Author: Diane Kim

The first day on the job can be tough for any new employee, especially when they are young and just entering the workforce. Summer jobs, part time work, new environments, unfamiliar faces … all of that uncertainty can sometimes combine to create unexpected situations. Like the following, for your consideration …

A young woman was about to begin one of her first jobs ever, and the boss had asked all new employees to meet in her office for orientation. She was the first to arrive (she liked to be a little early to prepare) and found the door to the office slightly ajar. She could hear voices inside, so she took a seat in the hall.  While she waited, she opened her bag and searched for her list of start-up questions, to review again.

A few minutes later the door opened fully and a client walked out. When the client noticed the young employee sitting there, she startled and looked away, then hurriedly left. The boss came out a moment later and when she saw the young woman, exploded.

“That is unacceptable!” she scolded, pointing a finger at her. “That is just awful, you need to alert people if you are there!” Before she could respond, the boss stormed off down the hall.

It is easy to imagine the thoughts that may have been racing through the boss’s mind just before she reprimanded the employee: The chair was right outside my office. She was close enough to hear any conversation inside. I can hear conversations in the hall myself, even quiet ones. She was not listening to music or talking to anyone; she was just sitting there and clearly had been for some time. Of course she heard everything. She was eavesdropping.

Right?

Right???

The above scenario perfectly illustrates a phenomenon that afflicts all of us humans and is especially relevant in education. I’ve heard it called many things: jumping to conclusions, climbing your Ladder of Inference¹, making up a story, assumptions … But the gist of all of them is this: in any given circumstance, our brains filter events and information through our own individual lenses. And as much as we like to think we know (we just know) what must be going on in any given situation, the truth is we really don’t. Not until the person involved tells us. Until then, we are all only ever operating from our own frame of reference and, let’s face it, limited knowledge. The lived realities of others are not a part of our own experiences, so we jump to conclusions based on incomplete and sometimes biased information. And once a conclusion is in your head, unless you stop to question it, it can result in some regrettable actions.

The truth of the matter was, the young woman in the above scenario did not hear a single word of the conversation, even though it took place only a few feet away from her, and here is why: she had severe hearing loss, and unless she was facing a person in the same room, her hearing aids could not pick up sound properly, and any voices or conversations sounded like muffled white noise to her, if they were detectable at all. And because it was not within her frame of reference, she was completely unaware that a typical-hearing person would be able to hear a conversation behind that slightly-open door. But the boss did not pause; she scrambled up her ladder of inference and ended up yelling at her new, eager employee for something she did not do. And demonstrated a bit of ableism in the process.

Oops.

As teachers, we work with students whose backgrounds, identities, and lived realities may be very different from our own. We may not have all of the information required to identify and respond to students’ needs.  And if we are not careful, if we do not find the pause, the quiet wondering, we risk forming conclusions that may be inaccurate, even harmful.  And there are many scenarios in our day-to-day teaching that require questions rather than conclusions …

Look at the terrible lunches the student brings. The parent must not care. (Or does the student have intolerances and sensory challenges, and the food packed in lunches is what they will eat independently, with parents ensuring proper nutrition in supported environments at home? Or is the family experiencing food insecurity and does not know where to ask for assistance? Or something else?)

That child won’t even look me in the eye … so disrespectful. (Or is it social anxiety? Neurodiversity and difficulty with eye contact? Cultural deference to the teacher? Something else?)

Look at this absence list … how hard is it to get your child to school?  (Or is there a chronic health condition? A student with mental illness? Economic barrier? Trauma? Something else?)

A colleague once told me that when she was a new teacher, she did not understand why some parents and caregivers had difficulty getting their children to school regularly.  After years of supporting students and their families, she quietly remarked that behind many an arms-length absence list is a broken-hearted parent.

So, to all new teachers (and seasoned ones, including myself) if there is one thing to remind ourselves of, it is to find the pause, the quiet center in the storm of our thoughts. To resist rushing up that ladder, furiously grabbing at the rungs of our own experiences, hoisting ourselves up to quick conclusions. Because in the pause we may find reflection. Do I have all the information? Might my identity have shielded me from something here? How can I learn more? As Eugene Ionesco is said to have remarked, “It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.”

Wishing many beautiful questions to you all.

 

 

¹ Harvard Business School Online, “What Is the Ladder of Inference?”, https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/ladder-of-inference.

 A cricketer whose bowling average is 12.4 runs per wicket takes 5 wickets for 26 runs and thereby decreases their average by 0.4. How many wickets were taken by the cricketer until the last match?

I can’t remember where I came across that question. It’s still findable on a couple of websites, but I think the first time I encountered it was years ago … perhaps in an ESL teaching resource? I do remember that the author had used this word problem to illustrate the importance of vocabulary knowledge for reading comprehension and solving word problems.

Unless you are familiar with cricket, you may have stumbled while reading the above passage, just like I did. Sure, I can decode it and read it fluently, but I have no idea what on this glorious green earth it means. I have never played cricket. Don’t know the rules. I’m not familiar with any of the special terms (I had to google “cricket vocabulary” to come up with the title of this blog). It bears saying that it’s not just the vocabulary that stumps me in that question, it’s the context; when I first read it, the entire thing was so befuddling I had difficulty determining even the first step in solving the math. Wickets? The only Wicket I know anything about is the Ewok who helped Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi. And I strongly suspect that will not help me here.

