5 Ways to Build Resilience, An Essential Tool for Sociocultural Competence
Sociocultural Competence is one of the three pillars of Dual Language Education and encompasses the following four domains: identity formation, intercultural competence or diversity, the ability to identify injustice, and the ability to take action against injustice. When our students are able and willing to take action against injustice, we know we have reached our…
Proud Parent of an “EL” Student
A few years back, a principal vehemently argued with me that a student who had scored “approaching proficient” on her English language screener should not be classified as an English Learner (EL)*. According to this principal, the student, who was at the time entering Kindergarten, spoke English well and did not speak much Spanish. When…
What if our Dual Language Program is Not Working?
We know that, according to national research, a well-executed Dual Language program results in better performance for Emergent Bilinguals than any other form of support. However, Thomas & Collier (2004-2012) share a “warning graph” that demonstrates that calling a program “Dual Language” is not sufficient to get the results we intend for our students. In…
Considerations When Talking About Race
The Gregorian Calendar is a fairly new calendar, founded in the 1500s to better approximate the earth’s revolution around the sun. It took many years for this calendar to be accepted by all its current adherents, with Catholic nations and its colonies being the first to accept it. Greece was, in 1923, the last European…
Thanksgiving and The National Day of Mourning
Many schools continue to teach “The First Thanksgiving” to students, a heartwarming story of two cultures that came together. In this story, Native Americans helped newcomers survive a harsh climate. In turn, the newcomers hosted a celebration of the success of that encounter, exhibiting gratitude towards both God and their Native hosts. However, the heartwarming…
The Importance of Recognizing Deepavali (Diwali) in Schools
New York City Public Schools recently decided to make Deepavali (Diwali) a holiday for students and teachers. A simple decision to improve inclusivity has surprisingly become controversial. There are those who claim that the decision takes us further away from the separation of church and state. (I’m not going to honor this argument in my…
What 9-11 Taught Me About Sociocultural Competence
September 11th, 2001 evokes memories for anyone who was in the United States on that date and is today, 18 years or older. We all remember where we were and what we were doing. The date marks the first time since Pearl Harbor that our country had been attacked, and it was a definite blow…
5 Ways to Support Speakers of Low Incidence Languages
Dual Language Programs are a fantastic way to honor the linguistic backgrounds of our language minority students, but only the linguistic backgrounds of our language minority students who belong to the majority amongst our minorities. But what about our students who speak low-incidence languages? What about our students who are minorities amongst language-minority students? I…
5 Do’s and 3 Don’t’s When It Comes to Names
Soon Labor Day will culturally signify the end of the long, hot, lazy days of summer and give way to pumpkin spice and scarecrows. Once upon a time, Labor Day also signified the last days of summer vacation for our kids. Now, depending upon where you work, the year might have already started, or you…
Being a Monolingual Administrator for a Dual Language Program
As this new school year begins, district and school administrators are filled with the typical excitement and anticipation, but additionally, perhaps a novel sense of anxiety. This anxiety may stem from the fact that the start of this school year is characterized nationwide by a record number of teacher vacancies. Perhaps it comes from the…
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Social Justice and Education 