Author: Diane Kim

Towards the end of August, whenever I drove past a school, I noticed that the parking lots were filling up again. At first it was just one or two cars dotting the pavement, but as the first day of school inched closer, entire rows of vehicles stood at the ready, some with trunks and side doors open as teachers carted in the materials they would need to start the year.

Every September this dedicated ritual occurs. And with each box of supplies carried into the school, educators are busy planning, anticipating what we will need to welcome, include, and teach students. And one of the most important aspects of that planning, that inclusion, involves first languages (L1) in the learning environment.

I’d like to share a story I read years ago that may help explain why.

I wish for the life of me I could remember where I read this story. I cannot recall whether it was a book or an article. Don’t remember the author. But I do remember stopping at one heartbreaking point. The passage recounted a graduation exercise, in which students were asked what they thought their teachers and classmates would remember about them. I hope I am accurate in quoting the response from one of the students: “They won’t remember anything. They didn’t know me. I never spoke my language.”

So integral is first language to our identities that this student felt no one knew him because of its absence.

As I have mentioned in numerous blogs, the importance of home languages in school and learning cannot be overstated.  Lost in Translation  explored the devastating impact of first language loss on identity and family connections; West detailed all of the additional thinking, abilities, and skills students are able to demonstrate when using L1 in learning tasks;  and Beginner ESL Class: Fluid Dynamics and Bernoulli’s Principle summarized one teacher’s success in using L1 to teach science curriculum topics to all students in her class.

But perhaps, through all the research and statistics and cited benefits, perhaps that one statement from a graduating student encapsulates it all: if a student’s language isn’t there, in many significant ways, the student is not there either.

But how to start? This year, what will we need to make sure that this essential aspect of identity and learning is meaningfully embedded in schools?

There are some initial considerations that may help …

We might consider if there are multilingual signs in the school, or translated resources for parents. Or if there are dual language books in the learning commons, or in individual classroom libraries. Perhaps dual language books could be included in home reading programs and nightly book bags, strengthening not only the student’s first language development but also parent partnerships. In day-to-day instruction, we might notice if there are opportunities to research curriculum topics in first language, using multilingual videos or books or conversations with peers, allowing students to more fully comprehend and negotiate curriculum content.

And finally, we might consider if it is normal to hear, see, use, and recognize the value of other languages in our classrooms …  for all students, not just MLLs. We might notice if our school is, intentionally or not, an “English-only” space, or if it posits the multilingual identities of students as central to learning and belonging, and just as important as English.

With September already in full gear, I have used several different multilingual resources with students so far. But I am still working on my inventory, still wondering about the ways I can bring first languages to the classroom.

And I cannot wait to see how this will help students to fully be there, too.

It can be exhausting, at best, to move through a world that is not built for you, to encounter a steady stream of reminders that you don’t quite fit into “normal” spaces. If you have a hearing impairment, for example, and regularly walk into meetings held in echoing or crowded rooms, preventing hearing aids from isolating sounds and speech. Or if you have mobility needs and routinely encounter physical team-building games with no modified alternative to allow you to participate. Or if you require enlarged font to read handouts, but only single-sized hard copies are ever distributed during presentations …

I suspect I could not record in a single blog entry all the ways people with disabilities encounter barriers in their every-day lives. I could not capture the frustration and isolation that may result. Could not adequately convey how it feels having to ask — again — for what you need to be included.

Well. Some teachers I know are tackling this issue head-on; at meetings, committees, and during discussions they bring to the forefront issues that may, in usual circumstances, go unnoticed. These educators always advocate for presentation rooms with various accessibility equipment. They discuss the need for sensory-friendly lighting and sound amplification (among many other supports) to always be present, not just when facilitators become aware of participants who require them. And one of the most ingenious ideas they put forth was to have a stored selection of accessibility equipment in shared spaces, including back supports and ergonomic chairs. When teachers attend meetings, they can simply select the equipment they need to be included. All the time. Every time.

Now there’s a little bit of that “new normal” I was talking about in previous blogs …. Teachers creating spaces in which accessibility is not an afterthought, but embedded and normalized. And I’ll wager their classrooms are equally as inclusive.

