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Jessica Payano: [00:00:00] Taking the time to build schema. And all that means is we already have a network in our brains of things we know. We have to give students the time to take what they already know so that they can attach it to the new content. So giving them the time to build schema, activate prior knowledge around the concepts that you’re going to teach and let them do it with the language they already have, which is either their home language or very basic English.
We’re not front loaning vocabulary. We’re not doing that. We’re letting them concept build and before they attach it to the new learning. That is a very high leverage, low lift.
Justin Hewett: Everybody welcome to the ML chat podcast. My name is Justin Hewett. I’ll be your host today. I’ve got my co host here, Ms. Mandi Morris.
Mandi, what a wonderful conversation we just got to have with Jessica Payano.
Mandi Morris: It was such a wonderful conversation talking with Jessica and hearing a little bit about her experience as a science teacher, [00:01:00] really lifting up and facilitating language learning through content learning. And I just love hearing her unpack how you can do that in a science class.
You can do that in a math class. It was a great conversation.
Justin Hewett: Yeah, I feel like that’s something that we hear a lot about is teaching language through content, right? And just infusing language into the classroom. And Jessica has some really great ways to do that. She talks a lot about having high leverage, low lift approaches, and we talk about some of those approaches today.
I also loved towards the end, what she shared about her empathy and her really drive for this work came from was from some experiences with her mom, where her mom would take her and go travel on a shoestring budget to go get some more experience in the world and see other cultures and other languages.
That really resonated for me as a father. I’ve got all these young kids and I’m thinking to myself, are we going on a trip to kind of get away a little [00:02:00] vacation and spend some time in the pool and somewhere a little bit warmer? Are we taking them on trips to go really educate and learn and. That really resonated with me and stuck with me.
I think there’s a lot of things that are friends that you’re going to love in this conversation with Jessica Payano and let’s get into it. You’re going to love this. Jessica is a former New York City public school science teacher as a full time educational consultant and curriculum writer. She now specializes in supporting teachers, organizations, and publishers and making grade level science accessible to diverse learners.
She also spent time teaching internationally in Cameroon, West Africa. And interestingly enough, it was five weeks of teaching English through a volunteer trip to mainland China that got her interested in pursuing teaching as a career. Jessica received her Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York.
And she earned her Master’s of Science for Teachers from Pace University in New York, New York. [00:03:00] Jessica, we are so excited to have you on the ML Chat podcast. Welcome!
Jessica Payano: Thank you, Justin. Happy to be here.
Justin Hewett: Well, Mandi and I have been looking forward to this conversation. We’re thrilled to have you here with us today.
And I want to go back to those five weeks of teaching English. That were so impactful and setting you, in a direction before we get to eat, to even get to China, how did you end up in China? What was it that led to that moment in your life that you ended up going to China for five weeks?
Jessica Payano: So, I was actually in medical device and pharmaceutical sales, my first two jobs out of college as a biology major.
And while I loved the sciency aspect of it and calling on hospitals and doctor’s offices, I didn’t feel as fulfilled in the sales role. So, I left sales and I had done [00:04:00] A bunch of volunteering and where I lived in New York with kids and decided let me take some time to see what I want to do with my life.
It was able to go to China for the five weeks that you mentioned, and we spent a lot of time. Spent time in Wuhan and in Tianjin. In Wuhan, it was just conversational English, the volunteer speaking with people in coffee shops and letting them just sit with us and practice their English, made great friends.
Tianjin was more of a school that a lot of university students attended during their semester breaks, where we were able to teach a little bit more formally, but still. still in a very student centered way where students were practicing. And then I just felt like, well, maybe this is my calling. Maybe teaching is what I’m meant to do.
And I applied to the New York City fellows program, got accepted back. I was back in 2010 and haven’t looked back and teaching in many different [00:05:00] capacities and education has been what I’ve been doing.
Justin Hewett: I love that so much. It’s amazing. The different paths we take that bring us to this moment where we decide that this is the work I want to do.
This is what I’m committed to. And it’s interesting how sometimes a lot of times that ends up happening when we are far from home. We are on a journey somewhere else. And I love hearing that. I it’s amazing to me how many of our guests have. Lived internationally and been exposed to different cultures and I think a big piece of that is just under starting to understand your place in the world and how when students, their families journey, bring them to the United States and bring them into our classrooms, we have an opportunity to serve those students and it’s having that lens of looking at it that really impacts us, I think, Mandi, I know you have your international experience.
I did a volunteer mission trip to the Philippines for a couple of years. That is, it’s interesting how having those experiences really, I think, prepares us to want to serve our [00:06:00] multilingual students.
Mandi Morris: Absolutely, that’s right. So Jessica, you come back from China and then you go into the fellows program.
And what does starting out as a teacher in New York City public schools look and feel like? Because I’m thinking about, I lived in Washington, right outside of Washington, DC for a year, and it was such a An international place to live, and having grown up in a small beach town, that’s not what life looked like where I grew up.
And I loved it. And I think of teaching in New York City public schools just being a place where it’s like, you’re going to have multilinguals in your classroom, whether you are prepared or not. How did you feel prepared for that experience coming out of your fellows program?
