Translating the Explosion in ELL with Andrea Bitner

In just two short years it is projected that 25 percent of all students in American schools will be English Language Learners (ELL). Are our schools prepared for that? Seasoned educator Andrea Bitner helps us understand the explosion in ELL students and how our school systems can best handle this change.

Bitner, an educator for 23 years, fills us in on the unique challenges of teachers and schools as they prepare to cater to these students' distinctive needs, illuminating the paths to progress. Communication strategies with the parents of multilingual students are critical, along with a commitment to empathy in education. She shares her groundbreaking AACE system and some of the currently available assistive technologies that can help foster a conducive learning environment for ELL students.

Bitner is also an author and speaker who travels the country providing resources to help educators better teach, connect and communicate with their ELL students and families. She is the author of "Take Me Home," in which she shares the true and inspiring stories of 11 of her former students through first-hand accounts of what it's really like to be bilingual in the American school system. (The book includes English and Spanish versions under the same cover.) Find out more about Andrea, her speaking services and other ELL resources at andreabitnerbooks.com or email her at 4andreabitner@gmail.com. 

"Outliers in Education" is a project of CEE, The Center for Educational Effectiveness. Find out more at effectiveness.org.

Produced by Jamie Howell at Howell at the Moon Productions.

Transcript

Intro: 0:00

Outliers in Education is brought to you by CEE, the Center for Educational Effectiveness. Better data, better decisions, better schools. To find out more, visit effectivenessorg.

Eric Price: 0:15

Hello, how's your Spanish? Millions of K-12 students across the US speak it perfectly. It's actually English. That's the hang up. As early as 2025, it's projected that one quarter that's right, one in every four students in America's public schools will be an English language learner. Are we really ready for that? We'll work to translate those statistics on today's episode of Outliers in Education.

AD: 0:40

I think we really need to change how we look at what we do in schools.

Intro: 0:44

Everything that we do as educators, it just comes back to people.

AD: 0:48

I love it, even when it's hard, especially when it's hard.

Andrea Bittner: 0:52

Ultimately. I mean, this is about what's best for kids.

Eric Price: 0:56

Bienvenido everyone, and welcome to another episode of Outliers in Education. I'm Eric Price, here with my co-host, Eric Boles from CEE, the Center for Educational Effectiveness, and I've just about maxed out my Spanish speaking abilities right there. Bolesy school was tough enough as it was, and I can't imagine trying to do it without understanding the language, but that's exactly what more than five million students are signing up for right now as we head into this school year. That can spill trouble for them, as well as for many of their teachers, who haven't been equipped to deal with non-English speaking students Well. Ep.

Erich Bolz: 1:28

I can relate. I had the good fortune to study a couple of times as a younger person abroad and know what it feels like to be in a country where you're having a hard time with the communication, with the culture, with the customs, and really it becomes an issue pretty quickly unless you have adequate supports. Fortunately, our positive Outliers Study of Schools in Washington State provides us lots and lots of avenues for what actually works in this regard, because one of the four groups we studied specifically were schools that had high proportions of Latino and Latina students in Washington State.

Eric Price: 1:57

Yeah, and I think that's one of those big things that Outlier Study really looked at was how can we effectively reach those students that I think we really haven't equipped our teachers, our whole, really our state, to be dealing with effectively, I think, in the classroom.

Erich Bolz: 2:14

I would just piggyback on that and say almost every school that's in tier three of school improvement in Washington State is either in for kids who are eligible under special education or identified as what we say in Washington State, multilingual learners lots of English language learner nomenclature across a country, so it's a huge issue for us, not only here, but we don't see a lot of great models or templates across the country either in terms of who's really meeting the needs of these students in a positive way.

Eric Price: 2:41

Yeah, I 100% agree, as both a teacher and an administrator, and even going down and spending time in some of those dual immersion pieces, I don't think there's a lot of great answers and there's just a lot of well if this and if that. Unfortunately for us, today we've got someone to help us make sense of all of this Bullsy. Our guest has been a teacher for 23 years and many of those with specific focus on English language learners. She travels the country teaching other teachers how to teach better and how to reach and communicate with multilingual learners and their families. So today, please welcome. Educator. Author speaker Andrea Bittner. Andrea, thanks for joining us today on the show.

Andrea Bittner: 3:19

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

Eric Price: 3:22

Andrea. So I'm floored by the growth in the number of EL students in the US In 2019 is around 10%, and now we're expecting to see it climb as high as, like, 25% in 2025. Are we ready for this, or is this a crisis in education?

