English Learner Summit: Harvard Graduate School of Education

Confianza Director, Sarah Ottow, was an invited speaker at the first EL Summit: Leading for English Learners held Winter 2018. 

The goal of the EL Summit was to elevate the conversation around equity for English learners by bringing together diverse stakeholders practice and policy — from universities, public schools, charter networks, community organizations, and nonprofits. 

Read Getting Out of the EL Silos: A multi-sector conversation to envision the future of EL education.

Watch Sarah’s summary of her presentation:

• Transcript

  As an invited speaker and panelist for Harvard's first English Learner Summit, I was asked the question, "What's one thing that we should know about English learners?" And my answer is this.

  The achievement gap per se isn't necessarily with the students, it's with us. As educators, we're vastly underprepared to meet their needs in schools. We need to change the way that we work and bridge the gap to make sure that our schools are culturally and linguistically responsive for English learners and for all students.

  All too often, I hear my kids versus your kids. I hear my kids from the EL department and I hear your kids from content or quote "mainstream teachers," when in fact, every educator across the school, leader, teacher, support staff should be saying our students, our kids. Everyone should be able to welcome our students and families from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, make sure that they're part of our community, and work hard to provide them access and opportunity to reach their fullest potential.

  Throughout my entire career as a teacher of English learners from over 40 different linguistic groups, and more recently as a trainer and coach and consultant working across the United States and internationally, I hear all of these labels and more. And you might recognize some of them. And while labels can be somewhat useful in terms of designating students into a group or naming programs, they are also problematic.

  One problem is that they limit our understanding of the rich diversity and assets within this subgroup of students. Another problem is that they, again, perpetuate these silos of my kids versus your kids and thus abdicating the responsibility of who meets their needs. I say we turn it around. I say we take the acronym, the label of ELL, and make it about what we need to do to bridge the gap.

  Because in fact, it takes a whole school. If every educator encompasses mindset and practices around equity, language, and literacy, the whole ecosystem will respond and adapt to meet their needs, thus becoming culturally and linguistically responsive school for every student. Let's unpack this. Equity. We can have all the programs and strategies and standards in the world, but we're not gonna get very far unless we start with an equity-based mindset. What does that mean?

  First of all, it means that we have to start by building strong relationships with our students and our families built on mutual respect and trust. We need to get to know their stories and bring their culture and language into the classroom and into the school culture at large. We need to make sure, as well, that it's not just those at the epitome of privilege benefiting from the status quo. No, we need to question the status quo and we need to interrupt bias and prejudice and all work to make sure that our schools are transformative for social justice.

  Language. This is what I like to call the language lens. That means that it's not just the responsibility of the EL teacher to know how to plan, teach, and assess with the language lens to understand the language of the content area that they teach. It's not enough just to work with the ESL teacher for 30, 60, or 90 minutes a day in order to bridge the gap. Plus, we know that all the college and career readiness standards promote academic language across the curriculum, thus making every student in our school an ALL, academic language learner. So when we teach and work with a language lens, everyone wins.

  Literacy. Of course, by literacy, I mean making sure that we're building proficient readers and writers. But sadly, that's not the case in every school yet. We certainly wanna make sure that our students are highly literate and we also wanna think about literacy as something more expansive as reading and writing as well. And by this I'm talking about literacy power. I'm talking about critical thinking, problem solving skills so that students can become not just college and career ready, but life ready as well. They need to be able to navigate our complex world and see the power of their actions on their own lives and those in their community. So imagine if everyone in a school embodied these practices.

  Imagine if everyone became an ambassador for equity, language, and literacy. After all, ELLs are all of ours. Thank you.