Transforming Schools for Multilingual Learners: A Comprehensive Guide for Educators

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Dr. Debbie Zakarian. Debbie is the founder of Zakarian and Associates, where she provides professional development, strategic planning, and technical assistance for K-16 educators of culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Debbie has worked with numerous state and local education agencies and written the language assistance programming policies for many rural, suburban, and urban districts. She served on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is the author of more than 100 publications, including a dozen books, such as Transforming Schools for Multilingual Learners, a comprehensive guide for educators, now in its second edition, which we're here to talk about today.

[00:52] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:54] SPEAKER_01:

Debbie, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:56] SPEAKER_00:

Thank you.

[00:57] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Debbie, given your expertise working with culturally and linguistically diverse populations, especially around multilingual learners, what did you see happening in the field? I know this is the second edition of the book, but back when you were originally considering writing the book, what did you see happening in the field that prompted you to take this step?

[01:15] SPEAKER_00:

For many years, I helped districts write their policies. And then I helped state education agencies write their policies based on the laws and regulations and also the research on what works. And there was a real need for a user-friendly path where a lot of educators poured over the regulations that are written in legalese. So in what kinds of ways could school districts, whether they were with lots of multilingual learners or small numbers, really help students to be successful in school and in their lives as well. So I worked with a number of districts across my state and then across the country in helping them really think about, well, what would work in their unique contexts? And that led to writing this book.

[02:03]

And then the book became used by many colleges and universities as part of their certification programs and by many, many districts across the country. And over the ensuing decade, I had the pleasure of working with a number of additional districts around how to make the ideals go into practice.

[02:23] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, I think that's such an important question, the connection between the research base, the evidence of best practice and legislation that guides what schools are required to do. And often we know that if schools are not required to do things, then often they don't happen. So it's important to have good legislation that aligns with the evidence. And then, of course, that has to actually translate into practice as well and not just be compliance issue, but be something that really impacts practice. And personally, I will tell you, I became certified as a teacher, I think before the first edition of your book was published, when there probably were not a lot of good guidelines in place for how teachers should be prepared to work with multilingual learners. Take us in just to a little bit of the evidence base around some of those key best practices.

[03:09]

And I know this is a topic that of course you've written multiple books on, but maybe just from kind of a 30,000 foot view, what are some of the key pieces that need to be in place?

[03:19] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think that leads to why the second edition was written. Not that the first edition wasn't successful, because it certainly was, but there were a lot of changes, both in the research and in the regulations that happened in the 10-year span between the first and second edition. Probably one of the bigger ones is our depth of understanding about what it means to use a strength-based approach. culturally sustaining approach. And that has really impacted the field of multilingual as well as really a lot of fields around. In the past, what we would do is use somewhat of a medical model, look for what was wrong and treat the problem.

[03:59]

And typically what people perceived as wrong is the student doesn't speak English or parents are too busy to help us, or they don't speak English, or maybe they've had limited prior schooling and so forth. So we started from this deficit base. And then our response to it was pour on a lot of English and assume that kids will then do well. And in truth, the outcomes are really poor nationally. And along came scholars like Abraham Maslow, Carol Dweck, Amol Amante Gonzalez and others who really looked at what happens when we look for the strengths that students already possess and how do we tap into those. And certainly multilingual learners are multilingual.

[04:43]

They speak a language other than English or languages other than English and oftentimes represent cultures other than American culture. And is that wonderful to tap into? So culturally sustaining practices really look at in what ways can we tap into student strengths, their cultural and linguistic strengths and all the other strengths that they possess to try and create as best as we can, a program of instruction that's really going to help them flourish in school and in their lives. And in the research that's been done on multilingual learners, when we do that, they are much more successful as an underrepresented group than they were ever before. So it's really been shown to have quite a positive impact when we use an asset-based approach that's culturally sustaining.

[05:32] SPEAKER_01:

Right, right. Seeing not what the deficits are, but seeing what the strengths are and building on those rather than, as you said, kind of a medical model. Let's talk a little bit about what schools are typically doing. When you look at a school system, when you talk to a school system about their policies, give us kind of a typical scenario of what might be in place and what some of the big opportunities might be to improve services for multilingual students.