Andrea Bittner: 3:36

You know, I think that it's been really interesting to see the numbers, how they have been climbing and in my 23 years the districts, even locally here in Pennsylvania, have seen an extreme uptake in students who are coming not just into the country, but most of the students now who are English language learners are born here and they're having the experience of being at home with mom and dad for the first five years of their life speaking the language that their parents you know. I call it their love language, right? You speak to your children in the language that you speak best and that you can show you love them best in, and walking into kindergarten on that first day hearing English for the first time and having the experience for the very first time that their language that they've been in love with with mom and dad for so many years now doesn't work for them. Yes, absolutely there is this uptake in English language learners, not just from people who are moving here, but from people who are also mostly born here.

Eric Price: 4:30

And are we ready for that as a system?

Andrea Bittner: 4:32

I think that that's something that we are definitely growing with as a system. You know a lot of our teachers. It's not that they don't want to do better, they're just not sure how, and so, depending on the students and teachers that you have in the building, who have may be more of a veteran teacher or a teacher who has never worked with ELS before to a teacher who had maybe some class back in college once you know that they're trying to refer back to. So no, I don't think we're necessarily ready, but I do think people are very open to growing in this area.

Erich Bolz: 5:04

And, in your experience, what would you say are the two or three big rocks that would cause us to be more ready? What would you provide as guidance to school administrators who said, hey, I can only ask my teachers to do so many things. What are those one to three things that we need to start doing tomorrow?

Andrea Bittner: 5:18

You know, the first thing I think that we do is we ask a lot of questions. I think that there's a lot of assumptions that happen about English language learners when they come into our schools. You know, lack of language never equals lack of intelligence, and I think that sometimes people get really stuck on. Well, they just can't speak English, but that's not a demonstration of their reading, writing, listening and speaking, knowledge, of concepts, of content. And so what I first say is let's look at the movie of a student and not the snapshot. And so let's get into the schools with first asking a lot of questions. Well, what does that mean? Well, have you been able to access their records from their prior state? Are they coming from down the street? Are they coming from a state over, are they coming from a different country? Let's see what knowledge they bring to the table. You know, have you communicated with their parents in the language that they prefer? The parents are the root to the student. They are going to give you the most information.

Andrea Bittner: 6:12

So, as a district, what pieces of information or what tools do you have for your teachers to access to gain confidence in communicating with those students' families, some of the kids that come in parents who prefer English, some of the kids that come in a parents who might prefer Spanish, some of them might prefer both. So you want to start to do digging what we say lovingly right in terms of the students abilities, where they're coming from. Were they in a state that assessed them previously? Were we to state in Pennsylvania? Did they have access scores that they're already walking into, that they've been serviced in their prior place? Did they exit the EL program in their prior school? And they're just an amazing bilingual kid that no longer needs support. So you want to start to access that.

Andrea Bittner: 6:57

Structural wise. You also want to equip your what I call frontline workers with the ability to confidently communicate with the registration piece of it. So a lot of schools will have, you know, our office teams are our frontline people and so when parents come in or parents call, they're looking to them to assist them in a whole new system that they may not know much about, and so to have you trained your office teams with the translation tools that are so easy and so available to use to confidently communicate with the parents immediately. I could go on, but I think that accessing the student information and accessing the parent information are the first two pieces.

Andrea Bittner: 7:36

From there I'd say the third essential piece, eric, is have you given your teachers the ability to connect and collaborate with their EL teacher? Because a lot of times there's a disconnect between the content teachers and EL teachers and their ability to access each other, because oftentimes EL teachers are spread out. You know, I like to say we live in the city, not on the block. We're heading from school to school, we're heading from grade level to grade level, sometimes district to district, and so are you being intentional about giving your teacher and EL teacher time to sit down and talk about the student strengths, areas of need together?

Eric Price: 8:12

Andrea. So you talked about chatting with those parents. You know, getting at that root, how does that typically go? So you know, I would say probably 15 years ago I was an administrator and I had probably 50% of my population was Spanish speaking and we had a real difficult communication issue with parents, even getting a hold of them. So in your experience, how is that relationship with like those parents and do they feel like they're a part of the system for our EL learners?

