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Dr. Karen Johannesen Brock has been an educator and educational consultant for more than three decades. She has assisted more than one hundred schools and districts with implementing instructional coaching and design as well as professional learning plans and school-improvement plans and has worked at the state, school, and district levels.
Our conversation centers on her book Coaching for Multilingual Student Success: Intentional Practices to Accelerate Learning and Close Achievement Gaps.
We discuss:
- Understanding multilingual students in our schools
- The achievement gaps we’re working to close and the challenges in doing so
- How to build teachers’ confidence
- An asset-based approach
- Engaging parents in the learning process
- Leveraging instructional coaching to strengthen collective teacher efficacy
- Karen’s approach to instructional coaching
- Teacher-coach relationships
- 4 essential practices for teachers that accelerate learning for all students
Find the book Coaching for Multilingual Student Success from Solution Tree or wherever you get your books.
About the host
Ross Romano is a co-founder of the Be Podcast Network and CEO of September Strategies, a coaching and consulting firm that helps organizations and high-performing leaders in the K-12 education industry communicate their vision and make strategic decisions that lead to long-term success. Connect on Twitter @RossBRomano or https://www.linkedin.com/in/rossromano
I also host Sideline Sessions, a podcast for coaches and parents of student-athletes. The show features conversations with coaches and performance experts in the NFL, NBA, NCAA, Olympics, and more. Listen here: https://bit.ly/3Rp0QGt
Creators & Guests
What is The Authority Podcast — Expert Insights and Fresh Ideas for Education Leaders?
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Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome in, everybody. You are listening once again to the Authority Podcast and the BE Podcast Network. Thanks, as always, for being with us. Today, we are going to tackle a variety of topics of a lot of importance in schools and some of which we've talked about before, some of which are kind of new to the show.
So, my guest today is Dr. Karen Johannesen-Brock. Karen has been an educator and educational consultant for more than three decades. She has assisted more than 100 schools and districts with implementing community based education. instructional coaching and design, as well as professional learning plans, school improvement plans, and has worked at the state school and district levels.
Her book is called Coaching for Multilingual Student Success. Karen, welcome to the show.
Karen Johanssen Brock: Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
Ross Romano: Let's start with [00:01:00] the, the students that we're talking about here, these multilingual students. Can you just. Define them for us, so we're on the same page. Where who are they where are they, and what does it look like in a school when we're, when we're looking at kind of the student population?
Karen Johanssen Brock: Sure, and it's, it absolutely, of course, varies by state, but multilingual is a newer ish term that we have been using to identify, to speak about the English learner. Multilingual tends to bring about a little bit more of a, An assets based kind of look at the, at the topic and every state has increasing populations of multilingual learners.
Some states West Virginia in 2020 had somewhere around 7 and And then Texas is looking more like 20 percent and a national average of about 10 percent. So they're in every classroom and, [00:02:00] and at different levels. We've got newcomers and there's been more in some years than others, but we'll have newcomers and we have what we call long term ELs, which are students who've been in our schools for four, even up to six years and are not academically fluent and proficient in English.
And so it's, it's a wide range of who, who they are.
Ross Romano: Yeah, and for those long term English learners is there a standard, like, precise definition? Is there are there things we should be looking at as far as? You know, what, what should be our objectives around graduating students out of that designation or what does that typically look like?
Karen Johanssen Brock: So we, when, when we have students that are long term, it's, it's, they have been in our system for usually upwards of six years and are not academic, proficient in academic English. [00:03:00] And their chance of graduating from high school is less It's, it's significant and it's a, it's a, it's a tremendous concern.
We're really, our goal really is to have younger students within two to three years should be close to their age peers. If they're older students, it takes a little bit longer. They're obviously everything is more complex, but within three to four years, we should be seeing some, some significant strides toward, toward academic English proficiency.
Ross Romano: And so you've indicated that oftentimes, right, when students are, and certainly when they're designated as long term EL, but, but. A lot of the reasons why it's important to understand who these populations are is because it may indicate you know, gaps in their academic proficiency or, or getting them where they should be on grade level something that's challenged you know, by the language.