Since my teachers’ college days, I have heard about the importance of activating students’ background knowledge for reading and other curriculum tasks.  Background knowledge is critical in supporting all students’ new learning, and yet instances abound when they may encounter curriculum material that is academically and experientially unfamiliar, and culturally embedded. How many times have I seen smart, capable, students stop in confusion when reading a text about going camping, building a snow fort, or ordering a meal in a restaurant from a menu … If you have never done these things before, how would you make meaningful connections to a story about them? How would you understand the main point of the text? Or solve a math question related to it?

All of this leads me to a professional resource I recently read: Teaching Foundational Skills to Adolescent Readers by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, Sarah Ortega, Kierstan Barbee, and Aida Allen-Rotell. In their chapter on background knowledge, the authors summarize the key findings of multiple studies on the effect of background knowledge on learning, and one section in particular offers a helpful distillation:

“When students’ background knowledge is strong, they can more readily comprehend complex texts because as they read, they are able to fill in missing or incomplete information that the author assumed readers know (Ozuru et al., 2009). Conversely, when students’ background knowledge is lacking, comprehension can suffer even for the most motivated readers because they have more difficulty making the logical leaps necessary to fill in the blanks (Elbro & Buch-Iverson, 2013).” (Fisher et al., 2025, p. 35)

So, we know background knowledge has a significant impact on learning new material. But how do we build background knowledge for learners who may not have the experiences and prior learning required to optimally engage with curriculum tasks? And what level of background knowledge is sufficient to make that knowledge, as the multiple studies in the book term it, “usable”?

I wish I could show you the graphic the authors created to illustrate the necessary components of usable background knowledge; it ties it all together nicely.  As a short description, the graphic is a simple circle. The words “Background Knowledge” sit in the very center of this circle, and three interconnected qualities surround it in a continuous cycle: “organized”, “conditionalized”, and “transferrable” (Fisher et al., 2025, p. 38).  To paraphrase the authors’ descriptions, students must have not only an awareness of the topic and its associated vocabulary, but this knowledge must also be organized and connected to other facts, creating a global understanding of the topic rather than disconnected terms and bits of information (defining the term “wicket” may help me a bit, but I need more context); the learner must also know in what conditions it is appropriate to use this knowledge (the authors use a fable to illustrate this one, so I will as well – a student may know a lot about lions and their habitats, but that information isn’t needed when analyzing the moral of the fable The Lion and the Mouse); and finally, the learner must be able to transfer that knowledge to new situations in order to learn (Fisher et al., 2025, pp. 38-42).

Essentially, it is not enough to give students the definitions of unfamiliar words, or perfunctory overviews of unfamiliar topics, before engaging in academic tasks related to them. There is a difference, they quote, between “disconnected facts” and “usable knowledge” (How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School, 2000, p. 11, as cited in Fisher et al., 2025).

All of this emphasizes to me the importance of knowing our students, their experiences, their backgrounds. It also highlights the importance of critically evaluating teaching topics and resources … are they familiar and accessible to everyone, or just to students with specific backgrounds and experiences? And how can we guide students in developing their background knowledge, and knowing when and how to use it? To transfer it to new situations?

The authors offer a number of ideas in this regard: initial student self-assessments to determine background knowledge, anticipation guides, and variations on KWL charts by adding a “Use” column as well, so that students are not only recording what they know and want to know about a topic, and what they ended up learning, but also how they will use and apply this information in new contexts.

This entry is not meant to be a comprehensive explainer of the authors’ work by any means, but rather a reflection to pique interest. If you have access to a copy, there are lots of practical, research-backed strategies for your classroom. And many of the studies they cite are available free online too, including some of those listed below.

Good luck – Yub nub!

 

 

References

Elbro, C., & Buch-Iversen, I. (2013). Activation of background knowledge for inference making: Effects on reading comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, 17(6), 435–452.

Fisher, D., Frey, N., Ortega, S., Barbee, K., Allen-Rotell, Aida. (2025). Teaching foundational skills to adolescent readers. Corwin Press.

National Research Council. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. In J.D. Bransford, A.L. Brown, & R. Cocking (Eds.), Commission on behavioral and social sciences and education. National Academy Press.

Ozuru, Y., Dempsey, K., & McNamara, D. S. (2009). Prior knowledge, reading skill, and text cohesion in the comprehension of science texts. Learning and Instruction, 19(3), 228–242. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2008.04.003

 

Sometimes a single sentence from a child can give you hope for humanity. I am profoundly grateful for these moments, especially when it sometimes seems like the world is wielding a firehose of divisiveness and intolerance, aimed directly at our faces and set to endless jet-blast.

So now, in the month of June, a month to honour and listen to many communities, I’d like to share one such moment with you.

I was working with a multilingual language learner. It was always a joy to observe this student during lessons. He moved through the day on a seemingly endless wave of energy and positivity. Everything was an adventure, everyone was a friend, and he was always the first to help others who looked like they might be having a tough time.

In this particular month, his teacher was reading a series of picture books to the class, representing many different types of families. Every time I visited, this student was thoroughly enjoying the read alouds. Since he spoke Albanian, I tried to find some of the titles in his home language, as well as other languages of the school community. I did manage to find some family-themed books … but I wish I could have found what appeared to be some of his favourites: the ones we were working on today. Once he found out I’d be working with him on those, he strolled over contentedly to see what would happen.

