Last week I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the The Rising Stars Summit from the Office of English Language Learners in Washington D.C. where I presented on teaching writing in the context of the Open Court Reading Program as part of a larger presentation by my colleagues on a four year grant we all participated in at my old school, Saturn.
I had never been to Washington D.C. before so let me first say that it was a lot of fun getting to see the city though we had to experience it at a whirlwind pace and it was good to be with colleagues who it turns out are all easy to travel with. It’s good to be home again but being away was fun and we laughed a lot.
The Conference
The theme of the conference, as I saw it, based on several presentations and informal lunch time conversation is that current research supports dual language instruction. Students should be taught to be literate in their native language before being instructed in English. This certainly makes sense though returning home it’s back to business as usual. We teach English to everyone all the time and if we didn’t I don’t think we’d have enough teachers to teach in any other language on the scale which we need. It’s frustrating when the research seems to support something other than what we’re doing and you don’t have much say in how things are done anyway.
Our Presentation
Our presentation was very well received. We were given very positive compliments from some of the attendees. I think we were a few of the rare conference attendees who actually came from the classroom. (There were many ELL coordinators, college professors, government officials but not too many teachers).
I spoke about how writing in my classroom evolved into teaching a writer’s workshop model where students chose their own topics and moved at their own pace while I still taught Open Court unit research and expository writing through mini-lessons and independent work time.
By teaching writing while students wrote about their own lives and experiences, students began to see themselves as writers and were able to focus on writing without the burden of writing on unfamiliar themes. Then when it came time to write about fossils or camouflage, students were already enthusiastic writers and so with some scaffolding they were able to write on unit themes much faster.
My premise was that while we attempt to teach the concept of reading for pleasure, teachers rarely have students read for any reason other than that the teacher is making an assignment. Students write only because the teacher says so. Many teachers do not even model writing and so students see writing as something that is unnatural, without purpose, and a drag. Teachers need to model writing and encourage students to write because they authentically have something to say.
I was asked how I was able to fit it all in when teachers are visited by curriculum police and expected to stay on pace. I offered that teachers need to move through direct instruction as efficiently as possible and make sure they are getting to workshop/independent work time and emphasized how adding time to writing paid off in dividends and allowed me to pick up time later in the program.
The audience liked my statement that “if this were a gifted conference you’d expect to find a few sessions on intergrating technology in the curriculum but here [at the English Language Learner conference] our focus is understandably on teaching English. However, in today’s world, knowing English is not enough. Our students will need twenty-first century skills in order to compete in a global economy.”
