Summer 2013

I have spent a ridiculous amount of time (to the detriment of my hamstrings) sitting at my computer this summer. But when I find myself staring out of my window wishing I were somewhere that doesn’t have internet or phone service, I remind myself about who I’m working for this summer – my students.

Last June, I watched my “muchachos” graduate from high school. When I moved back to Henderson County 7 years ago and took a job at a middle school, these boys were 6th graders at varying stages of English Language proficiency. One of them had just moved to the United States from Mexico and he did not want to be here. He loved his life on his abuelo’s farm in Mexico; he was happy there. Here he didn’t speak the language– and he didn’t want to. He was either sick or sobbing several days a week those first few weeks. But he was lucky. He landed in a school with a group of Spanish-speaking peers who watched out for him. Some of these boys remembered what is was like adjusting to a new life in a new country. Others had been born in our county and knew the ropes. Plus he had teachers who not only were passionate about helping him adjust, but also passionate about helping him learn despite his language limitations. He had teachers who recognized that limited language is not a learning disability and did not set their expectations too low.

© Alliance for Excellent Education

But this August, I’ll no longer be in the classroom with these students, somebody else will. For seven years, I’ve collaborated, co-planned, and co-taught with many of the teachers who will continue to teach these students, and I know I’m leaving them in great hands. But as explained in the brilliant 2006 publication from Alliance for Excellent Education, English Language Learners have to do double the work of their native-English speaking peers. They have to meet the same content standards while simultaneously learning academic English. In my experience, social studies classes have been an untapped resource for supporting language and literacy learning.

So I’ve been scouring the world wide web this summer looking for resources – learning activities, lesson plans, interactive websites, etc – that will align to the NC Essential Standards for Social Studies as well as support the English language development of ELLs. So when I start staring out the window again, I envision a social studies class where all students are thinking critically, reading and writing like historians, and analyzing primary sources.  I hope that my seat time this summer will benefit the teachers of my former students.

www.twainquotes.com © Barbara Schmidt

For some reason, this quote attributed to Mark Twain always crosses my mind when I think about data.  This past year especially, with the simultaneous implementation of new standards and my district’s push for data teams, data have felt like weapons used on teachers. Data were either something done to teachers or one more thing for teachers to put on our ever-growing to-do list.

My dat-a-ha moment occurred listening to Paul and Justin talk about data literacy when I realized that by seizing the data teachers have the power to gather and interpret our own data. The more I learn about this process, the more excited I became to share this information with other teachers in my school. I want to help teachers to see how data is actually worth our time and energy because it gives them a way to communicate our effectiveness.  And right now in NC, teachers need some positive PR more than ever, and I think data could play a role in this endeavor.

I had a glimpse of the power of data for students this past spring as I was preparing my students for the ACCESS (the state standardized assessment for English proficiency).  I get reports on each student’s performance each year the child takes the test.  With my middle school students this year, I gave them all their reports and showed them how to type the scores into Excel.  Then we turned those data into a line graph.  The students who were most impacted were the ones who would exit from ESL just by raising their writing scores a few tenths of a point. With the help of a simple spreadsheet and a graph, these students could see this for themselves and were motivated – driven even – to put in some extra practice the weeks before the test on their writing practice.

photo credit: giulia.forsythe via photopin cc

I remember thinking why I hadn’t done this activity at the beginning of the year.  But through the data process shared by Seize the Data, I realize that having students look at their own data should happen throughout the year.  I wonder what impact these type of data analysis activities might have on students who are motivated less and less by arbitrary grades on a report card.

Could having students look at their own data help those darling apathetic students who don’t see the point in so much of what they are asked to do in school?  Would data literacy help teachers eliminate those pointless activities in the first place?