There were a lot of knowing nods as NYSUT Vice President Maria Neira, herself an English language learner, described the inadequacy of the "accommodations" to help ELLs succeed at school.

"As an ELL, giving me a dictionary when I don't know the language doesn't help me," Neira said. "If I could sound it out, I wouldn't need a dictionary!"

Reading a passage out loud three times won't help English language learners, she said, nor will speaking louder.

Helping students "get to it a another way" might have been the subtitle for a recent NYSUT conference on "Collaborating for the Success of English Language Learners."

The February conference drew more than 100 participants from around the state to NYSUT headquarters in Latham. It was co-sponsored by the NYSUT Education & Learning Trust; the NYS Teachers of English as a Second Language; the Greater Capital Region Teacher Center; NYSUT's ELL Committee and Questar III Bilingual/ESL Technical Assistance Center.

It brought together middle- and high school-level content-area teachers and ELL educators to share instructional strategies and practices.

Collaboration is key

Work sessions featured teachers and ELT instructors who shared best practices to help ELLs and encourage more collaboration between ESL teachers and content teachers.

Christine Rowland of the United Federation of Teachers Teacher Center and Seth Mactas, a high school global history teacher, shared their story of collaborative success at Christopher Columbus High in the Bronx.

After the school failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress under No Child Left Behind requirements because ELLs were not graduating on a timely basis, CCHS was restructured into four smaller learning communities.

In a pilot program for about 75 ELL students, content-area teachers went through extensive professional development, with time to work with ESL specialists. Throughout the school year, content-area teachers worked closely with Rowland, who shared ways to make learning easier for ELLs.

Educators met twice weekly to case-conference on students, meet with parents and have more professional development. The standard text, which had an "incomprehensible" 11th-grade readability, was replaced with an adapted text with high school content — but a third- and fourth-grade readability featuring clear objectives, vocabulary, maps and timeline.

Mactas and Rowland worked together to use more visual documents, flash cards and graphic organizers. Assignments were more visually oriented, such as asking students to design a brochure to explain imperialism rather than writing an essay.

Mactas said they used an Understanding by Design backward-planning format. For example, when the students learned the World War I unit, "we said, 'What do we want to have the students learn?' Number 1 was causes."

The results are encouraging for the 2009 ELL cohort. The ELL students' NYSESLAT (New York State English as a Second Language Achievement Test) scores improved dramatically, particularly in reading and writing. Seventy-three percent have passing scores on Math A; 17 have passed three or more Regents Exams; and four others are now taking multiple Advanced Placement courses. In fact, ELLs are already exceeding general ed students in math, Rowland said.

Not remedial education

The Bronx collaboration was one of many work sessions showing how important it is for ELL instruction to address the students' level of language proficiency, yet not be watered-down content.

"This is not about remediation," Neira said. "ELL students are expected to meet the same standards ... How they get to the standards is different and that's what we're discussing here today."

Keynote speaker Susana Davidenko, a math education professor at SUNY Cortland, said educators cannot rely on oral teaching.

"Assignments need to be simplified so that sentences are short and clear," said Davidenko, an ELL herself. "You have to use visual forms: graphs, charts, diagrams, movies, outlines and organizers."

As an example, Davidenko showed a unit on fractions using pattern blocks as a model. She further expanded that instruction to offer a "detour" lesson on geometric shapes. She showed how to use grid paper to find factors.

"Rather than talking in abstractions, you need to communicate through manipulatives," said Davidenko. "You don't have to say it. You can touch it. The vocabulary will come later."

Areli Schermerhorn, an ESL teacher and Syracuse TA member at Fowler High, showed instructional materials adapted for ELLs with more pictures and visual cues. She showed a "word splash" sprinkled with hard-to-spell words like Hinduism, caste system and polytheism to prompt students to write simple sentences that will later lead to short-answer paragraphs.

Schermerhorn also showed participants interactive ways to involve students and build vocabulary, with back and forth Bingo games, concentration/memory games, "Give One, Get One" team activities and a "Ticket out the door," where students write a brief sentence about what they learned in class or a connection they made.

A daily routine is crucial, Schermerhorn noted, including activities like "a word of the day," a daily schedule on the board and a familiar format for assignments and worksheets until students recognize it.

More training in ELL instruction

At the wrap-up session, participants talked about the need to expand training for all teachers to learn strategies to help ELLs. Educators stressed that these interactive activities would undoubtedly be effective for all students — not just ELLs.

Given changes in demographics, Neira noted, it's essential the union advocate for both students and educators.

Nationally, the number of ELL students has nearly doubled in the last 15 years, to about 5 million. In New York schools, there are more than 200,000 ELLs speaking more than 100 different languages.

Several participants suggested that new teachers should be required to take six credit hours in ELL education, similar to the current requirement for special education.

Susan Lafond, an ESL teacher and Guilderland Central TA member, urged participants to get involved in their professional development planning committees to push for in-service credit and training opportunities.

"Staff development is the vehicle for getting this message out," said Lafond, an instructor with NYSUT's Education & Learning Trust, which offers courses on ELL instruction (see the ELT site on www.nysut.org).

Given the reality of New York's changing demographics, Neira noted, the union will continue to fight for more training opportunities and changes in state and federal policies that subject ELLs to inappropriate testing.

"NYSUT is committed to continuing our advocacy on behalf of ELLs and educators, emphasizing that bilingual and ESL teachers need to be involved from the beginning and can't be an add-on," Neira said.

"We know we need to have appropriate resources and inclusion of bilingual and ESL  teachers to have true collaboration in addressing student needs," Neira said. "For too many of our English language learners, we are their only voice."

— Sylvia Saunders and Kevin Hart