8. DBC, Inc. Live- Teacher Appreciation Series Featuring Emily Francis
I wanted to share this interview with you. On March 30th author and friend Tara Martin invited me to be on the Dave Burger Consulting, Inc Facebook live Teacher Appreciation Series.
During this interview I shared a story about a teacher and friend who has had a power impact in my life - professional and personal life, Angie Power.
I hope you tune in and hear how Angie Power took me under her wing and helped me become the teacher I am today.
Of course I made sure Angie hear this interview so I shared it with her and she responding with the message below.
Watch the recording on the DBC, Inc Facebook page or on Youtube - video below.
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**This post appeared originally in Seidlitz Education on April 21st, 2020.** It doesn’t happen as often as it should, but when it does, it is the most amazing feeling one can experience. That moment when you’re reading a book and you see your life and family experiences reflected on every single page. That moment when you see text and images intertwine on a page to bring forth cultural validation and acceptance. That moment when you close the book and cry tears of happiness because you realize that stories are so much deeper than you ever thought. I experienced all this and so much more the day I read Sometimes… by Hugo Ibarra and John Seidlitz. (video of me reading the book aloud for International Children’s Book Day.) Sometimes… is just the book we need right now. Ibarra and Seidlitz share with us a story in which immigrants’ experiences are legitimized, one that opens doors for connections and much-needed conversations. It is a story that made me think about how experiences and family stories don’t have to be forgotten. And about how significant it is when stories are shared, because they validate what is core in our existence and our hopes for what is to come. Sometimes… is a story of hope. A story of courage and strength. A story of a family who worked together through difficult circumstances to make their dreams come true. And even though sometimes things don’t go as planned and changes need to happen along the way, we see the characters rising through it all. We see Andrés and Clara holding tight to the hope offered by their mother and teachers. A hope that helps them get through every situation that comes their way. The International Children’s Book Day theme for 2020 was “A Hunger for Words”, and as much as I identify with this phrase, I also believe there’s a hunger for cultural understanding — a hunger for identity and individual acceptance. Children all over our nation deserve to open a book and see their families’ experiences and languages heard and represented. Through the lens of an unaccompanied and undocumented immigrant, an English language learner, and an educator, I closely analyzed each page of Sometimes… and wrote down a few essential points at which the book authentically reflects many of our students’ experiences.
March 13th was the last day students attended class on campus here in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. As soon as we started discussing going to online learning, our county began to provide resources and ideas to support our students through a new norm. Our county schools provided computers and local internet services provided services to those who needed it. Teachers began receiving instructions on how and when yo provide remote lessons and student online engagement. What I started noticing though was that my HS students were finding themselves having to go to work since they were not attending school. The financial need families began to experience led to students having to get up early and spend all day working or staying at home taking care of their siblings. I began to share these observations on social media and the comments were notices. Below you'll find a couple of press releases that highlight what our ESL students are going through this pandemic time. Ruben Jones - COVID-19's IMPACT ON STUDENTS: High Schoolers Find Jobs While Balancing Virtual Learning Here is a fantastic article published by Alex Granados - Senior Reporter for EducationNC. Thank you for reading!
Last week I found out about International Children's Book Day - a wonderful worldwide celebration.
I immediately started looking into it - If you know me...you'd know that I am passionate about children's books. I love picture books. I used them when I taught elementary with students in Kindergarten through 5th grade and now I use them with my newcomer high school students. There's just something magical about a children's books & picture book. I've used them to teach all genres and I've found that students connect with these books and encourages them to learn more. So, as soon as I found out that International children's Book Day is celebrated on April 2nd, 2020 - I started brainstorming about what book to focus on. Of course, all my cultural and diverse background book collection is in my classroom and there was no way I was going to be allowed in the building to get some. So I started digging through the books I have at home found a book author John Seidlitz sent me. I had not taken the time to read it so I started reading it...and...Oh...EM...Geeeeee! I started crying while reading it. I couldn't believe there was such an amazing book on my bookshelf and I have not read it!!! I wanted to share a great conversation I had with Adam Strong, director of Re-Imagining Migration, on how to build effective and lasting relationships with newcomers. You'll notice who this is a very simple conversation but loaded with practical and effective ways to create and maintain strong relationships with newcomers. I have no doubt that all students need and deserve a teacher who takes his/her time to get to know them and care for them. However, newcomers, students who not only left their country behind but could've experienced a lot to be here in the USA, have an urgent need to be heard and understood. Our conversation was first posted on Re-Imagining website on March 3rd, 2020 - and you can read it here. On March 13th, 2020 - Share My Lesson website shared it too!! I am so excited to see how a simple conversation about supporting newcomers is so very well accepted by these platforms that work hard to provide effective lessons to educators. You can find the same post here: "Building Relationships with ELL Students and Newcomers: A Conversation with Emily Francis". Thank you for reading!
