Schoolutions: Curious Educators. Evidence-Based Strategies. Classrooms Where Every Child Thrives.

Your Good Intentions Are Widening the Gap: What ENL Teachers Need to Hear

• Olivia Wahl • Season 5 • Episode 39

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0:00 | 23:35

What does "stuck" actually look like in a classroom and whose job is it to fix it?

In this S5E39 Part 1 episode of Schoolutions, I sit down again with Beth Skelton and Tan Huynh to discuss their newest collaboration, Integrated Literacy for Experienced Multilinguals. They talk about why the phrase "long-term English learner" needs to go, and what "stuck" looks like in a classroom. This episode is a must-listen for any teacher looking to improve their English language instruction and support every student.

Beth shares a powerful classroom story about a ninth grader who could explain physics perfectly in social language but needed explicit support to reach academic language. Tan shares what it felt like to arrive in the U.S. as a five-year-old Vietnamese refugee and later be told his "creative" science writing wasn't science writing at all.

Some episode mentions👇
💫The Writing Revolution by Natalie Wexler and Judith Hochman
💫Long-Term Success for Experienced Multilinguals by Beth Skelton and Tan Huynh (their first book)
💫Integrated Literacy for Experienced Multilinguals by  Beth Skelton and Tan Huynh  (the new book)
💫The 2020 WIDA framework
💫The original WIDA "Can Do" philosophy
💫Ruslana Westerlund — contributor to the 2020 WIDA framework
Publications
💫Scientific American — mentioned as an example of science writing for non-scientists

🔑 Topics discussed:
➡️ Why "experienced multilingual" replaces deficit language around student engagement and student motivation
➡️ What stuck looks like and how it starts as early as 4th grade (classroom behavior vs. academic language)
➡️ Social language vs. academic language: the continuum and why it matters for active learning
➡️Why every content teacher is responsible for the language of their discipline and how that supports inclusive teaching
➡️Good-intentioned practices that actually increase the gap (a must-hear for instructional coaching and teacher support)
➡️ The equity argument for explicit instruction as the most generous form of culturally responsive teaching

More resources from Tan & Beth:

Chapters:
0:00 Welcome & guest introductions
1:45 Research nugget: The Writing Revolution (Tan)
2:55 Research nugget: WIDA 2020 framework (Beth)
3:50 Why this book? Origin of Integrated Literacy for Experienced Multilinguals
5:40 Why "long-term English learner" needs to go (asset vs. deficit language)
7:50 What "stuck" looks like: the convex lens classroom story
11:00 Social language vs. academic language explained
13:00 Every content teacher IS a language teacher
14:40 Beth's husband's geology thesis (and why science writes in passive voice)
16:50 Tan's "sandwiched" rock layers story (two Englishes)
18:45 Lightning round: Q&A with Beth and Tan
22:00 Preview of Part 2 with the input-output loop & language domains

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Olivia: [00:00:00] Welcome, listeners. This is the second conversation I've had the privilege to have with Tan Huynh and Beth Skelton. Our first conversation, they shared about their book, Long-Term Success for Experienced Multilinguals. For this conversation, we are talking about their newest collaboration, Integrated Literacy for Experienced Multilinguals. They join me to talk about why the phrase long-term English learner needs to go, what stuck actually looks like in a classroom, and why every content teacher is a language teacher, whether they know it or not.

This is Schoolutions, the podcast that extends education beyond the classroom. A show that isn't just theory, but practical, try-it-tomorrow approaches for educators and caregivers to ensure every student finds their spark and receives the support they need to thrive [00:01:00] I am Olivia Wahl, and I am so happy to welcome Tan Huynh and Beth Skelton back to the podcast today. Let me tell you a little bit about Tan and Beth. Tan Huynh is a career international school teacher, consultant, and author specializing in secondary multilinguals. Tan arrived in the United States as a Vietnamese refugee at the age of five, having to navigate to both a new language while holding onto his roots.

