Ester De Jong: [00:00:00] Know your student, know who they are, know what they bring, and again, maintain this asset based view. I think particularly for students who have had these interrupted schooling experiences, it’s sometimes hard continues to remind ourselves that the way that we define knowledge in school. It’s very specific and the kinds of skills that we value, the kinds of ways of being that we value sometimes for students who may have had very different experiences.

It’s hard to recognize that as strengths because our system does not really create opportunities for students to show those strengths. And so I think teachers have to become really creative in terms of creating an environment where students can really shine and say, these are the skills I bring to the learning task.

And as we all know, learning needs to start with where the student’s at. 

Mandi Morris: Hi, welcome to the ML Chat. I’m Mandi Morris. I’ll be your host today. And our [00:01:00] guest was Ester De Jong. What a cool conversation that went in directions I wasn’t necessarily expecting. We were talking about everything from the science of reading to progress oriented approach, education, like real outside the box we talked, formative assessment, summative assessment, and just rethinking the way that school looks for English learners and how can asset-based education.

Change and shift your instruction. Such a great conversation with someone who is coming with 30 years of experience in the field. I know you’re gonna enjoy this conversation with Ester. Let’s go. Welcome to the ML Chat podcast. I am your host, Mandi Morris, and I’m so excited to be here today with Ester De Jong.

Ester is Professor in the culturally and linguistically diverse education program at the University of Colorado, Denver. Prior to uc, Denver, she was the director of the School of Teaching and Learning and professor of SL [00:02:00] bilingual education at the University of Florida. She has been in the field of ESL bilingual education for over 30 years as a practitioner and a researcher.

Her research focuses on preparing teachers to work with bilingual learners in K 12 schools, and integrated approaches to the schooling of bilingual learners, including two-way bilingual education. Dr. De Jong was president of TESOL International Association from 2018 to 2018, and currently serves as editor of the Bilingual research journal.

Ester, welcome to the podcast. We are so happy to have you here today. 

Ester De Jong: Happy to be here. 

Mandi Morris: Ester, I found you at wida. I was able to go to your session. I enjoyed your session so much. I left with over four pages of notes that I took. I was just, I enjoyed it so much. And after your session, I waited in a long line of other people who wanted to talk to you after your session, and I ended up not having enough time to shake your hand and tell you that I enjoyed your session.

’cause had it. [00:03:00] To get to my next one, so thank you for being here today. Before we go into your WIDA session, I’d love to go back and learn about you and what brought you to ML education. Where did this journey begin for you? 

Ester De Jong: That’s a great question. I think my journey begins in the Netherlands, which is where I was born and raised, and I think I became aware of language issues when I moved from the northern part of the Netherlands to go study in the southern part.

And I suddenly realized that my Dutch was very different and I had no awareness of that before. So that was really like, huh? I was part of a master’s program that focused on language and literature, and one of the conversations was how do we treat languages in schools? And I became much more aware of how Dutch speakers were treated one way and are.

Other languages like Turkish or Arabic for Moroccan students, that there was no place for them. And I saw the inequities that created [00:04:00] and how that really restricted their success in schools in the Netherlands. And I decided that I wanted to pursue bilingual education after that as part of my doctoral work, and that got me to Massachusetts.

And the rest is history, as they say. I’ve been involved in bilingual education since then. 

Mandi Morris: Okay. Wow. So you came all the way to Boston to do your doctorate, and then where did you go from there? Like you, you have this passion, this spark, it keeps driving your education, and then where does it take you to start your career after that?

Well, 

Ester De Jong: first took me to Framingham. After I graduated with my doctoral degree, I realized I needed to get a little bit more experience in the United States, and so I was very fortunate to become the Assistant director of bilingual education and ESL English as a second language program in the Framingham Public Schools.

And Framingham was one of those places where we had everything. We had a two-way bilingual [00:05:00] program. We had a, what at the time was called a transitional bilingual education program. We also had a self-contained English as a second language program, and this was K through 12. And so I had the opportunity to work with amazing teachers in the school system, and so that really was the basis.

Okay, this is. We can do the right thing together. And after doing that for five years, I shifted and went into academia and at the, if you will, the traditional academia thing. We have an opportunity to teach, prepare teachers, and do research. And that’s been the last number of years that I’ve been and engaged with the field.

Mandi Morris: Wow. So Florida is my home state. That’s where I am right now. So did you go from that really ideal like sounding school district down to University of Florida? I did. 

Ester De Jong: So there was an interesting switch for me. I was a professor in the e ESOL bilingual education program, but most of the [00:06:00] teaching. And working was with actually with mainstream teachers who had to become prepared to work with English language learners.

And so that was a big shift for me. ’cause suddenly I went from working with bilingual teachers to working with essentially either general education or. ESL teachers. So I had to learn ESL as, wow, what do you mean you cannot use the home language? And so that’s actually where my journey with TESOL International Association also started.