Hello friends! Just in case you don't know yet, I wanted to post here about our current bilingual Twitter book study on Integrando Lenguage, Lectura, Escritura y Contenidos en español e inglés ~ Integrating Language, Reading, Writing, and Content in English and Spanish. This book is not available on Amazon. You can get your copy through Velázquez Press following this link. This book study is through the very well known hashtag #ELLchat_bkClub by Katie Toppel and Tan Huynh. Katie allowed us to include this book study to the reading rounds so it is round 24.0! This book study is bilingual (Spanish and English) because the book is written in both languages (side-by-side). A list of questions will be posted every Sunday just to guide out conversation but you're welcome to post anything. Some ideas to post are: Favorite quotes, own questions, #BookSnaps, own thoughts, etc! This book has great content and support for all teachers who are:
We started on March 15th and we'll be following the schedule on the image above. We'd love to have you join us if you can. Check out all the awesome participants we have so far! Katie Toppel has more information on her website if you're looking for all the questions and for more information on how this chats work.
Her Website is: http://ellchatbkclub.blogspot.com/ Thank you for reading! High-Impact Literacy Instruction for ELL StudentsI wanted to share with you this amazing opportunity to learn ways to support your English language learners. Bret Gosselin from TX and I will be joining literacy expert Shaelynn Farnsworth on a webinar to share effective practices to support students with reading and writing. Here's what you'll learn: Participants will learn creative ways to build relationships and community, specific literacy instructional practices and strategies to implement in the classroom, and advice on how to measure achievement growth in EL learners. We’ll also be sharing tools and tech that you can use in your classroom, inclusive to EL learners, along with writing assignments designed to grow great writers. The webinar will be on Wednesday, March 18th at 5:00 pm ET. *Updated 3/23/20 To register and to watch the recorded webinar follow this link! I hope you join us! Please comment below if you registered and share your thoughts after attending our webinar.
A recording will be posted the day after. A link to the recorded webinar will be posted here as well. Thank you for reading! Last year I received a phone call from an author and very good friend, Carol Salva. Carol has always been so supportive of my work and is always sharing my immigrant journey during her presentations. She called me to let me know that John Seidlitz, the owner of Seidlitz Publishing, was interested in publishing my story. I cried! I was so excited to hear this because I've read several books published by Seidlitz and they are all centered around English learners and how to support them. I was also excited because finally, I was having the opportunity to publish my story. This all became a reality on February 7th when John Seidlitz and Sarah Welch came to NC to visit me and discuss my future book. There's not much I can tell you about the making, title, or format, or timing; but what I can tell you is that is coming! My book is coming!! Not only will I be sharing my immigrant journey and experiences as an English learner but also my students' stories.
As soon as I have more information I can share, I'll be posting about it. Thank you for supporting me and my work. I can't wait to share with you this amazing accomplishment.
Thank you for reading. Blog post on ESL Strategies Course: Session #5
During our 5th session on Effective strategies for ELs (click here to read about session 1-4), we took most of the time to dig deeper into our ELLevation Instructional Framework activities.
We started our session reviewing the 6 effective practices we learned about during session 4. We used Kahoot to not only have a little fun but also to review our learning. The game consisted of answering reflective questions that teachers were to analyze and assign to the corresponding practice. For example, a question was..."Am I considering non-traditional experiences as well as mainstream experiences when I discuss and teach something in class?" is this Building Background Practice or Developing Academic Language Practice?!?!? Of course, this question is referring to "Building Background". You can play the game here if you'd like. We notice how teachers are as competitive as students are! Congratulations to Mrs. Pierce for getting 1st place. An Activity in Your Pocket Chart
We made our 5th session centered on ELLevation activities because these classroom activities are effective to use during instruction and are research-supported to help improve language acquisition and content learning. These activities are non-content specific and they can be used in any core content classroom.
We thought that a fun and creative way to show our learning was to create a chart containing activities for each practice. So, we created an "An Activity in Your Pocket" chart. This is an idea taken from the popular "a Poem in Your Pocket" chart. Since there are 85+ activities available for teachers, I thought each teacher could find a classroom activity for each practice learned, write it on a strip of paper provided, and place it in the corresponding practice pocket. Teachers shared their favorite activity as they placed them in the practice pocket.
You can see the picture below - our chart is filled with amazing and effective classroom activities to share with your colleagues.