Creating inclusive spaces from the beginning seems a critical first step in strengthening any organization, any classroom, and accomplishing any task. Diversity of experience yields diversity of perspective, and a rich source of wisdom and knowledge that others may not have. And that is a strength that can benefit us all.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: it is a joy to collaborate with educators in our board. Whether visiting a bustling kindergarten class or co-planning with on-the-go grade 8 teachers, the knowledge and ingenuity of my colleagues always enriches my practice. 

Such educators ensure they teach in ways that reach all students in their classes, that everyone has what they need to learn and belong: the student with attention challenges, for example, might have noise cancelling headphones to help them focus, among other supports; or the student who experiences challenges with written expression might have extra time, assistive technology, and alternative ways to demonstrate learning … 

However, an equally impressive feat is when these same skilled educators use strategies for students who are yet to arrive, but that also benefit the current students in their classes. They embed and normalize diversity of identity and learning needs, every day. Here is a sampling of their inclusive efforts:

An intermediate teacher always adds a multilingual box to her “new vocabulary” graphic organizers, even if there are no Multilingual Language Learners in her class; in addition to recording the new word’s definition, a picture of its characteristics, examples and non-examples, she also requests students translate the term to another language of their choice, later discussing any commonalities or insights gained through translation. This rich learning task is just one example of multilingualism she incorporates in regular instruction. And if one day an MLL does arrive in her class, they will find the use of multiple languages already well-established in the learning environment …

A primary teacher uses a speech amplification system at all times, even though there are no students with known hearing impairments in the class. Her delivery is crisp and clear, her voice is saved from projecting, and all students have the benefit of a volume and clarity that enhances and literally amplifies the message. If a student who is hard of hearing arrives, that learning environment is ready and waiting …

A junior teacher I knew many years ago learned sign language for one of her new students, and continued using it in every subsequent class she had over the years. It was always a delight to watch her students request to learn more, acquire a new way to communicate with members of the deaf and hard of hearing community, and have the benefit of visual signals accompanying transitions throughout the day. Plus it never hurts to have a little bit of the incomparable joy sign language can create in your class.

It is of course impossible to anticipate all the ways in which our learning spaces would benefit from re-imagining, re-creating. But the beauty is in the journey. And each day I see educators like these making their classrooms that much better for everyone.

I will take that “normal” any day.

I love the way the light looks different in every season. The frozen skies of winter, sunsets muted with pearl and pink. Soft spring skies, new green and gentle rain.  And of course the fiery blue of summer.  But by the end of summer, the light always starts to look a little bit different. A little less fierce, as if making way for the grand finale.

The light in September, in my opinion, can often combine the best of the other seasons … The brilliant and still-warm blue of summer remains, the leaves that began in spring still edging its horizons, only now with brilliant bursts of colour. And the sunsets of winter can be seen at the end of ever-shortening days, whispers of colder days to come.

September reminds me of beautiful things, and makes me grateful for each one. And I’m particularly grateful for all the gifts, experiences, and hopes of students, for their bright anticipation of the coming year.

I wish every one of them community and belonging, and learning relevant to their lives. And I know educators will support them throughout.

What an amazing role we have, what a chance to make a difference. May each one of you have a wonderful start to the school year, and enjoy every moment of this glorious September light.

This summer we are travelling up the St Lawrence. A road trip. We’ve been meaning to for a while and this was the year we finally cemented plans and took the leap. Starting out in Ontario and making our way east, we are travelling first to Montreal, then Quebec City, Saguenay, Tadoussac and beyond … 

We have not yet made it out of Quebec yet as I write this. And my time in this beautiful province has not only afforded me rich opportunities to learn about the history and culture and surroundings in each region I visit, but also the language. 

Although I am not bilingual, as an ESL teacher I am very used to using other languages every day … to speak with students, to scaffold learning tasks, to support students as they use and expand their first languages simultaneously with English acquisition and curriculum content. And now I find myself using many of these same strategies during my summer trip.  I am constantly learning new phrases, checking the meaning of unfamiliar words on google translate, using context and gestures to aid communication … and others are doing the same for me. As the days go by, street signs, menus, pit stops, and shopping trips all become unconventional language teachers, bringing about new interactions, inviting in new words.