[00:04:00] And kind of the the subtitle of this book is Intentional Practices to Accelerate Learning and Close Achievement Gaps. What are some of those, are there specific gaps that are most, common that are persistent?
Karen Johanssen Brock: In, in terms of, I mean, in terms of academic gaps reading lagging well behind and, and math. Those, those are the two areas that we see consistently, and if, if they're not reading, then we, we don't get the same science scores and the same some of the, some of the state scores, and so, that's, I, I think our, our frontline is always reading, getting reading proficient with math a, a close second.
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Ross Romano: Why is it so challenging? Is it, that teachers aren't generally specifically trained on how to work with these students, that teachers don't speak the languages the students do are gaps in, in kind of the classroom discourse that students may be missing out on, [00:05:00] even if they're perfectly capable in the subject matter?
Karen Johanssen Brock: Yeah, I mean, I, this is certainly multi pronged. One thing that is. Maybe the happy news in all of this is that the teacher doesn't have to be proficient in the in the language that the student is coming in with. We really can have teachers that have zero language in other language proficiency and in other languages able to Radically improve the English language instruction in their, in their classrooms.
And so, some of the, some of the things that we're seeing is we're simply not set up to do enough dialogue. That's obviously students in order to learn English have to practice all day long. And we have, We have a variety of different structured programs for students to leave the classroom, leave the mainstream classroom, and go and get some very specific foundational skills, and that's, that's happening across the board with different levels of effectiveness, but that, that's happening across the board, and this book [00:06:00] is really addressing not that time of the day.
It's addressing the rest of the day. It's addressing now when they come back into the classroom, We need to see, we need to see lots of opportunities for that, for gaining background knowledge, for doing some close reading, for dialoguing, so that in the end they can write something down about what they're learning.
That's, that's our ultimate goal always in, in reading is what, or in, in learning is can students then give us a written statement, A presentation on this is the knowledge that I have, and this is this how I can communicate that knowledge
when we look at teacher training, the average for teachers across their career is only 30 hours. Most teachers are only getting 30 hours or less of training on how to approach English language learners in their classroom. We've got lots of resources. We've got specialists in every district and many schools have specialists [00:07:00] and moving it to how do we make sure that every single teacher is, is doing things throughout the day that will really benefit English language learners.
And the thing that's probably most exciting for me is the further I get into this, It's within every teacher's reach. This is, this is selecting some strategies. There's every, every program that, that you purchase, every curricula, every language arts curricula, every social studies curricula, science curricula, math.
The publishers have done a great job of giving some ideas for it. Here's how you can change this lesson up and make it fit the English language learner or adapt for the English language learner. Learn English for free www. engvid. com Lots of ideas. There's a gap between here are some resources for teachers and then having teachers very comfortable with actually implementing those in the classroom.
One look at just some, just some, some surveys [00:08:00] that I've come across on how comfortable teachers are. 70 to 80 percent of teachers are not comfortable utilizing strategies for English language learners. And that's a big problem. It's the comfort gap we really need to address and that's where instructional coaching comes in.
Ross Romano: Right, and you write about that one of the objectives of the instructional coaching is in strengthening teacher's confidence. What, how does that lack of confidence play into maybe the instruction a teacher provides? Of course there's there's a lack of confidence that is sometimes accurately corresponds with a lack of.
capability, but but that might not necessarily be the case, but are there instances where just. Not having the confidence itself is having teachers maybe not deploy all of the instructional strategies that they could because they feel as though they haven't been totally [00:09:00] trained on the best ways to reach different student populations.
Karen Johanssen Brock: Yeah, I think so. I mean, there's always the gap between I go to a training and I, and I learn something new and I try it in my classroom and I think, huh, that didn't work. How, how many times have I said that? When I come back to the classroom, I, one of, one of my Examples I laugh at myself or later was I went to a training years ago.
I thought, you know what? So somebody had done a masterful job of puppets. I was like, I am going to come back and be a puppeteer. I'm going to really do this in my classroom. And of course I got the puppets, did all the things and went back to the classroom and I was abysmal at it. And I abandoned it and they collected dust.
