Are we doing enough to support linguistically diverse students?

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Robert: If the first messages the family gets are praise and acceptance of their child, then we can start to build a relationship where maybe there will be concerns come up, but we can express those in a relationship of trust.

Kevin: According to the National Center for Education statistics, about 10% of students in U.S. public schools are English language learners. With this number steadily growing, educators and students are facing challenges highlighting a need to rethink curricula and teaching strategies. What are the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students? How can we remedy the challenges they face? And how can our schools create an environment where these students can thrive? This is “What I Want to Know,” and today I am joined by Dr. Robert Scott to find out.

Dr. Robert Scott is an educational consultant with expertise in working with English language learners. He has worked as an educator and advocate for students and families from diverse backgrounds for the past two decades. He joins us today to discuss how we can best support linguistically diverse students.

Robert, welcome to the show. Robert Scott, thank you so much for joining us on “What I Want to Know” and welcome to the show.

Robert: Thank you very much, Kevin. I appreciate it.

Kevin: You know, this idea of multiculturalism, this idea of how we help educate our diverse learners, it’s become your passion. But talk to me a little bit about how you got into this work. I mean, I know you’re an educator, but you really have taken this area and this issue on by storm. It’s clearly a passion of yours. Talk about how that developed.

Robert: I could go back further, but I can go back to ninth grade when I had a chance to study another language at Harrison Junior High in Great Bend, Kansas, and my teacher for Spanish was Mrs. Law. And we were able in this class to get a pen pal if we wanted. If you brought a quarter, you know, you could get a pen pal. And my pen pal was Fabian Sancho Lovatto from Quito, Ecuador. And I’d have to say that’s really where it started. The idea was I would write in Spanish to him and he would write in English back to me. And he has, over the years, made many efforts in English. He’s studied a lot and done a lot. And after we wrote a few times, I was studying second or third year of Spanish, and a letter came, a very formal letter from his father directed to my father or my parents inviting me to visit them in Quito, Ecuador.

I think especially my father felt like this would be a nice opportunity for me to kind of broaden my horizons. Everything was quite controlled. But they sent me down, and I spent a week getting to know my pen pal and his family in Quito, Ecuador. And those experiences, you know, I went to a baptism of a family member. Actually, I think there was a wedding I went to the next year. My mother and my younger brother and I were invited to what they called their Fiesta Rosaria, when a young lady at age 15 . . . A couple of the cousins of my pen pal were turning 15.

I can remember that first time though, after I’d been there about a week, we’d been having a good time talking and everything. And the last night I was there, in my sleep, I felt myself dreaming in Spanish. And it just was kind of a breakthrough for me, you know, at age 14. And, you know, it just got me started. And so I kept going down there, of course, shaking hands with my pen pal where they marked the equator there near Quito, shaking hands across the equator, northern and southern hemisphere. I think that changed something in my own mind and has affected me my whole life.

Kevin: It clearly had an impact, and I’m struck by that experience because, in this country, sometimes and, again, I’m not being critical, but sometimes administrators, you know, policymakers talk about ESL as a chore, if you will. And you, the way you describe your experience, you’re really talking about the fact, particularly dreaming in Spanish, that you became immersed in the culture. So from a definitional point of view, what does it mean to be culturally and linguistically diverse?

Robert: Boy, those are great questions you’re asking. One way of thinking about things in general is that what we grow up experiencing, the people close by, around us, the things that reinforce us, often it can be or has been an American tradition, sometimes people who look like us, talk like us. We see ourselves reflected, let’s say, in those around us, and it’s reflected back to us. And it just gives us a sense of sameness. When we get a chance to meet someone or interact with someone whose life experience up to that point, whatever age we’re talking, if we’re 7, if we’re 15, if we’re 25, if we’re 60, and we meet someone who’s had different things happen in their lives from what we’ve had, then we have a real chance to learn and grow from that exchange.

And I think that when you have someone in your school, who is coming from a different situation, now today, I mean, what I described was sort of an idyllic situation for visiting another country. Now, we have, you know, many times refugees. We have people whose education has been interrupted, whose lives have been interrupted by many things sometimes. And so here they are in our school. And it just makes so much sense to be welcoming, but not welcoming in a way that is saying, “You know, we’re better and you need to learn to be like us.” But welcoming in a sense of, “How wonderful that you’re here and that we can learn together, and all of us will be improved by the experience of learning with and learning from each other.” So what that young person, let’s say, brings to the school is just as important as what they find in the school for them.