Now I have to become part of that as a professional organization. And so a lot of my work in Florida, although I kept my foot and hand in bilingual education along the way. Also really began to think hard about, so what do general education teachers need to know? How do we prepare them in order to be effective with multilingual learners?

We also had a very international master’s program, so I had the opportunity to work with students from other countries and them thinking about what does it mean to be an English as an additional language [00:07:00] teacher? So I did that for quite some time and. Then became the director for the School of Teaching and Learning, and that kind of helped me step back and say, so yes, there’s ESOL bilingual education, but now there were nine programs that I was responsible for.

And so that was a really other kind of good learning experience as I continued to be involved with the fields along the way. 

Mandi Morris: Wow. So I, that just strikes a chord for me because we know how much of our, the day for our ML students is spent in core content education and. Though bilingual education, most certainly is growing and has been growing.

There are still so many places across the country that bilingual education isn’t an option. So students are still in a more traditional pullout or standalone ELD model or even getting in some type of integrated support or very limited minutes of support throughout their day. I wonder, what were your main [00:08:00] takeaways from being the director of the education department?

That’s. Such a big responsibility and how, what were the takeaways you tried to leave students with as they went out of the university and into their careers? 

Ester De Jong: I, a number, a couple of things I would say, I think one of the things we tried to work on collectively is to help people understand that working with multilingual learners is not just good teaching.

That it really is a very special, just good teaching, right? But that you really have to think really hard around. What does it mean to actually have a classroom that works for all students, including English language learners or multilingual learners? And there are specific things that we need to do for multilingual learners.

So that was one message that we tried to say, yes, it’s good teaching. Remember that if the teaching is designed for native English speakers. There will be pieces that won’t work for your multilingual learners, so we need to become more, more inclusive. [00:09:00] The other thing I think that we definitely wanted to make sure that our teaching candidates walked away was a assets based perspective.

I. There are so many deficit narratives around our students, and we definitely saw that happening in districts and everywhere else. So we work really hard to say The fact that you speak a language other than English at whole, that you’re still in the process of learning. English is not a deficit’s not a problem.

It’s just you just don’t know English quite yet. And so to really work with them to see these students as resources for their classroom as just a really fascinating other dimension of teaching as opposed to a burden for teaching. So I would say that’s the other part that we really worked on really hard.

Mandi Morris: That’s really neat. That is so much. The mission here at Flashlight Learning too, is to see students as an asset and to really think of our students for the whole child [00:10:00] experience, everything that they bring to the classroom, all of their languages, all of their experiences, and I love the wording that you use, that they just haven’t learned English yet.

That’s part of the journey that they’re on. I think that’s. That’s really a nice message. So you’re at University of Florida and then where do you go from there? 

Ester De Jong: Then I came three years ago to the University of Colorado Denver switch gears, and it’s really interesting being here in Colorado where bilingual education is in some ways more visible than what it was in Florida.

And so I’m here faculty member and working with a tremendous team of individuals, really thinking hard about how do we prepare specialists? Culturally was at diverse education teachers as well as general education teachers. And one of the foci here, which is really fun, is that we have a much stronger emphasis on bilingual teacher preparation, which is something that was harder to do where I was [00:11:00] in Gainesville.

’cause at the time there was no bilingual program in the city. And so to actually be here in the Denver public schools that are multiple bilingual. Schools and bilingual programs is really exciting, and it’s been really fun to have the opportunity to connect with that in a different way at this point.

Mandi Morris: Wow. That’s really neat to be in a place in your career where it, in some ways it feels like you’ve gone full circle. Circle you. Your passion came from bilingual education when you were even just getting your bachelor’s degree. That’s where your spark happened. And now to be at this place in your career to be able, it sounds to be doing work that you’ve been passionate about for so long with other people who are also really sharing that passion with you.

Ester De Jong: Yeah, 

Mandi Morris: exactly. So I have to ask, I did my master’s of TESOL at the University of Central Florida, and Dr. Foltz was the director of that program. And I’m just wondering, I think Florida’s a small enough education space. Did you guys cross paths over the [00:12:00] years? 

Ester De Jong: We sure did. We shared this. Florida has a wonderful T cell professional organization, sunshine State Tcell.

So Keith and I crossed paths multiple times along the way. 

Mandi Morris: I love that. He’s such an incredible person. I was on that board at one point in my career. I’m trying to think back now. I guess it was. Mid two thousands. So yes, it is a really wonderful organization and Dr. Fo was a pivotal part of encouraging both me and my husband to actually move to South Korea to do teaching in South Korea and to have that experience.

And I think it’s. It’s something that’s so exciting and fun about the work that we do to be able to work with people from all over the world, with all different languages and all different life experiences, and then as an educator, to be able to go overseas and to have those experiences to live internationally is also, it can be such a powerful experience.

So That’s so cool. I just, I had to ask if you guys had crossed paths at some point. Okay. So [00:13:00] switching gears, I’d love to go back to that wida. Presentation that you did, and to talk some about the work that you’re doing right now. Your research, as we said it in your intro, you’re both a practitioner and also have done research in your career.

