Over the past two months, I鈥檝e been doing a long public goodbye鈥攔etiring from my teaching career, not from writing this blog.
I鈥檝e shared a number of reflective posts based on my 23 years of teaching, ranging from how to keep 糖心动漫vlog in the classroom, why I stayed at one school for my career, things I鈥檒l miss and not miss, and key pieces of advice I offer all teachers. Ed Week even sent a videographer to my school to document my final days there (and shared even more video snippets here).
And now, it鈥檚 time for what I think may be my last commentary about my retirement鈥攚hich I鈥檝e certainly stretched it out!
I鈥檇 like to share what I believe is the most effective teaching strategy鈥攂y far鈥攖hat I鈥檝e done or seen and which I believe could be tremendously effective if duplicated.
It targeted long-term English learners. However, I鈥檝e always said that good teaching for ELLs is better teaching for everybody else, so I鈥檓 convinced it could be used to support English-proficient students, too.
Long-term English learners are students who have been classified as ELLs for six years or more and make up a significant portion of the nation鈥檚 English-learner population.
Six years ago, I had an idea for how our school could successfully support these students, and our school leadership supported it unreservedly.
We identified a group of 20 such students who were entering 9th grade, and they would take a support class with me. We also identified a different group of 20 who would serve as the control group.
The 20 in my class would stay together during the school day taking the same academic classes, with their respective teachers, though there would be other students in those classes, too.
Each of their content teachers would send me a paragraph once a week. In that paragraph, they would tell me what they would be covering the following week and what prior knowledge would be helpful for students to know to help them access that content.
In that preceding week, my class would have engaging lessons focused on the students developing that prior knowledge. When it was outside my area of expertise, which was often the case with math, we would watch appropriate Brainpop movies and play reinforcing games.
My support class also functioned as a de facto 鈥渁dvisory,鈥� with us doing social-emotional-learning lessons, students reflecting on what they were learning in their other classes, and, because of my ability to speak Spanish, I stayed in regular communication with their parents or guardians.
It was an extraordinary experience for all of us. My students, who in past years often felt behind academically, now were typically the most prepared students in all of their classes.
We worked closely with our district鈥檚 central office to develop assessments to monitor student progress. Students in our support class scored much higher in every measurement that we tracked鈥攁cademic, disciplinary, attendance, etc.鈥攖han the control group.
In fact, nearly half the students in the support class joined our school鈥檚 International Baccalaureate Diploma Program the following year.
You can read an
We repeated the program the following year with a different teacher. It was well on its way to similar success when the COVID-pandemic struck. Afterward, fiscal challenges prevented our school from continuing the class. We couldn鈥檛 spare a period or two for a teacher to cover the class.
Obviously, as education researcher Dylan Wiliam has said, 鈥淓verything works somewhere; nothing works everywhere.鈥�
Nevertheless, I鈥檓 convinced that this kind of program鈥攃ombining cohorts and collaboration鈥攃an be an exceptionally effective intervention effort for English-learner and English-proficient students alike in many situations.
It does take creativity in scheduling students, a little extra work from teachers, and making the time in a school鈥檚 schedule for these kinds of support classes.
I think the payoff is worth it.