Jessica Payano: So it was interesting because I knew the mission of the fellows program really was to put teachers first.
in understaffed schools where retention was low, difficult to staff. So I knew what I was going into, where I was going into, and I actually preferred that. I didn’t want to have it any other way. [00:07:00] I knew there would be students in my class who were newcomers or who were Multilingual learners learning English.
I, in all honesty, did not feel as prepared, but I was ready to learn, ready to ask a lot of questions, and ready to depend on folks who had been teaching longer than I had. It was a lot of learning right there on the spot. Had my very own classroom. Started fellows in June, had my very own classroom by September.
So it was a lot of learning on the spot and uncomfortable moments and situations. But it was my second year that I transferred to a high school that was 100 percent for multilingual learners. And I always say, that’s where I get where, that’s where I got my teaching chops. That’s where I learned how to be a teacher, not only a teacher from multilingual learners, but just a good teacher.
I had some amazing colleagues, amazing leaders, an amazing network of teachers from other schools where the focus was, how do we teach? [00:08:00] Kids grade level content and English simultaneously.
Mandi Morris: So I would love to hear you unpack that a little bit. We know that teachers all across the country are trying to figure out, how do I teach these content standards?
And And be responsible for language learning and models look different everywhere. What was the model like at a school that is a hundred percent multilingual learners? And what are just some even high level takeaways from being in that type of teaching environment that is quite different from what a lot of teachers are experiencing with MLS, where they’re still doing potentially pull out or standalone classrooms.
Jessica Payano: So, in New York, it was referred to E& L, right, English as a New Language. So we had teachers that were certified E& L teachers in the building, but not all of us were. I am still not a certified E& L teacher, but have so much experience. I sometimes I think, should I go back for the paper? I have all this experience, should I go back for the certification?
And I probably will at some point. [00:09:00] But, Mandi, what I want to say that was so important from day one. Was that I knew not only was I a science teacher, I was a language teacher. I was an English teacher as well. So having that mindset really was super important. The year before, when I worked at a school that was not in that network, I already felt as a science teacher and knew that I was a literacy teacher as well.
I had many students reading below grade level, not yet at grade level, but we’re getting there. And I knew that I had to teach reading. and writing in science. When I got to this high school, it was in, we joke around in the water, right? Like you knew that no matter what content you were assigned to teach, that every single teacher was teaching language as well.
I’ll give you an example of that. If I was teaching cause and effect, not only did I need to teach that pollution in a science classroom, pollution could have this effect [00:10:00] on blah, blah, blah, blah. I had to teach the language around cause and effect. How do you communicate that cause and effect? in English, right?
And there are so many different language functions in the way that we use language that is not always thought of as, I’m the science teacher. It’s not my job to do that. No, absolutely. If, even if I have one multilingual learner in my classroom, it is my job to do that. And also just frankly, in other schools that I taught in where title one schools where students were not yet reading or writing at grade level, taught a lot of that language as well, right?
Academic language, academic writing. So I feel like that was the biggest piece was the mindset of everyone in the building that everyone was teaching language.
Justin Hewett: That feels like such a unique perspective. I think More prevalent is the idea that I teach science. I’m not, I don’t teach the language. I’m not a language teacher.
What would you say to those teachers? And I asked that [00:11:00] because I think that we have a lot of ELD type teachers that are listening to our, and directors that are listening to our podcast. That’s our audience. It’s not the science teachers. What would, what should, how can they, how can an ELD teacher or an EL coordinator help a science?
teacher or a content area teacher understand that, Oh, actually you do need to teach the language. This is important. How would you, what would you say, Jessica, how would you get them on board?
Jessica Payano: Absolutely. So I’ll go back to how it was a part of the school culture and from leadership all throughout the school.
This was a What we heard, what we saw our colleagues doing, what we did. So I, my first year in the S at the school, because I had traveled abroad because I had broken down and cried because I couldn’t ask for salt in Mandarin in a McDonald’s in Tangent. Like I had an experience of [00:12:00] beating the odd ball out who did not know the language to order food, let alone to talk about cell organelles or what have you.
So I do feel like. Some grace needs to be given to teachers, a science teacher, a social studies teacher, a math teacher. And I feel like so many of our teachers are really kind hearted, coming from a good place, want to do right by their students, but really need the professional learning and the support and the coaching to be able to do that.
But I think also There’s an open mindedness that needs to exist as well, right? So if you do have a fantastic ENL or ELD or ESL, whatever your school refers to or the acronyms your schools use, that is wanting to share with you their wealth of knowledge about English learners, just being open to saying, Hey, you know what?
If I think about my own science education, and I think about how much reading, writing, speaking I had to do [00:13:00] to be able to communicate content knowledge, And just really, just starting at understanding and acknowledging that the two are inseparable, I think is really the first step. I don’t think that we can expect people overnight to know how to do all the things.
I know I did not. But I was really, Trying my best as a science teacher going in to be open minded, be open to learning. My students taught me a whole lot too. These were high schoolers in Brooklyn. They were no joke. They moved from wherever they came from. I had students from Yemen, from Panama, Dominican Republic, from China, all over the world.
