students in dual language settings. Guilamo had previously published "The Science of Reading in Dual Language" in Language Magazine, where she stated:

The only way to attain biliteracy and bilingualism is to leave the typical formula for reading as decoding and linguistic comprehension, or D x C = R, for the formula for developing biliteracy as 

oracy + decoding + linguistic comprehension + transfer 

O x C x D x T = R2.

(Guilamo, 2021)

Building on this description of the components of literacy in a second language, Guilamo uses her more recent article (2022) to focus on the transfer component of biliteracy. In dual language settings, we use transfer to describe the way multilinguals use knowledge in and about one language to help them solve linguistic problems or reach understanding in another language. For example, imagine a student who already knows that verbs that end in -ing in English serve the same grammatical purpose as those he understands proficiently in Spanish that end in -ando or -iendo, This student is much more prepared to gather meaning from the sentence "We are activating the alarm in the city." 

To further this point, Guilamo cites Dijksra et al., 1998, Gottardo et al., 2021, and Schwartz et al., 2007 in defending the idea that cross-linguistic transfer enhances and accelerates reading ability. This understanding is crucial to prioritizing the connections we make between the two languages we teach. I agree with Guilamo's point that in a school like my own, where the students are expected to be bilingual and biliterate in English and Spanish by the time they are promoted to middle school, we cannot afford to miss opportunities to explicitly teach students linguistic transfer skills.

Guilamo begins to tackle the problem at hand in dual language schools: time. I find that the teachers I support feel there is not enough planning time to analyze the linguistic knowledge students already bring to the classroom, nor the time to teach lessons on how to transfer those skills. The feeling is understandable, I myself remember feeling rushed to meet the standards in a monolingual setting. However, I am reminded that we have literacy standards across grade levels asking us to explicitly teach students how to use their background knowledge to make inferences, a form of transfer. In the case of linguistic transfers, we are the ones who have to advocate for this skill to be prioritized. 

How can I help teachers understand that taking time to teach students the connections will help accelerate their learning and save time in the future?  When will teachers see the payoff and be willing to do it again? 

Guilamo argues that engaging in a lesson that connects literacy in a second language to linguistic skills our students already have is identity affirming. They will feel their knowledge and heritage hold value, even if they do not yet have all of the skills needed to express their ideas in the new language. For me, that is reason enough to make time for linguistic transfer lessons, but is it enough for everyone? 

Read the full article to enhance your understanding of The Science of the Bilingual Reading Brain.

Guilamo, A. S. (2022). “The Science of the Bilingual Reading Brain.” Language Magazine. https://www.languagemagazine.com/2022/07/13/the-science-of-the-bilingual-reading-brain/