It was a sorting activity. Students were asked to compare the families in each book by sorting similarities and differences on a Venn Diagram.

Venns are great. Love it when these are a part of student learning. Today, as I sat next to my bright new student, I watched his eyes light up as we looked at the books again together, and then settled in for the task.  I read his teacher’s cut-out English sentences aloud (sometimes translating if necessary) and watched as he expertly took the square of paper and placed in on his sheet.

‘Family lives in a house.’ Where does this go? He slid the sentence with his finger over to the Family A circle.

‘Family lives in an apartment.’ Where does this go? This one went to the Family B circle.

‘Family has a cat.’ They both did, and he plunked the sentence squarely in the middle where the circles overlapped.

It went on this way, and my stack of sentences got smaller with each question I read.

‘Family has a mom and dad.’ Where does this go?  He slid it to the correct circle instantly.

‘Family has two moms.’ Where does this one go? Done.

‘Family is full of love.’ Where does this one go?

He snapped his head up and looked directly at me.

“What are you talking about?” he asked. The change in expression and tone was so abrupt, it took me aback. He had been nothing but upbeat and engaged through the entire unit.

Did he misunderstand the question? Was my translation off? Was he making a joke? Was he talking about something else entirely?

I stopped, uncertain of what he would say. He waited a moment, and then said in exasperation, “ALL families are full of love!”

And with that he shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite believe his teacher would ask such a ridiculous question and placed the sentence perfectly in the middle.

Happy Pride.

 

 

 

 

My mom has always loved books; over the years she has acquired too many to count. So when she moved to a retirement home this spring, and I went to her apartment to begin packing up her things, those books were one of the first things my gaze fell upon. There wouldn’t be room for them at her new home, and she knew she had to give them away. Find a good place for them, was all she said. But there were shelves and shelves, and I didn’t know how I could possibly pack them all up and haul them away in heavy boxes, or where I would take them.

​And then I remembered the Little Library.

​There is one right outside her apartment. Standing on a single pole, it looks like an oversized birdhouse, its wood painted dark blue. Two glass-paned doors open to reveal three shelves, on which community members are invited to “take a book, share a book”.

​To be honest, I have never left anything in it before. They always catch my eye though, these wonderful little giving spots that pop up in neighbourhoods all over the city. And whenever I pass them I can’t help but wonder what’s inside.

​So when I was looking at the rows of mom’s books in her too-quiet apartment, I thought, why not put some in the little library?

​I took about 10 books down on the first run, in a bag slung over my shoulder. When I got down there I found one door slightly ajar, moving with the breeze and softly tapping against the frame. I opened both doors and peeked inside. There were a few titles there … a cookbook, a novel and, delightfully, a cartoon-character festooned children’s book in Mandarin.

​I placed my books on the shelf, then lugged the rest of my bags to the car, and drove off to deliver them to my mother.

When I returned a few hours later for a second round of packing I stole a glance inside the little library as I walked by. Someone had taken the Mandarin reader, and a few of my mom’s books from on top. I felt a little of rush of excitement. I wondered who had taken them, and how great it was that people could find a little unexpected gift like that on their way home.

​This time when I came back down from her apartment, I had a full pull-cart of books to add. I lined them up on the shelves, moving taller ones to the top, and smaller ones to the bottom, until they all fit into colourful rows. Cramming the last book in, I stood back and admired my work. Every inch of space was taken. The titles looked back at me invitingly, a jumble of genres and subjects, everything from how to make soap, to yoga guides, to mystery novels, and even Mr. Spock’s autobiography. Satisfied, I started to close the doors but stopped when I heard a happy voice behind me.

​“I have some too!”

​A woman holding a bagful of books walked up, and I instantly regretted bringing those last ones down. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I think I took the last of the space.”

​She smiled and started piling her books horizontally across the tops of the others.

​“Oh it’s ok, that’s great,” she replied. “I just went to a book exchange last month, and I’ve been meaning to bring the ones I read.” She shook out her bag. “It’s been empty every time I’ve gone by lately, so I’m glad I remembered today.”

We chatted for only a few moments, but there was unmistakable kid-like energy in our exchange. You’d think we had just dumped out our Halloween candy to see what treasures had come our way.

​“It’s the best thing ever,” she said.

​“It is the best thing ever,” I agreed.

​This ritual has continued for weeks … me going over to mom’s to pack, and ending my evening with a trip down to the little library. Each time I see new people, from all walks of life. Once it was a man in a business suit, coming up as I loaded the day’s tomes with a friendly, “What have we got today?” Another time it was a university student, stopping on her walk to scan the titles. One time I pulled up to find a teenager with a skateboard under his arm looking at what was there. And ever since I saw that little Mandarin book, I’ve taken to bringing some of my kids’ old picture books, to make sure little readers might find something that delights them too.

​There is a beauty about this spot. Where anyone might find joy and learning in a book. It’s not dependent on how much money you have, there’s no expectation of payment. No improved access if you have more connections or resources than someone else. It’s just there, for everyone.

​And so I happily continued on this way, and my mother’s shelves grew bare as the little library’s grew full. And finally, there came a day when I carried the last of the books down and laid them on the shelf, for whoever would come to get them. ​

​We hit a patch of rainy weather around that time. Not many people were out and about like before. Sometimes when I drove by, there were a couple of books, but mostly it looked empty. I felt a little sad that I had no more to give.