Beth Skelton is an independent consultant with over 30 years of experience helping schools worldwide to create equitable education for multilingual learners. Beth is a former exchange student in Germany who knows the difference between sounding fluent and thriving academically. Our conversation today will focus on their newest collaboration. I have it right here. It is amazing, Beth and Tan, Integrated Literacy for Experienced [00:02:00] Multilinguals. Welcome, welcome, welcome back to the podcast. 

Beth: Thank you so much for having us back. 

Olivia: Yes. I start every episode having guests share a nugget of research or a researcher that connects with the topic we're going to be talking about. Tan, how about you? Do you wanna kick us off? 

Tan: Oh, yeah. I owe everything to Natalie Wexler and Judith Hochman, who wrote The Writing Revolution. I still remember, um, just reading that book during my summer break. It was the first week off, and I'm no longer jet-lagged. I'm reading, trying to get over jet lag. I'm reading in my, uh, on my phone, my Kindle. I'm walking around my neighborhood. And by chapter one, at the end of chapter one, I stop, and I go back, and I rewrite my lesson plans to include and/but/so. And I was like: What? Writing instruction at the sentence level? You mean not at the whole pa- not at the whole essay level? It was revolutionary. 

Olivia: Yeah. Beth, how about you? [00:03:00] 

Beth: I would say the authors of the 2020 WIDA framework, in particular Ruslana Westerlund, that their shift to systemic functional linguistics and the language that's embedded in all content areas, and how to look for language features, that has been really eye-opening and revolutionary to me, and it's my ongoing personal, um, professional development.

Olivia: Yeah. Well, and I've said to folks that these podcast conversations are so indulgent for me because they are a mini professional learning session as well, and that's what I love about having you both back. Um, I am so grateful to already have a conversation captured with both of you for your first book. I have it right here, Long-Term Success for Experienced Multilinguals. So why this book? Why now? 

Beth: Um, our first book is directed toward all of those content area [00:04:00] teachers who work with experienced multilinguals and may not be language experts. And as we, um, were presenting on book one, the, um, Long-Term Success for Experienced Multilinguals, many, many English language development teachers and English language arts teachers who work with experienced multilinguals in their English Language arts class would come up to us and say, "What about us? We're English Language Development teachers. How do we move forward with this group of, um, experienced multilinguals? They're no longer newcomers. We're not sure what to do with this group of students and how to move them forward." And so this is really written for English Language Development teachers and their colleagues who have maybe a sheltered section of English Language arts, um, at the secondary level. And so it really is focused on how do you have a content-based unit in English Language Development, um, or English Language Arts, how do you use literature to teach [00:05:00] explicitly the language that our students need to move forward? And it's about, um, complex sentence structures, linking one idea to another in essays. So it really is directed toward those specialists that have asked and requested this book. 

Olivia: Something that was very clarifying for me the first time we spoke, and I wanted to begin the conversation with this, the phrase long-term English learner, it was in place for many, many years, but yet you have chosen to shift to experienced multilingual. Tan, why does language matter? 

Tan: It matters because we, we call so many things that are considered long positive, like, um, long-term friendships, lifelong relationships. Yeah, but then when we talk with like about MLs who are-- who it takes five to seven years to learn academic language, and then we're like, "Oh my goodness, and there's something wrong with you. Why don't [00:06:00] you just learn academic language in like two years by the time you get here?" Or by the, and by the time you're in two years of the program. And we're like, wait, that's actually, it's normal for them to take five to seven years. Let's just change that per- perspective to say not just, oh my God, forever. It's like lifers. You hear the term lifers. And like, well, what if they're a just... If we see them more positively and like, what can they do? 

And it goes back to, um, WIDA. So Beth talked about like the WIDA new standards, but I talk about the old school WIDA. When I first learned about WIDA, it was the can do. With the can phil- philosophy. And so I see multilinguals in, in particular students who have been in the program for a long time, like what can they do? And not just, oh, they're stuck. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

Tan: And so we've changed that from a deficit mindset to uh, uh, a asset mindset to say, what can they do? They have a lot they come with. They've been in our school systems for at least five years. That is a lot to work with right there. 

