Preparing every teacher to work effectively with ELLs in the regular classroom is a daunting challenge: It requires much more than minor changes in habits of thinking, teaching, and assessing. In professional development workshops, video clips of instructional practices play an important role in helping teachers to critique and envision best practices for teaching ELLs. During our session, we used video clips and the perspectives of three Indianapolis elementary teachers and two district coaches to share their experiences participating in a relatively new ESL instructional coaching model targeting core academic teachers (Teemant, Wink, & Tyra, 2011; Teemant & Reveles, 2012).

The five elementary educators on our panel participated in a 30-hour summer workshop and engaged in seven cycles of coaching (approximately 15 hours) across the 2011–12 school year. The workshop prepared teachers to participate in instructional coaching focused on promoting use of the Six Standards instructional model (Tharp, Estrada, Dalton, & Yamauchi, 2000; Teemant, Leland, & Berghoff, 2013). The Six Standards instructional model supports teachers in designing learning activities using both critical (Freire, 1994) and sociocultural (Vygotsky, 1978) principles of learning. Specifically, the Six Standards include:

a) Joint Productive Activity—a teacher and small group of students collaboratively produce a shared product together;

b) Language and Literacy Development—students engaged in sustained (more than 10 minutes) opportunities to read, write, or speak with assistance;

c) Contextualization—the teacher activating and using students’ knowledge and skills from home, school, and community to learn new academic content;

d) Challenging Activities—the teacher defining expectations, and then providing assistance and feedback to students in the process of learning;

e) Instructional Conversation—the teacher engaging a small group of students in a sustained, student-dominated, goal-directed academic conversation that questions rationales and assists learning; and

f) Critical Stance—the teacher empowering students to transform society’s inequities through democracy and civic engagement that questions the status quo, reflects on issues from multiple perspectives, and invites social action.

The goal is for teachers to use three or more of these principles in the design of their learning activities.

While the Six Standards are easy to grasp at a conceptual level, they are much more complex to implement. The main challenge for teachers is moving away from whole class instruction to using small group activity centers. During the session, we showed video clips for audience members to critique in small groups. These discussions and our whole group debrief helped to highlight that the Six Standards instructional model requires social interaction to make the co-construction of knowledge possible in what is called the zone of proximal development (ZPD). The student’s ZPD becomes the site for teachers—or any more knowledgeable other—to provide assistance through such things as modeling, questioning, or feedback. Student learning is accelerated and internalized as students move from being other-regulated or -assisted to being self-regulated. The discussion also drew attention to how the Six Standards instructional model creates conditions that promote language learning by (a) making content comprehensible, (b) eliciting negotiated and extended interaction, (c) providing timely assistance and feedback in the process of learning, (d) building on previous knowledge and real-world experience, and (e) developing academic language proficiency in writing, reading, and listening/speaking.

We asked our panel of Indianapolis teachers to share who they were as teachers before they participated in the Six Standards workshop and coaching. Gossard said, “I was a teacher who did direct instruction the majority of the day.” Botsford described himself as doing “the majority of talking” in the classroom, telling students what they needed to know and “having students quietly work on worksheets independently to show me what they heard me teach.” All of the teachers described how attending the 30-hour summer workshop unsettled their teacher identities, pushing them to rethink how they were teaching and why.

A rubric used during the workshop helped teachers identify where they were in their use of the Six Standards model. Following the workshop, coaches worked directly with teachers in their classrooms. The coach and teacher would hold a preconference to jointly plan a lesson for observation, and the coach would observe the planned lesson; then, during a postconference, the coach and teacher discussed the lesson, setting new goals for improvement. (For more information on the coaching process, see Teemant & Reveles, 2012).

We also asked the Indianapolis educators to describe the Six Standards instructional coaching process from their perspectives. Rohrer shared: “We feel like we are learners, and we are claiming that learning just like the students are claiming their learning in the centers. It is just a powerful transformation…. It doesn’t compare to any other PD experience I have ever had.” Botsford explained:

They will not come in and say “This is what you need to do.” You start doing things and then it’s “We saw that you did this. What if you added this then?” It is never “do this instead.” “What if you were to do this? Why are you thinking this?” So that really helped…. Being supported by the coaches is just invaluable.

We then asked the coaches to describe their learning as coaches. Larr shared:

One of the biggest shifts for me was moving from opinion to evidence. Being able to look at something, and maybe my opinion was I really didn’t like the way so and so was doing something, but the evidence shows that you are doing what the rubric said. We know you are facilitating learning.

