PBL from Start to Finish: The Process, The Challenges, and The Triumphs with Francesca Davi & Luisa Frontino

Episode Summary:

In this episode, co-teachers share their secrets on how to prepare your ELLs and MLs for a PBL culminating event in which they showcase their civic-minded projects to a myriad of education specialists, field questions, and discuss possible solutions and future pathways to explore on their chosen topics. Ms. Davi and Ms. Frontino provide a comprehensive, start to finish guide that can be easily implemented by any educator with an interest in developing more structured, student-driven Project-Based Learning. If you’re looking for a way to breathe more life into your PBL projects, this is a must listen! 

RBERNing Questions for this Episode: 

1- Can you tell us about the implementation of your PBL project for this event from start to finish? 

2- What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in implementing the project? 

3- What were the biggest benefits for the students who participated in the PBL with ELLs in Mind collaborative culminating event on May 28th? 

Guests' BIOS:

Luisa Frontino

This is Ms. Frontino’s tenth year teaching English as a New Language (ENL) at Brooklyn Studio Secondary School in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Prior to becoming a teacher, she was an NBC Page (like Kenneth on 30 Rock) and worked in book publicity at Little, Brown and Company for five years. Her experience in publicity definitely prepared her for teaching in a myriad of ways!

 As a teacher, she has worked primarily in high school, supporting English language learners in ELA and US History classes. For the last four years, she and Francesca Davi have co taught high school English to sophomores and juniors. In the last two years they have focused on project based learning in their classroom to leverage the rich experiences and backgrounds of their students, and the results have been impactful. They look forward to continuing their work with PBL next year too!

Francesca Davi

Ms. Davi  started her career 17 years ago in Italy, teaching English and Spanish to high school students. She attended Fordham University as an undergraduate student and graduated in 2006 with a double major in Italian Language and Literature and International Intercultural Studies and a minor in Spanish Language and Literature. She earned her Master’s degree in TESOL in 2017 from ACE.

In 2015,  she began teaching at Brooklyn Studio Secondary School and has taught 7th grade science, high school nutrition, and middle and high school Italian. Recently, she has taken on the role of the 10th Grade ENL teacher and this is her first year also co-teaching 11th grade ELA/ENL with Ms. Frontino.  

She recently won a grant to create an Exploring Italy class for her high school students. This course gives them a unique opportunity to virtually explore major cities in Italy in real time with local tour guides via Zoom. Students also learn about the culture and history of the country.

Resources:

Contact Information: 

Email: fdavi@schools.nyc.gov 

PBL Pamphlet:

Amplifying Multilingual Voices and Learning in K-12 Education Through Project-Based Learning

To find out more about Mid-State RBERN at OCM BOCES' services, listen to season 1 of the show with host Collette Farone-Goodwin, or to receive CTLE credit for listening to episodes, click here: https://midstaterbern.org/

Transcript

Luisa: So with the PBL, the kids are the experts, and so many times our ELLs are seen in a deficit of what they lack and this puts them one as an expert and they're really showing all that they know, you know, which is very empowering. One of the beautiful things about PBL is that you're putting the kids in a situation where they have to communicate. There's the need and the want to communicate. And that's going to give them a lot more impetus to use the language. 

Yasmeen: Welcome to RBERNng Questions, a professional learning podcast where we answer your most compelling questions about teaching, serving, and supporting multilingual learners. I'm your host, Yasmeen Coaxum, and through our talks, I look forward to bringing the methods, philosophies, and stories behind teaching multilingual learners to light.

Let's get into the show.

Okay, so welcome Francesca Davi and Luisa Frontino from the Brooklyn Studio Secondary School. I am so happy that you were able to join me today on RBERNing Questions on our podcast. And I am very excited about today's topic, which is all about Project Based Learning. But before we get into that, I always like to give listeners just a little bit of an idea of, how we met,if there is like a background situation. 

And so I met you lovely ladies at the PBL with ELLs in Mind Collaborative Culminating Event on May 28th, and I'm just gonna read a little bit of the description, from the flyer about this event. 

It says that New York City Public School multilingual students will apply complex knowledge to showcase their civic minded PBL projects, addressing global, enduring issues at the local level. So one thing I really love about that description is the words civic minded and definitely, I believe that your students' projects really exemplified this.

So we're definitely gonna go into more about those projects, but first if each of you could just tell me a little bit about your current role in education for the listeners, that would be great. So we can start with perhaps Luisa.

Luisa: Okay, great. So I'm  Luisa Frontina. This is my 10th year teaching at Brooklyn Studio. I'm an ENL teacher. So I work with students coming from other countries, and primarily the 10th and 11th grade, and acclimate them to learning a new language and culture. Before becoming a teacher, I worked in publicity for about five years. 

