Lead investigator for “Project Teach Them All” and executive director at the University of Arkansas are Dr. Janet Penner-Williams, left, and Dr. Diana Gonzales Worthen.
 

'Project Teach Them All' forms communities of professional development for teachers seeking ESL endorsement
 

By Albert C. Jones
America, The Diversity Place

FAYETTEVILLE, Arkansas — The coach’s office for Project Teach Them All at the University of Arkansas is housed in the West Avenue Annex. Perhaps Dr. Diana Gonzales Worthen is not as well-known as Bobby Petrino, head coach of the football Razorbacks, but the impact she is having as coach and project director for Project Teach Them All is being realized up the road in the Springdale Public Schools with just as much of an impact.

West Avenue Annex, with its brick bearing walls and limestone molding, gets little notice for its box design. WAAX, as it is better known, variously has been used as the School of Writing and administrative offices. The parking lot slopes, just as much of the campus in Fayetteville. Buildings are built on tops of hills or on sloping contours.

Inside, Worthen is ready for the interview with Dr. Janet Penner-Williams, acting dean of Academics Affairs and assistant professor of Curriculum and Instruction. Penner-Williams is a pleasant woman who would later apologize during the photo shoot that the trees in the square had yet to come back with green leaves and blooms. She is the principle investigator of Project Teach Them All.

What West Avenue Annex lacks in amenities it surely makes up for in substance. Whereas Petrino runs variations of the Shotgun offense, the playbook out of which Worthen and Penner-Williams operate, Project Teach Them All, is the Critical reflection, Lifelong Advocacy for Second language learners, Site specific Innovation and Cross-cultural competency, which they have augmented with their innovative coaching piece. It is shortened to CLASSIC© Model.

There will be more discussion of Dr. Socorro Herrera and Dr. Kevin Murray, originators of the CLASSIC© Model, later in this conversation on educating English Language Learners. For now, however, Herrera and Murray developed the CLASSIC© Model at Kansas State University. It is now being used in five states. For sure, a common denominator of America, The Diversity Place is the shared experience in public schools across the U.S. teaching ELL students. It is occurring abundantly from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean and various points in between.

It is noteworthy that the influx of ELL or English Language Learners has been a constant since before President Ronald Reagan took office. Somewhere in there, it becomes the third generation.

The influx of ELL or English Language Learner students began in Springdale ten years ago. First, it was students from Latin America. More than 8,000 were enrolled this year. Then students came from Micronesia speaking Marshallese. This year, more than 1,300 Marshallese students are in the district, which is the largest population of Marshallese students outside the Marshall Islands.

In all, English Speakers of Other Languages brought 30 different ones to Springdale Public Schools this school year.

Strategies to effectively educate English Language Learners in the district have been many, including a $600,000 grant awarded two years ago by the Toyota Family Literacy Program and the $1.3 million grant awarded in 2007 by the U.S. Department of Education that funds Project Teach Them All. During the duration of the five-year award for Project Teach Them All, more than 100 teachers will earn state endorsement to teach students who are English Speakers of Other Languages.

Penner-Williams developed the grant proposal with the help of an associate no longer with the College of Education and Health Professions, according to the Office of Communications. Worthen is the former ESOL assistant curriculum supervisor for Springdale Public Schools. The district’s Board of Directors recognized her for initiating the Toyota Families Literacy Program grant during a board meeting this year.

Penner-Williams previously served as assistant superintendent for instruction of the Pearland Independent School District in Texas. She has been with the University of Arkansas for four years.

Meanwhile, the program funded by the federal grant is being implemented in the district’s secondary schools, including Springdale and Har-Ber High School, George, Central and Southwest Junior highs, J.O. Kelly, Helen Tyson and Hellstern Middle schools. This year, four elementary schools were added to the program, including Hunt, Lee, Parson Hills and Elmdale.

Penner-Williams started out explaining an important facet of the CLASSIC Model and that is how small teacher learning communities work.

“The way we have it right now, we have teachers in the same school forming learning communities of three to five people,” she said. “They support each other in the course. They choose where they meet. They choose what time they meet each week. In our particular course, they view DVDs that have theory and examples of practice on it. They discuss it. One person decides to try out the strategy the next week.