Could you, for everybody listening who wasn’t there, tell us about your session and what brought you to that space? 

Ester De Jong: Oh, that’s a big question in terms of what brought me to the space. So the presentation was called. Literacy and multilingual learners. Are we asking the right questions? That was the title, and it connected back to the larger conversation that we have around reading instruction here in the United States and that many people will know under the signs of reading conversation.

I had the pleasure of being invited to be part of a group that is now the National Committee of Effective Literacy. That basically got together as a group of [00:14:00] advocates as the signs of reading movement expanded in the United States that said, wait a minute, where are multilingual learners in this conversation?

And how do we make sure as state, after state are passing policies and mandates as to how to do reading instruction? That we do that with multilingual learners in mind, and we were just not hearing it right. And that group has been meeting for quite some time, has had a number of publications just saying, are we making sure that as we recommend practices or policies that’s inclusive of bilingual learners?

And so it’s been an interesting journey for me to be part of all of this. ’cause I’m not, certainly not a reading specialist. But I think I’m pretty good at asking questions along the way, and then other people are way better at as to doing all of the research. And so in this presentation, what my goal was to really raise awareness around, so we all talk about science of [00:15:00] reading, but what are we leaving out of the conversation and how does that affect what we do for multilingual learners?

So that was the thrust of the presentation. And my goal with that in the end was to move away from, I think what has happened a little bit in this conversation is that it has become very economized. It’s like you’re either for or against, it’s either yes or no. And people have gotten into that corners and become quite defensive about where they’re at.

And one of the things that I was hoping to be able to do is to say, listen, we need to have a conversation that moves this to more of an end conversation. And so meaning that there are, of course, there is a body of research that considers reading from a particular perspective, and I would say it’s primarily, I would say cognitive perspective and primarily relying on.

Studies that try to quantify things [00:16:00] and it’s very legitimate, brain research, fascinating stuff. And we can learn a lot from that research, but we also have to stop and say, if that’s the only research that we look at, what are we maybe forgetting in terms of other kinds of research? 

Mandi Morris: So you mentioned earlier you were asking questions around what did we miss?

What questions have we maybe not asked yet? What are those questions that we need to ask or what’s your observation about what has been missed? 

Ester De Jong: So one question to ask is when we look at the research that is presented to us as, so this is our body of research that we are drawing conclusions about is so who is in that research?

Is the research actually designed to be specifically looking at multilingual learners at different proficiency levels? So that’s one question. And the answer to that is not always, there’s a few studies, [00:17:00] but many studies kind of bilingual learners, I may be referenced, but they were certainly not the focus of the study.

Another piece that I try to remind people is that the science of reading tends to focus on foundational literacy skills, and so they tend to focus on kindergarten, first and second grade. And so my other point is that all of our students, many of our students are not in K one two. They’re at secondary level and at the secondary level, they come with such a wide range of experiences in terms of schooling experiences, in terms of their literacy, in their home language.

So let’s not forget about that. We have that when we talk about multilingual learners, we’re not just talking about K one two. So that’s another question. Let’s remind ourselves that we need to think about who is included there. So those are my, like who is included Question. Then the other question is, so when we say science of reading, what do we say [00:18:00] counts as science?

And so here, I think that kind of goes back to my, my, my point that I made earlier. It’s like a lot of the science that are be, that’s being cited, I. It comes out of a pretty specific perspective and view of what reading is, and it primarily is a cognitive view of stuff that happens in your brain. And again, I think it’s really important that we understand that.

But we have also science that uses other kinds of strategies, other kinds of design to do research that allows us to look at the kind of social nature of becoming literate. Which is a little different than just reading processes in, in your brain. And I think what we’re trying to do is to say, if you think about all of that, if you think about, so what’s the purpose of reading?

The purpose of reading is to communicate right, to learn, to communicate, to gain new knowledge, to express yourself and give more [00:19:00] new knowledge to other people. If that’s our goal, then we know that. Piece is not just a cognitive piece, it’s very much the social piece as well. And so really it’s exciting.

How about we include that research as well, because it’s part of the whole idea of becoming literate. So that’s the second big chunk I would say, in terms of asking questions. 

Mandi Morris: There are two things that are just so interesting that I would love to go into a little bit deeper and hear you talk a little bit more about, I love that when you’re talking about the science of reading, what is the science, and then also thinking about the.

The context of reading, the social part of reading. That’s really interesting. And having been a secondary teacher for the large majority of my teaching career in the classroom, the social component of any aspect of learning is so prominent in the student’s experience throughout the day. And I’d love to hear you [00:20:00] talk a little bit more about when we think about literacy at the secondary level.

What are you seeing in the field right now? What are you hearing? What are the pain points and is there any advice you have for teachers out there who have students in secondary who literacy is a real need still? 

Ester De Jong: For sure, and I have to put the caveat of, this is not my specialty area, but I think at the secondary level.