So a lot of those skills from publicity transfer very well over to teaching.

So that's my background. And then, Francesca and I have been teaching together the last four years. We teach a ELA, ENL class to 34 English language learners. This year we had one entering, about ten emerging, ten transitioning, ten expanding, and two commanding students.It's about that breakdown. Our students come from all over the world. They speak, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Francesca, nine or ten languages, and that's not counting the dialects that we don't get the specific names of.

We thought Project Based Learning was a really great way to showcase all the expertise our students come to us with.

Yasmeen: Okay, And Francesca? 

Francesa: Hi, I'm Francesca Davi. This is my ninth year here at Brooklyn Studio. Before teaching here in America, I actually used to teach in Italy.

So I was born here, but at the age of eight moved to Italy. So I lived primarily my entire life in Italy. Moved back here when I was a little bit older. After I graduated college, I decided to move back to Italy once more.

And I started teaching by chance, I must say. It was really, I started in an afternoon program teaching Italian and Spanish in Italy. And once I began teaching, I just fell in love with it, came back to America in 2014,

again, temporarily thinking I was going to be leaving after a couple of months.

But thanks to my sister and my assistant principal, I must say, they uh, encouraged me to go for my subject 

licensing that they kept pushing me, pushing me, so I finally gave in.

And here I am, nine and a half years later, I couldn't thank them more.

Yasmeen: Okay, so Francesca, I definitely read about your experience in Italy and I'm really curious as to whether anything carried over in terms of like, your teaching methodology or pretty much anything that you used to do in the classroom there that kind of carried over to your teaching here in the states?

Francesa: Well, yes, it's very different, I must say, teaching in Italy and teaching here. I was teaching English in Italy to students, so as a second language. And that is why, then, when I came back to the United States, I went back for a degree in ENL, my Master's degree, because I had an Italian degree, and I did not have an ESL degree.

 So being firsthand ELL myself when I was younger, I kind of knew the experience of what it felt like to be the one not speaking in class, be super shy. So when I started teaching English, uh, to students for the first time, it just felt right to me. The dynamics inside the classroom are very different in Italy in comparison to the USA.

I had good classroom management when I came, cause my students in Italy were a handful. However, expectations inside of a classroom are very different. The way we structure a class in those 47 minutes was very different. Here it's much more of a routine. In Italy, it's much more repetition, and understanding and memorizing.

Whereas here, we have more written essays. There, almost all exams are done verbally. 

Yasmeen: Wow, okay. This sounds a little familiar to me. I feel like one of my students, from Italy, was actually talking about these very same types of differences.I feel like she thought here it was just a lot more very structured in terms of what we're doing in the classroom. 

Francesa: You never know what to expect in Italy. So you have to just memorize those pages that they teach you. And the next day be ready to speak up. So you have to speak up in front of everybody. And... 

Yasmeen: Okay. Keeps you on 

your toes. Sounds like. Okay. now  Luisa, I really have to say that we, you and I have something pretty rare in common because I was also an NBC Page. I read about this in your bio you mentioned before teaching that you were in publicity, but before that you were an NBC Page and so was I. 

So I think it's really important some of our aspiring educators out there to just kind of realize that any background experience that you may have outside of education can definitely be an asset, um, in your teaching career.

So, I'm just gonna ask you one more thing in terms of this background, which is, what skills from your life in entertainment do you think have really served you in your current role?

Luisa: Oh, that's a great question. So I'm sure as you remember from our Page days, when we gave tours of the studios um, at 30 Rock, right? So, you know, we're wearing this terrible blue uniform with like orthopedic shoes because you're on your feet all day long, but you're giving tours to tourists and you have a group of 30 people in front of you and you're gonna, you take them through 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

You show them all the television studios. So that really developed an ease and comfortability with just speaking to people. Whether it be a group, whether it be one on one, and I did not realize what an asset that would be coming into a classroom. 

Speaking to 34, 15 year olds at one time is a little bit different, but of course those same skills transfer over.

And it also really helped in how I interact not only with my coworkers, but the parents, the administrators, being well spoken, and also coming from publicity where it was like everything had to be emailed, everything had to have a paper trail. When I first transitioned into education, I was very familiar with like checking my email every two seconds.

 If I was away from my computer for an hour, I was freaking out because I wasn't high enough up to have my own Blackberry. 

Yasmeen: Oh my gosh, you went back, you took us back. Blackberry. 

Luisa: I don't want to age myself right now. But, so when I first entered education, I was all about the email. Sending emails and expecting responses, and then I realized that's really not how education does it. It's face to face. It's on the fly, you see me in the hall, okay, I need to talk to you two seconds, and that was a little bit of like, 

Okay, I just gotta learn this culture, it's a little bit different.

and I remember hearing a senior teacher say, 

 oh, I only check my email once a week. And to me, I was like?