​Of course, very similar thoughts have been on my mind lately, with a year of uncertainty and advocacy approaching. Like that little library, our schools should be joyful places, with full access to learning and resources for everyone, and yet they too grow increasingly empty.  Funding for special classes and support staff to meet the needs of all exceptional learners … funding for psychoeducational assessments that determine rich and diverse learning needs, increasingly available only to families who are able to pay for them privately … funding for Multilingual Language Learners … books, supplies, resources … reading intervention groups …

​In the face of never-ending cuts and reductions, advocating for the supports students need is a most daunting task. But I have hope. Teachers are a tough bunch, and I am looking forward to seeing all we can accomplish together.

​And by the way, I did find out who took those first books of mom’s. The other day, on one of my last packing trips and during the first warm days of the season, I saw a couple standing in front of the little library. They were returning some books to the shelves, and one of them looked very familiar. It was mom’s novel, the bright colour and slightly bent corner giving it away. They returned the gift for someone else to read, and more. The shelves were full.

​Like the community members so invested in the little library, caring for it and bringing it back to life when it seemed all but forgotten, we too will do our best for our students. And I know that one day, our shelves will be full again too.

​

I was standing at the front of the class, in the middle of my history lesson.  I was a new teacher, and in those early days it didn’t take me long to notice the distinctive energy that characterized a lesson going well. It was marked by easy flow of conversation, focused attention, interaction …  At times such lessons seemed to sail along by themselves, with questions, and answers, and more questions propelling the learning forward. Time would slip away like a stream, completely unnoticed until the bell suddenly announced the end of the period. But on one particular day, things were not going as planned.  Stilted energy. Halting flow. I was distracted by something important, and every sentence I uttered seemed to drop like a stone in front of me.

One student could not understand my lesson, and I knew it.  She had joined our class that morning and was new to English. After introductions, welcoming, and community-building games throughout the morning, we found ourselves in afternoon history class. History can be a challenging subject at the best of times, with abstract concepts and events removed hundreds of years from current experiences. But now this bright student was sitting in front of me, knowledge and skills encoded in a language I was not speaking. She was so eager to learn, wide eyes watching me hopefully …  and my heart sank.

I did not know what to do.

Although I had just returned from teaching ESL abroad and was knowledgeable in ESL instruction, the context here in the Ontario public school system was entirely different. Overseas, the students I taught were studying English as a separate rotary subject, much like students in Ontario study core French. “English” had its own designated period, and the sole goal was linguistic acquisition. Moreover, everyone in the class had the benefit of speaking the same first language, allowing full discussion and explanation of the language material. But here in Ontario, in a class full of English-speaking students, my new student had none of those advantages: she was not learning English for the sake of learning English; she was using it to learn math, science, history, art, health …  How was I supposed to teach her all of these curriculum subjects when she was just beginning to learn the language? When she had no same-language speaking peers with whom to ask questions and clarify material? When she was in a culturally and linguistically unfamiliar place and school community?

I looked back at those hopeful eyes once more.  I am not teaching in a way that she can understand, a loud voice was ringing out in my head. On repeat. Knowing very well what it was like to be in a roomful of people and be the only one not understanding what was being said, I had to switch gears.  I hurriedly finished my lesson, and went over to work with her, re-teaching the topic as best I could and scaffolding language. But there were 25 other needs in that classroom as well, and only one of me. I couldn’t give anyone the time they needed like this. I needed to find other ways to include my new student in whole-class learning.

And that’s where PWIM comes in.

Ah, PWIM. I even like saying it that way. When sounded out it is almost onomatopoeia, a zippy word for a technique that gets your lesson going instantly. The acronym stands for Picture Word Inductive Model, and it is a tried-and-true strategy for teaching vocabulary and curriculum content simultaneously – in a way that is accessible to everyone in the class, including beginner MLLs. And the most amazing bonus? It requires almost zero prep time. The only thing you have to do is find a picture of whatever unit you are teaching … Canada in the 1800s. Desert Ecosystems. Healthy Eating. Or, in this case, the Life cycle of a Bird:

Projected in front of the class, this single image becomes a tool of engagement, with vocabulary learning, activation of prior knowledge, and curriculum teaching all rolled into one. Once the picture is up, the teacher invites students to name anything they see in the picture. In this case, students might say things like bird, nest, babies … The teacher writes the words as the students provide them, labelling the whole-class visual on the spot and even leading the class in chorally repeating the words for emphasis:

During this interaction, teachers also become aware of words students are not volunteering and may not know, and can then introduce them … perhaps words like chicks, down feathers, or talons …  Great for building vocabulary they will need for the subsequent lesson and unit. And of course, let’s not forget translanguaging:

Including students’ languages in learning has immeasurable benefits, in terms of equity and inclusion, language learning, and overall academic performance. Research tells us that students who maintain and develop first language acquire English faster and do better academically than those who do not. In addition, a multilingual classroom creates a new, inclusive space for students, in which their linguistic repertoires and identities are recognized, reflected in the school environment, and integral to learning.