There’s, I think a real awareness because students have had a life before they come to secondary, right? Particularly if they’re new to country students. So some of the students may have experienced a lot of trauma. They may have experienced a lot of interrupted schooling, and so they know a lot, they’ve experienced a lot, but they may not have had a lot of formal schooling.

So sometimes we refer to those students as life students, not necessarily the rape. We can do other terms [00:21:00] probably for that, but it is really having this interrupted schooling. Other students have, they’ve been to school up till the point that they come to the United States and enter our school system.

And so we very different profiles. And so I think my message for teachers is, know your student. Know who they are, know what they bring, and again, maintain this asset-based view. I think particularly for students who have had these interrupted schooling experiences, it’s sometimes hard for teachers to remind ourselves that like the way that we define knowledge in school is very specific.

And the kinds of skills that we value, the kinds of ways of being that we value. And so sometimes for students who may have had very different experiences, it’s hard to recognize that as strengths because our system does not really create opportunities for students to show those strengths. And so I think teachers have to become really creative in terms of creating an environment where [00:22:00] students can really shine and say, these are the skills I bring to the learning task.

And as we all know, learning needs to start with where the student’s at. 

Mandi Morris: Yeah. Learning needs to start where the student is at. That’s really powerful. And know your student. I know for the secondary classroom, often teachers feel very connected to the content that they teach. And this is how I teach. This is what my assessment looks like.

My assessment has always looked like this, and it works for everybody else. So it needs to work for you too. I wonder if you, in your. Experience. Experience in your different positions and the teachers that you’ve worked with. What are your thoughts around how does an ESL teacher, or a TWE or DLI, bilingual teacher confront some of that rigidity that they might find in their colleagues to help them to see it from a different perspective?

Ester De Jong: That’s a really hard one. Although I remember way back when Judy Jamison, she used to work for the Center for Applied [00:23:00] Linguistics, and she would she would have this wonderful way of being and she said, so with elementary teachers, she would say, you connect with, know your student. It’s all about the students and it’s all about their wellbeing.

And she said for secondary teachers, it’s all about their discipline. And so part of the conversation, I think with secondary teachers is about, you are passionate about your content. Don’t you want the bilingual learner to also have access to this content that you’re teaching? Because most of the people be, yes, of course I do.

Right now, given what you’re doing, it’s not reaching them. So there’s other things that you can do, and I think that often creates a little bit of a space to say, let’s try some strategies so that these students too can benefit from your knowledge and your passion. I think the idea that the same. Is equitable.

We need to unpack a little bit with ’em. It’s no. When you have an [00:24:00] assessment that’s very language based and language driven, it may not be an equitable assessment in terms of allowing your multilingual learner to show that they actually got your content. And so let’s think about other ways that they can demonstrate that they learned what you wanted them to learn.

’cause ultimately the teacher wants to know that. But that’s a hard one. ’cause I think sometimes we believe that. Oh, that means lowering expectations. No, we are keeping the same standards. We’re just allowing students to demonstrate their understanding in a different way, and that’s sensitive to where there are in terms of their language production skills.

And of course, if the teacher happens to be bilingual, you have many more opportunities for students to demonstrate what they know. But I think that’s the conversation I think to have sometimes I think especially if the teacher can work with the multilingual learner, sometimes it. Work that they can bring back to the general education teacher, the math teacher, the science to say, [00:25:00] look what this, what they can do.

And sometimes that helps also, I think for said, oh, I hadn’t realized that they could do that much. Maybe I can do something different in my own classroom. 

Mandi Morris: I’m curious your perspective, when you were talking about the system that you worked in after getting your doctorate in Boston and you worked in the school district that you described as in some ways perhaps being idyllic, that there were such great systems set up for bilingual education and a team of people that really believed in the work.

What are some. Just even high level takeaways from that system that felt supportive for students, that felt like if schools wanna replicate these things for a strong system for bilingual education, or a strong system for supporting multilingualism and asset-based thinking, what would be ideas or takeaways you can share with us?

Ester De Jong: So I think a lot of the system began and ended probably with [00:26:00] the quality of the teachers that were there. You have to have teachers who understand bilingual development, who understand what bilingual education is all about, who understand what it means to live and learn in a very different environment.

So I think the expertise of the teachers, the expertise of leadership, and mattered a lot that, for example, the school that had the two-way program. That there was a lot of expertise in the principals. They understood what that meant to have a school with a bilingual program. And then I would say one of the characteristics of the teachers was not only did they have this kind of asset-based perspective, they are also extraordinarily reflective teachers.

And so they were constantly thinking about is what we’re doing, still working for the children in front of us? [00:27:00] And they were willing, I would say, to be critical of themselves because they really took that very seriously. But they were also very supportive of one another. So there was a lot of collaboration and a lot of kind of ongoing reflection on.

How can we do better by our students? What do we need to change? And so there was a lot of opportunity for working together, but also professional development, the kind of ongoing professional development and those systems you have to have in place at all levels in a school district to really move the system forward.