I'm like, you know, it's like 2014, right? Like, when I started it was 2014, I'm like, that's crazy, you know? So, teachers are a little bit more on it, but it's still very normal to hear oh, I haven't checked my email yet today just because the nature of the job. You're on your feet, you're in front of students, you're running around trying to get 10, 000 things done during your prep. Umso, that definitely was different, but I do credit my experience in publicity with being able to communicate effectively with, like I said, students, grown ups, parents, that has been a really huge asset.

Yasmeen: And sometimes the tourists could be like teenagers when they walked into those studios. They turned into like kind of teenagers, oohh, ah, so yeah. 

Luisa: For sure. Like, SNL had Al Gore, so Al Gore walked by a tour. Trying to get anyone's attention again after that is not easy.That's also a skill. Okay, I just lost everybody's attention. How am I going to get it back? 

Yasmeen: Exactly. So, I think we'll just go ahead and transition into what inspired you to get into this field. Now I know Francesca, you said it was kind of by chance, so I'm really curious to hear you know kind of how that developed. So, we'll start with you, and then Luisa, you can go ahead and follow up after that.

Francesa: So yes, I graduated from Fordham University, and I was a double major in Italian language and literature, and in international intercultural studies, and a minor in Spanish language and literature. I saw myself working at the United Nations. I had an internship there when I was in college. I loved helping people. I did not predict being a teacher. My father would say to me, you should go into teaching. And I was like, no way. I, that is not for me. I do not have the patience for this. Little did I know that he was right.

Because as I said, I moved to Italy after I graduated college. Everybody thought I was insane for doing so, for leaving the United Nations and just pick up and go to Italy.

But I wanted to go back. I just had a desire to be back there. I left on my own and I said, I'm just going to try this. And I did. And I was sending out my resumes left and right everywhere. I worked at the airport. I worked for an international company. And then in an afterschool program at a high school, I put my name on a list and little did I know they called me and they said,come in for an interview and I said, for what?

For, uh, you know, to teach English and Spanish, because I was mother tongue and I graduated from here, from New York, I stepped up in ladder, they, cause everything there goes by pointage, so I was considered to be mother tongue. And, uh, that's how I started, by chance. I walked in the room really not knowing what to expect.

It was an after school program for students that needed credits in order to graduate.

 And I, uh, I just grabbed the book and started teaching grammar and really digging in again, it benefited me from being an ENL student because when I moved back to the United States at 13 years old, I didn't speak English. I was too shy. I didn't speak up, so I knew what it felt like. So I knew the difference from just knowing a lot of information and actually making them understand it. I think I would say that's the impact of what I do is just understanding what's important for them to know versus everything.

Yes, everything is important, but there's certain strategies. There's certain things that we have to make sure that they understand. So that's how I started really, and then when I moved back here,I only had an undergraduate degree and I got my Master's in ENL and here I am. 

Yasmeen: I think that that story is very interesting, especially because, your first reaction was, no way, and I don't have enough patience.

So, for it to go from that to oh, you know, this is something that I'm good at because I can relate to my students on a personal level is really great. And so, Luisa, how did you go from, okay, I'm like in entertainment and publicity to, you know what, I'm going to get in front of some ELLs and I'm gonna, you know… 

Luisa: It's funny because growing up, like my father's an immigrant, he's from Italy, he came to the U. S. when he was 16, he didn't speak any English. There was no ESL in the 60s and 70's. It was, sit the back of the classroom, uh, and then learn the language. That's it. So growing up there was such an important, uh, emphasis on education. You know, just focus on your education, and so I, I loved school, loved college. And then it was funny, I ended up in the entertainment world being like, how did I get here? Like, I kind of, I had a lot of imposter syndrome at the beginning. Like, I'm like, this is interesting. This is not where I saw myself, but I really did enjoy publicity in the beginning and then after a few years I realized, okay, I don't think this is my calling. I don't see myself doing this forever. What do I enjoy? And, like Francesca, I have some international experience as well. My father was an engineer for General Electric.

So our family got transferred all over the world growing up. We lived in Venezuela, Italy, England, and different parts of the United States. So I knew firsthand what it was like to move to a country where you don't know the language with my year in Italy. To be the new kid, figure out a new country, new culture, new everything. So I didn't really know ESL was a thing, and I thought I was going to go for my English, be just like your normal English teacher, love reading I love books, and then, a girl that I knew from middle school in upstate New York was an ESL teacher.