[05:58] SPEAKER_00:

Oh, that's a very important question. Thanks for asking. Typically what schools do is there's a bunch of forms that a school or a district will use to enroll new students. So we're all familiar with the emergency form, health form, educational history form, just all these forms that are very impersonal. We ask people to fill them out. And generally what's included amongst those packet of forms is something called a home language survey that no matter where we live, whether it's Alaska, all the way to Florida, wherever.

[06:31]

people are asked, what language did your child first learn to speak? What language do you speak with your child? And it's all around language. And that really gives us a very small snippet of a student. It doesn't really give us a broad range of who that student is, what their hopes and dreams are, anything like that. So generally what I get involved with is This is a first opportunity to meet with families.

[06:57]

How might we ask them about their child's unique interests and hopes and so forth? So I generally involve them in creating a protocol. Its intent is to build relationships with families right from the start. and ask questions to really discern what students' strengths and interests are, like what do you enjoy doing with your child? What is your child interested in? What kinds of thoughts do you have about your child's prior schooling?

[07:25]

Was there something your child enjoyed doing in school, enjoys doing out of school, on their own with others? And We can ask kids a range of questions, too, so that right from the start, we're really building a program of study that's based on everyone's strengths. And in addition to that, we can ask families, how are you involved with your child's prior school? How would you like to be involved here? And we might give them a range of ideas of ways that we'd love to partner with them. So those shifts from an, I want to say, impersonal home language survey to a very personal relationship building activity right from the start is so helpful.

[08:05] SPEAKER_01:

Wow. And replacing just here's a form to fill out with a conversation that shows that we care, that shows interest in the family, in the student, in their experience. I love that shift to more, I would say welcoming, but also, as you said, very strengths-based. kind of approach. So from that point forward, talk to us about the services, the approaches, and what the evidence base says about some of those best practices for multilingual learners. Because certainly as a teacher, I heard lots of strategies.

[08:35]

You get different professional development training on different strategies to use with multilingual learners. But talk to us a little bit more systematically about what it looks like for districts to set up systems that actually work.

[08:48] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's a great thing because none of us start at zero, you know, no matter where we work and what we do. Generally, there have been either a few or a lot of multilingual learners. So it's helpful to analyze five years of data of who are multilingual learners, what languages do they speak, what countries of origin are they from, where have they been to school, just a whole range of information that we can gather and then as a group analyze. So what's helpful is from the get-go is forming a committee and no longer working in a silo on our own. So I encourage schools to form teams of teachers, administrators, folks that are bilingual, bicultural, that might have background. and who the student is and where they're from and what their prior experience has been to really tap into, well, what kind of program would be the most successful?

[09:39]

And there's been a lot of research on the types of language education programs that are the most successful and what they should consist of. And so we talk a lot about, well, who are our students in this particular district? by grade, by school, by so on and so forth. And what should programming look like? What does the state say about how students should be instructed given their proficiency level in English? What would that look like?

[10:08]

What would it look like in a typical day and what kinds of things should we encourage educators to do? So I have a number of tools to help us really think about, well, how would that apply in my particular context? And gathering that type of data and then looking at it with other folks really helps. And it really helps when you have that strength-based lens aligned. layered over it to sort of say, oh, this is great. We have these students from these places and how might they add to what we're doing and really help us complement our mission and vision statements, which is always wonderful to do to sort of take a district's vision and apply it to our growing number of multilingual learners.

[10:53] SPEAKER_01:

Debbie, I want to ask a question that I would say is based mostly on observations that I've made from the special education world, but I think probably has some implications for working with bilingual learners, multilingual learners as well. And that is the idea of inclusion. And I think over the past 20 years, we've seen a big increase in inclusion that has been, you know, a good thing for students generally. But I've also heard from a lot of educators that sometimes inclusion means figure it out yourself. Good luck. not enough support.

[11:22]

And certainly we don't want students to be separated. We don't want students to be kind of cut off from everybody else to receive services, to get what they need. Take us into that tension as you see it for multilingual learners. Because I remember as a principal, We had in Seattle, we had many students who were brand new to the country. We had a bilingual orientation center where initially students would attend for some period of time just to get some basics, to have a chance for some assessment and figuring out kind of what their proficiency was and what their needs were. But of course, we don't want to have a completely separate system.

[11:56]

And this push for inclusion, I think, again, has been just tremendous generally. Talk to us about some of the details there, though.