A couple of great observations was pointed out by our math teacher and our Spanish as a foreign language teacher. Our math teacher expressed how it was a challenge to find activities she could apply while teaching Math III but she had a few that she will definitely be using in class. The same was addressed by our Spanish teacher, however, she said how she will be able to twist these activities to use them as she teaches Spanish.
Overall, we were really excited about our teachers' excitement as they shared their favorite activities. You can't hide passion...and passion was what they were sharing as they told us how they'll be using the activities in class.
These are some of the activities we were finding interesting:
Thank you so much for reading!
Blog post on ESL Strategies Course: Session #4
Cabarrus County Schools use ELLevation as a platform to house and store our ELLs' data information. I know there are several counties who use this platform.
ELLevation also provides ELLEvation InClass platform section that teachers can use to improve instruction for ELLs. The instructional platform is an additional license counties can purchase to support with academic and language instruction. We are so lucky to be able to have the data and the instructional platform for ALL teachers in our county. This ESL pd session was understanding the instructional framework that ELLevation provides for educators. The resources learned here can really be applied in any county whether you have ELLevation system or not. It is a teaching framework with effective practices that can make you just a better teacher.
To Review, we practiced and activity called "Inside-Outside Circle" where teachers had the opportunity to share what they've learned so far in out ESL sessions. We modeled this activity hoping that teachers will take this activity and use in their classroom and foster interactions among their students. Blog post on ESL Strategies Course: Session #3
Our 4th ESL pd was part two of our second language acquisition (SLA) lesson. We were on our EOC week so not everyone attended but information was emailed out so teachers can still learn about this content.
Teachers were asked to share their thoughts and the conversation led into a deeper conversation on learning vs acquiring the language. The Wakelet below has a great presentation that explains the difference on learning and acquiring a second language. This learning led us to dig deeper on one of the most important theories known on SLA - The AFFECTIVE FILTER! This theory is researched and supported by studies and its founder, Steven Krashen, is who you want to read about if you want to learn more about this topic. We talked about how important it is for students to use academic language in the classroom to help them acquire the language. One way we recommended for students to use academic language consistency is posting sentence starters and model for all students to use. This chart on sentence starters is just an example of what you can post for all students to use.
The article we read was "To Help English Learners, You Need Ways to Reduce Their Affective Filter" by Kara Wyman, MEd and you can read it here On November 26th, 2019, I received an email from Alex Granados, a Senior Reporter for EducationNC. His email stated that he was "working on a series about "rock star" teachers...who are considered particularly beloved, effective, or innovative..." and he wanted to come to my school to learn more about me and my students. Of course, we were thrilled to welcome him to our school and see our classes and students in action. On December 4th, 2019, Mr. Granados visited our ESL classroom and was able to see my newcomers and my instruction in action! My students were all working at their seats working on other class assignments and/or an assignments I had provided. Meanwhile, I was pulling small groups to provide individualized and personalized instruction. Mr. Granados interviewed me, observed my students, and met with my principal, Dr. Auerbach. While Mr. Granados was in the room, we took a minute to cheer and celebrate one of our students. Oliver had just received a letter from the NC superintendent congratulating him for a recent recognition as Athlete of the Week for the Charlotte Observer. I share this with you because I LOVE it (and students do too) when we are highlighted and featured for what we do best...learning and building a culture where the possibilities as endless! My Favorite part of the article is this: "Sitting in her classroom, one can see how that experience translates into a personal connection. The students work on their ESL assignments. But they also work on homework from their other classes, periodically checking in with Francis to ask questions or seek advice. The students chat with her in a way that is rare for students to interact with teachers. “If I didn’t have my struggles and experiences, I wouldn’t be as effective as I am,” Francis said." So, here is the beautiful article Mr. Granados featured on us! Enjoy! An immigrant’s dream to be a teacher: Emily Francis of Cabarrus County Blog post on ESL Strategies Course: Session #2
This were the amazing posters they created to show their learning.
For homework assignment, teachers were to read the provided articles and power point presentation and share thoughts on our padlet.
Everything you need and more for this pd is in the Wakelet below! Blog post on ESL Strategies Course: Session #1
We kicked off our ESL PD for teachers highlighting students background - learning who our ELs are, seeing them for who they are, and for what they CAN accomplish.
All the resources used are in the Wakelet below.