“They do that and then come back the following week and talk about how trying the strategy went and what worked and didn’t work,” Penner-Williams said. “Things like that. There has been a lot of research on professional learning communities. They say it is an essential component of effective professional development. The teachers supporting the teachers is really where it’s at. They get to be so close. They get to ask each other questions and test things that they would not do in a class with 30 to 50 students in it.”

Worthen said, “That goes beyond another level of that professional learning community. Once they are successful with that strategy, it filters to the team. Then the team may share it with the rest of the department or the rest of their faculty in their building. Some have even gone beyond and sharing it district-wide and presenting at conferences.

“The teachers all come together at the end of the semester and feature one of the strategies that they consider as very successful and they have all tried that particular strategy within their classroom,” Worthen said. “All of the teams come together at the end and they also share out. We may have teachers in eight different buildings. Those teachers will come together and share what they have learned. Maybe this team tried the strategy and it wasn’t successful, but they are seeing that this other team in this other building tried it and it was successful. Now, all of a sudden, had we known this, we would have been successful. Then they can speak with one another.

“Initially it’s in their professional learning community at their building,” she said.

Penner-Williams said, “Then it also ripples out.”
 

There are other aspects in the workings of 'Project Teach Them All'

“Project Teach Them All consists of four different courses,” Worthen said. “Courses are taught one time a semester for four consecutive semesters, leading up to the teacher’s ESL endorsement. In Arkansas, to receive an ESL endorsement, a teacher must take these four particular classes, plus Praxis II: Principles of Learning and Teaching, which is a standardized pedagogy test. When those two become married, the coursework and the test, then they are able to receive their ESL endorsement on the top of their teaching license.

“We are replicating a model,” she said. “The model we are doing is the CLASSIC Model, which was started at Kansas State University. One component that we have added here at the University of Arkansas is the coaching piece.

“The teachers are working in the professional learning communities for their coursework, but as they are trying a strategy then they are also coached,” Worthen said. “I go in and I coach. I coach them as they are implementing the strategy. Then it becomes, in a sense, you have that learning community between the coach and the teacher as they are trying it. That, what they learn there, they share with their professional learning communities as well. It does embed. They are working outside the university setting, so to speak. It’s what we call a hybrid model, where they are taking the coursework on their campuses, onsite, in their professional learning communities, turning in coursework as a team. It’s team-driven and at the same time, they are being coached as they are implementing those strategies.”

The CLASSIC Model, coaching, and the hybrid model promote unity.

“One of the strengths of the professional learning community is that it goes through the four semesters, so it lasts two years,” Penner-Williams said. “They are with that same group for two years, for the most part. There may be a little changing. Those teachers they start out with in the methods course they are still with at the end of the sequence two years later. They have that extended time to really develop their professional relationships and support for each other that they wouldn’t have if it was just a one-semester course.”

Worthen said, “Out of those four semesters, they are coached three consecutive semesters as well.”

“Diana does all the coaching,” Penner-Williams said, “so that gives her an opportunity to build up a coaching relationship with them and it’s not just a one-time shot.”

The CLASSIC Model has been tried long enough that innovations are common.

“Since the mid-1990s, that’s when they started using the CLASSIC Model. It was created by Socorro Herrera and Kevin Murray at Kansas State University,” Worthen said. “They basically created it because of the need of training their teachers in a different manner in Kansas. Kansas also had a large number of English Language Learners, culturally linguistically diverse students, moving into their area just as we have here and across the states as you are visiting. There was a major need to provide another mechanism of professional development to meet the teachers’ needs, quickly, to do this, but not so quickly that it would not be internalized.

“They created this model, tried it in Kansas, piloted it,” Worthen said. “It was successful and then it went to New Mexico. It was replicated in New Mexico and Alabama. There are five universities that are replicating this model all at the same time. We are one of five, Kansas, of course, Arkansas, Iowa, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Each university has added and adapted that model for their specific needs within their state. For our addition, that has been the coaching piece here.”