And this is what would have made a difference in my ill-fated history lesson. With vocabulary now pre-taught using the Picture Word Inductive Model (necessary for the MLL but great for everyone), the teacher now has a giant labelled visual to refer to as they teach the main lesson, pointing to items and visuals as they say them, reinforcing vocabulary, and enabling greater access to curriculum content than a purely verbal-linguistic lesson would have allowed.

At some point, we all look back on our beginning years in education and think, I wish I could go back and re-teach this lesson or that …  Well, the history lesson I described earlier is one of mine. But I learned quickly, and have never stopped learning to be honest. There’s always more to consider, more to add to instructional approaches. Hoping this one, or an effective variation that you have discovered, becomes just one more way to include all students in your learning community.

 

It was lunch time, and I was sitting in the little room outside the office prepping materials for an assessment. I was just about to get up and grab some pencils when a teacher passed by and looked in.  “Oh it’s nice to see you!” came her bright greeting, and it was undeniably nice to see her too. I’ve had the opportunity to work with this educator a couple of times now; my system role sees me moving about quite a bit, and at each new school it’s always a bonus to run into people I have collaborated with in the past.  She’s a dedicated teacher, always on the go and brimming with positive energy, someone you always feel better for having spoken with.

Today she seemed a little different, though. A little quieter.

Our conversation lasted about twenty minutes, the third period bell sternly enforcing its end. But while we were chatting, she spoke about how much her students would be able to do if they had adequate supports, and I could hear the frustration in her voice. She had multiple needs in her class, and as the only educator in a room of 30 students, along with vanishing funding for special education and ESL, her worry for her students was palpable.

Such situations are far from isolated. Every day teachers show up and give their best for students, and despite all the challenges still manage to accomplish incredible things. But let’s face it: no matter how devoted the educator, no matter how skilled their pedagogy, the underfunding of our school system can sometimes create an unshakeable type of stress, when we routinely see students who do not have the specialized supports and manageable class sizes they need to truly thrive. Couple that with the worries and struggles we may have in our personal lives, set it all against the backdrop of our roiling world, and you have the perfect recipe for stuckness.

Ugh, stuckness. I loathe it. Stuckness is the worst.  That trapped feeling, like boots you can’t pull out of squelchy mud.  Where solutions to our problems seem so out of reach, so distant, that we feel that we aren’t really making any progress at all.

But – as I discovered not too long ago – there is sometimes a way to make the worry a little more manageable.

It was a couple of years ago now, and I was telling a friend about a problem. It had been bothering me for some time and I felt, well, stuck.  That there was no solution to my dilemma and never would be.  That I was doing absolutely nothing to get to where I needed to go.

But what my friend said next helped, at least a little bit. She told me to imagine I was driving a car, and while not at my destination quite yet, it was important to recognize that I was headed in the right direction. Contrary to what I felt, I wasn’t doing ‘nothing’: I had a list of steps I’d already taken, and I had a plan for steps I’d continue to take. I was aiming for my goal, doing what I could do. And sure, unruly passengers might occasionally climb aboard with me, squawking and screeching and doing their best to remind me I wasn’t there yet (thank you very much, unhelpful thoughts).  But, my friend said, you don’t have to listen. They can spew doom all they like, because you know where you’re going and you have the skills to get there. So instead of absorbing the panic and helplessness, I could continue on, perhaps with a little more self-compassion, knowing that although I hadn’t arrived at the solution yet, I was headed the right way.

So as we continue the cold trudge through February, whenever I feel myself trapped in stuckness I’m going to think of that gradual, winding road trip. It’s the right image for me; it may or may not be the right image for you. But if there is a challenge you are facing in your day-to-day teaching, it is my hope that you can see all the things you are doing, all the little steps moving you forward, knowing you are making a difference in children’s lives every day. And that as we continue to care for students, as we continue to collaborate and help one another, and as we continue to advocate for the supports our students need, we are headed in the right direction together.

 

 

Several years ago I was looking through a catalogue of vocabulary-learning apps, searching for one that might work well for multilingual language learners. As I swiped through the demos, a familiar pattern emerged – and it was most clearly illustrated in an upbeat app that was basically a digital version of flashcards. I tapped the screen and the program sprang to life, an enthusiastic voice firing out vocabulary students were expected to repeat while looking at a picture of the word. I can’t remember exactly what the app said, but it was something not unlike this:

“Aardvark! …. Buttons! … Cheesecake! …”

I silently asked myself where I would ever hear those words again, and swiped away.

This unfortunately is the downfall of many vocabulary-learning apps: the words are random, or at best organized into broad categories such as “fruit” or “sports equipment”, but which are not usually the categories of words being used in class, that the student will need to understand lessons.

Going through these apps reminded me of the day I first realized the teaching and learning implications of this ubiquitous resource type. It was near the beginning of my career, and I was attending a teaching conference in Toronto. One of the presenters was a professor of linguistics and language acquisition, and as a newly-hired ESL teacher, I had signed up for her seminar.  The presentation went as usual, the professor walking back and forth across the room, animatedly talking about her own experiences learning English as a child, and her current research focus for teachers of multilingual language learners. There were about 50 of us sitting in those old-style lecture chairs with the swing-out desktop, watching her as she paced back and forth discussing the topic she was so clearly passionate about. I was scribbling notes here and there when she stopped and directly addressed us, punctuating the importance of her statement with gestures:

“Students need to hear and use a word – speaking, listening, reading, writing – in context, at least ten times, for it to be committed to memory.”

