Spanish for Teachers: Advocacy

Educators, Students, and Families Speak as One at National Immigration Rally

They hailed from all walks of life, from coast to coast, from towns and cities of all different sizes. Yet, while their paths and stories differ, they all voiced one single message as they stood before the U.S. Capitol: the time is now for Congress to pass commonsense immigration reform for students, their families and millions of aspiring Americans.

From: www.nea.org

Return on Education Investment
REAPING THE REWARDS OF EDUCATION FUNDING

When Maryland's Bridge to Excellence Act-Thornton-passed in 2002, the New York Times called the

legislation "historic." Now, after 10 years, Maryland's public schools are thriving and Education Week has ranked our schools #1 in the nation for an unprecedented fifth year in a row. Fantastic!

But despite the progress we've made school funding is still below the levels recommended by Thornton-more than $700 million on both the state and local levels. We've seen how this made an impact on larger class sizes, eliminated positions, and program cuts.

Our student population has changed greatly between 2002 and 2012. Thornton funding means more money for high poverty, special ed, and limited English proficiency students. Title 1 funding has risen by 129% and funding for limited English proficiency students has risen by 88%.

Local school funding is protected! Funding is now predictable and consistent thanks to the 2012 Maintenance of Effort law. This means that $2.6 billion is protected.

With Thornton funding came record school investment and increased student achievement. Thornton brought funding equity to Maryland. Now, less wealthy counties receive more money from the state than wealthier counties, whose local coffers can provide more for their residents.

Thanks to Thornton funding and full-day pre-K for disadvantaged students, children entering kindergarten are better prepared than ever before. In 2001, only 49% were ready for kindergarten upon entering and in 2011 that number rose to 83% ready for kindergarten.

School improvements were made possible by Thornton funding. The number of courses taught by qualified teachers rose by 17%. Focused career tracks brought 48 Career and Technology programs which give more students more options. School construction funding rose by $1 billion between 1992 and 2012 which provided for 49 new buildings, many renovations and repairs. Student progress is tracked using 10-way data collection which provides student demographics, programs, courses, and achievement. Be a strong advocate for our public schools.

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

#1 student achievement growth

#1 4th grade reading and math improvement, proficient level

#1 4th grade reading, basic level

#1 8th grade reading improvement, basic and proficient levels

- National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)

#1 AP Performance, 2008-2012

87% graduation rate

THE HIGHEST EVER!

STAND UP!

Protect programs

Protect jobs

Protect class size

Protect student achievement

Visit marylandeducators.org/standup

-----From Maryland State Education Association, Action Line

You can make a difference!

Public policy is an important component of language advocacy. We must remain aware of current issues in legislation to assist us in building networks for action. We can affect policy by writing letters to our local officials and congressmen, visiting policymakers, and building coalitions of concerned people like us who care about language. I suggest that you even contact your school district's superintendent and/or school board. Your letter might be in support of the creation of a program, expansion of a program or the saving of an existing program. Your letter should include the following: a) introduce yourself, b) explain the issue, c) always utilize facts, d) demand action.

The United States is a multilingual country:

Ethnologue estimates that the United States is home to speakers of 245 different languages. While the United States does not have an official language, English is considered the de facto language for public purposes. However some states, including Louisiana and New Mexico, have declared langauges other than English as an official language.

~From American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese

Attack on nonnative English-speaking educators

Whether is's Official English or English-only in the United States, or calls for increased language education, language policy can take many shapes and forms. Read below about one of the issues that TESOL is monitoring.

TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc.) and the Arizona affiliate AZ-TESOL have great concerns about this teacher English fluency evaluation initiative and its impact upon English language learners. Nonnative English-speaking educators should not be singled out because of their native language, nor evaluated based on arbirtrary standards of language fluency.

Click here to read the TESOL statement:

http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/bin.asp?CID=922&DID=13248&DOC=FILE.PDF

From: TESOL, Inc.

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New Teacher Evaluation Plan Approved in Maryland
A council of Maryland educators and policy makers approved a model for evaluating teachers and principals that will be piloted in Prince George's County and six other school systems this fall. Fifty percent of future evaluations will be tied to student test scores or other district growth measures, which is a step that many teachers oppose. Teachers will not receive a rating of "effective" unless their students show progress. This system will be used state-wide in 2012-2013 but Maryland received Federal approval to delay total implementation until the following year, once school systems have become familiar with the changes.