Logistics was an important factor in localizing the CLASSIC Model away from the university.

“When it was originally created, they had teachers throughout the state that needed it,” Penner-Williams said. “There was a large group in western Kansas, Dodge City, where they had meat-packing plants that had brought in diversity into their schools. They created the model so that the teachers didn’t have to go to the university. The university went to them for the opening and closing sessions and then provided support if they have questions or if they ran into issues while they were doing the week’s assignments. They had a liaison and Diana serves in that role here. She gets lots of phone calls at different times as they run into questions, etc.

“We provide the textbooks and the DVDs,” Penner-Williams said. “They get a notebook with modules that walk them through the different parts of the theory that are presented each week beside the theory that goes into practice each week.”

How are students being impacted by use of the CLASSIC Model?

Penner-Williams said, “Students have the benefit of the strategies being used with them and it gives them an opportunity to respond that is not in a typical lecture, take-notes type method, which is especially hard for a student just learning English or learning the academics.”

“Most of the strategies, they involve the students speaking, listening, reading and writing, which are the four components of learning a second language for that practice,” Worthen said. “Through these strategies, they are interactive strategies. Students are not learning on their own. It’s not solely independent.”

Penner-Williams said, “Usually they are partnered or small-grouped so that they can learn from each other, as well as the teacher.”

Student engagement in the CLASSIC Model brings pleasantries that come with interaction.

“They are fun,” Worthen said. “We hear that a lot as the students are actually trying the strategies. Teachers will report back as well that all of a sudden a student they hadn’t heard from, who usually doesn’t talk in class, will tell the teacher this was fun or are we going to do this again? The students are actually enjoying the strategy as well. They are practicing what they are learning. It’s interactive. They are speaking. They are talking about it. They are listening to one another.”

Penner-Williams said, “The teachers are learning the capability of the students also. Sometimes the student, because they haven’t used a strategy that allows them to express what they have learned, in a manner they can do, sometimes the teachers have thought they are not paying attention. They are not learning any of this. When in all actuality, the child is but they can’t express it in a written essay or whatever.”

Worthen likes this approach because students express what they are learning in different ways.

“They can express it in a different manner,” she said. “It opens that window for both the student and the teacher. The student is all of a sudden responding, interacting, showing and unveiling what they know. The teacher is opening, he or she, up because all of a sudden the student, who hasn’t said anything all semester, all of a sudden is talking. They are able to see what the student is actually learning and what they already know. It’s a different way of unveiling what they know.”

Is this approach working where students are expected to perform at a higher grade level each year?

“Eventually, as the student is learning, as their English proficiency is increasing their academic content is also increasing,” Worthen said. “What we would expect, and what we are seeing, both of those are working in tandem. Year after year, we expect that to increase.”

Penner-Williams said, “The learning standard or objective is on grade-level. They are being expected to learn the same concept the other children on that grade-level for the district and for the state are expected, but sometimes they may express the learning in a different manner than what they traditionally have.

“We are not watering down the curriculum,” Penner-Williams said. “It’s still very rigorous and they are expected to be thinking at the high levels.”

Worthen, the coach, is hearing experiences of teachers gaining greater familiarity with their students.

“It’s also allowing the teacher,” she said, “as the teacher is experiencing more success in their instructional delivery by the student responses, the teacher then begins to get to know the student a little more on an intimate level. One on one, getting to learn a little bit more about their families. Now bringing that cultural background and also the prior learning experiences of the student into their instructional delivery, so now, all of a sudden, that instruction is more meaningful for the student. At the same time, all of the students in the classroom are learning about the rich experiences of their peers that are in their class.”

Two questions: How does “Project Teach Them All” incorporate teaching children in their first language while also teaching them as English Language Learners? Are dual immersion programs or two-way language programs something that will happen in the future?

“Well, Arkansas has an English-only policy as far as teaching,” Penner-Williams said. “We do work with the teachers as far as . . . some of them come into the program thinking that they should never let the child speak their first language or their native language. We tell them, no, that is not true. The children can speak to each other in their first language. The teachers have gone so far as trying to learn some words in that first language, like have the students teach them Spanish. The instruction takes place in English because that’s the way the Arkansas schools are set up. We don’t do the bilingual education like some of the other states do.”