This stark number slammed right up against the wall of ESL learning materials and workbooks I had encountered thus far: the picture flashcards full of unrelated words, the grammar-heavy ESL drill books, the word game packages … the kind of resources that saturate the market.  And when we examine these resources, several questions arise. Where is the context in flashcards? Where is the authentic communication for real purposes in grammar drill workbooks? And perhaps most relevant to the professor’s statistic, what are the chances the student will naturally hear and meaningfully use these words at least ten times in the coming days and weeks?

Over the years I have heard adjustments to the number the professor quoted … 15 times to learn a word, 20 times … sometimes more. But the common takeaway in all of the studies is, quite frankly, “a lot”. Students need to interact with words meaningfully and repeatedly in order to retain them. And if there is one place students are going to hear words repeated and used for authentic purposes, it is the mainstream classroom. How many times will we say, read, and write words such as “cloud”, “evaporate” and “rain” in a science unit on the water cycle? Way more than ten, I’ll wager. Conversely, how many times will vocabulary like “cheesecake” come up?  And what then is the chance of the student remembering that isolated lexical item and committing it to permanent memory? Words, words, words … we teachers may get that Hamlet-style reply from students, if we ask them what they learned on one of those popular vocab apps.

I have kept this guiding principle as one of the main starting points for ESL instruction over the years, identifying words students will need for learning and authentic communication, and being intentional about teaching, clarifying, and recycling them.

And on a positive note, there have been some changes in ESL resources in recent years. I have seen some new learning programs that have moved away from generalized word themes to more specific ones that students will encounter, grade by grade, according to curriculum topics. But there are still an overwhelming number of them that do not follow this model.  So I will keep searching.  And although this will never happen in any other context in my life, I think I’ll pass on the cheesecake.

Those of you who have had the privilege of being ESL teachers will know the look I am about to describe.  It’s the expression on students’ faces when you arrive at the classroom door to collect them for tutorial support, their smiles lighting up the room as they realize it’s their turn to go with you. Other times you might notice a jump in energy when you walk in, as students suddenly rush to grab their pencils and head over in enthusiastic anticipation. Yes, ESL support classes can create an incomparably safe, fun, and dynamic environment full of rich learning. It’s a smaller space, quieter … where a few familiar students and a dedicated, specialized teacher provide the extra scaffolding, time, and support new students may need to find their footing and continue to learn.

It goes without saying that many multilingual language learners appreciate and look forward to these welcoming and affirming tutorial programs.

But …

But.

Not all students do.

Those of you who have been ESL teachers will also be familiar with a different look, I think. Sometimes, it is an older student who looks a bit embarrassed, not wanting to be singled out in front of peers as needing “help”; sometimes it is a student who is passionate about the next lesson topic, and looks frustrated and disappointed they will miss it; other times the student is unmistakably crestfallen, having worked tirelessly on their art project or science demonstration, only to find they will not be present for the first part of the class presentations on it; one of the worst is a quiet look of sadness, the student’s desire to stay with their friends seeming to hang in the air in front of you, everything about their expression telling you they just want to stay and participate in everything their peers are doing.

Make no mistake, these looks are not the result of subpar teaching or lackluster ESL learning programs; on the contrary, ESL teachers are some of the most talented and knowledgeable educators among our ranks. It is simply a part of that undeniable truth, that students have unique and varying learning needs, and that while some may appreciate and benefit from tutorial instruction in the traditional sense, others need something else. They want to stay and be included in their learning community in the classroom, be the same as their friends, and learn English and curriculum in the process.

In my last blog entry First, then, I described some of the potential academic pitfalls of isolated ESL tutorial instruction, where educators teach separate programs with little to no communication and collaboration. In such isolated models, students may not have as many opportunities for scaffolded support and recycling of key language structures needed in the mainstream classroom, potentially resulting in reduced linguistic development and curriculum access. However, academics are not the only consideration in this scenario. The innate desire we all have as humans to contribute and be included is equally important. And in decades’ past, when ESL support models overwhelming defaulted to isolated tutorial support, we may have met the needs of some students … but not all.

Implicit in a model that requires students to learn English as a separate subject before they are able to participate in classroom lessons is the assumption that students do not have the ability to participate as they are, here and now. That their current linguistic repertories are irrelevant to learning. That their rich experiences and skills do not count in school. That they are not enough. 

Fortunately, today’s ESL teachers are no longer relegated to isolated islands of instruction; classroom teachers and ESL teachers can now actively collaborate with one another to ensure MLLs are included in daily instruction, and have access to a full and robust curriculum, with the language supports they need to do so. To accomplish this, some educators co-teach in the same classroom, ensuring MLLs can stay with their peers and continue learning English; some teach separately but communicate with one another, so that their language programs are aligned and mutually-reinforcing.

All of this is well and good if – if – proper supports for educators are in place, with students’ needs centred. And regardless of support model used – tutorial, or integrated, or some wonderful combination of the two –  the professional judgement of teachers, coupled with adequate funding and teaching staff, are critical to choosing, creating, and sustaining responsive learning programs for students.

