Is “Good Teaching, is Good Teaching” enough?

Is “Good Teaching, is Good Teaching” enough?

The Misconception that “Good Teaching, is Good Teaching” 

“A good teacher is like a candle, it consumes itself to make light for others” -Mustafa Kamel Ataturk

Most teachers are good teachers, and caring professionals who want to do the best they can for students, and strive to do even better every day for every kid.  Through the course of our work, most of us are operating under the theory that “good teaching, is just good teaching”, in fact I’ll bet we can recall times we have said it or heard someone say it.  Our content standards for teaching, even our evaluation system supports the reinforcement of this assumption that if we can teach “good”, that is to utilize solid teaching practices with knowledge of our content, it will be sufficient to ensure that all learners can learn.   We also know that our work as educators is a practice as well as an art-with a set of dispositions, beliefs and expectations that are not clear in our content standards.  One of those really unclear expectations for most teachers is the hidden demand of the English Language in the content areas and the assumptions those lead us to make about what is required, what is needed and what is assumed about the needs of our language learners, and particularly our bilingual students.  

Some of the misconceptions about language learning itself, based largely on myths, steer us away from finding solutions to the teaching and learning art that we know we have within us.  Let’s take a look as some of them now so that can demystify the argument that “good teaching is just good teaching”.

What might I need to contemplate about “good teaching”? I am a good teacher, my students are passing and I have language objectives in my classroom.  I make sure my learners can do the work, and I help them to complete it.  I take away barriers that I see in them being able to participate in my class.  Everyone talks in my class and I feel good about it.  

1) Removing barriers and making it easier for students to access content is good enough.

False.  Removing barriers is part of the work, yes.  But what happens when barriers get removed, and those spaces get filled with learning opportunities that are below grade level?  What happens when the removal of the barrier does not actually scaffold new language the student needs.  Helping.  Helping can be really great, it makes us feel good, it makes kids feel good, and it is probably reason number one why English learning students speak social English and cannot speak or write for academic purposes.  Helping by removing a barrier without also addressing the language needed to be able to meet the standard-helps no one, but is especially damaging to a young person. Young people need expectations and scaffolds-they need instruction. Trying to “get around” language will most certainly ensure gaps than trap students outside of their ability and desire to succeed.  Researcher Evelyn Hatch calls this type of  ‘helping’ a “benevolent conspiracy” of lowered expectations and lower order thinking, and a lack of content goals that can reinforce the avoidance of these students as learners

Well, isn’t just being in our classrooms, immersed in English or in Dual Language enough?  How did you learn your first language?  In your caregivers arms, interaction with siblings to get what you wanted and needed, as you strove to learn new things?  Learning a first language is universal.  We all do it in very similar ways around the globe, in fact, we all follow very similar developmental patterns when learning a first language.  So a misconception that results from this can be:

2) Students will learn a second language through exposure to that language. 
False.  Most settings offer insufficient exposure to a partner language in order to ensure Academic Language Acquisition.  Schools are also settings where the hypothesis that students will learn their partner language as they learned their first, are false without explicit teaching of language and the language of the content together.  This is why simply attending your physics class will not actually create English proficiency-attendance alone is insufficient.  Second language learners, particularly older learners, bring literacy and oracy in their first language.  Where literacy in their first language isn’t present, they may bring distinct abilities in oral language acquisition that they have developed as a compensatory style for the literacy so inaccessible to them. In addition to this, older students have much greater cognitive abilities that they can apply to language learning, rather than just language exposure.  All English learners will become bilingual differently-especially true of older students.  You do not have to speak a language to read a language, and likewise, there are speakers who cannot read or write.  We cannot assume a silent child knows nothing, any more than we can assume that a child who speaks English is academically literate in it.

Well, my job is to teach my content area.  I teach English, Science, Business-whatever subject, the content of the learning in every subject specialty is totally dependent upon language.  When you look at your standards, is it clear to you what the hidden English language demands are?

