Coaching Teachers in Bilingual and Dual-Language Classrooms. Alexandra Guilamo
when they don’t understand the language. I do not aim to replace adopted teacher evaluation frameworks. Instead, I present an observation and feedback cycle that is a fair and just means of using such frameworks to improve student learning. When schools use this observation and feedback cycle in concert with teacher evaluation frameworks, they provide a level of neutrality, consistency, and accuracy that supports effective teachers of ELs (Fenner et al., 2014).
The Role of Advocacy in Coaching
One of the most basic mindsets that coaches can transfer from their prior experience is the idea that they must work to improve teacher practice while also advocating to overcome challenges that may stand in the way of teacher effectiveness. Many challenges stand in the way of bilingual and dual-language teachers’ ability to be most effective. These challenges include:
• Being used as interpreters and translators rather than having time to plan high-quality instruction
• Receiving no curriculum materials in the language of instruction
• Teaching double the standards and learning targets while being expected to maintain the same pace as monolingual teachers
• Receiving no training in the pedagogy, practices, and strategies that meet the needs of language learners
• Having no process to distinguish struggling or honors-level language learners from the language-learning process
• Being required to use English-only data to determine student progress, needs, and teacher evaluation
Sadly, I could add many more items to this list. This status quo would seem appalling if we were discussing an international baccalaureate (IB) program or gifted classroom. Yet schools still expect EL, DL, and TBE teachers to reach the same level of growth and success with their students despite having fewer opportunities, fewer resources, and fewer tools for success. That’s why coaches must be powerful advocates and allies in helping to overcome these challenges and barriers.
This is where coaches from outside the EL, DL, and TBE program have the advantage. It’s easier to identify inequities when there’s a more equitable reference point. These coaches know the many systems, infrastructures, and supports their schools have to ensure access, equity, and dignity in other programs. Structures like professional development plans, cohesive and viable curricula, collaborative planning, feedback, and use of valid data to drive decision-making processes exist to strengthen the ability to achieve success. Coaches must take action to ensure that the lack of these tools doesn’t undermine this success for bilingual and dual-language teachers and students they work with. As coaches provide feedback to teachers, it is critical that they use their monolingual reference point as a sort of check and balance. They might ask themselves, “What would we do if this were happening outside of this program?”
For example, during post-observation conversations, coaches might find themselves discussing with teachers the lack of scaffolds to improve student engagement and learning. In digging deeper into the issue, a coach learns that the teacher didn’t have time to create those scaffolds because she spends about eight hours every week translating the curriculum she received into the language other than English (LOTE), even though she has been told that she must teach that content in English. The coach must address this challenge because students learning another language need scaffolds to access the curriculum. Fair and effective coaches will pause to check their monolingual reference point. Would we ask monolingual teachers to spend eight hours translating their districtwide curriculum? Clearly we would not. Therefore, teachers need coaches who see these issues as matters beyond a teacher’s control and who will work on teachers’ behalf to get rid of those obstacles (Kotter, 2012).
Data Gathering
In the 1980s, schools used open-ended visits and checklists as their methods for gathering observation data. These tools had various components from state to state and provided very little guidance for what to do during observation to objectively determine whether components were strengths or weaknesses. But with time, these tools changed. From the late 1990s to early 2000s, a number of approaches to gathering data during observations posed additional problems for teachers serving language learners (Danielson, 2000; Marzano, 2013). Schools began exchanging checklists for rubrics and providing more parameters around what to do during observations—instructional rounds, classroom walkthroughs, lesson scripting, and so on. Teachers needed these parameters. Some proved to be more conducive to language learning contexts, like the walkthrough protocols that allowed observers to make more open-ended observations around specific focus areas (for example, environment, classroom management, and even engagement and discussion).
Others, however, proved to be detrimental to most bilingual and dual-language contexts. I still hear from bilingual and dual-language educators across the United States about observation “horror stories.” In one of the buildings I supported, a teacher begged me to talk with her principal about the following situation: The principal had asked her to teach the lesson in English even though that wasn’t reflective of the program and her students were not used to learning content in English. Not only did she have to spend long hours translating the lesson and resources into English, but the students kept responding to her in Spanish. The worst part of the observation for the teacher was when the principal chose one of her new students to talk to, not realizing that the student didn’t speak any English. This concluded with the principal reprimanding the teacher before leaving the room for not teaching her class any English, and a teary-eyed new student asking the teacher if it was her fault that her teacher got in trouble.
These sad realities are the result of a data-gathering process that refuses to acknowledge the two observational elephants in the room: (1) the lesson is in a language the observer doesn’t speak, and (2) the effectiveness of the lesson has just as much to do with how students improve their language development as with how they master the content. Data-gathering processes must be honest and objective for all classrooms. Many states have tried to accomplish objectivity by standardizing data-gathering protocols, such as the following, that champion limited and controlled practices during all observations.
• Scripting (or recording copious notes that aim to transcribe) what the teacher is saying and doing
• Scripting what the student is saying and doing
• Anchoring data with qualitative markers (for example, time during the lesson, number of students, quantity of instances, and so on)
• Noting and duplicating aspects of the environment (for example, anchor charts, classroom appearance, objectives, and directions on the board)
The designers of these protocols aimed for observational objectivity, unbiased data gathering, and models for what to do next. They meant to establish a judgment-free process for improving teacher quality. But by prioritizing the scripting of language interactions and language use (especially that of the teacher) as the only objective way to collect evidence, they ended any possibility of objectivity for bilingual and dual-language classrooms. And without the written account that scripting offers, qualitative markers lack enough substance to effectively coach.
Without full proficiency in the language, it is difficult for observers to log what the teacher says, what the students say, or any of the word-for-word print environment. Any attempt to do so would be unfair. Coaches and educational advocates must have the sense and courage to refuse a teacher evaluation process that leaves coaches without a clearly defined approach for how to document teaching and learning without understanding the words, visible print, and cultural nuances of bilingual and dual-language classrooms. Both the implementation of specific protocols and the use of common sense to recognize when a protocol will not be effective are attempts to engage in a process with bilingual and dual-language teachers that is highly objective, collaborative, and constructive, but the process cannot be so in the existing context.
What to Expect From the Observation and Feedback Cycle
The observation and feedback cycle is a four-stage process consisting of: (1) an essential mindset shift that frames the foundation for a fair, honest, and collaborative process; (2) the pre-observation conference;