I will not repeat the myriad of ways collaborative, inclusive teaching models can be accomplished. I will however offer the link again, to ETFO’s infographic quick guide “Collaboration and Co-teaching for MLLs” as well as additional infographics in the same series, “Translanguaging” and “Program Adaptations”, which detail how students’ first languages and background knowledge can be included and affirmed in the classroom, and used for rich curriculum learning. ETFO Secure – Supporting English Language Learners Resources

Wishing you the best of luck in re-imagining your classroom environments, in which all students’ identities, knowledge, and languages provide bright paths to learning. Where they are more than enough … right here, right now.

“First-thens” have plagued me all my life and believe me, they are an insidious bunch. These shady characters always show up under the pretence of reason and sensible precaution, and instead end up derailing all my best-laid plans. You might know the kind I’m talking about … they are all the little requirements and conditions we frontload onto our goals, before we actually allow ourselves to accomplish them:

“First I’ll lose a little more weight, then I will be able to buy that nice jacket.”

“First I’ll learn the dance moves, then I’ll be able to go to Zumba class.”

“First I’ll get the house perfect, then I will be able to have my friends over.”

First-thens.

Over the years, such arbitrary preconditions have prevented me from getting to the good stuff more times than I care to admit.  And counterpoint — yes, sometimes a little precaution is important, especially when critical situations and life decisions are at stake. But, if I let them, these subtle little negotiators will just keep showing up, intent on keeping me mired in deferred experiences and inaction.

(Diane. Just go to Zumba now.)

So when I see first-thens pop up in the education world, I always look at them a little askance. And while some are undeniably great (such as first-then visual schedules to help students navigate daily routines, or first-then sentence frames to help students create effective sequential writing) some may be more of the counterproductive type.

And there is one “first-then” in particular that may require some unpacking …

Decades ago, when a student new to English arrived at school, the set course of action was decidedly “first-then” in nature:

“First you learn English in ESL class for a year or two, then you will be able to understand classroom lessons.”  

With this silo-esque model firmly entrenched, and with the best of intentions based on then-current knowledge, the classroom teacher and the ESL teacher would retreat to their separate rooms. With pedagogical drawbridges pulled up, instruction in the classroom carried on as it always had (which was often largely unintelligible to beginner MLLs), and isolated ESL instruction took place down the hall (maybe a few times a week). And in this disconnected way, the MLL would dutifully bounce back and forth between educators.  It was anyone’s guess whether there was any content overlap and thus reinforcement in the two language programs. And most of the student’s time would be spent in the mainstream classroom of course, where they would sit (usually silently) with limited access to the curriculum content delivered in English.

That would have to come later. At some point.

First-then, after all.

Thankfully times have changed. And to be absolutely clear, I am not arguing that extra support in the way of ESL classes is unhelpful – especially in a time of increasing demands on teachers and decreasing funding supports. Rather, I suggest an examination of the assumptions and implications of isolated delivery methods, where English acquisition and learning curriculum are viewed as separate teacher responsibilities. Indeed, during my 20 plus years’ experience in ESL, I have noticed some distinct disadvantages to students if withdrawal programming is the only source of language acquisition support for MLLs – in terms of belonging and inclusion, learning curriculum, and even English development.

One of my all-time favourite quotes related to this issue comes from Pauline Gibbons’ book Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning: Teaching English Language Learners in the Mainstream Classroom:

“We do not first ‘learn’ a language, and then later ‘use’ it. Second-language learners do not have the time in any case to study English as a ‘subject’ before they use it to learn other things; they must begin to use it as a medium for learning as soon as they enter school, simultaneously developing their second language hand-in-hand with curriculum knowledge,” (Gibbons, p 25).

Gibbons is correct when she suggests we cannot wait for ESL class to “fix” the student before they are able to learn math, science, literary devices, and other rich aspects of the curriculum … especially considering it takes 5-7 years on average to attain fluency in a language. Yet, if learning programs are delivered independent of one another, with no communication between educators, we may miss vital opportunities to teach and reinforce the very vocabulary and language structures that MLLs need in order to learn content and communicate with peers in class.

Take the water cycle, for example. In this unit, students need to learn vocabulary such as cloud, rain, condense, and evaporate in order to understand and be included in lessons (and continue developing their English, for that matter). So why then would we spend time labelling types of fruit or common professions in an ESL workbook, when valuable support time could be spent pre-teaching this subject-specific vocabulary, offering speaking practice with target words and sentences about to be used in class, and delivering reading and writing instruction anchored in this relevant context? And during whole-class lessons, why would we pass over the golden opportunity to highlight and chorally read that same key lesson vocabulary with everyone, and point to a few visuals of those words as we instruct? The dual goal of linguistic and content knowledge acquisition is realized in this dynamic interplay, allowing repeated opportunities to use both meaningfully throughout the unit, with everyone in the class benefitting from review, vocabulary clarification, and multisensory engagement.

Now of course, sometimes other activities and approaches may be more appropriate, based on the needs of the student and professional judgement of the teachers. As we know, there is no one single “correct” way to teach; students and their needs are as unique and various as the teaching strategies that will best support them. I simply point out that isolated programs with no communication between teachers as the default and exclusive ESL support model may not always correlate to optimal learning for MLLs.

And I am happy to say I have seen some more-than-optimal learning occur for students, directly as a result of teacher collaboration and communication. Even if they only have a few seconds in their hectic days, these educators use whatever passing moment they can find to make sure their language goals are aligned with curriculum goals, with both teachers intentionally highlighting, recycling, and reinforcing this common language for students in their respective programs (and sometimes, in awe-inspiring fashion, by team teaching in the same classroom).