[12:02] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I don't want to say the overlap, but the understanding about the EHA or the Handicapped Act for children, and also the understanding of multilingual learners and what they need has really led to renewed interest around How do you identify multilingual learners with differences versus disabilities? So part of it is, well, what would constitute a high-quality lesson so that we're more sure that when we, let's say, refer students for a special education evaluation, or we have students with identified special needs in a regular classroom or a general classroom, with multilingual learners, so the class is somewhat heterogeneous, what should that classroom look like? And what would that high quality instruction be?

[12:53]

So that as we apply systems like multi-tiered systems of support, that it would really help us in addressing everyone's needs. So in this book, I include nine principles for, you know, using evidence-based, highly researched, proven to be sound and successful learning elements of a high quality lesson that really begins with building relationships with students. Because in almost every study that's been done about what constitutes a high quality lesson, teachers play an enormously important role in helping students see them as trusted individuals that are really there because they care for and care about them. And I include protocols that benefit not just multilingual learners, but every learner. And so that would be part of it. Another one would be, how do we really find out about our students' backgrounds and their experiences as people from a personal, cultural, linguistic, life experience level?

[13:54]

And what kinds of things could we do to really help us tap into that so that when we implement lessons and we design lessons, they're really based on who our students are and what they bring to learning. So that would be sort of a second super important element. And then how can we make learning super relevant for kids so that we can take our text and either prescribed text or texts that we've co-created or whatever, how do we make it relevant and meaningful for students? And that's super important as is working in collaborative experiences because we know students really learn well when they partner with others. So what should collaborative learning look like? And although we all know it's an important method, it's not that easy to implement.

[14:42]

And it's the heart of where my research is. What I talk about in the book and in other writing is that it isn't easy, but when we help students really look at how they work together and how they learn together and how we create these experiences where we model and practice how we want that to occur, they can be so much better off at not just really benefiting from each other, but learning content and learning language, which is something we're all after. So those are just a few of the principles, but they become very important as For all of us, especially when it comes to a general classroom teacher or school or district that truly has a heterogeneously diverse, I want to say multi-diverse group of students that we're all really wanting to do well.

[15:28] SPEAKER_01:

So the power of tier one instruction being good, the relationships that are being built in the classroom, the routines for interaction and working together among students certainly are the foundation. And certainly we can talk more about students with more complex needs or more complex teams working to support them. I wonder if we could talk a little bit about kind of a continuum of services, because again, I think like it's easy to see, oh yes, that is the ELL teacher. And this is a classroom where students students of varying needs are coming together. Sometimes I think teachers get a little bit confused about exactly what type of supports they are getting and what type of services their students are getting. In your experience of working with systems of all types, what have you seen to be a really good continuum of supports and services that makes teachers feel like they're getting the support they need, they can see that their students are getting the support that they need, and it's not just a, hey, be a really good teacher.

[16:27]

Because I think when teachers hear tier one, sometimes they hear, hey, just be a really good teacher and your students won't need additional help.

[16:33] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, let's check off this box that we're all doing what we are supposed to be doing. And when I think back, you know, earlier in my career, gosh, what I've benefited from all this research and application. So what I feel is the U.S. Department of Education in 2022 came out with the toolkit of like, what should we do? And what they talk a lot about is that every one of us brings a level of expertise.

[16:56]

It may not be the same. For example, you might be the principal. I might knowledge in this area. And we might be working with the school psychologist, the special educator, the after school person. There's just so many people in a school that have a high level of expertise, but none of us have all that expertise. So the U.S. Department of Education is saying we should form work groups.

[17:19]

and really tap into each other's expertise over these very students that have multiple experiences. And how can we highlight and amplify those experiences in the classroom? And when we bring all of our knowledge together, what can we gain from it? So what I've typically done is used, and I've done this for years, I'll use these nine principles. Teachers and principals love them. There's nothing in them that's so esoteric that someone goes, well, what is that?

[17:49]

But if I say, oh, if you're, you know, learning is visual, if you're using graphic organizers, what are you using and how do you know that your learners know what that graphic organizer is for? And I'll show them like three or four graphic organizers that mean the same thing. And then you put them in front of multilingual learners and they may not get that a bubble effect. might be the same as a list image, might be the same as a timeline. So we'll all work on, okay, when I do this, I'm going to use this image. Let's come to agreement around the visual that we use so that as students go through their school day, they're going to be training it in a certain sense to go from seeing this image to internalizing it.