Andrea Bittner: 8:41

Okay, yeah, that's a great question. So, absolutely yes. We work with hundreds of active students in our districts and we have about 25 different languages, so we have to be ready to, you know, connect with our parents in multiple modalities all the time 25 different languages At least, super easy.

Andrea Bittner: 8:58

Absolutely so. The first thing that we do was when we get that notification that a student has registered for the district that may speak another language at whom is that home language survey? That's step one. When we receive notification from our registration office that hey, I just got one yesterday. Hey, you know, we have a new student coming in from the Ukraine, they indicated with that check mark that another language is spoken at his home, I like to start what I lovingly call going fishing, and so now what I do is two things. I send out an email via a Google Doc that is translatable to the family. I introduce myself and this is what I say hey, my name is Miss B. I'm an English language learner teacher here in the Interboro School District. I was notified in our school system that your child is also speaking another language at whom. I think that's amazing. Thank you so much for giving them that gift. I'd like to send you this email with this attached document to learn more about your child's ability to speak a different language at home.

Eric Price: 9:59

So you're reaching out and finding all of that from that parent? Yeah, okay.

Andrea Bittner: 10:03

And that translation feature is important so they can put it in the language they prefer to answer the information most accurately.

Andrea Bittner: 10:09

But here are the kinds of questions on that document. Does your child speak fluently a different language at home or do they just use it every once in a while when they're speaking with a relative? Do they just listen to you and dad speak it to each other? Or they've always been educated here in English, so you want to start to kind of find out from mom and dad what does that look like in your house, and so we do get a response from that document from the parent, from there. Now if I have follow-up questions or I just want to introduce myself further, which I usually do, then I'm going to call and I'm going to use an interpreter on the phone, a live interpreter, which there are amazing companies out there, like language-based services, which is sometimes known as interpreter talk, where we use Propio 1, which is a 24-hour a day, at least hundreds of languages available, live interpreters at an 800 number that I can have Vietnamese on the phone in 30 seconds.

Eric Price: 11:04

And you're really digging for the depth of English when you're talking with that. Yeah, okay.

Andrea Bittner: 11:09

Yeah, hey, tell me about your student. What do they enjoy about school? Where are they coming from? What do you worry about for them? What do I need to know? Do they have siblings? You know all those family questions that are so helpful to us. To plan for instruction, we need to gather from their parents, and so, yes, those are the first two pieces of accessing parents. Is that Google Doc and that phone call home?

Erich Bolz: 11:35

Andrea, thank you for sharing all that, and in prior conversations you've shared pretty incredible stories of some relationships you've built with families, even in tragic circumstances. Could you share one of those stories with us and why you feel that's such an impactful avenue of serving these children and families?

Andrea Bittner: 11:51

I can. So I've worked as a teacher for about 23 years and about 17 of them have been spent working with English language learners, and about 10 years ago I worked with about 40 different students, like I mentioned earlier, and with at least 25 different languages, and they came from all walks of life. We had students who were adopted. We had exchange students. We had students who were born here. We had students who had crossed the border. We had students who had waited 10 years for Avisa and came after their parents. We had students who had waited 10 years for Avisa and came before their parents. We had students who had visited their parents sometimes. So there were a lot of dynamics within this group of students and no matter where they had come from or what language level they were currently coming in on right, because we have levels one through six and reading, writing, listening and speaking. We had this classroom banner in our classroom and it said education is freedom, education is opportunity. What's your plan? Because, as high school kids with only four years or less left in their free education that they're receiving at this time, we knew that we had to have a plan and their plan couldn't be you're going to go back to your other state or or their district or other country right now, and your plan can't be I'm going to quit school and just not do well here, because your parents and teachers have worked too hard to give you this opportunity to be freely educated and become bilingual.

Andrea Bittner: 13:17

I had one particular group of students, the Lopez family, and I worked with all seven of their children over a period of time, and they happened to come from the country of El Salvador and so they had all boys and one girl, and we started with Sergio and we worked our way all the way down to Nancy, and Nancy was the only female in the family that I had taught. So they all went through this program in this mentality and graduated from high school. And about a year after I was finished teaching Nancy, I was outside at school one day and I saw a bunch of helicopters and I thought, well, like I hope everything's all right. There's a lot of helicopters outside today. And about an hour after that my principal came down to get me, to let me know that one of my students had been hit by the train and that student was Nancy, and unfortunately she died that day.

