Brandi's+Thoughts

The National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth was charged “to identify, assess, and synthesize research on the education of language-minority children and youth with respect to their attainment of literacy, and to produce a comprehensive report evaluating and synthesizing this literature” (August & Shanahan p. 1). The panel investigated five domains: development of literacy in language-minority children and youth; cross-linguistic and cross-modal relationships; sociocultural contexts and literacy development; instruction and professional development; and student assessment. In the five domains there were various research questions to be answered. Let’s look at the instruction and professional development domain. Here the panel wants to investigate how instruction and professional development play a role in educating language-minority children and youth, what do we know about various approaches to literacy instruction, what can be done to improve achievement, and what does research tell us about teacher beliefs and attitudes toward language-minority children and youth. In my experience as a teacher I think instruction and professional development play a huge role in educating language-minority children. I have had students, in kindergarten, who have relocated from Mexico and cannot speak a word of English. Whereas, English is my first language and I can speak a little Spanish, which does not give a great big help to my new student from Mexico. I can only give little phrases and words in Spanish. However, if I were bilingual, I could go back and forth from English to Spanish to help my language-minority student with instruction. They might be able to grasp the material better if I teach it in English and Spanish, but I do not have this ability. My students are taught in English the whole time. I do have a student or two who can translate in English and Spanish, which is very nice for my new student and me. I teach in Long Beach Unified School District, which has a great training program for new teachers. When I began in this district I was taught how to use SDAIE strategies to help my language-minority children. I have used these strategies and they work when used consistently. However, I am a half day kindergarten teacher and do not have the time to consistently use the strategies. I only teach for three hours and 20 minutes everyday and with the SDAIE strategies you have to be well planned out and have everything ready. Sometimes this does not happen and I know my language-minority children are being left behind. According to Catherine Snow the literature reviewed by the panel provides limited guidance about how good instruction for second-language speakers might differ from that for first-language speakers (Snow p.638). She states that adapting instruction to specifics of the child’s knowledge base can be successful for language-minority children if provided high quality instruction in their second language (Snow p. 639). In my classroom this does not happen often. I do have a partner teacher who is bilingual and can help my language-minority students but she has to prepare for her own class and can only help for a limited amount of time. I also have an aide who is bilingual but she is only their for 30 minutes and next year because of the budget crisis I will have no aide to help. My class this year is 85% language-minority students and I am an English only teacher. I try very hard to use Spanish but it is not as good as a bilingual teacher. My students are getting a disservice from me and the district for not having the resources to place them accordingly or at least mixing the classes so the language-minority children are able to have more examples of how to speak “English”.