It can be the just the one teacher who knows what, what needs to be done. Or even a group of teachers who knows what needs to be done. You need to have that support of leadership at the school level, but also at the district level. And I think get on my little soapbox here. We often skip on the training and the preparation of administrators.

We put a lot of effort [00:28:00] into preparing our teachers, which is good. We need to do that. But I think there’s a, there’s room for growth, let’s put it that way. When it comes to leadership and like principal preparation, 

Mandi Morris: when schools are thinking about professional learning and how to set up professional learning for their teachers, what recommendations do you have?

I feel like schools have different ways of approaching that, where, it’s a menu of choose what you want. We have these asynchronous learnings to. The other. This is a required, you have no choice. You have to be here on Friday for eight hours. I hope you like it if you don’t, sorry. But everything in between.

What would you recommend for a school where is professional learning really having the most impact? 

Ester De Jong: I think that’s the key question. So I think the first question is, do you actually wanna change practices in terms of your professional development? We all know that the one time workshop does not do anything.

You can [00:29:00] put a lot of money into that, but it does not necessarily lead to change. So you need to have ways of following that up with coaching, with observation, with feedback loops for teachers, creative professional learning communities, a lot of professional development. It needs to be sensitive to where the teacher is at, right?

Not every teacher has the same expertise or experiences, and so to have one workshop that does not, that’s not sensitive to where the teacher is at will probably not be as effective, but you have to have a long-term view of what you want for your professional learning. We know that teachers will change if they are given the opportunity to understand what’s happening and getting that kind of constant feedback along the way.

But without that, I think the one time workshop, whether you are interested in it or not, it’s harder to change again, the system, right? The individual teacher, if they really like the [00:30:00] workshop, and the workshop has good grounding as well as practical implication, they’ll take it. Because that’s who they are, but that will be the individual teacher as opposed to the system.

Mandi Morris: You said earlier, know your student and this is the same concept. Know your teacher. So making sure that what I’m hearing from you is making sure the professional learning is really meeting the holistic objectives of the system and moving people together towards that vision by offering professional learning that isn’t a one and done, but has that repetitive and coaching.

Facilitation model alongside of it. 

Ester De Jong: Yeah. Yep. Invest in that. I think 

Mandi Morris: when you are working with teachers now, I’m wondering what is the temperature like for you from you’re a professor, so you’re at that side of preparing teachers and what we hear from admin often, ’cause we talk to a lot of admin that are who’s on the ground, they’ve gotta fill classrooms with teachers.

And what we’re hearing from them is there’s a teacher shortage. We’ve got a [00:31:00] lot of people coming into education. With different routes, less of the traditional route, like I’m doing my four year degree in education and more of alternative licensure routes later in life. I’m wondering, what are you seeing from your side?

What’s the temperature like in education and what might we expect in the upcoming years? 

Ester De Jong: I think that’s an unfair question right now to ask in terms of what’s coming up. I think the question of shortage, I think is pretty universal. And I think in response to that, you do see all kinds of efforts to just try and find other pathways into teaching, whether it’s grow your own programs, but that can be very powerful, whether it’s your traditional program, whether it’s alternative license.

I think right now any state probably has it all, and I think there’s a question around what kind of pathway is the best fit for different individuals. In my [00:32:00] mind, it doesn’t have to be an either or. I think depending on kind of what your experiences are, an alternative licensure might be fine. You really don’t wanna do like a whole four year initial teacher preparation program.

You already come with a lot of experiences. So I think that’s a universal one, and I think part of that is. The public narrative around being a teacher really got hurt along the way As teachers were asked to do things that were not really make them feel treated like professionals. Where the working conditions are really challenging, where the pay is not really very like comm with the job that they actually have.

So all of those things collide together, I think. I think you see that now too. I would say that some of the way that, for example, the reading reform efforts are being laid out. It is not always done with a [00:33:00] lot of respect for the teachers. It’s assumed like you don’t know what you’re doing and so now we’re gonna tell you how to do this.

And I don’t think that makes people feel treated like professionals. And some people are like, okay, I don’t need this. I will find some something else. So we do need to really think about how do we make. This profession, again, a, the kind of very honored profession that it is and should be. And then we need some, definitely some efforts into that.

And then making sure that along the way you keep these quality components. So you know, for example, an alternative licensure gets people ready for the classroom quickly. But it also often means that there needs to be more mentorship and induction afterwards in order to sustain that. So if you know that we need to build those systems into place too, we need people to stay longer than the three to five years that they now stay.

It’s like we can’t afford that. It’s too expensive and it’s not good [00:34:00] for the kids either to have that much turnover. I’m gonna stay, just keep that at that in terms of all the things that are gonna happen in the future. Lord only knows. I think that as long as there are children that need to be educated, that means you’re gonna need teachers, and I hope that we can continue to have a commitment to.

Quality teachers and public education because that’s a very important institution in this country. 