But one thing, above all others, has provided the most opportunities to communicate and connect with others in French. 

We got a new puppy this year and, perhaps a bit too ambitiously, we decided to bring him along. He is 6 months old now, with floppy ears and the softest black and caramel-coloured fur. He has bright white paws that make him look as though he is wearing mittens. His eyes are a solid ice blue — except for the right one, which has a little brown in it too. He is full of puppy-bright energy, sometimes pulling too hard on the leash, but always on the lookout for cuddles and treats.

He goes everywhere we go on this trip … down centuries-old cobblestone streets; onto sun-warmed patios for slow afternoon meals; down forest trails lined with pine-dotted cliffs on one side, and deep fjord blue on the other. And no matter where we bring him, it is our little puppy that has started the most conversations. I have learned how to answer delighted inquiries in French about his age, what type of dog he is, if he is friendly, and if it is alright to pet him. I somehow managed to have a short conversation about Samoyeds with a woman whose puppy took a liking to ours, both of us moving back and forth between English and French (with a lot of gestures) to communicate. I listened quietly to a lovely couple who approached and told us, using simple French and a little English, that they had just lost their dog, and saw something of him in ours. 

I love the connections that come through embracing other languages, and in using all the tools we have as human beings to communicate. And I love how my world gets a little bigger with every gesture, every sought-after word, every conversation … every time I see someone’s knowledge, personality, and feelings flow with their language — even if I do not understand everything they are saying. Whether it is during the school year when working with students and families, or on long summer trips like this, using different languages and ways to communicate is always a gift. 

As September approaches, these August days remind me at every turn of the importance of using first languages in school …  in learning, in lessons, in the way we move through the day. This fall, may you and your students discover your own new and beautiful words. 

At the end of May, I had the opportunity to attend a “Language Friendly School” conference in Hamilton. It was hosted at Glendale Secondary School, as it is the latest school in Canada to achieve this designation. There are member schools around the globe, however, including The Netherlands, Suriname, China, Germany, the UK, and others. I was particularly excited to attend this conference at Glendale, as it is the eventual destination of many students I support across the system.

I have walked these halls many times, touring with excited grade 8s and their families, and have seen the many ways both teachers and students embrace, use, and celebrate multiple languages in learning. It is not dissimilar to many elementary schools I visit, which are quite “language friendly” themselves!

The official designation of “Language Friendly School”, however, is a distinguished one. According to its website, “the Language Friendly School is both a label and a global network of schools that embrace and value all the languages spoken by their students … they actively foster an environment where these languages thrive within the school community.”

Two guest speakers from this organization presented at our conference, and discussed all the reasons why including multiple languages in schools is critical for student learning and well-being. They were the ones we are all familiar with: that students learn faster and better in their first language; that language is an inseparable part of identity, and to exclude it from the classroom is to in many ways exclude students themselves; that multilingualism benefits everyone, not just students learning English; and that first language maintenance is essential not only for strong English acquisition, but also for the vital connection to family and culture, to say nothing of future education and employment opportunities.

The presentation was full of celebratory speeches, examples of students’ multilingual learning and what a Language Friendly school looks like, as well as a moving multilingual performance by the Glendale school choir. Yet there were somber moments as well. Perhaps one of the most impactful occurred during the slide presentation, when a quote attributed to a former principal at Silver Creek Public School in Mississauga appeared on the screen:

“I went into school with two languages. I left with one. This is the exact opposite of what education should do: it should add things, not take away things.”

And there it is. This statement, in its stark simplicity, is a devastating reminder of what can happen out of sight, out of anyone’s notice, when we use only English in our schools.

Perhaps this is why the Language Friendly Schools website has a similarly brief yet poignant objective:

Language as a resource.

Language as a right.

A right, indeed. Language is who we are. To exclude it, consciously or unconsciously, from the school environment is antithetical to our most sacred duties as teachers.

(On happier note, the above school, Silver Creek Elementary in Mississauga, is also designated a Language Friendly School.)

I look forward to detailing in subsequent blogs all the ways in which the elementary schools I support are language friendly. For now I will leave you with a quote that was lovingly scrawled in colourful chalk in one of the classrooms at Glendale:

Language is the blood of the soul, into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.

– Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our days are filled with chatter. I know mine is. And it begins the moment I open my eyes … all the usual half-awake exchanges as the kids get ready for school and dawdle through breakfast, my words becoming more alert and urgent as I shoo them out the door to catch the school bus. Then it’s the radio host spieling off the hourly news as I drive to my first school, words coming out at a clip. And when I arrive for yard duty, welcoming students and families, their greetings are morning-bright and plentiful. As the day progresses, multiple text-to-speech messages to beloved colleagues usually occur, about an unexpected event, confirming a procedure, or maybe just seeing how they are doing … and in return characters pop up on my screen, gifts of script that are my support and comfort as I navigate my role.  And finally, the classroom itself, filled to the brim and bustling with nearly six and half hours of language each day.

Our world and our classrooms can be predominantly verbal linguistic in nature. Life is encoded in language, and as an ESL teacher, I have become acutely aware of the isolation and exhaustion that can occur if a student is just beginning to learn that language. Everything is a challenge, everything takes time. As peers effortlessly receive and toss back messages, multilingual language learners continually try to deduce meaning, search for context, and cross-translate in order to understand and respond.

As I have noted many times in this blog, I know countless teachers who are exceptional at making the language of instruction accessible to MLLs.  They use visuals as they speak during lessons, they pre-teach vocabulary before tasks, they provide sentence stems before speaking in groups, they activate prior knowledge in first language … again, I could fill a page with the strategies I have seen.

But sometimes, sometimes there is a time for quiet. Where we remove words and language from the learning task altogether. And in these moments, when I observe MLLs, I see the tense expression slowly ebb from their faces, worry dissolving. Suddenly, everyone is on an even playing field. Suddenly the labour of navigating English gives way to flowing visual creations, construction, movement, silent collaboration.

Here are a few of my favorites …

Sequencing games in which students must line up in a particular order (by birthday month starting at January, for example) but must figure out the order silently, using nonverbal cues to convey information.

Tableaux and interpretive movement, in which students explore character and emotion and story development through motion and physicality. No one speaks. The room is simply filled with still-life scenes, expression, and silent, unified observation.

Math games with pattern blocks, in which one student at a time views a secret shape constructed by the teacher, and then returns to their table group to try to recreate that multicoloured shape from memory with their own set of blocks. As students each take a turn viewing the teacher’s shape, one by one, they return to their group members and help each other adjust and finish the shape accurately. The catch? No talking.

These are just a couple of options, but there are countless ways to engage students in rich learning, in momentary quiet. Just a little bit of time, for the cognitive load to ease.  And I suspect it is not only MLLs that benefit from the occasional learning task in which language is removed. The introverted child, who prefers to contemplate before speaking, has ample time to do so during silent drama tableaux. The student with language output challenges, their sharp minds usually frustrated by the inability to pull words out quickly … suddenly their insights and ideas flow unimpeded. And sometimes … sometimes everyone benefits from a little solitude, a slowing of the day’s frenetic pace into soundlessness.

Hoping you and your students, from time to time, find togetherness in this most wonderful kind of quiet.

Even in noisy classrooms, busy hallways, and seas of faces, there are endless ways students might be lonely. Maybe they feel different, like they don’t quite belong. Perhaps they feel like they can’t contribute, that their voices and opinions don’t matter.  Some may feel like they can’t talk to anyone, at all.

Any child could feel these things, for any number of reasons. And having worked in ESL for many years now, I have come to see that multilingual language learners might be lonely in ways that are typically unexpected, in situations which otherwise might seem innocuous …

Perhaps loneliness might be born of listening to a class novel, read out loud by their teacher for 20 minutes … while the thrilling tale is open to all their classmates, it remains only a hum of disjointed sounds to the student just learning English.

Maybe loneliness finds them while staring confoundedly at a worksheet … devoid of illustrations and graphics, an intimidating wall of text stares back at them, crammed margin to margin with indecipherable script.

And loneliness might show itself at the sound of their classmates’ voices, at the sight of their hands raised … knowing that their peers are answering, participating, and understanding … while they themselves cannot.