Andrea Bittner: 14:06

But one of the biggest challenges of that day, in addition to the trauma that Nancy's death caused our school, our community, our family, her siblings, all these amazing kids I'm working with in this program and their teachers, was that mom and dad were still learning English themselves, and so, when they got the call that something had happened, no one on the local force spoke Spanish, and so they could kind of put together that something was wrong.

Andrea Bittner: 14:31

And they could kind of put together that something had happened, but they didn't know which one of the children it was. So they went up to the tracks and they stood there for hours calling all the kids and waiting for someone to come and help them understand what had happened to their daughter. And so, as we traveled through the coming weeks, we navigated the immigration process to get our brother to be able to come and back and bury his sister. We navigated the funeral process to help them communicate with the local funeral parlors to be able to bury their daughter, which we did and were able to do that for free. We navigated the Latino community and the church. We navigated all of that in addition to so many other things, to help this family support the language that they were learning at that time.

Eric Price: 15:16

So so, andrea, if you could help me out. I'm a kid and I'm going to go through this system. So I'm an EL learner and I'm now in that kid's shoes. So what kind of challenges would a kid like that face? And do we start to move into some equity issues there?

Andrea Bittner: 15:34

So there are layers of challenges that they face when they first come into the system. But the first thing that we're looking for to determine how big that challenge is going to be is what is their language? How close is it to English? If it's the Spanish-speaking community, that's a win, because it's a romance language and there are a lot of cognates there. And, number two, how literate are they in their first language? Because if you have a student who comes into your building who's literate in their first language, that is a win-win for everybody. Because now all I need to do is teach them the transfer skills, teach them the differences. They can already read and write. They can do it in their first language, so I just need to show them the differences as they're transitioning to acquire the second.

Andrea Bittner: 16:17

We've had students who have come in who were all-star students from schools in Guatemala, who were their top student in their schools, beating the English-speaking students in math and reading within weeks in the district. I've also had the opposite. I've had kids who have come in from South America and other countries who have never stepped foot in a school, who had the option of going to school. One of my guys from last year, I got him as a middle schooler. He was given the option of his country to go to school every day and learn to read or go play soccer. So what are you going to do? You're going to go play soccer, right? And so he spent his days playing soccer.

Andrea Bittner: 16:55

But now here's the difference. When Christopher came into the building, now I've got to teach him as a seventh grade student how to read, and so now I'm starting with A-Apple-A, and so you have two or more. I've had students who have come in from boarding schools, who had British English and just needed to learn some transition, you know. So I've had students from all over, but really that language and that literacy piece is going to be the first way to design a plan for a challenge that could show up.

Eric Price: 17:25

All right, now you're speaking my language. We'll be right back after a short break with more from EL Educator Andrea Bittner. Right here on Outliers in Education.

AD: 17:40

School leaders as we enter the in-service season, how great would it be to offer your teachers differentiated breakout sessions led by real classroom teachers. That's where Peer Driven PD comes in. Peer Driven PD finds some of the best teachers in the country, films them talking about their tips and techniques that really work in real classrooms, and they use this content in online courses that your teachers can access anywhere at any time. Teachers can log in at any time and choose their own adventure. It's like masterclass, but for teachers, and the thing is, teachers love it. So if you want to offer PD that meets the needs of your diverse staff, check out PeerDrivenPDcom.

Eric Price: 18:18

And we're back. We've been exploring the explosion in English language learners and whether or not the US public schools are ready to handle it with educator, author and speaker Andrea Bittner from Norwood, pennsylvania, gosh Andrea.

Erich Bolz: 18:30

I had one more question and then, of course, because you're fond of information, now I have two. So I'm going to ask the first one. I'm working with a school right now that has about 12% of their student body Most of the students I'm talking about inside of that 12% are EL students or ML students and they're reading. This is a middle school. They're reading four, five, six years off of grade level, so they're right at that foundational reading level that you're talking about. What advice do you have for middle and high school staff when you know, you know as a teacher, you're not trained in those foundational, scientific, foundational elements of reading? What advice do you have for, oh my gosh, what do I do? This is 12% of my student body and they're not. They're not reading for understanding, they don't know how to read.