[18:32]

And, oh, when you ask me for information, that's how we're going to look at it. And typically schools love that. Or if I do a training on every state has levels of literacy learning and English learning, what are those levels and how might we apply them across the board with everyone? Because they're related to how we want kids to listen to each other, mediate their emotions, listen carefully and comment and do all of these things that tap into the social, emotional, and academic learning to be a good teammate. Educators love that. And so I've never experienced a professional development experience where you bring teams together.

[19:13]

Everyone always wants to contribute because we all have wonderful ideas. We've been highly trained. So why not tap into those? And when we do, we experience true success. And that's always been sort of the wonderful outcome is we try these ideas, we see how they work, and students feel empowered to learn and we co-power them and the outcomes are always really wonderful. So I think there's genuinely pathways in that help everyone, a teacher, not just feel empowered themselves, but feel they can do it and they can do it in a good way that really benefits everyone.

[19:52] SPEAKER_01:

I wonder if we could talk a little bit about some of the layered complexity in understanding students' needs. Because as we alluded to earlier, often students have multiple needs that may be confused with one another. You know, from our perspective, we can't really distinguish between them as cleanly as we would like. And we tend to have a kind of typical model of child development and milestones and, you verbal language and written language and the ability to read and write. And those things don't always unfold in quite the same order in a second language. And as you alluded to earlier, sometimes students might be verbally fluent in their first language, but not have any reading and writing in that language or in English or vice versa.

[20:36]

And identifying exactly what types of support students needs, identifying if there are also potential issues to serve through special education can be very complex. And I'm guessing you're going to suggest that we have a team approach, that we do some collaboration. Take us into how we can navigate those issues, knowing that our usual ways of thinking about students who speak English as a first language might not be the most reliable guide or just might not get the job done.

[21:02] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's a great question. And one of the chapters in the book is really devoted to that. And I do a lot of professional development. For example, I just finished working with New York City Public Schools group from a collaborative where administrators, educators, specialists came together and really looked at how do we look for difference in disability? And I always start it with what are the national trends? And the national trends have been that we tend to either over-identify or under-identify.

[21:31]

And when we over-identify, what we tend to do, and this is not a great thing, is we tend to identify multilingual learners as having one of two disabilities, either their specific learning disability or SLD, or they are cognitively impaired. So that's kind of an unrealistic thing. broad brush of an entire population. There's absolutely no way that they, of all the types of disabilities, that they would fall into these two categories. And there's also been a huge surge in the number of multilingual learners identified as having disabilities over the past 10 years. So I think it's like 20 or 30%, much more than the national average, which also speaks to we're not doing what we should do.

[22:18]

in terms of we're way over-identifying. And what schools typically do is they'll wait and say, oh, it must be a language issue. Let's wait for years until we refer students. So then the pendulum may swing in the exact opposite direction toward under-identifying. So it's a sweeping over or under. And sadly, when kids are identified as having a disability of whatever, typically it's those two, but whatever it is, they typically leave the general classroom and go almost all the way over to being in the special education setting almost all day.

[22:56]

And by far, they end up not graduating with a regular diploma or they drop out. So those outcomes are not great. And so what we really need to look at is what is a high quality diploma language educational program for language education instruction. And that's where those nine principles come into play. So how would it be that a general classroom setting would make sure that it's using strength-based, culturally and linguistically sustaining practices? And that's what a lot of the heart of my work is, well, what would that instruction look like?

[23:33]

And how would it really be also professionally creative? Because it's not that we want to put every teacher in a box and say, we'll do it this way. It's use your professional creativity to create relationships with kids, help them find meaning in learning. Look at your state levels of proficiency and find creative ways to work with students. When we're assessing students, have assessment before multilingual learners, but with them, have them help us create assessments so that as a group, we're helping everyone buy into learning. So I look for various successful ways to build instruction So that first, we're tapping into differences because certainly all multilingual learners are distinct from the general population of speakers of English.

[24:23]

And most teachers are monolingual speakers of English who really haven't been trained in this field. So getting this type of high level of thinking is such a wonderful, successful way of going. So that's typically what I do. And then when it comes to disabilities, The wonderful thing about Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 under MTSS is we can go up the levels and down the levels. We can reduce services that kids receive as they acquire more skills and may not need that being taken out or having a special educator come in. And I use many, many examples in the book.