And I realized that wasn't my personality. And, And the same thing is true the first time I used cooperative learning, the first time I used math manipulatives in the classroom. It's the try it once, it didn't work, I'd do it again. I feel a little awkward. I'm not quite sure what, what to [00:10:00] do next. And the kids didn't respond well to it, et cetera.
And so it's the I think the first piece of confidence is knowing that these little things that you're doing in the classroom will change your life. make a difference in the end. It's, it's, it's deepening your vocabulary routine so that students have a chance to practice with the, with the word and partner speak with the word and setting up that structure.
Very simple things that every teacher can do. And once you've done it a couple times successfully, you'll just incorporate it. But it's the move from I learned about it too. I've tried it too. I tried it successfully, that we need to, to move that, that piece of competence. So I think one piece of, one part of the competence ring is, will it make a difference in my classroom?
Is it worth my effort? And then the second piece is, how long before I can make, make that be part of my repertoire of teaching?
Ross Romano: yeah, I'm curious [00:11:00] about also the of course, a lot of the attention is paid to instructional efficacy, right? And understanding how to teach students that are multilingual, but I guess What about the assessment piece? I mean, if, if teachers aren't totally comfortable with or you know, haven't received much professional learning on teaching multilingual students do they also have a gap in really being able to truly understand what students know and can do.
Particularly if students are, students may have a difficulty communicating things in the teacher's native language, but there may be things that they understand a lot better than the teacher may know. And then that could lead to a cycle of feeling as though instruction is [00:12:00] ineffective or feeling as though there are certain instructional needs that need to be the focal points, which actually aren't totally aligned with that student's current proficiency.
Karen Johanssen Brock: Right. I mean, absolutely. The, the testing piece and the what do teachers know and then how do they act on, on what they know. It's, it's the, it, and that goes down to what assessment are using. Is this a formative assessment that we're, we're using within the lesson? And so how can we look at that different?
And that's where PLCs and, and different faculty conversations. There's, it really comes, comes into play to be able to, ask each other questions about, well, this is what I'm seeing. So what would you do in this situation? And those, it's opening up the conversation so that we are not so isolated in, well, that didn't work and I'm not quite sure what to do next.
And to be able to say, so, and now I'm going to go talk to my colleague and we're going to look at this data together and we're going to test it. We, we, we don't have just one way of assessing a student. We have three [00:13:00] ways of assessing students. So now We can make a decision about what that was a language barrier issue or that was an information barrier issue,
Ross Romano: How, how important is, or how important is it perhaps to have a unique and specific. Training on the parent engagement piece. We know the important roles that parents play in learning and also that in many schools or in many classrooms, if they were to receive a a report card or progress report, it might be indicated as needs improvement in this area in general, right?
But then, of course, there are specific challenges with families and parents who may speak a different language and or maybe also newer to their communities may, they may not have the confidence level to exactly know how to [00:14:00] advocate or, or engage with the school. And, but yet it's important that that they're engaged just as much as other parents.
Karen Johanssen Brock: right? And that, I think that's where we, we, we really benefit for being a school community and having it not all be on the teacher's shoulders, but really bring in people that can speak the language, people that we want our parents to feel comfortable and confident walking into the class, walking into the school.
And we want to be able to have productive conversations that can remove some of the language barrier and that, that's, that's hard for every teacher and particularly hard for a teacher who's feeling like they're not being very successful with that student. So having a school community and making sure that as a school we have a plan that we're all engaged and then there's, and it's an ongoing conversation.
That's, that's one of the things that Just within every section of the book I, I spend [00:15:00] time on, let's have a full conversation about how this looks in our school and what we're doing right now and where our holes are. If a school is prioritizing and talking about and thinking about and aware of, Here's how our parents feel when they walk in our school, and these are, these are the parents that don't have an access point right now, so how are we going to create an access point?
That, that really becomes a school community conversation and addressed, again, across our levels.
Ross Romano: Yeah, and you referenced earlier this the book and the approach presented in the book, having an asset based perspective and how critical is that even from a a mindset and psychological perspective of how educators choose to approach the opportunity they have to, right, to teach these students and to engage with these families versus, I mean, it's been, boy, it's been about a year and a half now, I guess, but we had an [00:16:00] earlier episode on the book Hacking Deficit Thinking and talked a lot about, right, the language we use and the terminology and the way we refer to students.