3) My standards are a resource for the invisible English curriculum.
False.  In fact, this might be the biggest hurdle we face as teachers.  Our standards ask us to unpack our standards and content, analyzing and evaluating it for the invisible English curriculum.  These standards do not reference that students need to be able to manage prepositional phrases to be able to summarize, or that they need to be able to form the structures of questions in order to engage in Inquiry.  I am simplifying here, but beyond vocabulary, most teachers struggle to evaluate their content areas language.  Future Blog and PD to support you is on the way!!!

Well, but what if I integrate Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization and Reading-these are critical attributes of daily learning experiences for kids!  Won’t just doing this as a first step be sufficient to engage students in the hidden language of the content?

4) Strategies alone will not ensure language acquisition.

True-ish.  We must look AT language, not THROUGH it.  If you are committed to WICOR, you are on your way to peeling back the layers of the hidden language demands in your content area because you are already asking yourself what you want students to be able to know and do.  You are already committed to using strategies to get them talking and collaborating, writing and reading every day.  For ALL learners these are powerful ways to balance approaches to learning.  These practices will lead educators to asking why some students speaking and writing looks different than the grade level expectation and will guarantee to get you thinking about language; however, these practices alone will not guarantee language acquisition.  Why?  Often these strategies focus on removing language barriers for students, making tasks more accessible for a student, but do very little in terms of explicitly teaching students what they need to reach the goal.  Biliteracy and bilingualism is often invisible in our content classrooms-teachers in English mode of instruction are unlikely to know, use or prompt multilingualism in individuals and are even less likely to be aware of the opportunity a multilingual ecology could provide for all of the learners.  Tapping into a student’s first language and the similar cognates, words that look, sound and mean the same thing in English and Spanish, or prompting bilingual pairs to use their partner language to turn and talk-seem like bilingual education strategies that don’t belong in English mode classrooms.  But, if we are serious about tapping into all resources a student has to offer, and we recognize that a bilingual students doesn’t switch off their “Spanish Brain” when learning in English-we can certainly tap on this one.  Click here to see how Chris Knutson, West Social Studies, does it.

Well, but I am not an ESL teacher.  Isn’t this her job?  After all, I have 180 students a day, I need to deliver my grade-level content.  I just don’t have the skill to support those learners.

5) Content teachers must teach ensure learning for all learners, also those learning English.
Yes, so true.  An ESL teacher is a resource to you and to the students.  ESL teachers are expected to have specialized training in how to develop Biliteracy and bilingualism, and to use the capacity of all of the students language.  The ESL teacher is part of the system that ensures that English learning students perform on grade level in language and content-she is a partner.  There is no way 1 or 2 ESL specialists can ensure content and language acquisition across an 8 period day for all learners.  What they can do is co-serve and support you to analyze your content for the hidden demands of English.  They can help you to better understand how to use a students first language literacy for their second language literacy.  They can help you to demystify the needs of students by sharing students Individualized Language Plans and co-planning for instruction based on goals you both share for students.  ESL teachers can support your development of lenses that both teach and practice the language that is needed so all of your learners go beyond just “getting around the language”, to the language learning itself.  She can support you as you develop a multilingual ecology in your classroom.  The ESL teacher can support you to learn how to make effective and measurable objectives for language in your instruction-and support you to provide feedback to students. She can support you to know your own power and become highly impactful. Teamwork does make the dream work!

Most teachers are good teachers, and caring professionals who want to do the best they can for students, and strive to do even better every day for every kid. We also know that our work as educators is a practice as well as an art-with a set of dispositions, beliefs and expectations that are not clear in our content standards.  One of those really unclear expectations for most teachers is the hidden demand of the English Language in the content areas and the assumptions those lead us to make about what is required, what is needed and what is assumed about the needs of our language learners, and particularly our bilingual students.  Systems of collaborative teachers creates achievement and opportunities for students.  If you are curious, engage your ESL teacher to discuss this article and starting points for your transformative work.