Advancing Equity through ELL Program Reform: An Introduction to the Issue from the Editorial Board
by Jeff Ellenbird, Lloyd Sheldon Johnson, Maria Puente, Alison Ruch, Lee Santos Silva and Jennifer Valdez
“This reform - along with the inequities it attempts to dismantle as well as the inequities that still need dismantling – is ultimately linked to the world and events around us that are rooted in a history of racial, linguistic and other injustices.”
In this introductory article to the 2022 issue of Teaching for our Times: Centering Equity and Cultural Wealth, we introduce the Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC) English Language Learning (ELL) program reform and provide an overview of the articles in this issue and their relationship to the reform. We argue that comprehensive ELL program reform is linked to the broader struggle for racial, linguistic, and other issues of social justice. It requires not only pedagogical and programmatic change, but also broad collaboration across departments, a campus-wide reckoning and understanding of ELL students’ cultural wealth, and institutional commitment to challenging and dismantling perceptions, practices, and policies that create barriers for ELL students’ sense of belonging and academic success in the college community.
Sharing Our Stories: Multiple Perspectives on Leading the Comprehensive ELL Program Reform
by Jeff Ellenbird, Lindsay Naggie, Alan Shute and Maria Puente
“The process of doing research and sharing findings with colleagues liberated faculty from the constraints of the existing program curricula and levels, opening up many possibilities.”
In 2016, Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC) was awarded an Asian American, Native American and Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPISI) Title III grant which paved the way for a major five-year reform of the ELL program. This comprehensive reform was the heart of this grant, designed to address the structural inequities of the original ESL program that resulted in low retention rates of ELL students as they progressed through a long sequence of ESL classes, sometimes totalling as much as 36 credits.
In this article, three professors of the ELL Department discuss their roles, perspectives, and stories in leading this reform, each one of them contributing a section to the article. The project director of the grant introduces this article with a brief overview and rationale for this grant and the need for reform in the first section. The second section then examines the important role played by a faculty-led research review of best ELL practices in scaffolding and anchoring the program reform. The third section details previous attempts and obstacles to reform at BHCC, and then narrates the steps taken during the grant’s duration in defining new program outcomes and course sequencing. The final section discusses the key institutional steps and intentional collaboration needed in completing a major program reform.
Farewell to Monolingualism, Hello to Translingual Orientation
by Naoko Akai-Dennis
“When their Englishes are constantly gazed at and policed so that they are easy for teachers’ ears to catch, their linguistic and cultural identities are on the verge of erasure.”
In 1974, the Conference on College Composition and Communication declared a resolution titled (and upholding) “Students’ Right to Their Own Language.” In 2019, forty-five years later, at an opening session of the conference of the same organization, Asao Inoue had to title his chair’s address “How Do We Language So People Stop Killing Each Other, or What Do We Do About White Language Supremacy?” Students’ rights to their own language are yet to be claimed. According to Inoue “The key to fighting White language supremacy is in changing the structures, cutting the steel bars, altering the ecology, in which our biases function in our classrooms and communities.” This article is part of this larger conversation.
This article analyzes detrimental effects of monolingualism and discusses features of ELLs written products as translanguaging. Further, the author of this article revisits, reflects on, and re-envisions her feedback to one former student’s draft, applying the idea of “relocalized listening.” The author frames this article into one form of qualitative research, autobiography as inquiry, and therefore gives an account of her experiences as a language user.
From Remediation to Imagination: The Case for Humanizing Pedagogies in the Community College Classroom
by Cynthia Cummings
“Creating a learning environment that incorporates student cultural wealth into the curriculum heightens student interest and helps them move forward by measuring outcomes by what has been achieved rather than against a norm referenced test…”
This paper explains how traditional Eurocentric curricula and teacher centered learning environments diminish the educational experiences of both the ELL student and the culturally and economically underrepresented native speaker. It argues that remedial programming based on student scores on standardized assessments and the prerequisite model is not effective and acts as a barrier between underperforming learners and content studies. This paper also maintains that a curriculum centered on humanizing pedagogies can empower students, build academic literacy skills and teach metacognitive strategies. It contends that when properly executed with differentiated instruction, humanizing pedagogies foster learner engagement and promote student acceleration. This paper will conclude with a self-check or audit to assess how educators and staff may unwittingly act as gatekeepers by guiding learners to remedial programs based on standardized test scores or bias. Rationale for high-stakes testing, remedial learning and teacher centered pedagogies will be debunked with discussion and examples of humanizing pedagogies, integrating learners’ cultural wealth, the U-shaped curve, and data demonstrating effective asset-based approaches. Anyon (1980), Bartolome (1994, 2004, 2006, 2017), Delpit (1988), Freire (1968, 2005), Moll et al (2005) and Yosso (2005) are referenced.