The 5 simple key questions to ask about our ELs came from this article from Barbara Gottschalk. Teachers were asked to work with a partner and each partner was to read one of the key questions and create a poster to share with the rest of us. The 5 key questions are represented here: Mrs. Hatley and I are both ESL teachers at Concord HS. We both provide co-teaching/inclusion services in all content areas. Our teachers are amazing and very open to collaborate and learn new ways to support our English learners. Together we are creating a culture of responsibility to grow our English learners not only academically but also linguistically. During the month of December, we sent our staff an email offering an ELL strategies course where teachers can learn effective practices to support ELs. Participation to our course was not made mandatory and CEUs (content credits) were offered. We were super excited when we heard from over 25 staff members who wanted to participate. Our group meets once a week for 30 minutes with a 30 minute homework assignment to be completed during the week. During the month of January, we met four times and we've had a total of 10 teachers participating with consistency. Among the attendees, we have out MTSS couch, administrators, and core teachers. The session and strategies learned were as follows:
Thank you for reading! It's here...Year 2020 is here!! This time of year is by far the most exciting time of the year for me. This is the time of year when many of us get into deep thought about all the exciting events that we experienced throughout the past year. A time of year to reflect and embrace what we have or have not accomplished as the year comes to an end. This is also a time of the year to think about new beginnings, new goals, new journeys. A new year brings hope and encouragement to perhaps complete what we couldn't accomplish the year before. I don't know about you but I am not very good about making a New Year's resolution or a list of things to accomplish. I just feel like I wouldn't be able to keep up with what I want and I don't want to feel disappointed.
I LOVE to be surprised by life! I don't know what this year has in store for me. I don't know where I'll go. I don't know who I'll be meeting. What I do know is that I need a WORD. One word that will serve as a core focus to what I do, why, and how I do things in life. Whether is personal or professional, this word helps me stay focus on what matters to stay passionate about everything I do. I started choosing an inspirational word for a few years now and the intentionality I put on focusing on this word has been powerful. I blogged about my #OneWord2018 and #OneWord2019 if you'd like to read it. On December 11th, I had the opportunity to host Writable's Twitter chat. If you are interested in learning more about the best strategies and methods to support your students in writing, I recommend you join this weekly chat. All you have to do is follow the hashtag #WritingMatters at 7:00 PM ET and join the fun.
Shaelynn Farnsworth gracefully invited to lead the chat and focus on how to support ELs during writing. I didn't come up with a super catchy title but our focus during the chat was "Writing Instruction for ELs". When I think about supporting ELs in their writing, I think about interactive writing, visual writing, scaffoldings, and their classroom environment. This is why I made my questions around these topics. We had great participation and a lot of great tips and resources were shared. I thought about blogging this with the hope that you'll find a great tip that can help you support your students become the successful writers you want them to become. If you feel like answering these questions, please do so following the hashtag mention above and tag me when posting your answers. I'd love to learn from you. In Stories That Sparkle Powerful Conversations blog post, I shared a lesson I started with our SIFE (Students with Interrupted Formal Educations) ELs. This lesson led to another wonderful week where students created a wonderful presentation to show the rest of the class. All our newcomer ELs are expected to present their learning in our ESL class, of course, the bar remains high for SIFEs. Just like Kanako Suwa says, "Simplifying is GIVING UP, Scaffolding is BELIEVING. Simplifying is dumbing down/lowering expectations. Scaffold = same expectations and content + supports put in place to help Ss meet the expectations." With the understanding that these students are capable of more - I encouraged them to create their own book using the sentences they had formed from the book Dreamers. My students were very excited when they noticed that they were creating their own book using the information they understood. Both students were able to create and publish their own book but only one student had the strength to record the reading. It does take a lot of courage to do this knowing that your voice is being heard by others and you're not sure of yourself in the targeted language. So the platform I use to publish my students' stories is WriteReader. This platform is student-friendly and it can be used by students K-12. One of my students used the camera to take some pictures of the book that matched his text, another student took photographs of her own illustrations. Here's Yousef's book: DREAMERS (link includes voice/reading)
Here's Abril's book: DREAMERS
Both of my students did a great job and they are very proud of the work they accomplished.
You see, it really doesn't take much to help our English learners (and SIFE) to perform at their highest potential. If you choose to use this platform to publish your students' stories, please let me know! I'd live to share them with my students as well. Thank you so much for reading! I wanted to share with you a couple of lessons my newcomer ELs enjoyed this month. Students had fun finishing up these lessons and they learned a lot. Their final project was amazing and very creative! We started reading a couple of articles. One article was an article we read during small group guided reading, and the other was an article they read as a group. Both articles highlight the journey of teenagers who had to leave their home country to reunite with family in the USA. The two articles we used were: "Running from Danger, Looking for Hope" from Scholastic Action magazines & "15-Year-Old Waiting Months in Shelter to Join Mother in California" from NewsELA.
If you need some ideas as to how to read articles with high-level text with newcomer ELs, check out this post with some scaffolding tips.
