#lacoe

[reneebarbee7]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IdNIEnxQ3Y)

[drawpforschool]

Interview with Bilingual Educator Magdalena Ruz Gonzalez

As part of our ongoing interview series, this week we interviewed Magdalena Ruz Gonzalez, a leader in bilingual education.   

Magdalena Ruz Gonzalez has been in the field of 
education for more than 35 years, and recently
 retired from the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE). 
Her work with bilingual children, English learners (ELs) struggling with literacy, and ELs with special needs has 
helped her identify key practices. As a Newcomer Teacher, she witnessed success using  primary language instruction with ELs of limited formal education from the home country. As an ESL teacher, she understood the power of scaffolding materials when the language did not match the ELs home language. As a bilingual teacher, she saw how languages could flourish if properly attended to. She also saw failures and frustrations across the many classrooms she visited as an administrator and as a teacher herself when she was told “English only.”

During her time at LACOE she developed “A Tool for Scaffolding Instruction for English Learners”. Recently, she wrote “Families Learning Together”, a practical literacy guide for preschool through fifth grade to support families’ efforts in their children’s learning by advancing English through the promotion of the home language.

Her passions includes working with districts on ensuring procedural safeguards of interventions, multi-tiered system of support for ELs that include native language and non-biased assessments. She is currently working on an NSF grant with Drawp CEO and Founder Ana Albir around Newcomers and their instructional support with the use of technology and the transfer of English and Spanish.

Magdalena has a Bilingual Bicultural Studies as well as an Elementary Bachelor of Arts, a Master of Education in Reading and 
Learning Disabilities with emphasis on bilingual children 
and has completed coursework towards a doctorate in education and social policy at Claremont Graduate Schools.

You’ve been working in education for more than 35 years, particularly in bilingual education. How did you become interested in the field and how has the field changed over the years?

This is a good question because it is a combination of different events that led to my decision to choose a university that specialized in bilingual education in 1975. In high school, I took French my first two years instead of Spanish. Orally, I could communicate but I had never learned to read in my home language of Spanish. What I discovered in learning French was that once you learn to read in one language, in my case English, you don’t have to learn to read again in the second language. Once my high school offered Spanish 5 and 6, I skipped 1-4 and took the plunge into classical reading. It was not easy, but because I could read classics in English, I could do so in Spanish. This transference is one of the principles of bilingual education! This triggered an interest in languages and hence in bilingual education. Later, bilingual special education became a passion and still is.

The field of bilingual education has had its advocates and there are parts of this country that have always had bilingual education. NABE is still alive and supports bilingual education. Other states or districts have bent to the politics of the time and even eliminated any support in the primary language. Many universities that offered a bilingual credential eliminated this option because of low numbers with the only way to obtain the authorization was through testing. But in the last ten years there has been a wave of support for dual immersion programs which comes from mainstream educators and parents wanting bilingualism for their monolingual English speaking children. This, of course, helps the English learner as they are included as role models of language.

Now, with the current politics, I cannot predict what roadblocks educators and parents will encounter in establishing these programs.

What data do we have about English Language Learners today?  

The 2014-15 national data collected by the federal government (https://eddataexpress.ed.gov/index.cfm) indicates that English Learners (ELs) represent 25% of school age children with a range from states: Louisiana reporting 5% to Connecticut and Pennsylvania with 34%. California held steady at 33%. On ELs attaining English proficiency (Title III receiving local education agency)  national data is difficult to interpret since there is no national criteria on the types of assessments nor criteria thresholds. However, what is reported is New York state with 85% of their ELs obtaining proficiency to the lowest with Maine at 7.8%.

We have less immigrants coming to the US in certain states, and an influx in certain parts where they have never had this experience. For instance, there are far less emerging level ELs entering kinder in some districts in Los Angeles than in the past. These current ELs were born in the U.S. and are coming in at the expanding/intermediate level with some gaps in their vocabulary. The immigrant students with interrupted or limited formal schooling (SIFE) has also been a concern, entering in 2014, since they do not “fit” into the regular school program offered. These students coming from Central America and the Middle East pose a challenge for districts with few resources, especially when they settle in rural areas. Then of course, we have the created “curriculum casualties” our Long-term English Learners- students who have not been able to be successful and are entering the middle/high school. These students have been with the district since elementary. There are many causes as to why this is occurring. In some areas, more than 50% of the 9th graders are these Long Term ELs. Dr. Laurie Olsen has done extensive work in this area.

You recently wrote a book called “Families Learning Together” for families of children who are learning English. Can you tell me more about the book and why you wrote it?

The book supports parents efforts in assisting their child at home with homework. Explanations are given in a simple, straightforward manner with sample templates. For example, steps of how to read with children, how to guide them in editing a writing assignment, and also how to extend assignments in fun creative ways are the many ways parents can support learning. I tell the parents that they are creating mental tools for their children to use at school. The book is written for the parents in Spanish and in Chinese with the idea that they are going to conduct all the activities in the language they know best. I explain that these activities transfer to school, as research points out. The English version is primarily for school site professionals who will conduct sessions with parents on the book or other language groups, including of course English speaking parents.

I wrote this because as teacher, as an administrator and as a principal, I saw the need for parents and families to have these tools. When I would provide these types of mini-workshops, they would learn and tell me how easy it was to apply the lessons with their children.

