As a language learner herself, Alexandra has spent more than twenty years serving a wide range of language learners. She is a former teacher, academic coach, elementary school principal, and district-level director in highly diverse urban and suburban school districts. This range of experiences has equipped her with a unique lens that brings together a deep knowledge of second language acquisition, the guidance of evidence-based practices, and an ability to tailor supports to the distinct contexts and needs of each school she serves.
She is the founder and current chief equity and achievement officer at TaJu Educational Solutions, a company dedicated to meeting the needs of language learners while ensuring access and social justice for all students. Alexandra’s skilled, flexible, and evidence-based approach to supporting a range of educators has resulted in dramatic improvement for programs across the country. Because of this, she has now worked with school, district, regional, and state leaders and teachers in more than forty states across the United States to provide a range of professional development, job-embedded coaching, technical assistance, and program evaluation support.
Alexandra is a member of and frequently presents at the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE), TESOL International Association, Public Policy Professional Council (PPPC), Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), National Council of State Title III Directors, Illinois Association of Multilingual Multicultural Education (IAMME), Learning Forward, and Illinois Reading Council (IRC).
Alexandra received a bachelor’s degree from Drake University, a master’s degree from National Louis University, and is completing her doctorate from Concordia University.
To learn more about Alexandra Guilamo’s work, visit www.tajulearning.com, or follow her @TajuLearning on Twitter.
To book Alexandra Guilamo for professional development, contact [email protected].
Introduction
I have served in many different roles as an educator, but the two roles I loved most were those of academic coach and elementary school principal. They weren’t always easy, but they gave me the opportunity to focus on the most important parts of education—teaching and learning. During those years, I refined many of the skills I needed to work with diverse teachers on implementing powerful practices to accelerate the growth of all students. After all, making a difference in the lives of students is the reason I went into education.
I loved shutting out the world, going into classrooms to observe a lesson, and working side by side with teachers to zero in on a goal that could improve student learning. This was something I did in every classroom—monolingual, bilingual, dual-language, special education, and so on. The teachers never questioned the ability to move in and out of each of these spaces with such ease. Being bilingual myself and having taught language learners all my life provided a sense of confidence in knowing what to look for and a strong credibility with the teachers with whom I worked.
As a principal and academic coach, I observed instruction in English, Spanish, and Arabic. Since I transitioned into my role as a consultant, I’ve observed lessons in nearly a thousand classrooms in Spanish, English, Mandarin, Arabic, Somali, Hmong, Polish, German, and many more languages.
When I first began my consulting work, I approached interactions with these new and amazing teachers with one basic assumption: that everyone observed teachers who use a language other than English with the same ease, lens, and process that had become second nature to me. And yet, with each school and district visit, it became more and more clear that this was not the case.
As I work with schools across the United States, I’m still amazed at the overwhelming pressures on the shoulders of bilingual and dual-language teachers. These pressures include keeping up with pacing, implementing buildingwide initiatives that require anywhere from fifteen to sixty minutes of already limited instructional time, and of course, increasing achievement. These pressures are riddled with challenges, such as the absence of a viable curriculum (Marzano, 2003), valid and reliable data, time to teach the required standards, and basic supports that are staples for monolingual teachers.
As a former administrator, I believe that bilingual and dual-language teachers should and must be accountable for producing results. Students come to school counting on receiving an education that will prepare them for the future. But due to the unique challenges they face, the message that bilingual and dual-language teachers receive is to produce more with less. There seems to be an unspoken expectation that these teachers can produce the same academic results as their monolingual colleagues while having to teach an additional set of standards, translate huge amounts of print resources, and constantly justify why their classrooms have to look different—as if the program itself was the way to achievement.
Confronting and overcoming these challenges can be mentally and physically exhausting, resulting in immense turnover and creating a teacher shortage that could have huge consequences for U.S. students, schools, and the future workforce necessary for any society to thrive.
As educators, we must not force bilingual and dual-language teachers to simply make it work under these conditions. At a minimum, we must share the responsibility of providing all teachers with equal access to the same supports for improving their effectiveness. While aspects of the process are more challenging than others, leaving these teachers to fend for themselves is no longer tolerable or sustainable.
As schools determine how to ensure the academic success and language development of every language learner now mandated by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), supporting teacher effectiveness must be the focus of discussion and action. This work of observing, providing feedback, and coaching teachers is critical. But this can’t be just any support, especially if it conflicts with the research or focuses on using materials and initiatives rather than student thinking and increasingly complex language development.
The challenges teachers face in getting quality feedback and support always seem to reflect a few reoccurring themes.
• Support personnel in the building did not observe the teachers because they didn’t know how it was possible to observe without speaking the language.
• District personnel only observed and evaluated teachers for the required two to four observations per year because no building coach or evaluator spoke the program language.
• District personnel observed teachers using a business-as-usual approach and offered feedback that was counterproductive to the very principles that were most essential to the program model in which they taught.
• Teachers felt disconnected and abandoned while still hungry for collaboration and opportunities to grow.
I realized that it wasn’t only bilingual and dual-language teachers who needed support to grow their practice. Rather, school and district personnel who are there to coach and support the teachers who navigate this gray area of learning content and language were also at a loss. How would teachers get the coaching they needed if the coaches didn’t, couldn’t, or struggled to enter into classrooms to provide meaningful and constructive help? Interestingly, it wasn’t only English-speaking coaches who steered clear of these classrooms. Even coaches who spoke the language of instruction struggled to understand teacher practice and how to improve student learning.
To answer the preceding question, I must first acknowledge that coaches who support bilingual and dual-language teachers face unique circumstances and challenges, and therefore need a different model for coaching and observation—one that helps them overcome the issues created by language barriers and misconceptions about the coaching process. This book presents a responsive