Andrea Bittner: 19:13

Yeah, absolutely. I think this is where you start to access a lot of your supports. Number one I would talk to my reading specialist to access information on what their skills are in their first language. Number two I would ask them to do a written piece to see how strong they are in their first language, even if you couldn't translate it, this is what you could say Tell me what you miss most about your prior school or country, or just your prior school in the state they're coming from, the. Watching them write in their first language is very telling for a middle, any teacher, you know, for any teacher because are they using the same words over and over? Are they not able to write anything? Can they write two or three sentences? Do they use punctuation? Even if you're not able to translate it in that moment, you can gauge pretty quickly. What kind of skill do we have here? But how do you support that? Right, they've got this novel.

Andrea Bittner: 20:04

I had this question yesterday from a teacher right here in Pennsylvania. I need to teach night by Eli Wazel. I have no idea how I'm going to do this with my newcomer. Well, here's what we do. Number one we access audio. Students can listen to books. Number two you can reduce the pacing in the audio. So you can. It's awesome. Now you can go onto any YouTube video. Most of the time somebody's read it out loud and you can reduce the pacing of the video so that the student can listen to it at a shorter pace.

Andrea Bittner: 20:32

When it comes to language, english is full of fluff. I come from Philly. We are one of the fastest speaking, most impatient parts of the country. I love what you say. And so where in the language can we reduce the fluff? They don't need to read the whole chapter. Could they read a summary? Could you just take a highlighter and highlight the key sentences from those pages that you need them to focus on? Reduce the language, because it's not that they don't have the intelligence, they just don't have the words for it yet. So the listening skills here are really going to come into play. Then, when it comes to the language reduction, you could also think of. I know chat GPT is a big topic right now, but something I will say positive about it is there is the ability to take a piece of information and say to chat GPT. I need you to create A summary for me of let's go with the book Night Chapter 1 at a let's call it Level 2, english Language Proficiency Level. See what it pumps out, because it's going to reduce it.

Eric Price: 21:39

Can the kid be using that Any of those AI pieces, or is a teacher to translate some of those AI things?

Andrea Bittner: 21:45

I mean you could. I mean I don't see why not the other piece too? There's a great tool out there called a C-Pen reader, and what it does is you put the pen onto the text, you have earbuds in for the student, you scan the text with the reader and it reads to the student in English, spanish, french or I believe they're adding other languages. Wow. But we have C-Pen readers in my building and they are phenomenal because it's a very covert way for a middle or high school student to be listening to text in their first language that's being translated for them with that pen. So don't be afraid of really researching the technology. There's a great website or app, I think, called Diffit that's new that a lot of middle and high school teachers are using again for those features for students to help them access content. I could go one-in-one, but these are just a few.

Andrea Bittner: 22:35

These are just a few.

Erich Bolz: 22:37

Well, I have to say you've given me a lot for my next technical assistance appointment, so I thank you for that at no additional charges, it turns out. So, as we're working toward conclusion here, can you share with us when you walk in and do you see a school where EL students are really flourishing? What are those handful of characteristics that are just readily obvious?

Andrea Bittner: 22:58

Yeah, I kind of came up with an acronym I was thinking about this earlier and what I called is the ACE system and I kind of created this myself. And when I walk into a school and I work with schools around the country, I'm still teaching. My district is awesome about allowing me to teach and go out and help other teachers, but in our district, as one of I like to proudly say one of the models that's coming up for places around here and around the country, this is what I kind of see, the ACE system. So first is these kids have been assessed. You have given them the space to be assessed in their first language, if possible, or with your what we have, a leader screener, where we are your screeners that you're using to assess their English proficiency. You have intentionally scheduled them into classes based on their grade level and their proficiency level so that they are grouped with the best chance to have success with their EL teacher during the day, and you have mapped out the recommendations for how often they're seen. So, for example, our level ones and twos are seen five days a week, 30 minutes a day, five days a week. Our level threes I like to call that the sweet spot. That's the spot where they've gathered enough in my mind, content, knowledge and social language to expand. You know their content language. We're seeing them two to three days per week and then our level fours here in PA. They need a 4.5 to exit the program or seeing them on a console, or maybe once a week. So are you intentional about the placement of your students within their grades and their proficiency levels? Are you offering opportunities for your middle and high school students to gain credited classes for their English language learner work here in PA and EL student can take English with their EL teacher and have a credited course for it until they're ready to go into the mainstream. I won't call it mainstream, but you know that regular education setting without the support of the EL teacher for ELI.