There was a really nice school in Hayes, Kansas, and the fellow who was principal there for 25 years, and there were so many parents and families and children from Spanish-speaking backgrounds at that little school. It seemed to be near to a neighborhood where there were lots of immigrant families, migrant families. And this principal . . . You know, I’m thinking of a real person, Alan Park. What a great guy. He would be out there after school, you know, and people would be picking up their children. You could tell he was so friendly, so welcoming to the families. My wife is from Colombia, South America. And my wife was working there, and she did kind of a simultaneous interpreting at the first parent-teacher conference. And here the parents could put on these headphones. And as teachers were introducing themselves and talking about the new school year, they were also getting, by the headphones, my wife explaining what the teachers were saying.

Kevin: You know, what’s interesting is to hear you talk clearly your experiences not only with your pen pal and the visits to Ecuador and your wife from Colombia, but the work you did in different positions with universities and colleges that you said something that speaks volumes is recognizing, while we’re different, the sameness, that there is this sameness about our humanity. So talk a little bit about, you know, bringing all that front and center, your work now in this, you know, space of working with schools and recognizing the culture and linguistic opportunities. Talk about TESOL and what that means and how this relates to the work.

Robert: Okay. A lot of what I’ve done, especially the time that I spent in several years after getting my master’s degree in TESOL or the TESOL basically at curriculum instruction at University of Kansas, then I took my young family down to Ecuador. And I was there for three years teaching middle school mostly, but also adults in the evenings. I did my best to try to start up a little language institute for adults in the evenings while I was there. You know, then I spent almost five years in Japan, and I was interacting mostly with young people who had finished high school and were preparing to attend American universities. And I also was at a Japanese university working in their international studies department.

It keeps something fresh in your mind to be operating right there at the meeting place between two languages. And, you know, so I’m telling you later, when I was working on this serious doctorate at K-State, and most of my classes that I studied were in the evenings, then during the daytime, I taught full-time ESL, TESOL in their intensive English program there at K-State. And again, so enjoyable.

But the student demographics were different from when I had started, you know, some decades before doing things like that. And now, there were so many students from Saudi Arabia especially, and oh, I just learned so much from those students. And I had such natural respect because of the way I was raised. I was raised, you know, by parents with a strong Christian faith. And those students, more than anything, reminded me of my mother because her faith was so important. Because those students, you could give them almost any topic on an essay, and they would sort of transform it into a topic about their relationship with Allah or something. You know what I mean? Any topic became that way.

Kevin: Yeah. But, you know, Robert, that point you made is an interesting one. And it’s important because you saw those students from Saudi Arabia, when they related so many of their life experiences to their faith, it reminded you of your mother. And yet, because of the politics and the tension of the politics of the day, others who may witness those examples with those students would view it in a negative way. And similarly with the overall sort of immigration issue or ESL issue, you know, even in today’s headlines, you see that, you know, we’ve got stepped up border patrols, we’re talking about walls. There’s so much that demonizes the humanity of people from other countries. We don’t, you know, want to let people in.

Again, not to get too deep in the politics, but how do we sort of reverse that approach and sort of deal with our children from other countries with an open hand? And the reason why this is important, when it comes to education, is now school leaders, because of pressure from school boards, are forced to take more of a harder line on these issues. So share your thoughts on how we can sort of reverse that approach.

Robert: You could be talking about any number of aspects, be it religion, culture. In general, though, diversity is not, I think, something new to America. And we’ve had generations where one group after another has been made the target of blame for whatever seemed to be going wrong or whatever was difficult. Our country, the world, but it’s going through some very tough, tough challenges. And I think it’s just quite natural that people get a little defensive. And so sometimes we may have to . . . You know, right now, today, I feel like I’ve been talking to you or at you, but how much listening do I do? You’re doing a lot of listening. But, you know, I have been wanting for years and hopefully I’m making progress in listening. So, you know, listening to others and listening to what’s on their mind, and I think you’re absolutely right. We have a common humanity in our strengths. Our strength . . .

Kevin: Yeah, I think you’re right.

Robert: . . . is our diversity. Our diversity is our strength.

Kevin: And let me ask you this. Yes, diversity is our strength. And to that point, sort of bringing it back to the classroom, we know that school leaders have these challenges. But I’m also struck by that school leader that you said went out of his way to make that community welcome, the Spanish-speaking community. Let’s talk about where the school leaders’ focus should be if they want to meet their culturally and linguistically diverse students halfway. What are some of the needs? You know, this idea of being felt as embraced or welcomed is obviously important. But from a student’s point of view or the family member’s point of view, what are some of the needs that you feel school leaders should keep in mind?

Robert: I believe her name is Zaretta Hammond. I’m not sure. I think I have her first name right, Zaretta Hammond. She has said, and it is so important in answering the question you’ve asked. She has said, “Okay, you know, everybody talks about being culturally responsive, but just take the word ‘culturally’ out of it for a moment and just be responsive. Just be responsive to that individual student, to that student’s family, to what they need, to what they express. You know, make that first commit.” And then I would go on, you know. And then that will also take care of cultural responsiveness, being responsive. That’s the key, is being responsive.