Part II
This post is a follow up to "Stories that Sparkle Powerful Conversations" - If you have not read it, I encourage you to read it since it provides the background you may need for this post.
Group Projects
My advanced newcomer English learners were assigned the picture book 'Refugees and Migrants' by Ceri Roberts. This book covers migration from its causes to what we can do to aid refugees. It covers life in refugee camps, about the application process for asylum.
You can see their presentation below. They did an excellent job providing important details, their thoughts, and visuals. What you can't see in their presentation was the result of their presentation. As they were sharing their thoughts on the videos and the immigration topic, students began to cry all around the room. You see, I have several students (including me) who immigrated to the USA just like the book and their videos showed. Their presentation stirred up in us so many feelings we keep inside. Our immigrant experiences, regardless of what you experienced, mark our lives forever. Some feelings are happy, some are painful feelings, and some you can't even talk about. When overwhelmed with emotions...tears help! There was not a dry eye in the room. We all cried. We all hugged. We all shared. I even had a student share with me a video of him and his mother crossing the river to make it to the USA. THIS was when I lost it! I started thinking about how hard this particular student works EVERYDAY and how his teachers are only concern about his grades...when in his mind and heart THIS is what's going on. Students hugged me and said, "Mrs. Francis, don't cry". But how can you NOT cry when you know your students are dealing with so much in their personal life. We heard stories of concentration centers, stories of reasons why we left our home country. Stories of hope. Stories of resilience and strength. Part I
In September 2019 - I shared a blog post on how I structure my ESL lessons for HS newcomer ELs. If you haven't read it, I encourage you to do so! Click here for the blog post.
The Scholastic Action magazine, which is one of the resources I use during guided reading, always includes compelling topics my students find very interesting. The November issue includes an article very close to my heart - "an immigrant story"! Running from Danger, Looking for Hope - is the story of Freddy, an immigrant young man from Honduras. I was so excited about planning this lesson and looking forward to sharing it with my students. To increase the understanding of the immigration topic, I assigned students' group projects on the same topic but using picture books as a resource for the information. The picture books we used were:
From October 15th - October 26th, I had the honor and pleasure to lead a Twitter book study through #ELLchat_bkclub. If you participated - Thank you! - If you did not, I recommend you take some time and review our conversations on very important topics that are highlighted in Latina Teachers by Dr. Glenda Flores. Some of the topic we discussed are:
LIVE Book Chat
Updated on 10/24/19
Publications on the event: Mid-Island Times: Renowned speaker shares inspirational story with Hicksville students click here!
Over a year ago, Lisa Estrada, author and Supervisor of the English as a New Language (ENL) and World Languages department in Hicksville Public Schools in New York, invited me to visit her schools. The dates she considered never coordinated with the dates I had available. Until...we finally agreed on October 7th, 2019.
The ENL department had organized a Hispanic Heritage celebration with several events throughout Hispanic Heritage Month and at different schools throughout the county. Lisa's idea was to bring in a guest speaker who would inspire Latino students to embrace and appreciate their heritage as well as be encouraged to be successful in school. I don't think I can explain the excitement and the honor I felt when I received Lisa's invitation to be the guest speaker they needed for this event. I have done several keynotes and presentations all through the country, but a keynote presentation for students was going to be my first ever!! Without a doubt, I accepted the invitation and started planning my visit to Hicksville Public School. This school year, my English for Beginners class is quite different than last year's class. This year I have a lot more newcomers <1 year in the USA than I did last school year. Just in case you didn't know, this is only my second year teaching HS ESL and I'm loving it! One of the challenges I am facing this school year is having so many different levels of English proficiency in one class. This is a challenge when planning one whole group lessons and not all your students are at the same level on the proficiency continuum. My biggest group is in the entering stages of the continuum (Level 1), a couple in the beginning stages (Level 2), and another group of 5 students are in the developing stages (Level 3). Of course providing whole group instruction would not provide all with the needed support to grow linguistically. I've tried a couple of lessons but I still had to end up diving students in the corresponding groups to work with students at their level.
So what I started doing is working in small groups! I started assigning them readings and projects as groups and they work with peers completing the assignment if they are not in a group with me. These assignments could be assigned by language domain or a project of choice. I created this Wakelet with resources they can use to help them practice each language domain. Cultivating a Comfortable Environment for Diverse LearnersBreakout Session
Newcomer ELs and students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE) need a respectful and safe environment to function at their full potential. This session will provide culturally responsive pedagogy strategies to cultivate the environment diverse students need. Participants will discover that cultivating such environments needs to start from within. As a ripple effect, a commitment to culturally responsive pedagogy will transform our instruction, school culture, families, community engagement and (ultimately) our students.
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