Andrea Bittner: 24:56

Are you also giving students the opportunity to gain skills in their native language? So, for example, here in our district we had created a class called Spanish for native speakers. So at the high school level our Spanish teacher has created a course that only EL students who speak Spanish at home can take because they were interrupted in their literacy of Spanish. So what is she doing with them? She is teaching them the reading and writing of Spanish in that course as native speakers at home. From that they then take a translation certification, if they would like to, during their senior year, so that they're walking out into the world as a certified translator, and so that's motivation for them, you know they can use it if they want to, you know.

Andrea Bittner: 25:42

So that's the first piece assess, right. And then during the year, are you progress monitoring your students? Are your teachers continually meeting with each other, etc. And adjusting their language levels as they go? Because, remember, where an English language learner starts is not where they're going to end up. You know, all these accommodations and things that we're doing in place in the beginning will fade over time and so it's important to kind of assess all of that in the beginning. The second piece accommodate that second A of A accommodate. Have you given your teachers the ability to meet with their EL teacher to learn the accommodations that are required in order to show that that student is demonstrating progress with the accommodations in place? Because in where I am, a student cannot fail a class without the teacher and the EL teacher together being able to demonstrate that we put these supports in place and they still failed. And so that accommodation piece, again that will fade over time with those conversations is important and giving your teachers the confidence to know what to do. You know, and that's part of the role that we play.

Andrea Bittner: 26:45

The final two pieces are communicate and elevate. So communicate We've talked about that a little bit today. Are you communicating with your EL students parents confidently? Are you communicating as a team about your EL student in the building confidently? And finally, are you giving your EL students the ability to communicate with each other and have access to each other?

Andrea Bittner: 27:07

We do that a lot in our district.

Andrea Bittner: 27:08

We connect our kids building-wide, district-wide and county-wide. We've written some grants and what these grants have allowed us to do are have K to 12 community experiences four times a year, and so we are taking our kids and letting them meet with other kids within our district who are speaking the first-same languages as them. And I can't tell you how motivating it is for me as a teacher to see my little guys that are in elementary school speaking Arabic and French and Russian and Pashto and Tui and beyond light up when they see a middle schooler who speaks the first-same language as them. And I love seeing my high school kids be the leaders to mentor those middle and elementary kids when we have these community experiences, because it gives them a sense of pride and it reduces their feelings of isolation. We bring our alumni back every year to communicate with our high school kids. Hey, here's what's waiting for you. Hey, here's why being bilingual is a gift. Here's why you should be telling everybody that you're bilingual. Don't hide that. That's your secret party trick. That's what they tell them.

Eric Price: 28:15

You can switch it on and off whenever you want.

Andrea Bittner: 28:18

You know it's the truth, so I get very passionate about it.

Eric Price: 28:21

It sounds like this really is an MTSS for language and you've got an IEP. Really, when your dosing time is kind of appropriate to student need, does that, does that something I would agree? Yeah, okay, yeah, I would agree. I mean that structure in place.

Andrea Bittner: 28:37

Absolutely, and then that last place is just elevate. You know elevate comes down to are you giving your students opportunity to showcase their pride, not only within the EL classroom but within the building? So, taking a look at the physical space of your building, are you celebrating the students diversity that is occurring there? Are you recognizing what's important to them, what they celebrate, what they don't celebrate? Are you acknowledging you know the parent input that's coming from the outside? Are you taking a minute to throw out all your assumptions and taking a look at a student who's coming in to see if their classes need to be elevated in terms of academic challenges? Because a lot of times students are placed in lower level classes.

Andrea Bittner: 29:20

I had a student from Rwanda. He spoke three different languages. He was in culture shock. For the first six months they didn't think he could read. He could. He just was going through the motions of whole to shock as he assimilated into a new place. Within six months he was in an honors level ELA class and exited. You know. So you want to be thinking about how can you elevate these students to increase their opportunities for what they're headed to in the future. So I know I get really passionate about it, but that's where I'm at.

Eric Price: 29:50

But we shouldn't limit them just because they have a language issue. We shouldn't limit them because they can be accessing some much more challenging instruction.

Andrea Bittner: 29:58

Yeah, Absolutely, you know. I say it's time to flip the script. Instead of looking at an EL student and saying I want English right now, look at that student and say you're learning English, wow, wow, and just give their parents that same respect, that same respect.

Eric Price: 30:15

Andry. There is a ton here and this really is a masterclass for both teachers and administrators. So thank you for just really a good gillian, great ideas, and this is the time in the show when we really lean on our master of wrapping up, which is Mr Bolsey. What do you got for our nutshell today? Oh, was I supposed to?