And so you have a chance. When a school year starts, you have a chance to make those first communications to the home, to the family if possible. Now, you might have a really diverse school, and it might be quite a challenge to get those in their home language. But the best way possible but to make the messages that go out first positive and something positive that you’ve noticed, praising that child of theirs for something that they did, or that you’re noticing at school. If the first messages the family gets are praise and acceptance of their child, then we can start to build a relationship where maybe there will be concerns come up, but we can express those in a relationship of trust. It takes time to build trust. And that trust is so important for the relationship and the communication with families. And so if families feel like they can count on us, and if we treat them like they are our partners, you know, you have something you’re working on together, so there’s something that they’re doing at home, that’s in unison or in concert with what you’re doing in school.

Kevin: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense actually. And I think that sometimes while, you know, we endeavor to respect the diversity and the differences and to give honor to that, you know, all parents, irrespective of their background, they want the same thing for their kids. All kids need the same thing in the classroom. And so this idea of just, hey, being responsive, I love that answer.

You know, I have one last question, Robert, and this is what I really want to know. And I ask you this question again for many school leaders or superintendents who may be listening, but if you were putting together that ideal classroom and curriculum for linguistically diverse students, what would that look like?

Robert: Another great question. Well, there will be pictures. There will be reinforcement on, you know, displays that reinforce what we’re communicating in the curriculum in our classes. There will be goals that we can talk about, that we can pay attention to, that we can point to that the students can even be part of putting together.

You know, someone did a really neat intensive couple of days early in January at a school where I was lucky enough to be spending . . . Well, I spent the school year a lot there at Denver Jewish Day School just this past year. And someone put together a neat course, but the neat thing was they raised consciousness about art, and I saw how much students enjoyed drawing. I spent so much time I started making paper and art supplies not just, you know, crayons, markers, all kind of paints, water colors available. And my goodness, the number of students who just, if they could be drawing or painting something while we were working in class on our lesson, it just seemed to be important for some of them.

So I think having some outlets, having some ways for students to, you know, paying attention to universal design, you know, not just one way of doing things. Presenting information in a variety of formats, engaging with students based on their interests and what you found out about their interests as you go along. And giving them different ways of showing what they’ve learned, whether it’s to put a model together or making . . . You know, not everyone wants to get up in front and give a speech and things like that. You know, or maybe they want to make a little song, whatever, you know, it takes like that.

And then I’d go back, it’s getting to be some time, but the CREDE, the Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence, CREDE with the late Roland Tharp and his development, and they built schools based on his ideas about the principles for including all students, reaching all students. You know, it has to do with connecting with them, in joint productive activity, teaching language and literacy across the curriculum. So, you know, when you’re doing gym class or you’re doing other classes, you can cross connect the information and key into the language that’s going on.

I’m going to say that Carol Salva, S-A-L-V-A, is one of the most exciting new people, I think, in education. And her expertise is helping refugee students that come . . . You know, they come in high school, and some of them have had very interrupted educations. You know, at the same time that we want to be responsive to culture, responsive to language, reinforce, definitely tell families, “It is great if you work on literacy in your home language at home. That’s really going to help in school.” That’s going to cross over and give the student an advantage in working with English in school, but also don’t set the goals too low.

Some of the students that come in high school and they’ve only got two or three years to get it all together, there’s a lot you can do by coordinating across different subject areas. So all the teachers are in on a plan that brings language ability in English together with key content in the different areas. And sometimes the coordinator of that is the English teacher, is the language teacher. They can help coordinate that school wide because there’s got to be some fast movement, and you can see some fast progress, sometimes faster than maybe 5 or 10 years ago people were saying was possible. So some really fast results, as long as we’re being respectful, we’re honoring, like you say, the culture and the language of our students.

Some students, especially those high school students that come with very broken experiences from overseas and trauma and all kinds of things, they have to get going quickly on what they’ve got to do. And so they’ve got to learn content and the English language together. And there are really nice ways of doing that. And the expert that I know of, the main expert is Carol Salva based in Houston.

Kevin: Yeah. Well, Robert Scott, I really appreciate not only your passion behind the work, but frankly your work in supporting students like this and setting an example for what’s possible when you meet students halfway. So thank you so much for all you’ve done, and thank you again for joining us on “What I Want to Know.”

Robert: God bless you, Kevin. Thank you very much for having me today. I appreciate it.

Kevin: Thanks for listening to “What I Want to Know.” Be sure to follow and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, so you can explore other episodes and dive into our discussions on the future of education. And write a review of the show. I also encourage you to join the conversation and let me know what you want to know using #WIWTK on social media. That’s #WIWTK.

For more information on Stride and online education, visit stridelearning.com. I’m your host, Kevin P. Chavous. Thank you for joining “What I Want to Know.”