And one of course, if those are labels that students. are aware of and associate with, how it changes their perspective on it. But even if it's not that case, just how talking that way amongst ourselves, so to speak, as educators gives it's a, it's a different mindset, right, toward what the job is, who the students are, what they're capable of, and what we expect of them and expect of ourselves.
Karen Johanssen Brock: Well, and it's an interesting, this is probably somewhat unique to American culture. I mean, 20 percent of Americans speak a second language. Where when you look in, in Europe, it's more like 56%, and when, when I'm speaking to adults who know one, two, three languages, [00:17:00] I'm stunned and impressed, always, and employers, 66 percent of American employers want someone who is bilingual, at least bilingual, and yet we have approached it as a culture Transcribed Learning English in the schools as a, as a deficit model where in, in adulthood being dialing duolingual at least or, or more is.
is an admirable feat. And so, as a, we're up, it's an uphill battle in America because we have this deficit habit. And so, as part of our role as educators is to really be very impressed with the student who is doing all of this work in, in two languages. It's, it's something that, it's a, it's a mind shift for teachers and it's, It's I think one of our moral responsibilities as educators to admire the fortitude of a child who [00:18:00] is learning, coming to school every day in a different language.
I lived in England for a little bit as an adult and found it sometimes daunting just even to approach the accent sometimes and in, in different, in different settings. And it's just a little bit ironic that as, as adults, it's. A huge asset and no one questions that, but as, as children educators can really pave the path on this to, to change the, to change the thinking and change the talk around how impressed we are with a child who's learning a second language.
Ross Romano: Absolutely. So, zooming out momentarily. So I, I read through the intro and got our guests familiar with your work and of course talked about the number of schools and districts you work with implementing instructional design. What. or Instructional Coaching and Design. But what, what drew you to this topic specific to the Instructional Coaching and its relationship [00:19:00] to capacity building around teaching multilingual learners?
Karen Johanssen Brock: Well, I have been working at a district level and have been supervising instructional coaches across the district for about eight years now and have just really been intimately involved with instructional coaching and we have been within the district have been implementing a new reading program or a new math program and we'll use instructional coaches and what used to take really years for people to eke through a new implementation.
Within four to six weeks, we've had very high levels of implementation of our reading or math program, whatever it is we, we've adopted that year. And so I have, really dug into what can coaching do. It's kind of the speed of coaching idea that anything you do, if you have somebody standing next to you and helping you tweak your, your practice, it just speeds everything [00:20:00] up.
And I've gained a kind of a missionary zeal about instructional coaching and how important it is to, if we, if we have found our data is lacking somewhere we can and should set a plan and then support teachers to move practice. We don't change school unless we change, we change the structural practice.
And coaching is the fastest way from my experience in, in schools to move from something we need to do to something we're doing. And and so as I have, I actually had a chance a couple of years ago to interact with Marguerite Calderon, and she As a field expert in, in the multilingual space and just collaboration with her and the fact that in the school improvement realm, even a high performing school can be in state school improvement category for their multilingual student population or EL [00:21:00] population.
And so, any problem of practice. We can address it within the let's put a professional learning plan in place and let's support teachers through instructional coaching. And so I just got more curious about how does this align with everything else we already know about instructional coaching and truly within a matter of months.
a teacher can be proficiently serving multilingual students through working with the coach. And I just don't think we have the time anymore to dabble in this work. It's, we're, we're at a, we're at a record number of students in our, in our schools that are not progressing at the, at the level we'd hoped.
And so, I just wanted to marry the things that I know this, I know coaching is a solution to a problem of practice that we all are grappling with.[00:22:00]
Ross Romano: And so you, you reference joint coaching as a great tool to move us from what we should be doing to what we are doing. And so along those lines, let's talk about the collective advocacy piece. So the It's about leveraging the instructional coaching to strengthen the collective teacher advocacy, and when we think about what our schools are like, will be like, or should be like you know, why is it so important to have that?
collective efficacy and collective efficacy around teaching our multilingual learners versus just having an EL teacher and saying that's their job or some other type of approach.