 I was kind of just reaching out to people I knew in education, asking them questions, kind of doing informational interviews, basically. And when I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute, I can take my international experience and teach English, but also keep that connection with international students. I love learning languages, I love learning about different cultures. So when I realized ESL was a school thing, I was like, this is perfect.I can, like Francesca said, relate to the kids. You know, listen, this first year is going to be really hard. I know firsthand, how long that transition when you move to a new place really does take. And then, that coupled with, I get to play around with language and I get to learn about new cultures. I was like, absolutely ESL all the way. That's how I ended up being an ESL teacher. So while I was still doing publicity, I would volunteer at schools on the weekends, teaching English down in Chinatown mostly, just again, I'd get some experience and I was a little nervous. I was terrified. You know, like I, I could give ━ and tourists no problem, but sitting with three children staring at me all of a sudden, I was terrified. But once I felt more confident in my skills and everything, then it really opened up and it's a very, very rewarding career.

Yasmeen: Now, I just want to go back to what you initially said about a calling because a lot of people say that teaching is definitely a calling. So I love that you brought that up

 when you talked about your transition, when you talked about switching, and feeling like what you were doing wasn't your calling. But, both of you have been doing this for a while, so I think that perhaps you feel like this definitely is it, right? This is your calling. Um, okay. So before we dive a little bit into, the project based learning, so, Luisa, I understand that you taught both English language arts and history classes in high school, and was there ever any synergy between the two, is my question, because I'm thinking about how all educators are essentially educators of ELLs.

This was the theme for last year's NYS TESOL conference, and I'm sure that there's a lot of content educators that may still be a little bit trepidatious when it comes to teaching ELLs. So are there any tips, basically either of Francesca as well, that you can really provide since you've clearly been successful at doing both.

Luisa: So I'm an integrated ENL teacher for U. S. history, so I work with the content area teacher to support the ELLs in that classroom. And, uh, Francesca does the same with Global in the 10th grade. During our time teaching together, we began to realize that if we connected the English and the history, the children are able to see that, you know, these subjects are not existing in a vacuum. That English impacts history, which impacts English and science and everything. They're all interconnected with one another. So one of the things that we have been working towards in our classroom is integrating global and 10th grade English together so the students can make these connections. So do like a global literature unit where we ask students in 10th grade, "Who are your favorite authors from different countries? What are their most famous works?" And we'll build a curriculum off of that. And then in 11th grade, we do more with American literature. So we'll do Of Mice and Men, we'll do short stories and poems from Colonial America, and then we'll, usually the last half of the year is more civil rights.

We're looking at John Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr., the women of Hidden Figures, Yeah, the kids love Hidden Figures. It's very, very fun, and so you can see, as I'm the integrated teacher in U. S. history and their ELA teacher, I see them making the connections more. We have the liberty of going slower, the material in our ELA class,

but the kids, I feel, learn on a deeper level. And they're able to recall that in their U. S. history class. See them, you know, connecting the dots.

So that, I think, is a really important aspect, especially to our content teachers. Don't be afraid to take time to bring in literature or to talk more about these, like, hidden figures, show these films, tell stories of these people that are making the history.

Um, and that seems to really resonate and stay with students. 

Yasmeen: Okay. And Francesca? 

Francesa: I would say, don't fear making a mistake because we live and we learn. So we've been working together the last four years. The first time we taught together the ELA class, our curriculum was very different.

We had what we have adapted now for the 11th grade curriculum integrated with our 10th graders. So, yes, we did Hidden Figures, we spoke about Martin Luther King with them in the 10th grade, and we found ourselves, our students looking at us like, what are they talking about?

So at that point I realized, hold on, they're used to world, global studies. They know about World War II. They know about what's going on in Europe. They really have never been exposed to American history. So they have no idea what we're talking about. So it was then that we realized, okay, we need to change it up for next year.

And we did. And that's how we pretty much disintegrated everything we had created and started from scratch again because we realized we need to mirror our students. And if we don't find the connection with them, we're never going to make them understand anything. And if they're not understanding, we're not teaching them anything.

It's not about just memorizing these facts. It's about understanding it. Once we understand it, then we can have an impact. We can grow. We can analyze. But That comes after understanding it. So I think that these last two years, we've grown and now we're in a nice spot. I'm very proud of the 11th grade work that we have created this year and our students really seeing what we had in mind coming through in the classroom and 

Seeing them talk about certain aspects of history and connecting it with literature, American literature, for the first time ever for them was very, rewarding this year. 

Yasmeen: You know, something that, actually, Luisa mentioned, I would like to kind of tie together with what both of you, just said, and that is this idea of something occurring in a vacuum, right? I think really the essence of being. a really good educator, is making the students realize that everything has a connection.

Everything comes together. There's nothing that's in a vacuum, right? Whether it's your language learning ability, that's not in a vacuum. That's really not separate from you trying to grasp concepts and understand history, and I think a lot of times, I mean, definitely, when I was learning, uh, back in the day, I feel like there was a lot of emphasis, especially with history, on just facts, like, here's some facts, memorize these facts, you know, and there wasn't enough of a kind of story behind them to make you really want to memorize the facts.