From The Washington Post

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Urge Congress to Restore FLAP Funding

Dear Language Advocates and Supporters:
Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee considered and passed the Labor HHS and Education funding bill. Although some education priorities were protected, the bill zeroed out ALL funding for the Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP). This means that for the next fiscal year there will be no funding for new FLAP programs and possibly none for current FLAP grantees. FLAP is the only existing K-12 national program for language learning.
In the big picture, the elimination of FLAP demonstrates a lack of commitment to teaching foreign languages in US schools at a time when our nation’s children need to gain skills that will enable them to compete in a global economy. Meanwhile other countries have made language a high priority – in fact, the large majority of European countries require students to study language for at least nine years. Cutting FLAP also flies in the face of Department of Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, who is urging the US to prioritize language for national security interests.
Zeroing out all K-12 language learning in fiscal year 2012 means that the opportunity for thousands of children to learn another language will be jeopardized or eliminated as school districts struggle under tight fiscal constraints. To add to the distressing news – Title VI funding, which was cut by $50 million last fiscal year, was not restored to its previous funding level in the Senate bill.
We urge you to contact your member of Congress and tell them this decision must be reversed. If you currently have a FLAP grant, your congressional representative needs to know what will be lost if your funding is eliminated. Thank you for your continued support.

ACTFL1001 N Fairfax St Suite 200 Alexandria, VA 22314
Phone: 703.894.2900 Fax: 703.894.2905
membership@actfl.org | http://www.actfl.org/ | http://www.discoverlanguages.org/

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ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

The Invisible Minority

The National Education Association has a long, proud legacy of

advocating for great public schools for every student, including

English language learners.

Educational, socio-economic, and sociocultural factors facing English language learners (ELLs) and NEA members are more important now than ever. The future of our members is closely tied to the educational outcomes of ELLs.
NEA cares about ELLs because our members:

-Embrace multilingualism and multiculturalism

-Care for all students

-Want every student to be college and career ready

-Recognize that as the student demographic changes, and grows
so must their capacity to meet ELL students' educational needs

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In 1966, the National Education Association’s Department of Rural Education released a report entitled, “The Invisible Minority: Report of the NEA-Tucson Survey On the Teaching of Spanish to the Spanish-Speaking.” The opening page contains the following quote from Thomas Jefferson to his nephew Peter Carr in 1787.
“Bestow great attention on Spanish and endeavor to acquire an accurate knowledge of it. Our future connections with Spain and Spanish America will render that language of valuable acquisition. The ancient history of that part of America, too, is written in that language. I am sending you a dictionary.”
Since 1787, the number of languages other than English spoken in the U.S. has increased significantly, as has the number of people in the U.S. who speak languages other than English. This is a trend that educators experience today in schools throughout the country.
The enrollment growth rate far outpaces that of PK-12 enrollment. The foresight of Thomas Jefferson in his note to his nephew and that of NEA’s commissioning of this important report are more prescient today as the population of native/heritage language speakers is expected to increase to more than half of the total U.S. population by the year 2050.

From NEA Today, Fall 2011 Issue

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SPEAKING IN TONGUES
an Award Winning Film

Click below to watch a video clip. It is so moving and really something for all of us to think about.

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=film+speaking+in+tongues&mid=16005BEE0CBF5364A18C16005BEE0CBF5364A18C&view=detail&FORM=VIRE1

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO READ MORE!

Speaking in TONGUES

Four kids. Four languages. One city. One world.

At a time when 31 states have passed “English Only” laws, four pioneering families put their children in public schools where, from the first day of kindergarten, their teachers speak mostly in a foreign language.

Speaking in Tongues follows four diverse kids on a journey to become bilingual. This charming story will challenge you to rethink the skills that Americans need to succeed in the 21st century.

Sometimes a small idea has big implications. Consider America’s resolute commitment to remaining an “English only” nation. It turns out that our attitudes about language reflect much bigger concerns: that language is a metaphor for the barriers that come between neighbors, be they across the street or around the world.
Our idea in making Speaking in Tongues was to showcase a world where these communication barriers are being addressed. An African-American boy from public housing learns to read, write, and speak Mandarin. A Mexican-American boy, whose parents are not literate in any language, develops professional-level Spanish while mastering English. A Chinese-American girl regains her grandparents’ mother tongue—a language her parents lost through assimilation. A Caucasian teen travels to Beijing to stay with a Mandarin speaking host family. Their stories reveal the promise of a multilingual America. Each kid’s world opens up when they start learning two languages on the first day of kindergarten; each is developing both bi-cultural and bi-lingual fluency.

Support for this idea comes from an odd cross section of America. Business leaders point to a “flattening” world, seeking workers with multilingual skills like those displayed by many from rising nations; the Department of Defense pours hundreds of millions of dollars into teaching languages deemed “strategic” to national security (today Mandarin, Arabic, Russian. Tomorrow, Hindi? Portuguese? Malay?). And many educators tout the improved test scores of bilingual children—whether they speak English as a first language or not. Why then, is bilingualism not de rigeur in the U.S. as it is in most nations?
Many Americans have a different perspective. We are becoming a modern-day Babel, detractors warn; our national identity is at risk. Witness Nashville’s recent vote aimed at making English the city’s “official language,” something 31 states have already voted to do. New York City, in turn, felt the hostility last year when street demonstrations erupted over the opening of an Arabic immersion public school named after Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese Christian writer who once lived in New York. Even liberal Palo Alto, California, had a hard time allowing a Mandarin immersion program to open.
Some said there was fear it would attract too many Chinese to the neighborhood. Attitudes toward bilingualism can be a mask for complicated fears that are hard to talk about: the impact of new immigrants, and global competition, to name two hot button issues. But in our diverse country, in our
increasingly international world, is knowing English enough?