Olivia: It sure is. And then Beth, uh, uh, there's [00:07:00] a lot of assumption that happens. I am advocating with every teacher I have the privilege of being a thought partner with. Let's not just go with an asset-based way of speaking about children living and breathing. Let's stop making assumptions. Let's take a curiosity stance. And so, as Tan just said, these students have been in the country for at least five years. What does stuck look and feel like in the classroom then for experienced multilinguals? 

Beth: I think it's best just to give a really concrete example, um, and this one came from a ninth-grade physics class that I was co-teaching with, and in that class. And the students were doing experiments on finding focal length of a convex lens. And at the end of the class, the teacher asked the students to explain what they had learned about finding that focal point. [00:08:00] And one of the experienced multilinguals that I was there to support said, "It gets bigger when it gets closer."

And the physics teacher understood that that student had the content, and, and they were actually responding as they should to the content. And they, they, um, encouraged the student, "Yes, you're getting the idea. That's great." And that's where the language would stay. I, as the language person in the class that didn't remember the physics of finding the focal point of a convex lens, didn't have any idea what the student was talking about.

And so I asked the content area teacher afterward, "What would a grade level response sound like if they were scientific?" And so how can I, as the language expert, and you, as the content expert, move the student along the continuum from it gets bigger when it gets closer to what he expected, which was, "As the distance between the light source and the convex lens [00:09:00] increases, the image on the screen becomes sharper and eventually reaches a point where it's clear and well-defined."

I went, "Oh, that's what you want." That now is academic language. That's where we need to move the students, and it's way more than just vocabulary, as you heard in that structure. It's the as this, so that. There's a, um, kind of cause and effect linking there, and that became then my job as the EL teacher in that room is to make sure that all students in that room had the ability to start linking the concepts using the academic vocabulary as well as that academic structure. So that would be the difference. It's not that it gets bigger or it gets clearer when it gets closer. That's not wrong. It's just on the social end of the continuum, and there's this mode continuum that WIDA talks about, and we wanna move students along that continuum, right, to get to the point where they sound like experts in the [00:10:00] field.

And I think what happens is that as students get to that point where they're-- it gets, it gets bigger or it gets clearer when it gets closer, the teachers hear that and they're like, "Yay, they understood the content," or, "Yay, they're participating in class," or, "Yay, it was a complete sentence," and they're fine, and it stops. And so we have to continue the development, which helps all students. 

Olivia: It sure does. 

Beth: So hopefully that example gives some clarity to how I see stuck happening, and I see it happening starting in about fourth or fifth grade, where we accept that at this end of the, of the continuum, we accept it and we don't move students forward.

Olivia: Tan, it's a perfect segue then because I'm interested in you elaborating a little bit on what Beth was just speaking to. What is the difference then between social development language and academic language? Because that is something we see a lot. It's very problematic in classrooms. [00:11:00] 

Tan: Right. It's like-- So let's go back to that example that Beth talked about. Beth, you're gonna have to help me add. So if we were to s- I was thinking about that long, complex sentence as the object gets closer, right? But like, um, if we were to break that into three simple sentences, it would be-- Beth, can you help me? Um, an object is close. Uh, something got bigger, and this is called 

Beth: The object-- Or the convex lens got closer to the image. The light source, you know, you'd have these three sentences, right? That seem distinct. 

Tan: And the bi- and that is, while technically that is correct, the ter- like the understanding of that is correct, a science understanding of that correct, scientists don't write in simple, short sentences like that. Uh, because they write in longer extended sentences that has multi- that have multiple clauses, one clause ha- adds to another clause, [00:12:00] and those two clauses add to another thing that makes this expanded sentence.