Karen Johanssen Brock: Well, it's, and I, the collective efficacy for me is, I've just seen Teachers have more fun, for one, and I think that's really important to me that teachers love their job and love and walk in and when watching a teacher who is confident [00:23:00] and knows that what they're doing is making a difference is, is is a real, it's a sweet spot.
It's, it's the, it's what we're going for. It's what we're really trying to support. In every school Collective Teacher Efficacy, a lot of times that that I feel like that that term has been batted around sometimes just to mean teachers feel good about what they're doing and Collective Efficacy really addresses that.
This group of teachers knows that if they use these strategies with these students, they will get the results they're looking for and it's collective teacher efficacy because they're talking to each other constantly and they're looking at data and they're really grappling with this problem of practice.
And so if we can, if we can. Hit that level of collective teacher efficacy across our system. We have not only does every teacher feel less isolated and more able to talk through a problem practice, but we have [00:24:00] students who are thriving and that's, That's every teacher's goal.
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Ross Romano: Yeah, and you know, there's the collective efficacy and associated the collective confidence and and it is, it's important when it comes to not only being effective, but to also feel that one's peers are effective, right? Because we know whether that's Again, sometimes an accurate evaluation.
I know that this other teacher in our school is not as effective as some of the others, or whether it's just that it's You know, teachers haven't learned to have that sense of, of a collective. All the challenges that's going to present. Oh, well, once these kids leave my classroom, they're going to be in that teachers and or, oh, the kids I'm getting from the previous grade I know they're going to be way behind and then we're going to have to do this, this and this and and how.
You know, there's a limitation [00:25:00] to how much students are going to learn over the course of their years in school, if there's a bunch of time spent either with redundancies at the beginning of the year, reviewing information that the students already know, but we don't know that they know it, or we don't think that they know it, or or actually going to a grade level where they're not progressing at their learning as successfully because there's a weak link in the chain somewhere or whatever the case may be, but really important for teachers to be on the same page and equally effective to ensure that we only have so many years, right?
And, and so many short school years for these students to progress through and every time that they are all the time that they're spending not learning something new is time dead. It likely won't be recovered.
Karen Johanssen Brock: Right. Right. And it's the, it's one of the [00:26:00] things that I, I, an adage I came up with some years ago that I, every, every child deserves to walk into our best teacher's classroom. And we often, in education have training and programs and resources that we invite teachers to, but we don't build a program around making sure that every classroom has that opportunity to use that.
We opt teachers out by even simple things like we'll say, we're going to start with the primary grades and then we'll move up to the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade, or we're going to invite anybody who's interested and then we'll gather people as we go. And We're, we're too, we're, schools are, are moving, there's too many moving pieces to opt teachers out.
A, a teacher knows that if I sit it out for a year or two, the principal may move, the funding may dry up, that there's lots of different things, but we just, we can't afford to opt. [00:27:00] teachers out of opportunities because when we opt teachers out, obviously we opt out students from the, the skills and, and abilities that they would have received through this training.
So it's, it's the problem that many, Well, I think every school faces a problem of a family comes into the class, into the school, and we have three children we're going to place in the, in the school. And wouldn't it be nice to be able to say, welcome to our school. Your child will be served in any classroom.
And we would love to be able to say that. And we can. We, we should be able to say every classroom is ready to serve a multilingual student. Every, every class, every teacher knows and has a support structure and will grapple together with their team on making sure that this child is well served and thriving.
Ross Romano: Yeah.
Karen Johanssen Brock: That's what we're hoping for.
Ross Romano: So, Karen, what does, what does your approach to [00:28:00] instructional coaching look like? What, what how is it organized? Is there integration in the day to day? What, what's kind of the, the way in which this is presented?
Karen Johanssen Brock: So it starts with the professional development plan. So it starts with what does our data say that our that our school needs and a professional development plan is not a one off. A professional development plan is this is our year. This is what it looks like. And so mapping out the year so that Every, every teacher is having access to some pretty deep professional learning.
Linda Darling Hammond says somewhere between 20 to 50 hours across a year to really make a skill change. And that's not sitting in a, in a faculty room somewhere for 20 to 50 hours, but it is 45 minutes here, 45 minutes there, going back to your classroom and trying it, doing it in your PLC, working with instructional coach.