So you know, I, I think that is very important, to just, this statement about something being in a vacuum, right, and like making sure that whatever we're doing as educators is not in a vacuum, right? It has some connection to what's going on in the world, so I think this is a great opportunity to then go ahead and start talking about the project based learning because the projects that I got to listen to at the round table activity, they definitely reflected a sense of things that are going on in the world, 

 and making people aware of those issues. So for the listeners, can you just tell us about the implementation of your PBL project for the event from start to finish? And whoever would like to take the ball and roll with that, uh, it's up to you.

Francesa: I'll start from the beginning of the year and then Luisa will tell us about the ending of the 

year. This is a course that starts in September and just ended today actually. So, in September we begin our first unit with Freedom Writers. We begin with the movie and the journals because we want to build a sense of community inside of our classroom.

We come in, we have 34 students plus us, that makes 36 of us that are very diverse, different backgrounds, different languages. Everybody's so intimidated when they walk in for the first time in our classroom. So since day one, we want that to become our home for the year. We want them to feel comfortable.

We want to build that sense of community. So that's what we start in September is building that sense of community with them.

 We navigate September, October, November, introducing different texts that speak about different people with the same experience of coming to America from different parts of the world so they can learn, oh, okay, I did not come from Africa, but I do share that same experience of Ishmael Beah, who came to the United States at 19 years old with his luggage and lost his luggage.

So we like to do that and talk about the baggage that we all carry and our experiences is what makes who we are and what we're going to become in the future. And that brings us then to the spring semester where we then go into our global unit. Our global unit is where we ask the students, like Luisa mentioned before, we ask them, "What are some authors from your country?"

And so we try to align the authors that they're giving us to what we are studying in history because I am the ENL push in for global history with them. So I kind of know where we are during the year. So we try to integrate the literature perspective with what we're learning in history. For example, this year we started with Italo Calvino because we were talking about World War II.

So we spoke about what happened in Italy during that time. Everybody felt that their eyes were on them. They were being, looked upon and what's happening. So we tried to integrate both, and once we introduced authors from their country, it brings our class to another level. The students are very proud of themselves, very proud that we are taking time to learn some of their authors. They introduce it to us. They tell us how to pronounce the names. We're the ones making the mistakes and they're the ones correcting us. So once we go through that unit, they are ready for our PBL. Luisa, you want to take over? 

Luisa: Sure, yeah, the kids love nothing more than hearing us butcher names in Russian, and we're reading like Chekhov's short stories, so we're keeping the rigor, we're keeping the expectations high, and we 

provide scaffolding as needed to make sure the students can all enter in the story at their levels but still take away understanding of what the story is, what the central ideas are.So, that global literature unit, we're also talking about how are art and politics connected? You know, how can art be a reaction to politics? How can art be a commentary on what's happening in the world? Yes, this is a story about a man feeling uneasy, but is it just this one man, like Italo Calvino, or is he speaking for a generation of people who are feeling uneasy in the aftermath of World War II?

So, really showing this, this connection, and then asking the students to think about what's the author trying to say on a larger scale. 

Not just about this particular story, but what are they saying about the society at the time. And that leads into our Project Based Learning, where we're saying, well now it's your turn. What's an issue in our society, and we're global citizens. So they go global because they are teaching us things from their home countries that we don't know about. One of the students that you saw presented about illegal cosmetology in, um, Kazakhstan, and how unlicensed aestheticians are really damaging people and injuring them, causing bodily harm to them, sometimes irreparably, and tied to social media culture and how certain uh, features are prized more above others, or certain aesthetics are in. So, we leave it very open to the students. We give them like a scaffold, a very kind of like an outline, but we said like, here's a menu of choices. You can talk about things happening in your home countries. You can talk about, global warming, school shootings, anything that

they are encountering on a daily basis. So the kids really come and tell us what they're interested in, and then we guide them along each step of the way in researching how to find quality sources, how to cite sources, uh, bringing those into your presentation, how are you now going to take all this information that you've learned and share it with your peers? So this is our second year doing 

PBL, and one of the big things we've noticed is the needs are very different year to year. So we're like, okay, great. Second year, we got this. It's going to be smooth sailing, but then you're like, wait, this group needs this more. They need more guidance and structure and finding quality sources, whereas maybe the previous year had a good handle on that, but they needed something different. So with the PBL, the kids are the experts, and so many times our ELLs are seen in a deficit of what they lack and this puts them, one as an expert and they're really showing all that they know, you know, which is very empowering. And you can, see the kids becoming more confident as the presentations go on. So this past year, we just give an idea of the wide range, we had a world cosmetology, nuclear wastewater in Japan,conflict between Ecuador and Mexico, which I didn't know was going on. It's a wide range. Global warming, school shooting, one year ago, bridal kidnapping in 

Kazakhstan where grown women are kidnapped to be wed, and have no recourse, really. She shared her own grandmother was one of these women. so it really is a way for our students to open up about what they do know, what they are experts on, and it's, it's fascinating to see what they produce. 

