The year is coming to a close and much has happened this year in all of our lives.  Some of us have had the joy of welcoming new members into our family whether through birth, adoption, or marriage.  Others have lost family members to accidents, illnesses, or worse.  In terms of our professional outlook, some of us have been fortunate to be a part of burgeoning Dual Language programs with the promise of biliteracy and bilingualism for all of our students.  Others have rolled up their sleeves to better existing programs.  And yet others have watched as their programs have been squashed by those who don’t believe in them in spite of the strong evidence that they are the only research-based programs that can close the opportunity gap for our Emergent Bilinguals.

As tides change, whether at our schools, in our districts, at the state level, or even federally, your multilingual programming may hit some challenges, but challenges are nothing new in our field.  We need to safeguard our programs from this tragic end, and the best way to do this is to have strong programs that can be defended using data.

It is our responsibility as Dual Language advocates to demonstrate that our programs work.  To do this, we first and foremost have to have strong programs that do in fact work because not every program that is labeled Dual Language is truly Dual Language.  This does not mean that we should ever get rid of our programs.  On the contrary!  This means that we need to repair broken programs and build new ones using the 7 Sides of Dual Language Instruction™.  We need to have strong structures in place that follow the non-negotiables of Dual Language Education.  Our language allocation plans have to be carefully thought through and planned.  We need to ensure that we are teaching all grade-level standards distributed across the two languages.  And we need to understand how to make these standards accessible through appropriate scaffolds and comprehensible input so that while not lowering the grade-level of the text, we build appropriate entry points.  Furthermore, the false debate between separation of language and translanguaging needs to be dropped in favor of an understanding of both so that the appropriate strategy may be picked to match the classroom goals and individual student’s needs.  And finally, oracy needs to be prioritized over the quiet and ostensibly compliant classroom.  If we do this, we will have the strong Tier 1 instruction that will give us the data we are seeking.

In addition to strong instruction, we must have strong evaluation systems in both languages which help us look at the whole child as bilingual individuals.  We must be able to interpret the data across languages with a bilingual rather than monolingual lens to determine if students are making adequate growth and adjust our instruction and provide MTSS accordingly.

If we pair strong instruction with strong data analysis, I promise you that we will have programs that work.  And if we have programs that work, we will have the data needed to prove our success.  But having the data is not enough.  We will need to be able to speak to the data and the bilingual trajectory when defending our programs because while strong Dual Language programs work, they take time.

So my Dual Language friends, don’t despair.  We are fighting in the same world we have always fought in… a world in which some are strong proponents of our program, some do not believe in them, and most are unsure.  But by making the right pedagogical decisions, we can in fact protect our programs, and I am here to help.  If you need support with the 7 Sides of Dual Language Instruction™, with your evaluation systems, or with MTSS, our consulting firm is ready to provide that support to you.  I can be reached at arm977@mail.harvard.edu and at 786-390-2100.  Reach out!  I am always here for you.