The demographics are changing. We can only do so much…they don’t have parental support at home. This is a great task for my higher students, but not for this group because they have too many gaps. We just need to focus on the strategies they understand. We need to show them step by step what they need to do because if not they will get stuck. These are statements that have commonly been shared by educators during team planning conversations, data talks, and intervention meetings. It is interesting that the changing demographics (the number of ELs & low SES students is increasing), causes educators to want to simplify and reduce content. Just because we need to use strategies to make input comprehensible and content accessible, that does not mean that the standards should not be taught at a rigorous level. All students deserve the respect and right for educators to teach content to its fullest depth & complexity. If this group of students has more gaps, then it is even more important that this group take part in high level & rigorous tasks every day. Due to the stress and pressure of high-stakes testing, well-intentioned educators spend a lot of time on test-prep aligned lessons & practice to help their students “pass the test”. Teaching surface level lessons or facilitating instruction where students are just shown simplified steps to follow will lead to students having difficulty with applying what they have learned in challenging and real-life situations. All students deserve to develop, practice, and work on the critical problem-solving skills every day. How can we guarantee educational equity for our English Learners? One way is to make professional learning opportunities available to educators. In order to guarantee educational equity, educators need to increase their understanding of culturally responsive teaching, instructional strategies that support language development, and creating high level instructional tasks with multiple entry points. Another way is to help educators understand the importance of acknowledging the funds of knowledge students bring to school and their home life struggles. Now we do have to be careful that while we should empathize with students, we should not take the pobrecito (poor baby) approach, but use what we know about our students to make instruction accessible. We can also maximize student voice in the classroom orally and written. Hearing and reading what students are thinking is a powerful way to show students that we value them and we get an authentic example of their reasoning that we can use to provide “just in time” support.
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