[25:01]

And when I work with educators around, well, what would this look like in play? Because certainly we want kids to be... The general phrase that is used is the least restrictive environment. And what I call it is the most opportune environment.

[25:17]

Like, how do we make it the highest quality environment so the students get the biggest outcome that they possibly can? Because that's what all of us want. We want them to be successful. And so when I start using language like that, instead of least, most, restrictive, most inclusive, people definitely start thinking about, how do I do that? What would that look like? And how might it benefit everyone?

[25:42] SPEAKER_01:

Debbie, talk to us a little bit about the types of external support. If there are specialized staff who work with multilingual learners, if there are coaches, if there are other types of support for students, what can those supports look like beyond the regular classroom?

[25:57] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's a great question. And Typically what I'll do is I'll put up a chart and in the center, I'll have student. And then off of that, I'll have these spokes and I'll include every single person that teachers and administrators tell me the student works with in any given day. So there are all these people, right? And then if we really look at it, it's the cafeteria people, it's the bus driver, the after school, out of school. It's a whole lot of people that work with students.

[26:29]

So I generally have created these Google Docs and I'll say, what questions do you have about your student with this person? And Usually the questions are loaded up on the ESL and the bilingual teacher, and they'll ask questions like, what's my student's proficiency level? And what does that mean? What does that mean in my classroom? What does it look like? What should I do?

[26:52]

How should I engage my students in collaborative work? What suggestions do you have? So I've done this for years, and people really like it because they'll say, well, these are the questions I have. Can we ask that? And so then I'll say, okay, here's your list of questions of all the people that work with students. Let's ask those questions.

[27:12]

And so then we'll have time to ask those questions and then think about how do we build our community? instruction based on what we learned. So it might be, well, Debbie tends to overuse the word and button. So when I speak with her in my ESL class, she just reuses those transition words all the time. So in my class, this is what we're doing. And when general education, subject matter, elementary teachers hear that, They think, oh, I can deal with that in my class or here's a concept I'm working on.

[27:44]

How might you make it more meaningful in the ESL class so that when they come to my class, I know that you've done some pre-work with them. Once those conversations are held and if people want and they get the book or whatever, you can see like how to set this up. It really helps. And everybody sees very quickly how to make it work. because we're buying into it. We're creating these questions ourselves.

[28:10]

They're based on what we want. And that's so important. And believe me, everyone has questions of others. What are you doing? It was really fun one time I listened to a group of staff that included the school officers, the police officers in the school. And they really knew a lot of the kids, the multilingual learners who were coming to the school because many of them spoke other languages.

[28:34]

And it was wonderful. to see the questions that staff had of the school officers about their students. And it really added to a very highly compassionate, empathetic conversation about what they all could do in their classrooms to help the kids feel less isolated and more a sense of belonging. So it was wonderful.

[28:53] SPEAKER_01:

So Debbie, two big themes I'm hearing in your work are that strengths-based approach, asset-based approach to our students and seeing what they can do, what they are bringing and so on. And then the importance of adult collaboration and how we can set up our work together as adults to set our students up for success and share all the strategies and the approaches that we need to put in place. So the book is Transforming Schools for Multilingual Learners, a comprehensive guide for educators now in its second edition. Debbie, if people want to get in touch with you and learn more about working with you, what would be the best place for them to go?

[29:25] SPEAKER_00:

Well, they can email me and I'm happy to give you my email. And they can also go to ZakarianConsulting.com and reach out to me anytime. I'm happy to help any group I work with. Like this week, I worked with the Schenectady New York schools and they're reading my book as part of a book study. And I always give people my email and say, if you have questions, please reach out to me.

[29:46]

And I'm happy to communicate with educators because I feel like if I'm going to say we learn a lot from one another and I want to be part of that. I learn a lot from others as well. And, you know, even the questions that you asked, I learned a lot from what you ask. And I think it helps us all do a better job at serving a population that's growing rapidly and that's growing in ways that's not predictable. For example, we're getting students from the war in Gaza, from the Ukraine, from countries that, you know, haven't had much exposure to being educated in the United States. And when we look at natural disasters in our own country or in others, suddenly school districts that didn't have those populations in the past are now having those populations.

[30:31]

So I'm really happy to be part of that conversation and hope I can help.

[30:35] SPEAKER_01:

Debbie, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure.

[30:38] SPEAKER_00:

Thank you. Thank you.

[30:41] Announcer:

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