The ensemble cast of Speaking in Tongues answers on camera. As their educational adventure unfolds, we witness how learning a second language transforms their sense of self, their families, and their communities. In a time of globalization and changing demographics, bilingualism offers these kids more than an opportunity to join the global job market. They connect with their grandparents, they communicate with their immigrant friends, they travel comfortably abroad. They are becoming global citizens.
We’ve witnessed this transformation in our own home. Our sons are in their fourth and eighth year in a public school Chinese immersion program. They cause a stir when they order in accent-less Chinese at local restaurants. But they also have translated for a confused Chinese speaker lost at the doctor, visited shut-in Chinese speaking elders, felt at home in a traditional Chinese home, and very important for us, helped us understand our film footage. When spoken to by a native speaker, they don’t pause to translate; they think in Chinese, having learned it like a baby, by hearing it spoken around them. Their experience prompts the telling of these small stories that in turn provoke one of the most compelling questions of our day: what do we as a nation need to know in the 21st century?
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Need for Increased World Language Programs

Only 25 percent of elementary schools in the United States offered any world languages in 2008, down from 31 percent in 1997. American secondary schools offer more opportunities yet involvement is still low; currently, only half of all American high school students take even one year of a world language. Like many other academic advantages, language-learning opportunities are less available in urban schools than in suburban or private schools. For the past fifty years, school language choices have remained for the most part the same commonly taught European languages. Many FLAP grants aim to change this, focusing on programs that provide students the opportunity to learn a critical need foreign language such as Mandarin or Arabic.
The American language-education offerings contrast markedly with those of other countries where learning a second language is a higher priority. Twenty out of twenty-five industrialized countries start teaching world languages in grades K-5 and twenty-one of the thirty-one countries in the European Union require nine years of language study. It is not surprising that a 2007 report from the National Academy of Sciences warned, “The pervasive lack of knowledge of foreign cultures and languages threatens the security of the United States as well as its ability to compete in the global marketplace and produce an informed citizenry.”
To find out more about FLAP grants and where they have been awarded, please visit:
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oela/funding.html

From Speaking in Tongues and the U.S. Dept. of Education

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ACTFL Position Statement on Use of the Target Language in the Classroom

Research indicates that effective language instruction must provide significant levels of meaningful communication* and interactive feedback in the target language in order for students to develop language, a cultural proficiency. The pivotal role of target language interaction in language learning is emphasized in the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century. ACTFL therefore recommends that language educators and their students use the target language as exclusively as possible (90% plus) at all levels of instruction during instructional time and , when feasible, beyond the classroom. In classrooms that feature maximum target language use, instructors use a variety of strategies to facilitate comprehension and support meaning making. For example, they say:

1. provide comprehensible input that is directed toward communicative goals;

2. make meaning clear through body language, gestures, and visual support;

3. conduct comprehension checks to ensure understanding;

4. negotiate meaning with students and encourage negotiation among students;

5. elicit talk that increases fluency, accuracy, and complexity over time;

6. encourage self-expression and spontaneous use of language;

7. teach students strategies for requesting clarification and assistance when faced with comprehension

difficulties; and

8. offer feedback to assist and improve students' ability to interact orally in the target language.

*Communication for a classical language refers to an emphasis on reading ability and for

American Sign Language (ASL) to signed communicative ability.

Approved by the ACTFL Board of Directors 5-22-10

Report from Maryland State Summit on International Education

This report includes attention to both the important area of world language proficiency as well as the infusion of global perspectives across the curriculum.

Recommendations on Foreign Language

1. Recruit heritage language speakers as teaching resources
2. Continue to expand alternative routes to teacher certification
3. Initiate world language programs beginning in elementary school in all Maryland school systems
4. Expand dual language immersion programs
5. Expand before- and /or after-school language programs

Recommendations on Curriculum Enhancement

1. Support curriculum development that seeks to infuse international content and pedagogy in subject
     matter at all levels
2. Create school based teacher leader roles in the aarea of global learning
3. Take concrete steps to ensure that Local Education Agencies are in compliance with provisions of
     COMAR's Education that is Multicultural (ETM) regulation that support integrating cultural literacy
     into the curriculum
4. Include exemplary activity and resource suggestions for how teachers and Local Education
     Agencies can develop thier students' global competency in MSDE's Online Tool Kit for Social
     Studies, which will be expanded during Maryland's implementation of Race to the Top.
5. Require each Local Education Agency to address global citizenship in the new Social Studies
     component of the Bridge to Excellence Master Plan.

* These recommendations are a part of the Report submitted by the Maryland State Department of Education and the University of Maryland, College Park, 2011.