Yasmeen: Okay, and Francesca, you chimed in a little bit. 

Francesa: I'm sorry. 

I We had women stereotypes, uh, women stereotypes in society, human trafficking, school shootings, like Luisa said, the topics were so diverse, but also the way they presented was very diverse. So some students decided to do a dance, and other students wrote a poem. We had another one create a video, someone with a PowerPoint, someone with a poster.

So I think also giving them the freedom to establish how they shine the most was also very empowering to see, and as they were sharing their projects, the audience was expected not only to listen, but to take notes, to ask questions, and seeing them using their own scaffolding when doing so, seeing students talk into a phone so they can translate their question to ask their friend was really amazing. I must say.

Luisa: Yeah.

Yasmeen: So now, this takes place in your classrooms first, and then you take it to the culminating event where I met you? Is that how it goes? 

Luisa: Yeah. 

So the students that you met at Tweed, since this is our second year, we basically modeled the presentations off of what we did at Tweed. So the students, uh, Tweed Courthouse, I'm sorry, it's like my own mental shorthand. I forgot, I didn't tell you what it meant. I'm sorry. Um, But yes, at the event where we met you, the students had previously practiced in our classroom so, we would have four students presenting at the same time with a small group of six or seven classmates in front of them, and then the groups would switch. So those students actually got an opportunity to practice giving that speech about four times in front of different people before they were presented at the event.

Yasmeen: Okay, so there's quite a bit I wanted to address in what you said, but mostly I'm going to just do kind of like a little recap for the listeners. So basically, you get started at the beginning of the year by, uh, really establishing a very comfortable and collaborative space.

And then, you basically put the students in a position of expert by having them share their authors from their heritage, and having them have a voice in what they're going to be learning. So that automatically. makes them feel empowered, right? And then, of course, so step three,

and then you start, uh reading from some of these authors, like integrating this into the curriculum. Again, really filling the students with more pride about their heritage because oh wow now we're going to actually study learn and talk about a famous author from my background and then because a lot of these authors are tackling subjects that are global, you use that as a jumping off point to then ask the students what issues they think they should focus on for this project. Did I get a gold star, get these steps? Ha. 

Luisa: You nailed it. 

Yasmeen: And then what I really love is this idea of multimodal forms of presentations. This is like giving me ideas now because, normally it's just, okay, you're going to do some slides and you're going to talk, and nothing's wrong with that, but then to just leave it to the students, like, give them, choices, but leave it to them to say, okay, I want to present this in an artistic way, through dance. That sounds really incredible, and, basically, through, what was the other thing that I thought, oh yeah, through video, of course, just different ways to really express their research and what they've learned about this topic. I think that's really great. I think it really makes

them want to participate in and really just want to dive into everything that It takes to do these projects. So I think that's really great. I would also like to know of course, what kinds of challenges you ran into when you were implementing these projects. So you already talked about how one year could be different from the next year because of the skills that each individual student brings to the classroom.

But what other types of challenges have you experienced with this implementation?

Luisa: I think one of the things we also noticed this year was we're realizing we need to explicitly teach how to present. A lot of the students were reading off of their cell phone. 

Yasmeen: Such a young people's game that they play now. It's like, yeah, looking down at their iPhones. 

Luisa: Which, okay, it was, I was, 

like, oh,I forgot to see it in the future to see that they were going to do that, you know, um, so then, okay, how do we now moving forward, all right, next year, we need to take a lesson, say, all right, this is how you present. This is where you position your body, where you put your eyes. Some cultures, our children are very nervous to look someone in the eye. So we teach them, okay, look at their forehead. You're not looking at them in the eye. They think you are, everyone feels good. Let's move on. Um, so, that is something that we're gonna integrate into next year. And every year, we're like, okay, that needs to be fixed. Okay, we need to, uh, tweak this for next year. Of course, in a class of 34, there's going to be groups that take it very seriously and groups that struggle with having too much unstructured time. You know, so you have to use the class time wisely and really stay on top of those kids, and it all comes with really knowing your students. You know who is good, you know who will, um, do the research, do what you're asking them to, and you can get away with quick check-ins. Okay, yep, you're on task, and that's the beauty of us, being two adults in the room, that between the two of us we can get to about 15. PBL especially for a class as large as 34 would be very, very difficult, but I think it's important as the teacher, you kind of have to look into the future, foresee where they're going to have some problems and plan ahead to fix it. You're not going to catch everything, obviously, but once the class is in motion, it's not teacher-led. The students are driving it. And they're pushing each other. You know, when they peer edit one another or the questions that they were asking their classmates during presentations, I was like, I'm glad I'm not presenting. 