And so readers have a-- What's academic is that the readers are expected to follow this complex sentence structure But we don't speak like that. Rarely do I speak, "As I was running home, comma, da, da, da, da, da." Like, we, we, we, we talk in very simple, straightforward, um, conversational language, and that's, uh, that's normal for conversational language. But then students apply that to academic work or, um, academic expectations or tasks, and then they get lower marks or they don't perform at the highest level, um, because it doesn't register at the profe- at the, at the more academic level. And that is why it, uh, the students struggle. 

Olivia: And that also then speaks to, you just did something, and I'm sure you realized you were doing it. You broke down the moves, the actual language that aligns [00:13:00] with the structure of the sentence. So not only are you offering academic language with the content, you're also offering access to the writing piece. And so it's how it's being spoken, it's how we're hearing it as we're listening. It's the reading and the writing, which I know in your gorgeous new book, you also break down the language domains that we're going to talk about in part two. So listeners, hold onto your hat. 

Uh, Beth, I want to go back to something you just spoke to as well, because what a beautiful partnership between the content teacher, you as the support for experienced multilinguals in the classroom. This book is geared toward ELD. This book is geared toward ELA, yet every teacher needs to read this because math, social studies, science teachers would greatly benefit.[00:14:00] What is your response, Beth, to a content area teacher who says, "It's not my job to teach language or literacy"?

Beth: I agree that your specialty is math, science, social studies, and that is where you've trained and where your gift is. And because of that, you know that there is a very s- specific way to communicate a lab report in science. There's a very specific way to communicate historical analysis. There's a very specific way that you want students to communicate how and explain how they solved a math problem, and you are the best person to teach the students how to do that in your discipline.And so you are also an expert in the language of your discipline. I am not. 

And I like to give this story. My husband is a scientist, and [00:15:00] when he was doing his master's in science, in geology, he gave me his master's thesis because I'm the English teacher, so I should be able to help him writing. And so I very dutifully changed all passive voice to active in his master's thesis, and he turned it in knowing that his English teacher wife had corrected it. And the-- his advisor said, "What is this?" And, and so I had changed things like, "The crater was formed by," and I changed it into, "The asteroid c- formed the crater." 

And she's like, "This isn't how we write." Passive voice is best taught in your science class because that's how science is written, and here's me changing everything to active voice. And her comment, which I thought was hilarious, she said, "This reads like a 'Scientific American' [00:16:00] article." And I thought that was a compliment. And my husband said, "No, 'Scientific American' is written for people who don't know science." And so it's written in a form, right, that was accessible to me, a non-science person. So apologies, um, but I am not the best person to teach someone how to write a scientific article. So that gives you a personal story of my realization, um, over 35 years ago of why the best person to teach my husband how to write scientifically is the science teacher. 

Olivia: There's also an expectation... Oh, Tan, go ahead.

Tan: Yeah, I wanted to add that example of like, so this is me, like, so you, so you have Beth and her husband, the s- the sci- scientists who speak a very particular language, and then rewind many, many, many years back, and I'm sitting in my last science course in university. I have to take this. Like, like [00:17:00] I, I tried to avoid it as much as possible, and it's, it's biology, um, or earth science. And the, the s- the teacher said, the professor said, "We're gonna go learn about the different land forms and different, like, sediments. We're gonna go to a river, and we're gonna go da-da-da, do the experiments." And there was a section where I had to introduce the experiment, and I, so I had to talk about the land forms.

And I wrote, "This layer of rock was sandwiched between this layer of rock." And I was like, "Oh, this is pretty. Like, it's metaphoric, like figurative language. This is great. She's gonna like this." Um, 'cause I thought that science writing was boring. Handed it in, and she, like, circled big around, and she's like, "Come see me."And I s- and she was very kind, and she's like, "So the way you wrote about how the layers of rocks were sandwiched between this one and that one, that's great for when you write figurative language in an other course, in another course. But in science, we say very clearly this is between that, and that's it.

