Washington Academy of Languages

A classroom

Originally uploaded by Im *S

The central debate in the recent election for the position of Superintendent of Public Instruction was teacher and student accountability. The issue took the form – as it usually does: what type of objective tests will demonstrate student learning and, therefore, teaching effectiveness? There is one area that received scant attention from the candidates: the civil rights of students.

In my job of observing ESL Endorsement candidates, I have visited more than 40 Elementary, Middle, and High schools in Washington State. Almost all are overcrowded. I have seen portable classrooms filling the playground, gymnasiums, cafeterias, computer labs, and even storage areas turned into classroom. Students in overcrowded classrooms pay less attention, achieve less, and experience more violence than their less-crowded counterparts. If someone needs research support for my assertions, pick any study on the subject of overcrowding and education and you will find a plethora of research. These overcrowded classrooms are more likely to have substandard electrical and lighting systems, safety features, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. Taken as a whole, I believe this is a civil rights issue. To ask a child in an overcrowded school to take the same examinations as a child takes in a school with an appropriate student-teacher ratio in a modern, equipped classroom is nonsense, or worse. Overcrowded classrooms should have been included in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 as inherently unequal. If African-Americans were getting lower scores in segregated schools because separation was inherently unequal, surely overcrowded schools are a civil rights issue by the same criteria.

Realistically, in these economic times the situation will not change in the near future. As a teacher trainer at WAL, I find it appropriate to train teachers for reality and to make them feel effective. I also want to train teachers to avoid burnout from frustrations in difficult situations or from watching politicians debate with their eyes closed. I will take my lead from Vygotsky who said “What children can do together today, they can do alone tomorrow.”

Doing Co-operative Learning is not only effective teaching, it is imperative in overcrowded situations if learning is to transpire at all. I think most experts in the field distill Co-operative Learning down to five principles, and many books are written about each: Let us assume you have 28 ELL students in a sheltered (content) class. You have groups of four sitting at seven tables. Here are some thoughts to keep in mind:

1. Each student has a clearly perceived idea notion of positive interdependence.
2. There should be considerable face-to-face interaction.
3. Each student has a clearly perceived individual accountability and personal responsibility to achieve the group goals.
4. The teacher monitors and models frequent use of small group skills.
5. The teacher checks the group functioning to improve effectiveness.

In other words, this is far different from having 28 students do the same activity. Any teacher knows that most of the children will end up with little or no attention and there are always special children issues in every classroom. I stated the five ideas/principles/ suggestions in the most general fashion. We have to find ways to defeat overcrowded classrooms ourselves in the near future. Each of the suggestions requires some considerable elaboration; far more than a blog of its own. I will wait to see if there are questions coming from you. You may also sign up for any of our classes at WAL that you believe will provide some classroom help. I fear that most help will come from our own mental resources if history is any judge of so-called ‘priorities’ during a recession.

- Dr. Paul Schneider, Director of Teacher Education Programs, WAL

This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Teaching English as a Second Language. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.