Mandi Morris: Yes. Yeah. I agree so much. And I what you shared about the profession being one that people can feel like professionals and going back to some of that autonomy and teaching. I know I, I’ve had friends and coworkers over the years that had been in the work for a long time and said things like, this isn’t fun anymore.

When I am told that I have to teach this on Monday, and if I’m not on page 75 by Wednesday, that there’s punitive measures because of that. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about, have [00:35:00] you seen a shift in your 30 years in education? What teachers identify as, perhaps I don’t have the autonomy or the freedom to do what I wanna do anymore, and how do we balance that as a system for.

What might have felt fun for that teacher to teach? Maybe it wasn’t inclusive for everyone. So some of the shifts and changes that have happened are for the better. How do we balance those two things? Do you have any thoughts about that? I certainly see 

Ester De Jong: the, we’re not giving teachers any autonomy pieces and I think this just really hard it, it has come with, I think, an accountability system.

That has gone haywire a little bit. It’s one thing to say we need to be accountable for learning, and we need to make sure that parents know how their kids are doing and that we make sure that there’s equity in meeting those standards. But I think the amount of testing. And the high stakes nature of those testings, I think has done a lot of damage to the system because it now [00:36:00] becomes about the test as opposed to about the learning.

And of course, we know for multilingual learners, many of those assessments are not quite valid and reliable. So there’s a challenge right there. And then Excel teacher can do whatever they wanna do. That may backfire too, right? That means that sometimes some children are not learning. So you have to have.

Formative assessment that is maybe, if you will, more holistic that maybe values and assesses multiple things and not just a very kind of narrow thing of what we can measure easily. Where we can say we can track progress of children, right? And we can see how they’re growing in different areas. Whether it’s math or literacy or science or critical thinking, all of whatever it is that we care about as part of our educational system.

And so maybe a little bit more of a progress oriented approach as opposed to everybody needs [00:37:00] to score a certain score by this point in the school year, which means you lose the fact that children will grow differently, right? Developmentally, not all kids will. Develop at the same pace and all of that.

That has nothing to do with something’s wrong with you, but to make sure that we have a way of saying our students within the bandwidth that we would expect them to be as opposed to this one, one point in time so that we can say we can hold ourselves accountable for the learning of all of our learners.

And we’re not just benefit the system is not just benefiting one group or the other. Now designing that is not an easy thing to do. But I think frankly, if people have a commitment to that and you have a little bit more maybe flexibility even as a school or in some cases maybe as a district that say, hold us to the standards that we have agreed on, but allow us to get there in a way that makes sense [00:38:00] for our population, our students, our school.

And that not everybody has to be lock step, right? We know that one size doesn’t fit all, and I’ve always said, but then set the parameters around what can and cannot be done. And then I always say, so if we know what the goal is and we have to allow for flexibility as to how to get to that goal, what I’ve also always said is that.

That’s not, doesn’t mean that you can do things at random. There are some principles of understanding based on research that we need to keep in mind as we do that. And so when I wrote my book a while back, I came out of down to this principles thinking, if you will, framework where you say, no matter what your context is.

If you want to design your school or your program in support of multilingual learners, [00:39:00] you have to think about dynamic and additive bilingualism. You have to think about how do we affirm all of the identities that they have and that they bring to our school system? And you need to think about how do we do all of our work in a way that’s inclusive and integrated.

So regardless of where you’re at. And you can design your own program, but to me those were the non-negotiables you need to use. Apply these principles now, what that looks like in school A will be very different than in school B, but the principle still leads to guide decision making. 

Mandi Morris: I love this concept of progress oriented approach.

It’s, it feels very asset based. You think about, I’m a mother and. Your kids, your pediatrician will say these things will happen around these years, but it’s a right, it’s a span of years. And then when we get into school, I have a son in seventh grade and I’m starting to really experience this as a parent [00:40:00] and not just as a teacher of this is the thing that you have to do on this day and order to show that you can move on to this math class next year.

So it starts to get. Like these very finite measures and you start to feel that high stakes starting to creep in, even in middle school, and it doesn’t feel like you have a window of time to show what you know. You have a window of time to learn what you need. Have you ever worked in a system that focuses more on this progress oriented approach?

Have you seen this done K through 12? I 

Ester De Jong: have 

Mandi Morris: not. 

Ester De Jong: I have not. I think there’s been. I think at one point it might have been for moms that actually used like a portfolio assessment at one point in time, which of course allows for a lot broader way of demonstrating your skills. You know what’s interesting is that as part of the CM of Biliteracy, you actually now see when students are being asked to [00:41:00] demonstrate for, to get, in order to get the seal as part of their high school diploma.

And this the traditional tests that you can do. But particularly for languages where we don’t have a readily available test or we don’t have an AP class for that, there’s really creative spaces where students are invited to demonstrate their skills through more of a portfolio kind of an approach, which I think is really exciting as an alternative to the standardized ized tests.

But this might be a good invite for the people who are listening to the podcast, is to text you or email you and say, we are doing that. 