We don't use figurative language." And I'm [00:18:00] like, "But it's English." She's like, "Yes, but this is science English, and that's literary English. These are two different Englishes." And I was like, "Stop. That's not fair." "No one taught me that." 

Olivia: Yes.

Tan: I thought English was the same everywhere." 

Olivia: Uh, you're both d- you're really illuminating something for me, and I hope for listeners as well. It really is about shared expertise. Our kids can see this beautiful collaboration, not us competing against each other. And it's also about unzipping our brains for children and each other as experts to say, "Oh, as a English major, this is my expertise. And, and then I'm going to code switch if I'm writing as a scientist, and I'm going to use that language." And it, it's just fascinating, um, and things I wouldn't necessarily have considered before this conversation, so I'm grateful for that. We're going to wrap part [00:19:00] one with a lightning round. So I'm going to ask questions, and just give your gut response to these questions. Uh, the first question is what subject, Beth, do e- experienced multilinguals fall behind in the most?

Beth: Well, you just teed us up for that, and I would have to say it's English Language Arts. And it's simply because the content is the language. And so in order to, um, analyze a text in the frame of an English Language Arts, like all the metaphorical language, the, um, alliteration, everything, they have to understand literally every word, um, in order to do that type of analysis. And so you can't get by just by understand the content. They have to know every word. I would say that's the area. 

Olivia: All right. Uh, Tan, finish this sentence. Experienced multilinguals are not struggling learners. They are… [00:20:00] 

Tan: An experienced multilingual is not a struggling student. They are a student in need of academic instruction.

Olivia: Well said. Beth, what is a good-intentioned practice that you see happening in classrooms that actually increases the gap for experienced multilinguals?

Beth: I'm gonna give you two, and they're flip sides of the coin. One is I'm not gonna call on that student because they are a language learner. I know that 'cause I've gotten the report that says they're a language learner, so I'm gonna protect them. And so it's out of good intention, not gonna call on them. That increases the gap. And the second is the opposite, is that I'm gonna take whatever they say and encourage them, but not then expect them to go further because they're a language learner. So the frame of language learner limits in both ways, whether it's accepting whatever they say and not expecting more and teaching and giving the skills, or [00:21:00] not calling on because I wanna protect.

Olivia: Ah, that's fascinating. Fascinating. Tan, what is one word that describes how you felt as a five-year-old refugee when you arrived in the United States? 

Tan: Fun. 

Olivia: You were ready. You were ready to learn. Y- 

Tan: Yeah. 

Olivia: Beth, what is one word that describes then how you felt as an exchange student in Germany? 

Beth: Oh, frustrating. I'd had years of language classes, and to then be in an academic setting where I thought I am so ready for university courses and just struggled, and especially 'cause I'd already been a university student in, in the US in my first language. I knew what I could do, and I couldn't do that in German, and it, it was frustrating and very hard.

Olivia: I can imagine. Tan and Beth, part one, this has been amazing. I cannot wait for [00:22:00] part two because we're going to go in depth with the structure of the book, the framework you offer. Uh, we're going to talk about the language domains, the input-output loop, all the things that will help teachers put this book into action. Thank you so much for this first part of our conversation. 

Tan: What an honor to be here with you. 

Olivia: Thank you. That is a wrap on part one of my conversation with Beth Skelton and Tan Huynh. I'm hoping this conversation resonated with you, and I would love for you to do three things. First, grab Integrated Literacy for Experienced Multilinguals. The link is in the show notes. Then, visit Tan and Beth's websites. I put links in the show notes. Both are treasure troves for educators. And finally, share this episode with one colleague who works with experienced multilinguals. One conversation, one classroom, one student at a time. [00:23:00] That's how we change this.

And we are just getting started because in part two, we're going inside the framework, the input-output loop, the language domains in action, the instructional routines, and the equity argument for why explicit instruction is the most generous thing we can offer our students. Don't go anywhere. Part two is waiting for you on Friday, and you do not want to miss it. See you then.

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Olivia Wahl

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