LATINO STUDENTS NEED MORE HELP, SAYS DIRECTOR

Just a few months into his new job as Director of Migrant and Bilingual Education, Dr. Alfonso Anaya sees lots of work to do and lots of people he needs to get involved in solving the challenges facing some of Washington’s most struggling students.

“We have about one million students in the state of Washington. Of those about 150,000 are Latinos, of which about 60,000 are English language learners,” he explains, and many of the other 90,000 Latino students are struggling in school and on the state’s WASL exam because they have not received the support they need in order to learn English at an academic level.

 “We’re exiting the students too early,” Anaya says.

 Most students with another native language are put though a “pull-out” English-as-a-second-language (ESL) program, which has been shown to be one of the least effective. Students learn to speak English fairly quickly, but they still don’t know it well enough to do well in school – not just in reading but even in mathematics, says Anaya.

 “Math on the WASL is mostly a reading test in the state of Washington,” the director says.

 Knowing how to speak English enough to be understood does not prepare a student to keep up with his classmates in school – much less in college.

 “About 60 percent of our students don’t qualify for ESL, but they still can’t compete because they don’t have the foundation,” Anaya says. “It is important that all students learn English, but it is a shame if we do not prepare them with an English that will help them succeed academically, not just as a McDonald’s worker.”

 The migrant director says teaching English is not just a process of teaching vocabulary.

 “Most teachers don’t understand that children from a different culture need to be taught in a different way,” Anaya says. “You don’t have to lower your standards, but you do have to teach them differently.”

 The former migrant student supports bilingual education that allows English language learners to learn their new language more gradually while still keeping up with other subjects, sometimes taught in their native language – “especially where the majority of the English language learners speak the same language and are mostly from the same country.”

 Simultaneous native-language instruction helps to make English comprehensible, by providing contextual knowledge that enhances understanding, say experts. When native-Spanish-speaking children already know something about dinosaurs, for example, a lesson on dinosaurs will also make more sense when taught in English. Their knowledge of English and science will grow simultaneously.

 As described elsewhere in this edition of Migrant Education News, Mexico’s CONEVyT kindergarten-through-adult curriculum is available free or nearly free online to help Hispanic immigrants. It is helping many Washington schools provide at least some level of bilingual education, even if the school has only one or two English language learners. .

A committee of Washington bilingual educators examined 150 high school-level courses in the CONEVyT curriculum, approving 73 as meeting state standards for high school credit. Local school districts have approved additional courses for such areas as Life Skills.

The director remembers when he had already graduated from a U.S. public school and was in college that he was invited to go fly fishing with his friend.

 “Fly fishing? What’s that?” Anaya asked himself. He had to go to the library to figure out why anyone would want to fish for flies.

 Understanding individual words isn’t enough to comprehend a new concept. There are a lot of concepts that Hispanic students similarly don’t understand after just three years of “pull-out” ESL training..

 “Teachers need to understand the cultural differences. They need to understand that if a Latino child comes to class speaking English, that’s not enough. That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Anaya says.

 “We have to understand the difference in the structure of the language. English is linear. Spanish is a romance language. It is circular. It’s an embellished language. You have to say a lot to get to a point. If you do it in a linear way, you will offend people,” he says.

 “If you see anything change overnight, it mostly won’t last. It won’t stick,” Anaya says.

 And language, he notes, is the instrument by which all concepts are conveyed – whether concepts of math, science, social science or whatever.

 “All of WASL is a reading test. You have to be able to understand the meaning, the concepts and connect to it,” Anaya says.

 PARENTS NEED TO BE INVOLVED

 Anaya says Hispanic parents need to get more involved in their children’s education. They need to understand the importance of education in changing their children’s destiny, or the consequence of not taking advantage of education.

 He says he wants to personally communicate with parents.

 “I will be working with parents, and I need to scare the daylights out of parents. It’s not our fault initially, but after a while we’re responsible. It’s not enough to just say, ‘Look what they’re doing to my kid.’ They have to advocate for the children. I want to teach them how to fight the good fight and how to make the good argument,” says Anaya.

 Anaya’s wife has been a kindergarten teacher for 16 years. She makes sure the parents of her students understand the importance of a good education.

 A parent or designated reader must come to school each day to read with their child. If they don’t, their child can’t be in her class. In addition, each child must do homework every night, and they keep an organizer to track their assignments.

 BUILDING A WINNING PROGRAM

 Anaya says there are so many migrant students and other English language learners in California that it is very difficult now to develop a program that will meet their needs.

 “In Washington it is still manageable,” he says. The state can put in place more powerful staff development activities, university teacher training and school programs.

 “In my office we are beginning to readdress the programs. We need to have a clear, unambiguous definition of the programs,” says Anaya.

 For example, dual-language programs, he says, are good but inconsistent. They are not uniform across the state, so he plans to do a series of workshops to help districts with these programs.

 “We will be looking for demonstration sites for teaching strategies and curriculum development,” he says.

 Anaya says 80 percent of the state’s English language learners are in kindergarten through Grade 3.

 “After that they are transitioned out,” he says, adding that there is not a model established to address needs adequately at the high school level. He wants to develop a model for high schools.

 It is also important to develop teachers who are better prepared to help the Latino students, says Anaya.

 “We need to work with the universities to prepare the teachers so the minute they hit the road, as soon as they get in the classroom, they will know how to deal with language-different kids -- with culturally different kids,” he says.

 Those who can best meet the needs of Latino students are Latino educators and administrators, says Anaya.

 “When I was going to school, I never ran into a Latino teacher. I went to the university for 12 years, and in that entire time I had one Latino teacher, and he was not a Mexican,” Anaya says.

 “As we look at the educational leadership across the country, it does not represent my people, my culture,” he says. “I will always be a Latino, and it is my responsibility to educate, to model and to bring along the generations behind me.”

 And it is that future generation that will be most likely to help Latino students achieve their greatest academic success, he suggests.

 “We have our future sitting in our classrooms – in our high schools and in our elementary schools,” says Anaya  “Ten years from now, if we do the right things, we should not have any excuse about not being able to find any teachers and administrators who are bilingual. They are here in our classrooms; we see them every day.”

 The state migrant director also wants to develop student models for success as part of a new “Ambassadors” program. The exemplary students will wear nice dresses or shirts and ties with slacks.

 “We need to change the image of the children of color. Even today as I’m working in my front yard, I have people come by in their Mercedes Benz and ask how much I would charge to do their yard. They speak loud and slowly so I can understand, so I speak to them in broken English. And I tell them I charge only $100 a month. They ask me to go do their yards, but I never show up,” Anaya says.

 “If I dress the wrong way and don’t wear a tie, I could get deported to Mexico. It’s gotten even a little trickier now because not only are we considered illegal but now we’re terrorists,” he says.

 Anaya wants to use the Ambassador program to change the image.

 “We are looking for 20 students from throughout the state of Washington. We’ll use these kids to go to elementary schools, middle schools and high schools,” he says. “They’ll come in all dressed up and looking sharp. I can use them in front of the Legislature and the state Board of Education.

 “Right now when we think of failing students, we think of what? When we think of people who don’t care about education, we think about what?” he asks. “We want to change that image.”