Mandi Morris: Yeah, I’m so curious. It would be really neat to learn more about what could that look like in a K through 12 system. I think sometimes what happens in public education is that the systems have run this way for a while or forever, and then they just continue to run that way because it’s.

You do, and it’s hard to disrupt systems that are really [00:42:00] big, that have a lot of stakeholders, so many levels of people involved, but I, my brain immediately goes to what would that even look like in a classroom? I do think that teachers can, depending on the system that you’re in, but have some control at least over their own assessment.

What is it like analyze your data if students are passing all of your formatives and then failing all of your summatives? Why? What does that tell you about the instrument that you’re using as your summative? What’s the disconnect that’s happening between, they can do the homework and quizzes and formatives, but then they can’t do the summative.

So I think there are areas of control that teachers could have to rethink their own systems. At least their own assessments. 

Ester De Jong: Yeah. Particularly when you start thinking about formative assessments, and I think sometimes there’s that kind of. Frustration too, because again, sometimes the district mandates certain assessments and that’s what they actually use to, to make decisions.

And then as a teacher, [00:43:00] based on your formative assessment, the student can do so much more. They just don’t happen to do it on this particular very narrow assessment. And I think the tension there too, hopefully. When schools do kind of data driven decision making and they get groups together to look at assessments, they ask the question, are we using the right kind of assessment?

Thus, are we actually assessing what we want to assess? Does the assessment line up, like you said, with what’s going on? One of the things that we’re seeing a lot is. Because of the emphasis on foundational skills, there’s a lot of emphasis on assessments that allow students to see, to show that they know their phonics and they their phonemic awareness.

I. Which is very important, but that assessment becomes the key. And then when you look at our students who did really well on those phonics assessment, how are they actually doing on more of the language arts assessment that they all have to pass in third grade? And you see a big [00:44:00] disconnect because it just does not assess the same thing.

Just like you were saying, if there’s no alignment. Between the ongoing assessments and where we really want people to be. I think that’s, that creates challenges, right? And it means that we need to rethink. Which assessments are we actually using and what do they really tell us and what do they maybe not tell us?

And how do we deal with that? 

Mandi Morris: Okay. You brought up phonics, so let’s go back to the science of reading for a minute. And I’d love to know your perspective on, let’s say we’ve got a teacher who’s supporting language learners in the elementary school level, and there’s a lot of talk and a lot of. Buzz about the science of reading, and I think it depends on where you are in the country, where people fall in the science of reading and what the emphasis and push looks like behind that.

But what advice do you give to that teacher? What questions should she be asking so that she can support her students and know where to fill the gaps or what questions to ask or how to. [00:45:00] How to approach that conversation if she wants to learn more. 

Ester De Jong: So one of the things that, that I hope we can do as part of the implementation of curricula that’s as people do all of this, is to allow for a lot of kid watching and to say, is this actually working for my students?

One of the things that we’ve noticed as we’ve talked to teachers is that they feel very constrained in terms of their ability to actually take maybe the goal of the lesson, but then implement it in a way that actually takes the multilingual learners background knowledge into consideration. It takes their language proficiency and understanding of English into consideration, but if they’re being mandate, you have to do it this way and no other way.

So I think one piece is freeing that up just a little bit and allowing teachers to use the professional judgment and say, I [00:46:00] can see that what I’m doing right now is not working for my multilingual learners. I understand I need to do phonics, but you know what? This student cannot make the distinction of the sounds yet that I’m trying to teach.

At that point, it doesn’t make any sense to have that particular phonics lesson. Or I’m being told I need to use these words with the phonics lesson. If they’re not in your multilingual learners vocabulary yet, they’re just learning and practicing the nonsense words not effective as you’re trying to do some of these things.

So that kind of agency for teachers to be able to say, I need to. Be able to respond and do this in a way that is sensitive to where my multilingual ISTs are. I think that agency is just really important. It goes back to our conversation route, treating teachers as professionals. I. I think a lot of the teachers that we’ve talked to talk about the fact that a lot of the texts that are being used, there’s either [00:47:00] assumed background knowledge or they’re very disconnected from actual the cultural experiences of the students.

And so, Rick, let me just. It allow me to include these experiences, right? And let me include scaffolds for bio second language learners, because they need the visuals. They need the comprehensible input. They need the interaction with their peers and not all of the lessons that they’re being given. Allow for those opportunities.

So I would say to me, a key piece is make sure that you look closely as to whether this is working for your students and if not, give to just the agency to. Make the changes so that the instruction is effective for their students. And I think the ESL teacher, whether you’re co-teaching or you’re doing a pushin or whatever, can really help see that because they can look at students and their behavior and say, you know what?

This is a second language issue that [00:48:00] we need to. Pay attention to in a different way than what you might think if as though they were a native Eng native speaker of English. 

Mandi Morris: I love that advice so much, and I love the idea of being able to. To have agency in making those decisions. So much of being a teacher is the in the moment on your feet switching course and it’s being flexible.