Erich Bolz: 30:35

take notes and summarize this. Is that part of the podcast formula? So actually I have a lot and I agree. I think this is something everyone should absolutely listen to in the teaching administrative profession, because you're going to get a lot out of this 30 minutes. So really, where I went first was you know it's interesting to think that most of our EL students are born here. I think just helping kind of imbue that knowledge might change some dialogue in our country around how we feel about the immigration issues in general Questions, really starting with you got to be a detective to find out everything you can about the family, the kids, the backgrounds and really important, like with any other students that we serve, really no to EL students or EL families are exactly alike.

Erich Bolz: 31:18

Love the idea of what administrators can do. They can set up systems so that they're. It ensures collaboration between a regular education teacher and an EL specialist. So you know what are we doing? Intentionally put those systems in place.

Erich Bolz: 31:31

I love the entire discourse around assistive technology and all the things that we can do. Familiar with many of those interventions, but really hadn't thought about chat. Gpt is a teacher's best friend and one of the things that I always try to do when I'm working out in the field is teachers don't want to go to one more conference. They don't want 10 more hours of work at night or on the weekends. They're justifiably overwhelmed in the profession right now. So to have access to something like chat GPT and to ask a really well structured query and get something that's kicked out inside of just a handful of seconds for those of you who have used chat GPT that then can turn around and be a resource. What a what a brilliant example of assistive technology. And obviously Andrea gave us a whole lot more than that Love how she really broke it down. You know I'm always interested in one of those characteristics that you can kind of see, you can tangibly get your hands around inside of an effective school, and that a system was just great. So big takeaway for me was like to get our heads around what we can tangibly see in successful schools and when. What we see in those schools, according to Andrea, was assess, accommodate, communicate and elevate.

Erich Bolz: 32:36

So quick recap there, and then going back to two big points that she made. First one I love the sign education is freedom, education is opportunity. What's your plan? All of these things that Andrea talked about. Do they just help EL students? Oh my gosh, if you're a teacher and you have these strategies and skills in your bag, you're going to be able to better reach all your students.

Erich Bolz: 32:55

So again, EL teaching is just really, really great teaching and after 25 years in public education, I live in awe of educators and your story resonated with me so much and we think about what educators do in general. I can think of a million examples in my career of donations and food and time spent and time given. But wow, orchestrating a funeral, helping a family with a different language based access, a funeral process, is just one of those many readily accepted other duties as a sign that we see in our public education system. So again, Andrea, thank you for reminding us that we should all stand in awe of the incredible work that educators do, and thank you for the gift of your knowledge. What you shared today is going to make a huge impact across the audience that none of us would have previously reached. So props to you.

Eric Price: 33:42

How we do EP. I think fantastic. Andrea, is there anything you'd like to add to that amazing wrap up?

Andrea Bittner: 33:47

You know, I just want to say thank you. You know I'm proud to stand alongside all of you and teach these amazing students. I'm enjoying the time that I'm having teaching and getting to travel the country and work with educators. I did write a book about the experience that I referenced earlier. It's called Take Me Home. Take Me Home is a true story of 11 of my former bilingual students, who give a firsthand account of what it's really like to become bilingual in America, and we weave Nancy's story through it, and so that is one proud piece that took a tragedy and turned it into something that's been helpful to educators all across the country, and people can also reach out to me anytime I have educators email me. Hey, I just need an idea. Can you hop on a zoom for 20 minutes? My school's really struggling because we're better together, and so people can find me at Andrea Bitner books dot com. You can send me a direct message and reach out anytime.

Eric Price: 34:38

Well, thank you for that reference. That was my next question, so that's perfect, because I'm people are I'm sure people are just like smokes. How do I get ahold of you? Because so many of us are needing some of those resources, how to reach out. So, andrea, thank you again for being on the show. That was amazing, something that we absolutely need to hear, and it's going to be a growing issue as we move forward in the future. So thanks again for being on the show, andrea, anytime.

Erich Bolz: 35:01

And thanks to all of you for joining us today on Outliers in Education. You can find this episode and more, anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts or you can visit us online at effectivenessorg. Until next time, this has been Outliers in Education.

Intro: 35:21

If you'd like to find out how to gather the data you need to help drive positive change in your school or district, take a moment to visit CEE, the Center for Educational Effectiveness, at effectivenessorg. Better data, better decisions, better schools wwweffectivenessorg.