Getting Straight A's: Triple A Teaching--Part 1.

The last couple week’s worth of assignments and Google Alerts has gotten me to thinking about 3 ideas that I find interrelated:  Agency; Active Learning; and Authenticity.  Triple A.  What I have found in recent educational news points to the critical need to establish these 3 A’s for our ELLs.  This week, the focus is on agency.  

Agency 

Many ELLs may have never been given the opportunity to create student agency.  School, like perhaps other circumstances, is "done to them."  Before they have reached our classroom, they may not have experienced being the actor of their own educational story.  

Student agency is not a given.  Unless the principles that underlie student agency are offered, students who face persistent struggle and/or failure are likely to give up and never have experienced the wonders of being in control of their successes.  The idea requires a complex balance of hope and confidence while looking at one’s progress realistically and feeling in control of it.  So, as educators, we can provide the skill, hope and choice that are needed for our ELLs to have agency.   

I really like Jennifer Davis Poon's explanation of student agency: 

It is not (just) a manifestation of free will, or an exercise of one’s vocal chords, or a “buck up and be responsible” mentality. Rather, it is a multi-faceted skill—and disposition—invoking past, present, and future. It is students’ abilities to set advantageous goals, initiate action toward those goals, and reflect and redirect based on feedback, all the while internalizing the belief they can have agency.

She explains:

In Education Reimagined’s lexicon, Learner Agency is the “methodological development of both the capacity and the freedom of learners to exercise choice regarding what is to be learned and to co-create how that learning is to take place” (italics mine). Meaning: educators can work with young people to intentionally and progressively develop each of the four components. 

Her article Part 1: What Do You Mean When You Say Student Agency?  is a must read.  She outlines how student agency requires supporting students in setting, pursuing, reflecting and monitoring the progress of goals.  But, importantly, she explains that self-efficacy, which requires believing one can affect one's outcome through action, underlies all these important steps to student agency.  It is not enough to mentor students in goal-orientation, but essential as well to build an environment in which a learner believes it is possible for them to achieve.  This article is a good primer on self-efficacy and how it is not synonymous with self-confidence or self-esteem (though related).

Also don't miss her Part 2: Toward A Culturally Responsive Understanding of Student Agency where she warns educators about the temptation to impose the dominant-culture frame of reference on fostering student agency.

Among the content and curriculum, let's give our students a chance at seeing themselves as heroes of their own story.  

This week, in A Look Back: Every Teacher Who Has An ELL In Their Class Should Watch This “Immersion” Film, Ferlazzo has reposted a WIDA Consortium video that speaks to just one (although large and looming) barrier to student agency for an ELL—have a look.  I think it will make sense.

I don’t know about you, but that teacher is me—every year during the PSSA.  I find myself telling ELL students to not worry or something doesn't matter.  Is it akin to saying, “There's nothing we can do?”  What a poor message.  The producers of the film seem to understand this.  Go to their website to find more about the film, how to purchase or screen, and find ways to help.

Liping Wei and Paul Carlson echo the sentiment in the Victoria Advocate article, Are we failing English language learners?  They bring up the pertinent point:

High-stakes testing places public schools and teachers under increased pressure, and stress they place on some English language learners is counterproductive...  The problem is especially clear when we consider the varying ages, grade levels, personal histories and English proficiency levels of ELLs...  The reported test results unfairly reflect on the quality of instruction. Even more tragically, they depress the students’ motivation and often make students feel beaten down. They start to doubt themselves and believe they are unintelligent. The fact is, with appropriate ESL programs and sheltered instruction over time, they can meet rigorous academic demands.

Many teacher preparation programs are paying attention, such as the URI School of Education wherein Kassandra Marulunda knows the struggles of ELLs.  She is quoted as saying, "As I grew up, I began to have some negative experiences in school because of the second language."  Her purpose?  "I want to go out there and make a difference in the outlook of students with a different native language and in ESL programs as a whole.”

And thank goodness, ESSA may be creating more flexible parameters of student measures, including SEL criteria, but there is so much we can do daily in the classroom to offset the feeling of powerlessness.  Some ways to build agency include many key concepts of personalized learning such as voice and choice.  There are more ways as well to lay the proper foundation such as happier schools, smarter classrooms, careful blended learning programs, digital literacy, civics education, active learning, UDL, drama and poetry, differentiation of retrieval exercises, reflection time and mentoring, accessible homework, peer instruction, and of course, authenticity--in task and audience. 

Many of these ideas are not specific to ELLs, but I can't help to think that our ELLs can be particularly susceptible to feeling (or being) failed.  So it is with a lens toward helping those of our students who may have already been through more than most and who have the most barriers to access I look at ways to create or maintain student agency.  


Patrice Bain explains in The Secret to Student Success? Teach Them How to Learn that students who have internalized failure may have done so at a very young age and it can be hard to undo.  She writes, "I often teach students who react with surprise when they do well in my class. 'But I’ve never done well in history,' they say. This is almost always followed by a common, heartbreaking confession. 'I’m not smart.' Every time I hear this, I am faced with the gut-wrenching realization that the student has internalized failure by age eleven."  She goes on to say, "This raises two questions for me: How can we turn eleven-year-olds who have internalized failure into students like Abby who retain information for years? And how can we teach that poor grades don't indicate failure, but rather that we haven’t found the correct learning strategy?”


Some closing thoughts on this theme are the cultural importance of empathy and growth mindset in the educational setting.  Amelia Harper quotes the National Association of School Psychologists in Creating a happier school environment yields benefits for students and teachers, "A school’s environment — and the degree to which students feel connected, accepted, and respected — heavily influences students’ academic achievement, mental health, and overall school success."  

Have a look at The 7 Mindsets Portal that schools are using to create schools where everyone feels valued and successful.

To that end, read what this teacher has done with her ELLs.  It is a striking way to create a paradigm shift from a deficit model to an empowerment model for everyone!