So when you think about formatives, there’s all of the formal stuff that you do that’s a formative, but there’s all of that in the moment formatives that you’re doing, and part of that is observing as a teacher. This is just crashing, like what I’m doing right now. Like I’m reading the room and this is crashing.

Like kids are not engaged. They don’t know what I’m talking about. And then I think as you become more experienced in the profession, you can pivot more quickly. Whereas earlier in your profession, you talked earlier about that turnover rate of that three to five years in the first three years of teaching, when stuff is crashing [00:49:00] out, it’s really hard to pivot in the moment because you don’t know.

Where to go next. It’s like I know that I’m off the railroad track here, like kids aren’t coming with me, but I don’t know how to get back on. I don’t know how to change course or, so I love this idea of it’s really giving yourself permission and grace to have agency to change course in the moment when you need to.

And I also think a lot about call in a lifeline. You work with other people in the building, collaborate, talk to people, get advice. How do you message this to the young adults that you work with that are going into the profession when you think about leaning on your colleagues and mentorship? 

Ester De Jong: Yeah. I think that’s such an important piece, right?

No matter what our roles are, I think the, your ability to say, I don’t know. I think it’s really important and that there’s no judgment around that. It’s like you don’t have to know everything, especially this day and age when information is just available in so many different ways. And so I [00:50:00] think what we do in teacher preparation programs is have teachers collaborate on, on, on projects, right?

They, it’s not all them doing it all by themselves. Go figure it out. It’s now what expertise can you have at the table to do it together and be okay saying. I need help with this and just making that kind of the norm and completely. Okay. I think the other place is as we work with mentor teachers and we prepare them, not every teacher, you can be a great teacher, but not necessarily a great mentor teacher, right?

Becoming a mentor teacher of, let’s say teacher candidates who are doing their internship with you in your classroom, that’s a very subtle skillset. And a lot of conversations around what does it mean to be a good mentor? How do you coach your interns? How do you give feedback? How do you let them discover things?

That becomes a really important component of, I think, a quality teacher preparation program. 

Mandi Morris: I love this conversation. Ester, this has been so wonderful. [00:51:00] I could ask you questions all day and learn from your expertise and all of your experience. I wanna go into some of our lightning round questions. So we’ll dig into a few of these.

What is one practice that you’d like to see being implemented more? So I would say on 

Ester De Jong: that line, consistent use and tapping into students’ languages other than English. We just don’t see it enough. I think a lot of monolingual teachers. Think they can’t do it because they are monolingual and like you don’t have to do it all yourself.

Your students can bring this piece. And so to really resist the monolingual English spaces that we create in schools actively all the time. 

Mandi Morris: Don’t be afraid of the unknown. I think sometimes when you’re dealing with a, you don’t know what the student’s response is going to be and it’s hard to try to navigate like, how do I bring value and integrate this when I’m scared of what might happen?

’cause they might not have [00:52:00] control over it. So it’s letting go some of that control. And that can also be a lot of fun in a classroom where students can feel like they’re active participants in their learning. What practice is making the biggest difference in your program right now? Like when you think about these teacher candidates, what practice is making a big difference for them?

Ester De Jong: I would say reflexivity. So we do a lot of work with our teachers, really helping them think about what do you know, how does that translate into your planning? How does that translate into once you get into the classroom and you start practicing? How do you now reflect back on what happened and why things happened, and how can you analyze that to then identify areas of success, strengths as well as areas of improvements or really helping understand that connection and understanding also, I would say.[00:53:00] 

Why you believe what you believe or do those beliefs come from Know your own story so that you can understand why you maybe think about teaching in a particular way, or you think about language in a particular way, or you think about bilingual learners in a particular way. So both exploring and reflecting on kind of those belief systems, but also the practices and just understanding why you do what you do.

Mandi Morris: I really appreciate that a lot. In education, we often don’t have enough time to reflect because you’re done with today’s lesson and tomorrow you’re onto another one, and by the time you teach that again, an entire year might have gone by or there was a new curriculum over the summer and now you’ll never teach that lesson again.

What you’re seeing is really taking the time to reflect in your practice. I, and I really love what you called out understanding, like why are your beliefs. About teaching what they are and just having time to think about that and reflect. That’s such great advice. Okay, we will do one more. [00:54:00] What do you wish you could tell yourself at the beginning of your career?

So if you go back in time, you said 30 years you’ve been in this profession, what piece of advice would you give yourself? Just be yourself. 

Ester De Jong: Just be yourself. 

Mandi Morris: That’s good enough. Ester, that’s a wonderful note to end this beautiful podcast on. Just Be Yourself. Thank you for all of the work that you’re doing in the field and for making time to be here with us today.

I’m so grateful for all of your advice, your thoughts. I think anyone listening to this podcast is going to leave with a lot. Of important takeaways for themselves personally and professionally, and also ways to rethink systems that maybe aren’t serving us or our students in our classroom. So thank you so much for your time, Ester.

We’re so thankful you were here.