So with, with a professional development plan, it's what do we [00:29:00] want every classroom to look like in May? Or in April, hopefully, even, even sooner. And so let's backwards plan. And then from there, if you have training in August or September, then we have a, between this training and next training, this is your assignment.
That has to be, the principal has to stand up in front of the faculty and say, whether or not the principal's the one that's delivering the training, the principal has to get up in front of the faculty and say, between now and the next time, I would like you to try this X amount of times in your classroom.
Sign up for your instructional coach and then it's the teacher and the coach deciding what that looks like. Does the teacher want the coach to co plan? Does the teacher want the coach to model it? Does the teacher want the coach to take a small group and Wherever the teacher's standing, we want them to make steps forward in that.
So it's going to look very uneven across the school, but everybody's trying it. And when you come together in your PLCs, everybody's [00:30:00] talking about it. There's a, there's a time in the PLC where we're bringing our data together. We're looking at how students did with, with the skill that we're working on.
And so the next time we come together, we report out. This is what I tried in my classroom, this is what was successful, and this is what I'm still struggling with. And so the Professional Development Plan runs coaching. The coach is the vehicle to help a teacher say, I'm standing here, I need to move to there, this is my plan and what I, what I'd like to do.
The principal's role is to say, this is our assignment. and sign up for the coach.
Ross Romano: And then as far as the teacher coach relationships how do those typically work? What do the teachers tend to expect of the coach? What should they expect? Who's, and then who's responsible for kind of contextualizing that and ensuring that all parties understand what the relationship is, what the objectives are, how it should work,
Karen Johanssen Brock: So that should [00:31:00] also be embedded in the professional learning sessions that coaches are going to get training to be a coach. outside obviously of those sessions. It's a much different skill set to be a teacher and even to be like a lot of times people get come into the instructional coaching realm or look at the instructional coach as maybe like a student teacher supervisor or somebody who's coming in to fix a bad teacher or and we need to really remove those those definitions.
Neither of them are very functional in in this conversation or setting. But a coach needs training outside and the district should be really supporting coaches on how to become a coach. There's lots of great resources on how to become a coach. I like to have, with every professional development plan, I like to work with the school in the planning of the professional development plan for, okay, let's make a coaching menu.
What does this look like? What are some things that you would be comfortable with saying? Teachers, choose any of these six things that the coach [00:32:00] can do with you, or for you, or for you. Sometimes people are wanting the coach to help them gather some resources to even start at the very beginning at the start.
And other teachers are saying, you know what, I would love to go with you and go and watch someone masterfully do this. I've not seen it. Can you find somewhere that I can go watch? 20 minutes in the back of somebody else's classroom doing, learning how somebody else is doing a strategy or technique is.
That is, that's best, cheapest professional development we, we get. So it really, it's very dependent on what it is you're trying to implement in terms of the multilingual learner. I like to, to start with the, with Margarita Calderon's It's four kind of, she has kind of a four pronged approach with background knowledge and vocabulary and then moving to the close reading and then really hitting the dialogue and then writing.[00:33:00]
And so to, to walk a school through each of those prongs throughout the years so that you could go into any classroom and that's happening across the day it would be, the goal for me is that. In, in most classrooms, most students get the chance to learn a few vocabulary words, do a close read, have a great dialogue, structured and and with a, with protocols in place, and then be able to write, even if it's an exit ticket, just some, be able to write some sort of a summary statement, or maybe write a big paper, or, or put together a big project, but those steps are happening.
Multiple times a day for a student that a student has lots and lots and lots of opportunity to be in dialogue that is based on the academic learning of the day. And so maybe it's not a close read. Maybe it's we watch a video clip and then we talk about it and then we, but it's, do we have the vocabulary?
Do we have some new [00:34:00] knowledge? Talk about it, write something.
Ross Romano: right? And so once teachers are receiving this coaching and training, what are the essential practices they should be doing throughout the day to support those multilingual students. I believe there's four of them, but you can walk us through it.