This blight of isolation has an elixir, however. There is no one single recipe that produces this redeeming draught, but many educators know the basic ingredients. Luckily, my role affords me glimpses into this creative process, across many schools, in countless classrooms. School days, and weeks, and months reveal of a pinch of this, a dash of that, strong foundations, and ingenious combinations. Here’s a smattering of this years’ reimagined approaches:

A novel study, but with copies in multiple languages… so everyone is involved in the magic of the tale, and the meaningful exploration of related themes and topics afterwards.

A worksheet, dense script lightened by illustrations and open spaces, meaning unlocked through visuals and strategic translation, transforming that wall of text to an invitation, a welcoming-in.

A lesson, relevant to the lived experiences of students in the class, its ciphered speech slowly made comprehensible as teachers point to pictures of vocabulary they are talking about, visual clasps that fasten meaning to words … and the slight slowing of the voice as this happens, like stopping briefly on a stroll for a warm greeting.

As I’ve said before, each classroom is different, each teacher’s response tailored to the needs of the students before them. But each wonderful concoction has the same effect. And I never tire of seeing all the various ways our teaching can become that beautiful remedy, that antidote to loneliness.

Last fall I wrote a blog entry about our union local’s efforts to identify The Missing Pieces in its office space, the things that may unintentionally inhibit members’ participation in union events and workshops. The HWETL Disabilities and Accessibility Issues Committee organized this initiative and came up with a one-question survey that we asked anonymously at all union events, in hopes of identifying barriers:

“Is there anything missing from this space that you need in order to have access to the same information, and the same opportunity to participate, as everyone else in the room?”

The answers we received were illuminating.

We got responses that spanned everything from lighting brightness, to speech amplification, to the amount of space between tables and in aisles. Some of the answers we did not anticipate … but isn’t that always the case? We cannot know how life unfolds for those whose experiences and identity we do not share.

And the union got to work right away, making changes to promote inclusion, just as we would in our classrooms. Making better spaces. 

And this process reaffirmed for me the importance of continuing to question things as they are, even if they seem “fine” to me. What is that saying? There are a great many things we know. And there are a great many things we don’t know. But there are even more things that we don’t know we don’t know.

So for now, this survey is a start. It is most definitely not an ending. Wishing all of us luck in discovering tomorrow what we do not know today, and making our students’ lives ever better for it.

I could hear her voice from the hall as I approached. It had the tone and cadence of a lesson that is going well, guiding students in a steady flow. I opened the door quietly. As I stepped inside the classroom the full volume of her words, amplified by the sound field system, suddenly surrounded me in an acoustic hug. And there she was at the front, wearing her mic headset, holding a book, and addressing the class. Her students were looking up at her, and then back to their desktops, engaged in the task she was explaining. Her words effortlessly transitioned from English to Hungarian, back and forth. The class was clearly used to hearing other languages in instruction, as evidenced by their intense focus on the activity, attending to her words with casual ease and unfazed expressions. This was, it seemed, a typical Tuesday for them.

While this teacher is fluent in Hungarian, I have also seen her use greetings and phrases in other languages too. And whenever a Multilingual Language Learner joins her class, she always welcomes them, and fully includes them in learning. It shows, too. Her new Hungarian-speaking student was all smiles. 

What an inspiring example of a multilingual learning environment, where first language is used to review and teach content. Where it is used for communication, expression, and connection. In a classroom where it is normal to hear and recognize the value of other languages. 

It is wonderful happenstance that this teacher can speak the same language as her new student. But there are many strategies teachers can use even if they do not have a language in common with the MLLs in their class. For a quick list of high-yield, low prep strategies that enable MLLs to follow whole-class lessons, my blog entry Let that be a lesson for everyone goes over some of the main ones. And for a description of these strategies in action in an actual lesson, Beginner ESL Class: Fluid Dynamics and Bernoulli’s Principle showcases another amazing teacher’s efforts to make her whole-class lessons accessible to all students, regardless of English language proficiency. 

When I think of both these educators, when I picture their lessons in my mind, I see the ways in which their teaching included students who might otherwise have sat in lonely silence. Their efforts ensured that the opposite occurred. And so, in the languages of their new students, Gracias, شكرًا لك, Köszönöm.