She also shared that her understanding of what it means to contextualize learning changed. She explained:

I have known for 40 years that you always hook old learning to new learning. Before it seemed like that was the teacher’s role to contextualize for them. Seeing the power of honoring what students bring to the table, asking them what they bring to the table, that was powerful for me.

The teachers also shared how students experienced the Six Standards in practice. For example, Rohrer said, “I’m making kids be more critical thinkers.” Gossard explained, “It is less teacher directed and more child oriented—student ownership by far, and giving them the responsibility for student choice.” She continued, “You never know what you are going to get. That is the most exciting thing. You are amazed they [the students] can really think like that.” Botsford explained, “My kids are to the point now where if you come up and say ‘why are you doing this?’ They can say, ‘Oh, we are doing this because. This is what we are learning.’” He continued, “The kids are excited to learn. They are really eager to be a part of doing this, and they are accountable.”

Although the Six Standards instructional model is target-driven, Gossard felt the model and process allowed each teacher to maintain his or her uniqueness. She explained, “There is no cookie-cutter way. There is no right way…. How it looks in Aaron’s room or Amie’s room is completely different than in mine. It has to be what you’re comfortable with…. It is successful in all three classrooms, but it looks totally different.” She ended by saying, “Coaching was invaluable…. The most important thing in 32 years I’ve done is this by far.”

As a coach, Larr shared that,

The joy of coaching is seeing change. Wow, did we see change. The first year I coached one gal I had worked with the previous year [prior to using the Six Standards model]. In two [Six Standards] coaching sessions, she moved more than she did the whole year before. It was defining what you are looking for and looking for evidence.

Quasi-experimental and correlational research findings demonstrate Six Standards instructional coaching led to statistically significant and positive increases in teacher use of the principles, effects on student achievement (i.e., language arts and English proficiency), and evidence that teacher use of collaborative and cognitively challenging activities requiring civic engagement are powerful predictors of achievement gains (Teemant, 2013; Teemant & Hausman, 2013). These types of positive teacher, coach, and student learning outcomes are building the case for the Six Standards instructional model and coaching process as value-added components of professional development for core academic teachers.

References

Freire, P. (1994). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum.

Teemant, A. (2014). A mixed methods investigation of instructional coaching for teachers of diverse learners. Urban Education, 49(5), 574-604. DOI:10.1177/0042085913481362

Teemant, A., & Hausman, C. S. (2013, April 15). The relationship of teacher use of critical sociocultural practices with student achievement. Critical Education, 4(4). Retrieved from http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/article/view/182434.

Teemant, A., Leland, C., & Berghoff, B. (2014, April). Development and validation of a measure of Critical Stance for instructional coaching.
Teaching and Teacher Education, 39, 136-147. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2013.11.008.

Teemant, A., & Reveles, C. (2012). Mainstream ESL instructional coaching: A repeated measures replication study. INTESOL Journal, 9(1), 17–34.

Teemant, A., Wink, J., Tyra, S. (2011). Effects of coaching on teacher use of sociocultural instructional practices. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(4), 683–693.doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2010.11.006

Tharp, R. G., Estrada, P., Dalton, S. S., & Yamauchi, L. (2000). Teaching transformed: Achieving excellence, fairness, inclusion, and harmony. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E Souberman, Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Dr. Annela Teemant has spent 16 years focused on preparing mainstream teachers to serve ELLs in the regular classroom. Her latest research validates a new ESL instructional coaching model for mainstream teachers and connects teacher pedagogy to student achievement.

Dr. Serena Tyra is an early childhood literacy expert, with extensive experience as a bilingual teacher. She currently consults as an ESL instructional coach for IUPUI in Indianapolis area schools.

Julie Gossard is a 33-year teaching veteran at College Park Elementary. She was honored to be recognized as the M.S.D. of Pike Township’s Champion Teacher in 2001.

Aaron Botsford is an ESL-certified elementary school teacher who has a master’s degree in language education.

Aimee Rohrer teaches a class of first-grade newcomers, is ESL certified, and has a master’s degree in language education.

Janet Larr is a veteran teacher with experience as a classroom teacher, principal, and instructional coach.

Karen Goldstein has 20 years of experience as a teacher and then instructional coach. She is National Board Certified and currently works as an assessment content specialist for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.