They don't shy away from challenging one another, which is a beautiful thing to see, so long as they're doing it in a respectful, more academic way, and that's what we teach as well. One of the beautiful things about PBL is that you're putting the kids in a situation where they have to communicate. There's the need and the want to communicate. And that's going to give them a lot more impetus to use the language. We'll pair them by subject area, which is not always the shared language. 

So the kids will use whatever scaffolds they need to communicate with one another, and I think we've seen a lot of students really develop their language skills as a result of project based learning. 

Yasmeen: Great. 

That actually segues into what I was going to ask next, which was about the benefits, right? So, you just addressed some of the challenges you've had, but of course there are a lot of really great points, really great experiences that can come out of something like this, especially then what happens at the culminating event with just complete strangers, adults asking you all kinds of questions, about your projects, etc. So what do you feel are some more 

benefits and maybe particularly to them doing it at the big event.

Francesa: I say giving them a voice. 

Many times, as we mentioned before, the ELLs are in a corner of the room. The excuse I don't understand does not fly by with us. 

Everybody understands. We'll make it happen. We'll use our translator. We'll use our phones. We'll use me translating on the spot. When, we speak the same language.We make it happen. We buddy them in a way that there is not one student inside of our classroom that is sitting in a corner. I think that really is what makes a difference inside of our classroom. By the time it's the end of the year, we do not have any students who are scared to speak to us or to speak to a peer or embarrassed because we all have an accent.

We all make mistakes, and it's okay. And that's where we learn from our mistakes and we perfect them and we get better at things. So that's what we try to establish in our classroom and with this event. And being able to take to such a rewarding experience, some students who are not here, not even a full school year, is fantastic.

Being able to tell them, we have chosen you. Me? Yes, you. You've worked hard. You understood your project. It's not just putting a couple of facts on a board, it's understanding them, it's being prepared for those questions. It's not just throwing facts and pictures, it's really understanding and making other people understand why your topic is important. 

Yasmeen: And I have to say as someone who participated in the roundtable, they did such a nice job answering the questions from all of us there. So yeah, they definitely took the project very seriously, and I was very impressed by what I saw in terms of them answering 

the questions on their projects. 

Luisa: And all three of those students are here less than a year. It was amazing. 

Yasmeen: Alright, so I think we're gonna kind of wrap up at this point, and I definitely want people to know if there are any upcoming projects that you're working on or, anything, any publications or just anything that you would like the audience to be aware of, so that we can 

follow your work? 

Luisa: Oh, it's exciting. Well, we're definitely planning another year of PBL next year. I'm going to be actually working with Maria Friedland in July with the 

CUNY Center of Dominican Studies, where we're going to be working on building a curriculum integrating more Dominican authors, voices, and history.

I'm very, very, excited about that. Um, because we have, we have a lot of Dominican students here too. Definitely in our global literature unit, I'm like, okay, we're going to add a Dominican author next year. 

I think what's great with PBL is it's going to be different every year, depending who's in front of you. I mean, it's an opportunity to see what's important to our students, and that is very cool. Just plugging away, seeing what worked, what didn't, retweaking it, replanning it. And that's, that's where I'm planning. 

Yasmeen: Okay, Francesca, what do you have in the works?

Francesa: Nothing much, I guess. Every year our schedules are so different. So we're hoping to continue to work together in the future and not separate our work marriage. I just love what I do and just being able to help the students must learn and feel comfortable in this, in their new life, new world. 

Yasmeen: Francesca, you are being super modest right now for some reason, but in your bio, I read that you recently won a grant to create an Exploring Italy class? 

Okay. So I'm outing you. I don't know why you said nothing much. To me, this is, this sounds like fantastic. Can you tell us what that class will entail as well as how you went about obtaining this grant because I'm sure there's a lot of educators out there who might be listening to this and who might have a really innovative idea and then they're not really sure how to go about maybe getting funding to make it a reality the way that you have.

Francesa: Besides being an ENL teacher, I'm also an Italian teacher, so I basically applied for a grant through the Italian embassy, and then I was granted this grant through the Yatcha.That's the Italian association that we have here, and they awarded me a $5,000 grant. With that money,

I worked with this Italian company. It's called Super Ciao Tours, 

Yasmeen: Super Ciao. 

Francesa: so Yes. Super Ciao. 

Yasmeen: Yes. 

Francesa: So, together with them, we booked seven live tours of Italy. 

I do it so that I have one tour a month. So I created a class here at our school where I teach the Italian culture, and I dive into what it is to travel, documents that you need when you're traveling, national, international flights.

