Arizona: Two languages: Din é schools look t o modify Arizona's English teaching program

Sat Dec 1 16:32:06 UTC 2007

Two languages: Diné schools look to modify Arizona's English teaching program

By Jason Begay
Navajo Times

(Special to the Times - Donovan Quintero)

WINDOW ROCK, Nov. 29, 2007

Transportation. The word has four syllables that the class chants with
gleeful, harmonious handclaps: Trans. Por. Tay. Shun.
The word also has 13 letters, a daunting challenge for the second
graders in Chris Yazzie's classroom. "That's a lot of letters," Yazzie
explains. "Remember the trick when spelling long words?" She begins to
explain, but the class cuts her off. "Break it up to small chunks,"
David Mitchell III yells out, echoed by his classmates. "Because the
brain will remember the words easier." This is Tséhootsooí Elementary
School's second grade English Language Learners class, a daily
four-hour block of time filled with students deemed to need extra help
learning English, according to a new state policy.

The policy, which districts statewide began to implement this fall,
requires schools to implement a curriculum that would identify and
isolate these students in order to give them more intensive
assistance. Originally designed to boost language skills in students
from immigrant families, it is also being applied to native-born
students who do poorly in testing. However, local school
administrators say the policy ignores the needs of Native American
children who are trying to master two languages, English and their
tribal languages. "This is an unfair model," said Superintendent
Thomas Jackson of the Window Rock school district. "We are talking
about indigenous language learners versus an immigrant language
learners model.

Conflicting goals

For years it seemed that Arizona's English Only law lived in quiet
conflict with the federal Native American Languages Act, with neither
technically addressing the existence of the other. Nonetheless, the
state's 1988 amendment to its constitution, which requires government
offices and schools to conduct business only in English, was a direct
contradiction to the 1990 federal law that encourages and supports the
use of Native languages in tribal governments and schools. While the
detente is unlikely to change, new state requirements implementing
English-immersion policies in the classroom could come uncomfortably
close to bringing the conflict to a head. Specifically, the Structured
English Immersion Model - the result of Arizona's 2006 voter-approved
Proposition 203 - calls for children identified as "English language
learners" to spend up to four hours of each school day in an intensive
language tutoring program. Locally, districts like Window Rock have
implemented the program by creating ELL courses for each grade level
in its elementary schools.

At Tséhootsooí Elementary, the ELL courses are smaller than the
average class and are led by the teacher with the highest credentials
in English instruction, said Principal Scott Cooper. The policy was
designed by a state task force to use a comprehensive and intensive
English curriculum. However, the model's primary components - to
identify, cluster and isolate - have already raised concerns from
local school administrators. "We were fine with it all until they
started mentioning 'isolate,'" Jackson said. "That raised the first
red flag." Two-language learners (subhed) Although it's meant to act
as an immersion program, in which students and teachers are only
allowed to speak, write and teach in English, the Arizona model fails
to properly characterize reservation students, Jackson said.

"Our students are not immigrants," he said.

According to the model, parents are asked to fill out a home language
survey in which they specify the languages used in the home,
regardless of the language usually spoken by the student.

Students from homes where another language is spoken are then given an
English competency exam, the Arizona English Language Learners
Assessment.

Based on their performance on the language assessment, students
identified as English language learners are then placed in classes
operating under the controversial immersion-only model, which means no
other language is allowed in the classroom.

"We don't know a thing about the AZELLA; how it was developed, how
it's referenced," Jackson said. "We don't even know how the other kids
would do on the exam." It's possible that a family could misrepresent
itself on the home language survey, for instance marking that English
is the only language spoken at home when it isn't, and thereby avoid
the AZELLA test, Jackson said.

"The (home language survey) doesn't identify children whose primary
language is Navajo, just those who are exposed to it," noted Larry
Watson, the district's director of curriculum instruction and
assessment.

Of 504 Window Rock students who took the AZELLA this year, over half -
322 - were labeled English language learners. That number represents
about 15 percent of the district's 2,500 students, said Susan Stucker,
district ELL coordinator.

Jackson believes the state's English language learners model should be
amended to include an alternative plan for Native American students.

These students, he said, are not English language learners. Rather,
they are dual language learners - striving to master English and their
own language.

According to the state's model, ELL students should be clustered
together in a single classroom for four hours a day in which only
English would be spoken. It does not address the goals of the federal
law aimed at preserving Native languages.

Students can test out of the ELL class by passing the AZELLA, but must
do so twice. The first time they pass it, they are considered
provisionally qualified to join regular English classes.

Isolation a concern

The idea of isolating English language learners drew concerns
immediately from Navajo educators because such a class would seem
almost ineffective, Jackson said.

"That is not a true immersion program," he said. "We should group
these students with other students who have mastered the language. You
don't learn Spanish by isolating yourself with a bunch of people who
can't speak Spanish." The model could cause even more problems in the
higher grades. For instance, high school students must meet a specific
state- and district-mandated number of credit requirements in order to
graduate.

Spending four hours a day in one class for an entire school year would
only earn a student one credit when the student should have earned
four.

The district has already implemented portions of the state ELL model
in its elementary schools. In the middle school, the district has
implemented a version of the model in which the four-hour block is
integrated into mainstream curriculum.

"We don't know what we are going to do at the high school," Jackson
said. "That's going to be a mess." It may not come to that. The
district is currently developing a teaching plan for districts with
large Native American populations. The model, which would open up the
four-hour English class for integration with other classes, should be
completed before the Christmas school break.

Jackson hopes to present the model to the Arizona Department of
Education immediately and receive a response by spring.

"The state required that the task force come up with several models,
but they only have the one so far," Jackson said. "I hope they will
welcome another."

http://www.thenavajotimes.com/education/1129english.php

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