Karen Johanssen Brock: yeah, I mean, there's, there's so much out there for the different strategies and within those four. I mean, in terms of dialogue, there's so many great strategies. There's, there's lots of pieces. And again, going back to your curricular programs, and there are specific multilingual training programs that give lots and lots of, of, of instructional ideas that aren't way outside of what many teachers are already doing.
But it's really centering in on how does this specifically work for this child. I've got, I've got two newcomers, a long term EL, and Three students who've been are on different levels. You know, I mean, within if, in a classroom, if [00:35:00] you have six or seven kids, they're, they're all different levels.
So how do you do in, in the lesson planning piece? But we want to see, boy, if, if kids could learn 10 vocabulary words across the day, two in each vocab, two in each academic area, and have opportunity for, if you add it all up, they have at least an hour of the day where they get to talk to each other. Now, kids talking to each other, that's not a problem.
We get, we, we get kids talking to each other all the time. I've heard a statistic, I, I, in my observation, it's probably true, but something like 80 percent of the feedback students get is from each other. And so if we can, and 80 percent of that is wrong, so if we can, if we can help with some, some structured dialoguing and some structured ways of students to work together on the academic topic of the moment, we can really up the feedback that students are getting and the [00:36:00] opportunity for language practice.
And that's why we've got to have classrooms where kids are talking. They've just got to be talking way more than they are. And that's true for everybody. That's true in your AP class. That's true in your gifted class. That's true with striving readers. That's just, we need to be doing much more dialogue.
It's very easy to take a high dialogue classroom where there's structures and frames in place for, for having some academic dialogue and to adjust those dialogue Habits for multilingual learners. It's a bigger lift to take a classroom that's not doing a lot of dialogue and move it to a dialogue classroom where multilingual learners are getting that language practice opportunity and That's where coaching comes in.
Really refining it so that the teacher who has one multilingual student and the teacher who has seven multilingual students are both able to feel supported and able to move their practice toward a really [00:37:00] heavy dialogue and and vocabulary learning. Classroom, where that's the norm,
Ross Romano: And, and this may have been clear to those who are listening to that, but I think it's worth taking a moment to call it out explicitly, right, that we shouldn't be thinking of these practices as things that are separate from or, or different from just good instructional practices. for all of our students.
But if you wanted to take a moment to kind of highlight, I mean, even if we're talking about the right dialogue and discourse that might not be happening effectively in classrooms that don't have any multilingual students, right? That, but just understanding the critical importance of how that helps students learn, understand their learning, represent their learning the gaps.
That may exist in it also it could relate to just any, any classroom could relate to [00:38:00] classrooms that I don't know if there's a particular grade level or age at which you notice a more of a divergence between challenges that are related to multilingual or second language learners versus younger students whose language abilities are just still developing, right?
Not because of multiple languages, but but in any case, right, to say that these are just good practices to know regardless of Who you were, who's on your class roster this year, because that could change over time, it will change over time. And also there they just work for any kid.
Karen Johanssen Brock: right? Yeah, I mean, and I, I, I want to also say, of course, these are, these are strategies that work for everybody. And we're looking at advanced rigor for everybody. And, and on this, on the same, I want to stop and take just [00:39:00] a quick time out to say, Yes, because you get, you get criticism for that with the, well, yeah, I'm sure they work for everybody, but we're still not really addressing the multilingual learner.
And I want to say absolutely, we need to have this dialogue process in place for everyone so that you can look at that dialogue process for everyone and say, well, so then what will that look like for the three newcomers in my class? With the, with the student who's, who's being the, the dialogue partner with, with a newcomer, how am I going to prep that student to say, Maybe the newcomer is the third person in a, in a, in a partnership that they are then repeating and, and practicing.
And, and you, you prep your, you've prepped your two English speaking partners and say, this person is going to then repeat. So correct them on their, their job is language within this academic topic. So give them the practice and have, and have them help them repeat. So it's not just a, we'll do it. And then language kids will just get it.
It still needs. You need to stop and make sure that we have very [00:40:00] specific adaptations and intentionality for each student and the needs of each student. It's a, like I said, it's a much bigger lift if you're not already doing this work. It doesn't mean it's hard. It's, it's hard. It's still easy, it's still easy enough that every teacher can do it.
