School Visits and School Hospitality

I've been very fortunate to be in a position to vsit schools and have a glimpse of what goes on there. It was a central part of my research project since I wanted to get to know (up close and personal) how innovative projects with languages actually work, but we all know how protective principals and teachers can be of the work they do. It was of great help to have colleagues in the School of Education with existing strong links with schools and with the generosity to spend their time organising these visits for me (thanks are due in this sense to Leslie, Nadeen and Margarita!).

The first school I visited was the Language Academy of Sacramento where we were welcomed by Lalo, its over all Principal. He spent the afternoon with us and generously answered all my questions and more! LAS is a charter school that was created when the bilingual strand of the school were they were did not prove to be the best fit to serve the community of children and families who wanted a truly bilingual education (Spanish-English) for their children. It has low rotation rates of teachers and great results for the kids in standardised tests and beyond. This is not the place for an extended report on the school visit, but I wanted to share a few of the things I saw at the school that I thought were interesting.

As we were leaving, we took a group photo:

I also visiting Marguerite Montgomery, a dual immersion bilingual school in Davis. The Principal of the school spent the morning with us and showed us around the preschool and elementary classrooms where she knew, on a first-name basis, not only all the teachers, but also all the students. She exemplified the level of commitment and command of all that is needed to undertake the kinds of changes that the school is undergoing. 

In spite of their busy schedules, Principals were very generous with their time. They shared their experience and answered all my questions and they personally took me around the school to visit the different classrooms. 

Some general traits that you can observe in many schools appear to be common traits all over. 

One of the first things that hits you like a waft of presume as you walk into the schools and the classrooms is the wealth of resources that they have. Part of the explanation for the wealth of resources is that teachers are the single users of their classrooms (there is no other group that uses the classroom in the afternoon or evening) and if anyone moves across classrooms, it is students, e.g. when it comes to specialist classes such as music or when children move up to a higher class if they are more advanced. 

Routines seem to be very much in place and part of the activities of all the classes I visited. For example, there are chants to call student's attention (e.g. 1-2-3, eyes on me) 

There is a lot of classroom-specific language. Students are very responsive - and very well behaved - almost other-worldly compared to classes I am familiar with

There is a clear emphasis on displaying the work of students and their achievement.

Students work displayed on the walls and windows and hanging from the cealling. 

Testing is not visible in the class, but it is very much present in the life of the school and the teachers and students. 

There is usually a display that has all the students in the class, their photographs and some information about them. 

The different classrooms I visited had different setups and furniture arranged in different ways but, all of them had options for rearrangement, possibilities for corners, small group areas (and in many of them there were small groups of students with a teacher or assistant working on some particular point or skill. 

Most classrooms I visited were bilingual and books played an important part. There were books in different languages, books displayed, books set aside for particular work. 

In all classrooms there is plenty of reading materials in the languages that are relevant to the students. There are reading corners and various spaces where students can read quietly. 

Many of the posters and displays had to do with language awareness issues in the bilingual context and were closely related to the recent work. Teachers often made reference to these displays during their classes. 

The one-to-one model here is implemented by means of Chrome books in trolleys or other devices that are stored in trolleys. 

Different aids for teaching on the walls (e.g. word list)

Yes, everyone can point to things they may want more of, but they also admit to be very well equipped. 

As a general rule, in the classes I visited, not all the children are working on the same thing. There are small groups, some with a teacher, some with a helper, some on their own, working on different activities. Some times they rotate between stations.

When they come together, especially the younger ones, they often sit on  a mat. All classes have rugs where students sit to listen to stories or sing songs or share different classroom moments.

The rugs usually have clearly designated areas for each kid and, in some classes they also have language input in the languages of the school.

In many of the classes (and in the different languages) I observed different chants and routines that teachers employ to bring children to focus.

I was lucky to visit schools that work in dual immersion programmes with Spanish and Mandarin (I know that there are also other that work with Korean, Vietnamese, Portuguese and other languages). I'll try to upload some more of these when I have a minute.