Worthen said, “That’s a totally different program. Bilingual education and ESL, those are two completely different programs. One of the things the teachers are learning, they are becoming aware of what the students’ English-level proficiencies are, the various levels, so if they are a beginner English Language Learner versus an intermediate or advanced, so as they are working with students, placing them in, for example, cooperative learning groups.

“If this is a beginner English Language Learner,” Worthen said, “then it would be important to make sure that we have someone at the intermediate or advanced levels with the same native language as this learner so that whenever the students are interacting. If they do need to discuss in their native language or their first language, then that learning will take place and actually occur a little bit faster.

“Then one of the strategies is use of cognates,” Worthen said. “As teachers are realizing that, you know what, if this child is speaking, for example, Spanish, that’s their first language. They have a lot of learning connections and associations. Everything has been taught in that first language. The more we can learn a little bit about that first language. Then that’s going to be the bridge to learning the second language. They are beginning to realize and see that those can be used as strategies as well.”
 

English-only begins discussion of best practices for teaching language skills in multicultural classrooms

Is it a political football, English-only, and then the second part of that, under that approach won’t you have a lost generation in the next 20 years?

Penner-Williams defers to Worthen.

“In every state, they determine through legislation what the language of instruction will be,” Worthen said. “Within the classroom setting, Arkansas has adopted English-only. Only ESL is being taught in terms of bridging going from first language to second language. Now is that going to continue from here on out? We don’t know that. As our legislators become a little bit more aware and more knowledgeable in terms of second language acquisition, how a child learns a second language and so forth, I think they themselves will start to see there is more than one approach in terms of learning a second language. ESL is one method.

“As far as what happens to that generation of students,” Worthen said, “in terms of their native language, one of the things that is embedded in the model that we are replicating is how important it is to maintain that first language as the child is learning a second language. Number one, that’s their first learning, their first learning connections. Secondly, they have a broader view of all types of learning associations because they are different from knowing it more than in just one language. You have more learning associations in terms of learning theory. Thirdly, if a student maintains their first language, they are more marketable later on when it comes to jobs. We know that through the economy, the advantages of being bilingual or trilingual, multilingual.”

Worthen shares her personal experience in context with an approach that was common in the Sixties.

“Certainly trying to avoid that lost generation, as you speak, that is something that could possibly happen,” she said. “That is a natural progression if a child in a family, if the recommendation is not to use that first language. Then it becomes a matter of we are only going to teach our children that English is the only language. Then what you end up with is, and I don’t mind saying this because, essentially, during the civil rights era, in the Sixties, that movement of the English-only, you saw that. There were a lot of Latino families, not only Latino families but ethnic minority families whose first language was another language other than English.

“Because of the time,” Worthen recalled, “it was recommended that you only speak English and you only want your child to speak English. It was embedded in that generation. You have a whole generation, and I’m part of that generation. I don’t want what happened to us to happen to our children. Their first language will be English and that native language then sort of went by the wayside and then all of a sudden you have children, and I’m one of them, who had difficulty speaking to my grandparents. That was horrible. It is horrible when you have to speak sign language to your grandparent. That shouldn’t happen. That shouldn’t ever happen.

“There are a lot of reasons, theory, learning theory-wise, the importance, but also maintaining that family structure and those family ties,” Worthen said. “Yes, that’s a great question and that’s something that people, generally, don’t often see as what happens in that English-only.”

Penner-Williams knows from experience that approaches other than English-only are rift with conflict over a lack of resources.

She said, “One thing I would say about our program, it really focuses on what the English Language Learner brings to the table from their home culture, from their funds of knowledge that are different from the child that grew up in the Anglo home and the mainstream culture. It teaches the teacher to value the other language, even though they don’t teach in it. Most of them don’t have the ability to, but they value it. I think that is probably the key to not losing it, too, or losing the generation.