It's just increasing the, the, the opportunities for. For dialogue. So it's,
Ross Romano: yeah, I'm thinking maybe it's another way of saying let's say you're a teacher who you've been teaching for 10, 15 years and it's, I have a couple of multilingual learners every other year or so, or you're a school leader who's, well we have about 3 percent multi thinking learners, right?
That, that spending the time to become familiar with these strategies and to implement them will not, it's not a waste of your time because, one, you will much better serve those students who you may have. not been serving [00:41:00] as well traditionally, but also you will be able to apply these strategies to the other learners as well.
And we all of course have those resources around time and where do we spend our learning and what, what should our professional development be on now or our coaching. And you know, even though I would hope that there's not too many, educators out there who would think of it as, well, this is really only for like a couple of kids.
But you know, there's only so much learning we can do each year, but in reality, it's, it's going to just make you more effective. overall, and to be prepared for that year when that number goes from two to eight and you're not scrambling to catch up.
Karen Johanssen Brock: well, and yeah, I appreciate you bringing that up because I guarantee that every single child in the class will be, their learning will be exponentially accelerated. So [00:42:00] your multilingual learner, when you're tweaking it to fit that child and the whole class is doing this work. everyone in the class. Well, we, we know that when, when you teach something to somebody else, you're better at it.
You have a deeper learning. And that's what we're giving students the opportunity to do when we, when we dialogue and when we really set them up for dialogue, using the vocabulary words that we just use, referring to the reading that we just, or the video that we just watched, or the reading that the teacher just, just read, but referring to that new knowledge in that, in that dialogue opportunity.
Everybody is smarter at the end of that and a teacher is going to look a lot better. The results are going to be a lot, 10, 15 percentage points higher on any given assessment easily by, by adding dialogue and by being very intentional with academic vocabulary development.
Ross Romano: So Karen [00:43:00] here, this is the last question. It's kind of going to put you on the spot, but in kind of one or two sentences, what, what would your goal be for a after they've worked through this book? What? You know, what should they now know how to do or what process should they have implemented that kind of summarizes what an effective reading of this book would be.
Karen Johanssen Brock: I would hope that at the end they will have a really robust, intentional, professional development plan starting in August, moving all the way through the year. They never stop and they have all teachers actively working toward Students in dialogue that by October, every student has had six to eight opportunities to go through a [00:44:00] process where they learn to vocabulary words, then they read or the teacher reads or they watch a video of something that they're, they're learning academically.
And they're, they've had some structured dialogue, the teacher has taught them how to do routines of structured dialogue, and they've written something they're, they're proud of that, that happens, that's becomes a really normal thing that, that students are confidently engaged in. It's, it's so gratifying to watch students talk to each other at high levels on an academic topic that it becomes.
really a shot in the arm. It's a, it become, it makes teaching even more fun than it was before.
Ross Romano: Super. So, listeners, you can find the book, Coaching for Multilingual Student Success, from Solution Tree or on Amazon or wherever else you get your books. Karen, is there anything else listeners should check out? Any other related resources or any other work you're doing that they should look at?[00:45:00]
Karen Johanssen Brock: I I'll put my, I'll webpage, I'll give you my webpage, just, just Karen J Brock.
I'm working on another new book with Margarita Calderon on looking specifically at strategies for K 3 and she's going to do a book on 4. 8 or 4. 12 actually. So that's, that'll, that'll be out probably, it'll probably be a year before that comes out. But Yeah, that's I've got more resources for instructional coaching and professional learning and then and putting plans together on my website.
Ross Romano: Excellent. We will put the links below. We'll put the link to Karen's website, karenjbrock. com. Also, the links to where you can find the book directly and Karen's link to Connect on LinkedIn if you'd like to connect there. So please do check those out if this is a topic that would support you and help you to be more effective in educating your learners.
Please also, if you have not already, subscribe to the Authority for more author interviews like [00:46:00] this one coming your way. Every week we'll cover all kinds of topics, as you know, listeners. So check that out, or visit bpodcast. network to learn about all of our shows. Karen, thanks again for being on the show.
Karen Johanssen Brock: Thank you.