[Edling] Urgent question from bilingual teacher

[Wright, Wayne E]

The whole thing sounds messed up - especially the part about refusing to sit down with the teacher to talk about the observation.

On the narrow question of the positioning of the Spanish and English text - I think that's nitpicking. There may be some argument that the putting English on top puts it in a more privileged position, but even in side-by-side text one could argue the one on the left is "privileged" because we read left-to-right.

More important is the pedagogical purpose, and its sounds like the effort was to allow students to draw on their linguistic repertoires to make sense of the texts - sounds pretty defensible to me.


Wayne E. Wright, PhD
Professor and Barbara I. Cook Chair of Literacy  and Language
Purdue University
College of Education
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Beering Hall of Liberal Arts and Education, Room 4108
100 N. University St.
West Lafayette, IN 47907
(765) 494-3936
http://www.edci.purdue.edu/faculty_profiles/wright/index.html
Co-Editor, Journal of Language, Identity, and Education (http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hlie20/current)
Editor, Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement (http://www.jsaaea.org)


From: <edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se>> on behalf of Susan Behrens <sbehrens at mmm.edu<mailto:sbehrens at mmm.edu>>
Reply-To: The Educational Linguistics List <edling at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling at bunner.geol.lu.se>>
Date: Monday, April 18, 2016 at 10:24 AM
To: 'The Educational Linguistics List' <edling at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling at bunner.geol.lu.se>>
Subject: Re: [Edling] Urgent question from bilingual teacher

HI, seems to me that if the observer won't meet, "dialogue" with the observed, the whole observation write up should be suspect.

From: edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se<mailto:edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se> [mailto:edling-bounces at bunner.geol.lu.se] On Behalf Of Miriam E Ebsworth
Sent: Monday, April 18, 2016 8:30 AM
To: Francis Hult; The Educational Linguistics List
Subject: [Edling] Urgent question from bilingual teacher

Dear Colleagues,
A grad of one of our programs is a bilingual (Spanish) social studies teacher in New York City, with 11 years of teaching experience.
The teacher received a super-critical review of a class observation from somebody outside the school who observed a single lesson. The observer knew nothing in advance about the teacher's curriculum or approach; there had been no communication with the teacher in advance of the observation.  After having written a scathing observation report, the observer refused to have a conversation with the teacher, who sought politely to explain their perspective and try to understand better the nature of the critique.
The teacher has requested input on one issue in particular:
At the top of the lesson, the teacher had written a guiding question in English with the Spanish version directly underneath.
The teacher, as I understand it, sought to have the students first try to understand the text in English, then read it in Spanish, and using all linguistic resources make meaning out of the question. (And ultimately, the students will be tested in English.)
One of the many criticisms in the observation report was that the English and Spanish versions should have appeared side by side rather than one above the other. The teacher is perplexed.
While the teacher's explanation makes sense to me, I have been asked whether there is any objective guidance available from the research on best practices to advocate for EITHER of the 2 approaches (2 languages side by side versus one above the other).
Thank you in advance for sharing your perspective. I'll pass it on.
Sincerely,
Miriam
Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth, PhD
Dir. of PhD & Post-MA Programs in Multilingual Multicultural Studies
NYU Steinhardt,
316 East Building
New York, NY 10003

Research Editor: Journal of Writing and Pedagogy
Chair, NABE Research SIG Advisory Board
Co-chair, ELL Think Tank

office phone: (212) 998-5195
office fax: (212) 995-3636



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