And I talk all about the Italian culture because within regular Italian class, I don't have that much of a chance to really dive into the culture. It's all about the grammar and getting them ready to pass their region exam. So in this class, I have that opportunity to teach them about the history, the culture, the food.

And so after we learned about a specific region, we go live on a zoom call for one hour, and we get to see the city with a live tour guide, and we get to walk around the streets of Milan, Rome, Venice. 

Yasmeen: Okay. Quote unquote, walk around. Yes. Okay. 

Francesa: Walk around, we're little spies and you know, what I love about this class is that we are live in Italy. Here it's 7am. In Italy, it's 1 p. m. And we have people waving at us and they have no clue they're waving to people across the country in America, in New York, in a classroom. So that's my Exploring Italy class.

Yasmeen: Class. Okay. Very nice. Very nice. 

Luisa: Even the teachers are like wait, where? Where are you going this month? Okay. Like there'll be teachers who come in just to watch the tours. 

Yasmeen: Yeah. I mean, I was going to say, I want to be in that class, actually, when she was explaining about culture of Italy, et cetera, I was like, wow, I would love to sit in on that. So I understand why your colleagues come in.

Francesa: Well, you know, this class started during COVID. So I must say that was the one positive thing, where I had students at home. Some of our students were abroad. They went back to their home countries and they were locked in the classroom and we were live in Italy. So that's how this all started. And it's been four years now. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed to obtain the grant again so I can promote this class again next year. 

Yasmeen: All right. Well, thank you for sharing, that, with us. So what's a way that our listeners, if they want to contact you or follow you or anything like that. Is there any specific contact? 

Luisa: I just realized I have no social media presence whatsoever. Um, email? 

Yasmeen: Just hint, hint. Maybe you should. You have some really interesting things going on, so maybe you should. 

Luisa: Right now, I'll say email for myself, which is not super helpful, I guess, but, we'll be working on our social media presence over the summer. 

Francesa: Maybe that'll be our next project, Luisa. 

Yasmeen: I think it's great. I mean, it's it's really, it can be really dynamic because you're a pair, like it's the two of you and you really vibe well off of each other and you have these projects going.

So yeah, that's just my little two cents there. Um, okay, so now I'm going to ask you the question that I ask all of our fantastic guests here on the RBERNing Questions podcast, which is, what burning questions should today's educators consider in order to improve their service to the ELL or ML community? So Luisa, if you would like to get started. 

Luisa: It's not, it's not a light answer, unfortunately. 

Yasmeen: We'll take honest over light. We'll, we'll do that. 

Luisa: How we bring more trauma informed teaching to, especially our ELLs? 

People have no idea what some of these students have gone through just to get here, what's happened to them once they got here. Some of them are living with a family member they've never met before. And, that's after sometimes a very grueling journey, just to get here. So I think, especially for the ELLs, we really have to be aware of everything they come to us with, of course, their home language, their home culture, but a lot of people don't think about what was their journey here like? You know, we're now starting to see students coming to us from Ukraine via Poland. So, okay. We've had a student who was forced out of their home country, had to stay a few years. Kind of as a layover country almost, if you will, and now they're here, and they're starting to act out in class. Well, yeah, I would too if I had gone through what that student has probably gone through. 

Yasmeen: I don't even know if I would even, show up to class.I'm saying it's really tough,

Luisa: It can be very easy for some people to say, "Oh, the kid doesn't do anything, doesn't speak English, she's just acting out." and we're all stretched in 10, 000 different ways, but I think especially for this particular group, take a breath, take a moment, and realize these students have been through a lot. A lot of them have been through a lot that make our daily struggles pale in comparison.. Um, so I think that needs to be a little bit more forward in educators' minds with this group.

Francesa: I completely agree with Luisa and I would just add, we need to understand that we are human beings before anything else. We need to understand and learn from our experience. We need to learn from our students. It's not just about us and yes, we all have those state exams that we have to do well on.

But before reaching that goal, we need to reach our goal within our classroom with our students because we're working together as a team it's not just me and my scores. No, we're working together. My score is at the end of the year going to be okay only if my students understood what they had to do, performed it and that has to come with the collaborations with our students. So it's important for them to know that they have an active voice in that classroom. 

Yasmeen: Francesca and Luisa, thank you so much for joining us today on the RBERNing Questions podcast, and we look forward to some interesting social media, perhaps. Okay, but thank you ladies so much. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you for tuning in to RBERNing Questions, produced by Mid-State RBERN at OCM BOCES. If you would like to learn more about today's guest or any of the resources we discussed, please visit Mid-State RBERN's webpage at ocmboces. org. That's o c m b o c e s dot org. Join us next time where we hope to answer more of your burning questions.