“When I was in the Houston area,” Penner-Williams said, “we got to the point where we had 25 Vietnamese first language learners in our school district and, according to the Texas law, we were supposed to provide a bilingual Vietnamese classroom for those children. The problem was we had no curriculum books for those children in Vietnamese. We didn’t have access to enough teachers who taught Vietnamese or knew Vietnamese. We were fortunate that we had one or two teachers from a Vietnamese background that could speak to the children in Vietnamese.

“When you try to go totally bilingual, sometimes you create some issues of curriculum materials available in those languages and teachers that are trained that are also bilingual,” she said. “Maybe in an ideal world we would have that, but at this time we are not learning in an ideal world. I think by valuing that home language and experiences in the culture that supports it, we can keep the children from feeling like I need to forget that and I need to just totally go English. Our teachers, in their reflections, are really showing some turnaround in their mindsets that what they are becoming. They are recognizing how important that first language is. They are recognizing that those children have important experiences from their home life to bring into the school. I think that makes a big difference.”

Still, impactful of the future, criteria may be gathered from the teachers’ experience.

“One of the other elements within the model of “Project Teach Them All” is that there is independent reflection,” Worthen said. “The teachers do anywhere from two to four, depending on the course, what’s called ‘reflection wheel journals.’ They do journal reflections based on what they are learning through this program.”

As an investigator, Penner-Williams, are you more concerned with findings to build new models or implementing a model that already exists and then report how the model worked?

“Well, as an investigator,” she said, “I am always looking for ways to improve the model. We feel like the coaching element is very important. One thing that Diana does is show them how the practice, as they implement these strategies, how they are reflecting some of the theories that we have taught. Sometimes the theories go in and out. If you don’t connect it to a practice that you are doing in the classroom, she strengthens that tie by labeling the theory that they are implementing in the classroom. Sometimes it is not on a conscious level until she verbalizes it to them and stresses to them. ‘Did you know that what you were doing is Total Physical Response at that point in your lesson? You were and it was great.’ The teachers feel pride that they also get a little push to do more of that. I think that the coaching is an important part that we are adding.

“One of my responsibilities as an investigator is to collect data from the district and see how students that have our teachers do compared on benchmark tests, which are state-mandated tests we use for No Child Left Behind. Is their English language acquisition levels, progressing through those levels from beginning to intermediate to advanced, how they are doing in that aspect also? We are comparing the students that are English Language Learners that have our teachers to other English Language Learners in the district that have other teachers. We are still working through all the kinks of getting that data and running the analytical measures on it. That is a primary responsibility that I have, too.

“Diana and I are always talking about other programs we might want to try to implement,” Penner-Williams said. “To try to increase the number of teachers in our area that are from diverse backgrounds so that when the students go through the schools they see models of successful Latinos, African Americans, white and Marshallese, which is a big sub-population. We have talked about ways to do that. Diana has worked with teachers who have come from other countries into our state and how can they get licensed here, which is not always an easy process for them. From this one project, we see other possibilities that we would like to explore. Money is a big factor as far as we have the Title III grant for this project. As we look at other projects, we are looking at where we might obtain the grants.”

Project Teach Them All also allows for a broader approach to professional development other than just learning communities.

“One of the things that we have done with the project that has been helpful to continue the professional development of teachers is we, through our grant, help fund registrations to conferences,” Worthen said. “We started an ESL symposium two years ago where we are bringing in nationally recognized speakers to Northwest Arkansas. That’s open to anyone who would like to come. For us, we feel it is really important for us, our teachers who are in Project Teach Them All, to hear firsthand the current practices and theory. To be able to actually visit one on one with people who are in the field on a national level that has been something that has been very rewarding for our teachers.

“We also have our state organization. It’s called Arkansas Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages,” Worthen said. “We encourage and also pay their registrations to attend that annual conference as well. Those are in addition to what the project already includes, which we pay their tuition, their books, their materials and so forth, but in addition, they are also receiving scholarships to other conferences.”

The third 2011 symposium will be held the last Friday in February. More than 300 teachers, some from Oklahoma and Missouri, attended the 2010 symposium. Worthen and Penner-Williams have presented at AERA (American Educational Research Association), National Association for Bilingual Education, Association of Teacher Educators and regional meetings. Conference speaking is a time to make certain points.

