Teacher educator rock star comes to Monterey County

In Monterey County education circles, Kate Kinsella is like a rock star. I’ve been hearing great things about her and I got to see her firstand on Thursday, when she made a pro-bono presentation to local educators at Hartnell College.

The topic of her conversation was Long-Term English learners, a term used for students who don’t “reclassify” as English proficient after certain number of years in the school system. Forty percent of students who attend Monterey County schools are English learners, so getting students to reclassify as proficient is a huge issue.

Kinsella has been hired by several districts to train teachers on her methods, so she’ll be around more often in the months to come. That means I’ll have more chances to see her in action. Stay tuned.

Charts are beatiful. Check out this one, courtesy of MCOE

For the third year in a row, the Monterey County Office of Education has published a report to the community on the county's state of education, an effort aimed at highlighting the good things that are happening in education these days.

If you are a Herald reader -- or follow my blog -- you will find very little news in the report. Most of the articles are about issues we've already covered here. Of course, they look more nifty in a booklet all of their own.

But there are a few articles worth mentioning. The one about Common Core on pages 6 and 7. The one about new funding rules on pages 8 and 9.

And my personal favorite, the chart on English learners as they progress towards proficiency in English on page 5.

It's illuminating. Worth a story. I'll get to it one of these days.

Find the report here.

Of 'educated' cities, national rankings and English learners

Many Salinas residents were upset by a recent analysis that ranked their city as second least "educated" in the United States. If you missed the hoopla, here's a story I wrote about it.

In spite of the metrics that were used for the analysis -- and its hurtful conclusion -- I believe there's value in the conversation that ensued. Particularly around trying to diversify the local economy so we don't lose our college graduates to Silicon Valley or other parts of the country. Just last week I met a smart, dedicated young woman who told me she was ready to return to L.A. this summer -- where she earned her bachelor's degree -- because she couldn't find a job in Salinas.

So yes, let's talk about what we can do to increase educational and job opportunities for our students (the study did not take into account people younger than 25, so  whether or not they're "educated" is surely irrelevant to WalletHub, right?). Let's try to find creative solutions to our budgetary problems. Let's try to increase literacy among our farmworking population.

But one thing we should NOT do is blame this issue in our English Language Learners. If anything, we have a broken system that fails to recognize what an asset it is to be able to speak more than one language. Instead, we want to blame low academic performance in our young kids who grow up speaking Spanish at home. So why have double immersion programs spread so much if they're ineffective? Why is it that children who attend bilingual schools do better than in monolingual schools? Why is it that research shows bilingual people are smarter?

Last week, a day after the WalletHub study was published, a letter writer came close to blaming Spanish language speakers for the Salinas dishonor. Michael McMillen from Salinas wrote that "extremists .. would insist on full literacy in their native language; this means that there would be no English-Language instruction until roughly ninth grade."

First of all, I've never seen anybody ask children in the United States have no English language instruction until the 9th grade. Every bilingual program you see, be it dual immersion or structure English immersion, has instruction in English. Second, children are not learning "survival English." They're being taught academic English. Maybe their vocabulary is limited and they are behind their native English-speaking peers, but not taking advantage of the fact that they already speak a universally accepted language -- spoken by 470 million people on this planet -- would be a real shame.

So instead of blaming English learners for our educational woes, perhaps a more reasonable response would be, how can we make sure all of our children speak more than one language so they can be prepared for this globalized economy? Now, that would be a conversation worth having.

Celebrating Foreign Language education at MIIS

The Monterey Institute of International Studies will host “Celebrating Foreign Language Education: A Monterey Bay Symposium,” its second annual student-organized conference on language teaching and learning.

The symposium will take place Saturday, March 30, and it will feature local teachers, students, administrators and other professionals from throughout the Monterey Bay area. The conference will examine innovative ways of thinking about foreign language education, with particular focus on using technology as a tool to enhance language learning outcomes. The conference will also address the importance of intercultural competency for achieving language fluency.

Participating speakers include representatives from local institutions such as Stevenson School, North Salinas High School and the Defense Language Institute. The symposium will provide a venue for students in the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages and Teaching a Foreign Language programs at the Institute to share ideas with local teachers, bringing their learning outside the classroom and into real-world practical applications.

For more information and a full conference schedule, visit the conference website here. Registration is available online at mflsymposium.eventbrite.com and tickets are $15.

Learn a language on-line -- courtesy of the Monterey County libraries

The Monterey County Free Libraries have now a popular language learning program available free of charge through its website here.

Livemocha uses a combination of traditional language learning methods and online social interaction for a fun way to learn 38 different languages. Just click on the Livemocha icon to get started.

The Livemocha community has over 15 million users with several options available: traditional lessons, flash cards, vocabulary tools, videos, audio recordings of your own voice, and feedback from native speakers of the language. Plus, once you start using the program you can also give feedback to learners of your own language.

Sounds like a fun way to learn something new. Would you try it out and let me know what you think?

English learners and the Stanford project

When I wrote an article about English learners and the Common Core a couple of weeks ago, I failed to link to the Understanding Language Project at Stanford University. The team is working on developing teaching resources to share, something that could be very useful as schools work on implementing the Common Core Standards.

The project will host a webinar to discuss their unit "Persuasion across time and space," a unit for 7th graders that analyzes a series of texts in the context of the Common Core. I was lucky to attend a workshop on this unit taught by Prof. Aída Walqui, who piloted the program in Oakland to much success. So English teachers out there, I highly recommend the webinar!

Salinas City Elementary to host dual immersion parent conference

Dual Language Program Advocates and the Salinas City Elementary School District will hold its 2nd annual dual immersion parent conference at Boronda Meadows Elementary School from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, November 17th.

 Dual immersion is a method that teaches students in two languages.

The conference is free and is geared toward prospective parents of incoming preschool, kinder and first graders and current dual immersion parents. Separate tracks for each session (in Spanish and English) will focus on areas specific to either group.

Enrichment activities will be provided for children in attendance.  Dual language expert Rosa Molina will deliver the keynote speech and host one of the breakout sessions.

Boronda Meadows is at 915 Larkin Street, Salinas.

To register click here or or call 831-607-9360. Walk-up registration is welcome.

Dual Language Program Advocates exists to promote and support dual language programs that develop bilingual, bi-literate and bicultural students in the city of Salinas and the state of California. For more info on dual immersion programs, click here or here.

Educators, your input is needed to help develop English language development framework

Monterey County will be the site of one of the four focus groups that will provide input on developing the English Language Development roadmap for K-12 in California. Educators are being sought to be part of the 10 to 12-member focus groups, which will develop guidelines to teachers, administrators, and parents on how a standards-based curriculum is implemented in the classroom.

The focus group meetings will be open to the public and comments made will be forwarded to the Instructional Quality Commission and the State Board of Education for consideration.

Focus group meetings are currently planned for the following dates and locations:
May 22 - Orange County Office of Education
May 31, 2012 - California Department of Education, Sacramento
June 4, 2012 - Monterey County Office of Education
June 5, 2012 - Contra Costa County Office of Education

For more information, or to apply, click here. Deadline to apply is April 5.