A Culturally Responsive Approach to Success Coaching for Asian American Students in English Language Learner Courses
by Zaida Ismatul Oliva, Christina Lambert and Cherry Lim
“For our ELL students, success coaching means so much more than just being advised on the next course/s to take or getting help with coursework. It also means finding…ways to learn how to navigate, not just life as a college student, but life itself.”
In fall 2016, Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC) received the Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPISI) grant to undertake comprehensive reform of the ELL Program. One important aspect of the grant that was key to the success of its implementation was the development and expansion of a success coaching model that complemented the curriculum and served students of the new English Language Learner (ELL) program, where Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students were overrepresented at BHCC. This article will present an outline of the work accomplished to create a new, culturally responsive success coaching model that provided targeted support for AAPI students and the steps taken to fully expand the model across the new ELL program. After creating a model that focused on culturally relevant advising practices and a close working relationship with the ELL department, the work shifted to incorporating more sustainable practices to fully scale this model across all courses. This prompted the collaboration with BHCC’s ACE Mentor program to train student mentors in learning and performing selected ELL success coaching duties. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, success coaches switched to online advising, creating a series of videos that replicated key pieces of the coaching model while continuing to maintain a classroom presence. With the institutionalization of the new ELL Program in fall 2020, culturally responsive success coaching was also implemented at full scale and started serving 100% of ELL students.
Applying Critical Race Theory and Building Community to Bridge the Disciplinary Divide Between ELL & ENG
by Naoko Akai-Dennis, Jennifer Burke Grehan, Ashley Paul and Jennifer Valdez
“In creating a community of learners and moving within college resources and events, we are empowering our students to step out of their marginalized corner and into the college community, prepared to move within the system that challenges others who are less familiar or informed.”
The authors of this article co-teach two learning communities that bridge the traditional disciplinary divide between English language learning and English composition. Our pedagogies for these learning community clusters, as they are known at Bunker Hill Community College, draw upon tenets of critical race theory such as co-disciplinarity and valuing students’ experiential knowledge, community cultural wealth, and linguistic diversity. Following an exploration of our theoretical framework, each co-teaching pair offers an overview of the relevant assignments and assessments in their respective cluster.
Breaking down Borders in Collaboratively Designing and Teaching an Integrated ELL/SOC Learning Community
by Jeff Ellenbird and Aurora Bautista
“When a concept, a text, or an experience is presented and analyzed through different disciplinary perspectives, it can blur the borders between the two disciplines so that the learning becomes intertwined and iterative. That learning is the magic of a learning community cluster that we want students to experience.”
In this article, two community college faculty members (ELL and Behavioral Sciences) discuss their experience collaboratively developing a linked ELL and Sociology learning community course. Their discussion begins with the factors that led to their teaming up as co-teachers and then to their collaborative process of developing a fully integrated curriculum that supports students in using sociological concepts to reflect on their immigrant experiences. Particular attention is given to a high stakes essay assignment they developed and how they leveraged their different strengths in scaffolding student learning and writing through integrated assignments and collaborative feedback to support students in writing this challenging essay. To illustrate the connections between theory and practice, this discussion of their collaboration is framed against the findings of a faculty-led research review on best ELL practices that paved the way for a major ELL program reform at the community college where they teach.
The Search for a New Identity
A multimedia project by Lindsay Naggie featuring voices of faculty, staff and administrators from the ELL Program Reform with commentary by Shawna Shapiro (2011) author of “Stuck in the Remedial Rut”.
“The participants were questioning not only themselves and their role, but also how other forces at work contributed to student experience...That willingness to critically examine all aspects of student experience from intake to graduation led to deep conversations and deeper partnerships.”
In this multimedia publication, video excerpts from the faculty, staff and administrators who participated in round table discussions about the five-year reform of an English Language program at a large, urban institution are woven together to examine the critical question of how and at what point did the faculty and staff redefine community and common goals. Participants also discussed the challenges and opportunities the ESL (now ELL) Department faced in revising the program. The excerpts are grouped into three categories, and a written synopsis by the project author, Lindsay Naggie, is provided to draw out the connections. Shawna Shapiro, author of one of the reform’s guiding texts, “Stuck in the Remedial Rut” provides additional commentary.