At this point, you would be correct to point out the desperately limited (if not altogether absent) release time teachers have to plan with one another.  In the link below, it is my hope that teachers will find at least initial strategies that require little to no planning time, with the hope of one day having the release time needed to properly and fully explore their potential.

A couple of years ago, a team at ETFO put together the infographic poster linked below. This resource offers quick and effective collaborative teaching strategies for both classroom and ESL teachers, that may provide students with increased chances to learn the language they will need every day in the mainstream classroom.

And while such collaborative efforts are essential to expedited English language acquisition and improved access to the curriculum, they are also key to student belonging and well-being. The ability to access and contribute to learning in the mainstream classroom is integral to feeling a sense of efficacy and inclusion – and to being seen that way by other students as well.

So, to classroom and ESL educators who have the privilege of teaching MLLs, witnessing firsthand their insights, talents, and multilingual abilities …

Have fun jumping in together, right now 😊

Collaboration and Co-teaching for MLLs

A couple of weeks into summer I woke up with the morning light. My dog was waiting expectantly by the door and so I threw on my sandals, put on his leash, and stepped into the steamy July morning. The sun was already strong, radiating over the grass as we walked across the lawn. 

We were out there only a minute or so when I felt a sharp pain on the inside of my ankle. At first I thought I must have brushed by a thistle or some other prickly plant, but when I looked down I saw a flurry of wings, familiar black and yellow stripes.

Yes, I had been stung. I must have gotten too close to flower or nest. And now the wasp was hovering over my bare skin, getting ready for the next strike, the burning from the first one already starting to spread outwards. With a panicked gasp, I reached down and tried to gently brush at the wasp with the back of my hand, my care and restraint born more of a desire not to get stung again than anything else. After a couple of hand waves, the wasp flew off.

Back inside, I hobbled over to the couch to google “wasp sting remedies”, and sat down with an unimpressed flop – right next to the book I had been reading.

The book is called Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, written by botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer. Recommended to our ESL team last year, it is in the author’s words, “a braid of stories … woven from three strands: Indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge, and the story of an Anishinabekwe scientist … old stories and new ones that can be medicine for our broken relationship with the Earth … in which people and the land are good medicine for each other,” (Wall Kimmerer, preface, x).

The stories within this book’s pages, though different, are nonetheless intertwined and connected to the point it is almost impossible to discuss one without reference to another. The following is just one of many that shifted my thinking. In it, Wall Kimmerer speaks about the “grammar of animacy”, and the ways in which we use language to describe the living world in hierarchical terms:

“In English, you are either a human or a thing. Our grammar boxes us in by the choice of reducing a non-human being to it … Where are words for the simple existence of another living being? My friend Michael Nelson, an ethicist who thinks a great deal about moral inclusion, told me about a woman he knows, a field biologist whose work is among other-than-humans. Most of her companions are not two-legged, and so her language has shifted to accommodate her relationships. She kneels along the trail to inspect a set of moose tracks, saying, ‘Someone’s already been this way this morning.’ ‘Someone’s in my hat,’ she says, shaking out a deer fly. Someone, not something,” (Wall Kimmerer, p 56). 

Language is not neutral. It reflects the core beliefs and assumptions of the society that speaks it, reinforcing them at every utterance. Language has power. And in our classrooms, some of the lessons we teach may be unintentional, conveyed only through the words we choose. 

All my life I have referred to wasps (and a significant number of other animals and plants for that matter) as “it”. And that language, inherently distancing, probably did not help me to see my interconnectedness with the world I was describing.

Our science curriculum is full of sustainability and environmental impact expectations. And we hope that by teaching students about these critical issues, we empower and inspire them to care for the world (an all-too-relevant need, as the string of environmental catastrophes this summer alone has shown us). But – even unintentionally – does the language we use to teach, to describe the living world, run antithetical to these lofty curricular goals? Are we trying to swim one way, with the current of our words pulling us in another? Can someone truly care about and for trees, waterways, and pollinating insects when we ascribe language that reduces them to an “it”? It is a question worth exploring, and Wall Kimmerer offers some observations:

“Our toddlers speak of plants and animals as if they were people, extending to them self and intention and compassion – until we teach them not to. We quickly retrain them and make them forget. When we tell them the tree is not a who, but an it, we make that maple an object; we put a barrier between us, absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation. Saying it makes a living land into ‘natural resources’. If a maple is an it we can take up the chainsaw. If a maple is a her, we think twice,” (Wall Kimmerer p 57).

I sat on the couch a while longer and reflected that while being stung remains a very unpleasant way of waking up in the morning, wasps do have an important place in our world. They consume insects and control populations that would otherwise ravage vegetable gardens. And even though they are not as efficient as bees, they do have the ability to pollinate flowers, adding to our source of fruit. And that seems like a pretty good thing for everyone. 

So, perhaps language can shift thinking. Perhaps it might move me from indifference at batting away a wasp, to seeing connection, and being more careful the next time I walk across our shared home. 

There are countless applications to teaching and learning (and unlearning) in the pages of this wise and beautiful book. If you have the chance to read it, I wish you joyful discoveries. But for now, I think I’ll go have a salad for lunch. I have some fresh cucumbers someone helped make for me.