“I think the primary focus up to this point has been that the professional development of teachers that have English Language Learners in their classroom is critical and in order to be affective with it we need it to be long term,” Penner-Williams said. “We need it to have professional learning communities. We need a solid research theory base. We need coaching support so that they can turn theory into practice and all of the elements of effective professional development that have been woven into this program. There is a lot of flexibility with it, too.

“When we recruit teachers, we always tell them this is not like Wednesday night from five to eight that you have to block off on your calendar every week,” she said. “You get to decide with your group. Do you want to meet right after school, before school — Saturday? Do you want to meet three hours straight a week because it does take about that long or do you want to have two one and a half hour sessions? There is flexibility because of the busy nature of the teachers’ schedule. We have coaches, band teachers, besides the regular classroom teachers in the program and their schedules all vary a lot.”

If lack of funding was not an issue, what programs or approaches would you like to foster?

Penner-Williams said, “Grow your own type program where we would start working with some juniors and seniors in high school that were possibly considering education that were from a diverse background, getting them interested in coming to the university to be teacher candidates, providing funding for them to do that and mentoring them and walking them through that process. There just aren’t enough diverse teachers already certified out there. We have some really sharp people from diverse populations that we would like to entice to enter the teaching profession.

“We have to be competitive and we have to be out there telling people what a difference they can make,” Penner-Williams said. “We are not going to tell them they are going to be rich as a teacher. They may become rich in their soul from the effect. Without having those role models in some of those critical positions, we feel like that is causing us to lose some of our students. If we had a dream come true, we would have funding to grow some of our own from minority populations.”

Worthen said, “We have a lot of teachers, Arkansas being a state that’s experiencing emerging diversity — that’s what my dissertation was on — related to this phenomenon. We have a lot of teachers who are actually here from out of country, but they are not teaching because of the lengthy process of becoming certified.

“They need not only that scholarship support, but they need that one-on-one mentoring support to help them, guide them through that process,” she said. Instead of having a teacher that is working in a cafeteria at a hospital, that had been a classroom teacher in her home country, we need that teacher in our classroom. That’s another area on our wish list.”

Penner-Williams said, “I think we would like to spread our program even farther throughout the state, maybe making some adjustments. There are rural districts that need training for their teachers. There are other districts in the state in need, but right now our funding only works for one school district in the state. We would need more personnel and would have to train them, in order to have them, but we would like to expand our base.”

The broad but prevailing question is what needs to happen in the future to have more success stories in successfully educating English Language Learner students in Arkansas?

“One thing that can help,” Worthen said. “Now there are many things, but one thing would be integrating the components of the coursework that we are doing into pre-service teacher programs. So that the teachers who are coming out of the College of Education, they have these core components, so that they go into that classroom ready to handle English Language Learners and culturally and linguistically diverse students. I think that is critical.”

As a means of summary, given the chance to state what was not asked or give personal reflections, the last question was pitched: What would you like to add?

“It’s been exciting working in this program,” Worthen said. “I have seen teachers, whether they are in their first year of teaching or whether they are in their twenty-eighth year of teaching, become excited when they are successful with students who they generally had not been successful with. It’s rejuvenated them in a sense. For some teachers, they have said. This has taken them all the way back to why they went into teaching. That’s very powerful.

“Teachers want to do the very best job they can to reach all learners, but they may not necessarily know how exactly to do that,” Worthen said. “This provides one way of doing that. It’s exciting. If we can spread that, I think that will also assist in teacher retention as well.”

Penner-Williams said, “We have a large number of teachers that went through teacher preparation when there wasn’t the diversity in the student population. They don’t know how to deal with this sudden explosion of diverse learners who are coming into their classroom. They want their students to succeed and they want to be able to teach them in a manner that brings about success, but some of them just don’t have the tools.”
 

Taking lead in professional teacher development at the University of Arkansas are Dr. Janet Penner-Williams, left, and Dr. Diana Gonzales Worthen.