McKay School of Education > News > McKay Today Magazine > Opportunities & Solutions

Opportunities and Solutions

by Various MSE Faculty

The David O. McKay School of Education is actively creating and refining programs
that instruct current teachers as well as teacher candidates in strategies for teaching
English language learners.

For our nation to succeed in facing the opportunities of language diversity in its K–12 schools, teacher preparation institutions must be included in the process. The David O. McKay School of Education (MSE) is actively creating and refining programs that instruct current teachers as well as teacher candidates in strategies for teaching English language learners (ELLs). The flagship of those efforts is the Teaching English language Learners (TELL) program, which is being adopted by school districts in Utah and around the nation. TELL is described below, along with programs that accent TELL course work.

TELL
Marilynn Terry, a fifth-grade teacher in Provo School District, and her student Daniel sat at the computer laughing together. Marilynn was explaining Daniel’s homework using an online translation program as a teaching device. As they worked, Daniel not only began to understand the directions for the assignment, but he also developed his English and Spanish literacy. Later Marilynn taught this approach to fellow teachers, showing them an engaging way to support English language development in students.
Mary Rice, a junior high English and ESL teacher in Nebo School District, stood in the cafeteria as a BYU undergraduate student taught Mary’s ninth-grade honors class a folk dance as part of a unit on the Crusades. The class included regular education and ELL students. That morning Mary had supported ESL students in writing poetry responding to Shaun Tan’s graphic novel about the immigrant experience, The Arrival. The next afternoon she was on the BYU campus using an experimental blended format to instruct a teacher education class.
These two anecdotes capture the collaborative nature of the history, development, and delivery of the TELL program at BYU. The development of this seven-course Engilsh as a Second Language (ESL) endorsement program began as an effort of the BYU–Public School Partnership in the 1990s when an Alternative Language Service (ALS) director in Provo District sought the help of the David O. McKay School of Education and the BYU linguistics department in educating teachers to work with ELLs. The partnership first tried using summer school and EDnet to instruct teachers. After two years only 11 teachers had received the endorsement. Partnership ALS directors needed hundreds of trained teachers to meet legal requirements. At that point, Ramona Maile Cutri, Annela Teemant, and Winn Egan joined the team, bringing expertise in teaching and delivery systems. Soon after, Stefinee Pinnegar, the current program director, joined TELL, bringing additional understanding on teacher development.
Today, faculty and students from the McKay School and BYU’s linguistics programs have joined with the BYU–Public School Partnership leaders and teachers to produce and improve the seven courses (including practica) that currently make up TELL.
TELL is one of the strongest examples of collaboration within the BYU–Public School Partnership. Partnership constituents worked together to develop and fund the courses. TELL uses the ProfessorsPlus™ delivery system, which permits the partners to teach TELL courses in school district buildings using both video segments and facilitators—making the endorsement easier and more attractive to teachers already in the classroom.

TELL materials include minilectures developed by professors using taped quotes from experts in applied linguistics and various fields of educational research, as well as stories of practice from teachers.

TELL Courses
Foundations of Bilingual Education
Second Language Acquisition
Assessment
Second Language Literacy Development
Integration of Content and Language Instruction
Creation of Parent, Family, Community Connections
Practicum

Blended/Hybrid Format
The need to prepare large numbers of teachers to work with ELL students encourages innovative approaches. Yet quantity does not always equal quality. Simply moving teacher candidates through the process of acquiring teaching strategies does not necessarily prepare them to work effectively with ELL students. There is a danger of focusing only on teaching skills without developing positive attitudes toward ELL students.
The TELL blended/hybrid learning effort seeks to instill in teacher candidates the view that working with ELL students is a moral endeavor, as well as to equip them with the skills that they need to make academic content understandable to all ELL students.
Currently, the TELL 400 course uses a blended/hybrid learning format that consists of holding some class sessions face-to-face and holding some electronically. Face-to-face and electronic sessions are both designed around a sociocultural learning model emphasizing interactions between professor and students and among students as some of the most meaningful learning opportunities. The electronic class sessions use many types of technology, including text, audio, and video. By doing this, the teacher is able to incorporate materials from academic, religious, and pop culture sources. These resources—whether a radio program, a video, a talk by a General Authority, or a scholarly article—are chosen for the emotional and intellectual impact on teacher candidates. The purpose of the class is to affect the attitude of teachers and teacher candidates toward ELL students, their families, and the policies and practices involved in their education.

