Principle-Based Approaches for Educating English Language Learners

• School leadership's support of the education of ELLs can be seen in the explicit inclusion of ELLs in a school's vision, goals, and reform strategies as well as in its promised accountability regarding retention and dropout rates, test exemption rates, and enrollment in special programs.
• ELLs are neither programmatically nor physically isolated; rather they are an integral part of the school and they receive appropriate targeted services such as ESL and/or literacy instruction.
• ESL and bilingual teachers have equitable access to all staff development resources and materials.
• All staff have access to appropriate professional development in educating ELLs.
• Linguistic and cultural needs of ELLs are included in decisions regarding comprehensive school reform. School reform teams include members who are knowledgeable about ELLs.

(Brisk, 1998; Dentler & Hafner, 1997, Grey 1991; Hamann, Zuliani, & Hudak, 2001; IDRA, 2002; Lucas, 1997; Miramontes et al., 1997; Olsen et al., 1994; Stringfield et al., 1998) 

• Hallway conversations, displays of student work, and school activities are multicultural and multilingual.
• Adults from students' heritage communities play important roles in the life of the school.
• Teachers integrate students' first language and literacy and other "funds of knowledge," including their individual areas of interest and curiosity, into the learning process, helping them make connections between their prior and new knowledge.

(Au, 1980; Brisk & Harrington, 2000; Cloud, Genesee, & Hmayan, 2000; Escamilla & Coady, in preparation; Gonzalez et al., 1995; Hammond, 1997; Miramontes et al., 1997; Moll et al., 1992; Ruiz, 1984; Roseberry, Warren, & Conant, 1992; Um, 2003)

• Educators foster family participation in ways that truly value parents' knowledge and priorities.
• Educators communicate regularly with families, exchange information and points of view through newsletters, calls, interpreters, and presentations at ethnic, community-based organizations and houses of worship. Meetings are conducted multilingually.
• The school staff includes adults from students' heritage communities and speakers of their languages.
• Educators recognize the importance of family participating in education and, through family and community activities, reinforce connections among students' home, school, and the broader community in which the school operates.
• Educators understand that across different cultures and settings the roles of parents in their children's education vary. In some cultures parents' responsibilities center around the provision of necessities, protection, discipline, and moral guidance in the home and community. They may view schooling as the responsibility solely of professional educators.
• Educators have some familiarity with and show interest in learning about the cultures, languages, places of origin, demographic patterns, reasons for immigration or migration, naming patterns, and interactional styles of the communities they serve.
• Educators make explicit to ELLs' parents the new opportunities and expectations that exist for parental involvement.
• Educators are aware of potential linguistic, cultural, economic, and logistical obstacles to the participation of ELL families in school-based programs and events.
• Educators try to address obstacles energetically, creatively, and in culturally sensitive ways. They provide ethnic community liaisons, interpreters, child care, and transportation.
• Educators understand that in some families the provision of necessities, protection, and moral guidance consumes all of the parents' time and resources.
• Educators do not disparage parents whose support of their children may not be evident because of its lack of alignment with local expectations.

(Ada & Zubizarreta, 2001; Delgado-Gaitan, 1990; Epstein, 2001; Epstein et al., 2002; Heath, 1983; Henderson, 1987; Miramontes et. al., 1997; Moore, 1992; Siu, 1995; Valdes, 1996; Valenzuela, 1999; Villenas, 2001)

• ELLs have access to all programs and levels of instruction, including special education, gifted and talented education or high-level courses such as calculus.
• Curricula, teaching strategies, grouping strategies, and other reforms are implemented in ways that increase their accessibility, comprehensibility and meaning to ELLs.
• ELLs have access to prerequisites for acceptance into higher education.
• ELLs have access to all enrichment and extracurricular activities.
• ELLs have equal treatment from guidance counselors and equitable access to the full range of services they provide, such as planning for postsecondary education.

(Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University, 2000; Olsen & Jaramillo 1999)

• Particularly for ELLs with previous school experience, this principle means educators a clear sense of what students have already mastered in a different language or in a different country.
• The need to adapt curriculum to match achieved language proficiency cannot be an excuse for denying ELLs access to challenging academic content.

(Garcia, 1997; Stoops-Verplaetse, 1998; Valdes, 2001)

• Teachers should have high-quality professional development experiences in topics pertinent to working with ELLs including - first and second language acquisition, reading and writing in a second language, methods for teaching content subjects to ELLs, alternative assessment, sociocultural issues in education.
• Staff development is long term and job embedded.
• Teachers can differentiate among developmental issues in language acquisition, gaps in prior schooling, and learning disabilities.
• Teachers are culturally responsive, building on students' linguistic and cultural knowledge both for purposes of scaffolding new knowledge onto students' existing knowledge and earning learners' assent.
• Teachers foster meaningful relationships with students.
• Teachers understand and incorporate standards for ELLs.

(Cummins, 2001; Erickson, 1987; Garcia, 2001; Gay, 2001; Gonzales et al., 1995; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Miramontes et al., 1997; Moll et al., 1992; Nieto, 1999; TESOL, n.d.; Wong, Fillmore & Snow, 1999; Yedlin, 2003)

• Teachers explicitly teach and model the academic skills and the thinking, learning, reading, writing, and studying strategies that ELLS need to know in order to function effectively in academic environments.
• Teachers act as "educational linguists" and pay attention to uses and functions of language in their own classrooms and disciplines.
• Students are taught which styles of speaking, writing, reading and participating apply in a given setting, genre, or subject area, including text books and story books, friendly letters and essays, personal narratives, and persuasive essays.
• Children are enabled to make overt comparisons of linguistic meanings and uses in one environment versus another, such as the playground and the reading group, or in English and their home languages.
• ELL students have opportunities to hear comprehensible language and to read comprehensible texts. Texts are reader friendly and make links to students' prior knowledge and experiences.
• Teachers employ a variety of strategies to help students understand challenging language, texts, and concepts. These may include linguistic simplification, demonstrations, hand-on activities, mime and gestures, native language support, use of graphic organizers, and learning logs.
• Students have opportunities to interact with teachers, classmates (both ELL and English proficient), with age-appropriate subject matter through instructional conversation, cooperative group work, jigsaw reading, writing conferences, peer and cross-age tutoring, and college "buddies."

(Brumfit, 1997; Cummins, 2000; Kohl, 2002; Wong, Fillmore & Snow, 2000; Yedlin, 2003)

• Multiple forms of assessment measure not only students' academic achievement but also their progress, effort, engagement, perseverance, motivation, and attitudes in the school and classroom setting.
• Because first-language development positively impacts English language literacy (Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998) tests assess literacy in the first language along with students, English language proficiency and content area knowledge.
• Assessment is used frequently and formatively, with results following the instructor-perhaps in direct consultation with the learner-to refine subsequent teaching strategies.
• Teachers include first-language competence in assessment of an ELL's overall academic accomplishment.

(Ascher, 1990, Escamilla & Coady, 2001; Garcia, 2001; Hurley & Tinajero, 2001; National Research Council, 2000; O'Malley & Pierce, 1996; Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998; Stefanakis, 1998; Yedlin, 2003)