While working at the Los Angeles County Office of Education you developed “A Tool for Scaffolding Instruction for English Learners.” How does that tool work and why did you create it?

The tool is a set of sentence frames organized by three levels of language proficiency, cognitive levels (instruction) and depths of knowledge (assessment). It was first developed for teachers to use with English Learners so the English version is organized by California’s three levels. The subsequent versions in Spanish, Chinese, and Korean were designed for dual immersion classrooms and also match up to the first three levels of ACTFL.

I wanted to create this because I saw a need for more oral language interaction at the secondary levels. This tool provides teachers a place to start not only orally but also with writing. It can supplement any content. But as teachers, they also need to observe students to determine when to discontinue these scaffolds.

You are currently working with Ana Albir, Drawp CEO & Founder, on a National Science Foundation funded research project to develop a digital transfer tool for newcomer students. What are the goals of this research?

The goals are to determine the efficacy of this cutting-edge digital technology Drawp with scaffold tools for language acquisition.  In particular, the grant will examine the hypothesis that Spanish-speaking students learn more effectively when given native-language educational tools. Research on language transfers promotes this practice. Since these newcomers may have gaps in their primary language, using first Spanish will solidify the concept, for instance a comparison of two ideas, before they use the same sentence frame in English.

- Julie Brannon

Read more about the Drawp for School NSF SBIR Language Transfer Tool research project here.

Drawp for School is a workflow management platform with built-in design tools, swipe-to-share collaboration and unlimited cloud storage. Teachers use Drawp to create, distribute, collect and give feedback on assignments. Students use Drawp’s creativity tools to add drawings, voice recordings, text and photos to assignments. The Drawp for School platform includes a newly launched Drawp Resource Marketplace website that provides teachers with an easy-to-access repository of educational resources to share and download.

For a free 30-day trial of Drawp, visit the www.DrawpforSchool.com website and download Drawp for iPad, Android, or Chromebook, or sign up via the web app for Windows and Mac users.

[drawpforschool]

Drawp Partners with the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) to Provide Digital Versions of English Language Learning Scaffolding Tools

The Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) has partnered with Drawp for School to provide interactive digital versions of their English language learning scaffolding tools for English learners. These tools are organized by proficiency level and provide teachers editable sentence frames and questions that can be tailored to any content. Teachers can access any lesson plan from the Drawp Resource Marketplace and then simply add sentence frames to assignments to help guide English learners.  

These tools do not replace interaction in the classroom, but using Drawp with LACOE’s useful scaffolding tools allows for enhanced engagement. For example, with Drawp, teachers and students can add Voice Sticker recorded notes to the LACOE sentence frames as a way to practice fluency and confirm pronunciation, intonation, and understanding. Students can also use Drawp’s digital drawing tools to illustrate concepts.  

Drawp has produced a short video to demonstrate a sample lesson plan using the LACOE scaffolding tools:

Check out these PowerPoint presentations below with trainer notes for each set of tools: Emerging, Bridging, and Expanding levels useful for professional development:

Sample Lesson Plan For Emerging Level English Learners Using Drawp and a Tool For Scaffolding Instruction (LACOE)

Sample Lesson Plan For Bridging Level English Learners Using Drawp and a Tool For Scaffolding Instruction (LACOE)

Sample Lesson Plan For Expanding Level English Learners Using Drawp and a Tool For Scaffolding Instruction (LACOE)

In applying the LACOE scaffolding tools with Drawp, English language learners (ELLs) benefit in all language domains:

Oral practice with frames

Listening practice with questions

Writing prompt with frames

Reading practice with support

Scaffold support in multiple languages

Teachers also benefit from using the LACOE tools with Drawp:

Organized by Bloom’s Taxonomy

Filtered by Narrative, Expository and Argumentative/Persuasive types of questions and sentence frames

A bank of strategies are linked to each level

A bank of products or assessments are included for each level

Scaffold support can be turned on in multiple languages

If you have any questions about using Drawp for School and the LACOE scaffolding tools for English language learners, please email [email protected].  

- Julie Brannon

[thecrayonboxes]

We pretend that we can cut services and education funding to the bone — as has happened in California — without consequence. We somehow convince ourselves that despite a minimum wage so low no one can live on it, an economy that simultaneously depends on and criminalizes undocumented workers, and schools that pack 45 or 50 kids into a classroom while slashing counselors, after-school programs and summer school, we can simply demand accountability and get it. But our students aren't likely to just trot back to school when their lives are falling apart.

Ellie Herman, Truancy is just a symptom 

[thinkmexican]

Petition: Demand LACOE Renew the Charter of Anahuacalmecac

Anahuacalmecac is the only school in Los Angeles that meets our students’ rights to be treated as intellectual equals, both as Indigenous Peoples and as unique persons.

LGBTQ, Special Education, English Learners and other subgroup populations do better at Anahuacalmecac because of its inclusive community design and values. Anahuacalmecac sends more kids to college by embracing highly gifted students including Special Education students in a challenging, culturally rich curriculum and supportive school environment.

The denial of our charter would be one more step in a long series of discriminatory maneuvers against our school community ultimately harming our students and community.

For more information, visit: Semillas del Pueblo