Dual Endorsement
Five years ago the special education program at the McKay School of Education received a federal grant focused on increasing the number of minority special education teachers who are also endorsed in the area of teaching English language learners. Today the program continues, supported by university funding.

In addition to increasing the number of minority special education teachers with an ESL endorsement, the grant’s purpose includes increasing the cultural responsiveness of MSE special education faculty. To accomplish this, faculty received 72 hours of training over four years. They also visited teacher candidates in their homes. Faculty built strong relationships with their students by getting to know more about their cultures and families. MSE special education faculty members continue to teach teacher candidates to be more culturally responsive by using some of the same methods.

Results of the initial program years are exciting: 92 percent of the minority teacher candidates completed the courses. Most are now teaching in special education settings where they also use their language endorsement training. This year, through continued collaboration with TELL curriculum designers, a Spanish bilingual component was added to the dual endorsement program.

Bilingual Minor/TESOL Minor
The McKay School has two recognized minor programs that prepare teacher candidates to teach ELL students in public school classrooms. The impetus to develop the K–12 minor and the bilingual minor started five years ago when MSE and linguistics faculty realized that teachers need special training to instruct English language learners in the public school setting. The linguistics department had created the TESOL minor (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) to train anyone interested in teaching English to any second language learner. However, research showed that a one-size-fits-all program does not fit all students.
Children who have immigrated to the United States and are immersed in an English-speaking classroom have very different needs from students or adults living in a foreign country who want to learn English. “An immigrant student doesn’t just need to learn English, he needs to learn it well enough to be able to understand math, physics, and other subjects taught by an English-speaking teacher,” explains Ray Graham, who was involved with the development of both minors.

Responding to these facts, faculty from the McKay School and the linguistics department worked together to create programs that would meet the needs of teachers instructing English language learners in their classrooms.
The TESOL K–12 minor was the first program developed. It now incorporates the TELL curriculum and results in a Utah State ESL teaching endorsement. The TESOL K–12 program was moved to the McKay School just last year.
The bilingual minor prepares teacher candidates to work in a class consisting of both native English speakers and native Spanish speakers. Students receive instruction and respond in English for part of the school day and Spanish for the remainder of the day. The purpose of the dual immersion strategy is to prepare teachers to develop and preserve second language skills in K–12 students through content instruction in native languages. Research shows that strengthening a student’s native language proficiency can actually enhance an ELL student’s performance in English. The bilingual minor was developed last year.
The requirements of the bilingual minor and the TESOL K–12 minor are similar but have a few different class requirements and a different practicum experience based on the needed skills. The bilingual minor is currently taught only for Spanish speakers but is expected to be extended to Chinese and perhaps French in the future. The skills taught in the TESOL K–12 minor can be applied to students speaking most foreign languages.
The Future
The ELL teacher programs described in this article are innovative and ambitious. Yet faculty are continuously aspiring to learn what more might be done. Many say teacher preparation institutions should prepare all education graduates with an ELL endorsement—both to meet legal requirements and to ensure that all ELL students receive a quality education.
Additionally, McKay School faculty members see the importance of instructing candidates about their moral stewardship for teaching all children. Says Professor Ramona Maile Cutri, “We must help graduates learn how to embrace English language learners.” She quotes Elder Wirthlin voicing his concern in the April 2008 general conference about treating people as outsiders: “Some are lost because they are different. They feel as though they don’t belong. . . . They may look, act, think, and speak differently than those around them, and that sometimes causes them to assume they don’t fit in. They conclude that they are not needed.”
While the context of Elder Wirthlin’s statement is built around Church membership, the principle and results of selective treatment are the same. MSE faculty members know that all children in our school systems are precious and needed. Thus, the McKay School will continue to intensify its efforts to prepare teachers to embrace the academic and spiritual skills needed to instruct school children to learn not only content but also English.

The following contributed to this article: Ramona Maile Cutri, Ray Graham, Stefinee Pinnegar, Betty Francis, and Carol Solomon.