It wasn’t just one country. And they came to the U. S. In a very, if I could make it here, I could make it anywhere. A part of the U S right where they had to be really tough and learn. And so I learned from them. They taught me a lot as well. So I think the first step really is just being open minded about this thought of being a language teacher in addition to content [00:14:00] teacher.
I hope that that answered the question.
Justin Hewett: No, I love that.
Jessica Payano: Jessica,
Mandi Morris: I love it. You refer to the grittiness of the students and that’s something that we as teachers of ML students we’ve seen, right? Just like this tenacity, this grittiness of I can do this. I can make this work. And I think it points, it’s worth pointing out here because it points to The opposite of that, which is like the publicity though, you can’t do it.
We feel so bad for you mindset. And I think there’s a hundred percent in this movement and ML education of, we advocate for our students to empower them to empower their voice. But our students come with that grittiness, the determination that they’re going to be able to make it here. And I think what sometimes happens with content teachers is.
Either an overwhelm. How do I do this thing that feels really overwhelming? I don’t know how to do it. Or I just feel really bad for this student. So I’m just not going to assign rigorous work. [00:15:00] How do you start to move past that when you’re in that collaborative relationship as the ML specialist or the content teacher?
How do you start to work through that where it’s about maintaining rigor for the students, really highlighting their tenacity to create a space of empowerment and learning for your students?
Jessica Payano: Another mindset piece here that’s really important is seeing students as assets and leveraging all of the assets they come with, right?
So even if a student, a newcomer, come to our building who we’re not sure of how to use a hand dryer because they came from a place that wasn’t a part of their bathrooms or in a public place or having running water inside. Just a lot of different scenarios. And then we had students come from really high end rich private schools in Senegal and then coming into Brooklyn public schools, like what is this?
But if you’re looking at students from an asset. [00:16:00] A student who has had the experience of going from one country to another. When you travel and you live in a different place, you have a number of assets that you can draw on, right? Getting to know a new place, being determined, like you mentioned, Mandi, determination, right?
Whatever that is. And then remembering also that students have language. They might, they don’t have English, right? They might not have English yet, but they have a language. They can communicate. And what happens sometimes is that we lose sight of. Oh, they don’t, they can’t get the content or they don’t understand the content.
And it may be that they don’t have the English to communicate their understanding yet, or they might not be able to read a text in English to understand, but they absolutely have the ability to learn the content. They may already know the content, but we’re teaching them also now how to communicate it.
So just leading with.[00:17:00]
And a note about the pobrecito mindset of like, poor babies, I’m going to water everything down. That is the exact opposite of what most students and their families want for them. Like they didn’t come to the United States or bring their children to the United States so they would have a better life.
Terrible education or somebody would baby them to the point that they don’t graduate high school or middle school, even if we take it back. So really thinking about and honoring students and what they want and what their families want and what their families likely. That thinking about that American dream piece and what that means to individual students and really tapping into that to me is a fuel for, like you’re saying, Mandi, people are sometimes overwhelmed.
Teachers are overwhelmed, right? But if you can use that as fuel and take it one step at a time from there.
Justin Hewett: I love that you talk about expectations from that [00:18:00] perspective, because at the end of the day, These families are here because they have higher expectations than for the life they want to provide their children and their families than they felt like they were going to be able to live in their previous country, in their mother country or wherever they came from.
And I’ve shared this on a, on another podcast episode, but I just think it’s amazing that 45 percent of the fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants. That’s amazing. That’s incredible. And the reality is you are six times more likely to start a business. If you are an immigrant than if you were born here in the U S think about that.
They’re not coming to take your jobs. They’re coming to give you a job. And that’s really interesting. Go ahead.
Jessica Payano: Justin, can I say something about what you just said about the take jobs part? I have always said immigrants have given me not only a job, a career, a career I love. So something I also do part time is I [00:19:00] teach an ESL class to the parents of the ESL students in my County, right?
And you just had class last night and. When I tell you these parents are so eager to learn English so that they can be just meaningful members of our local community, and they are, I see them out, I see them with their children. I see them. working in our area, our retail area, the way that they have such a passion to learn English, to help their children with their homework.
And it’s amazing. So the, that has never been my experience and immigrants is coming to take my job. It’s been the opposite. I have work. This is my life’s work. Because of the amazing immigrant population that we have here in the U. S., and I’m thankful for that. It
Justin Hewett: reminds me a little bit, for anybody who enjoys Hamilton or has seen Hamilton, of the, there’s a spot in the middle of Hamilton where there’s a few [00:20:00] main characters including a young Hamilton, where they talk about how immigrants, we get stuff done.
And I just love it. I think it, it really resonates. And I appreciate you sharing that, Jessica. I want to go back to that classroom. Where we’re in the science classroom and You get a chance to talk with a teacher that has not really done the work of incorporating language development into their science curriculum and their pedagogy that they have for their classroom.
It’s not that they don’t want to, they just haven’t. Right? And at this point, they’ve been doing this for 10 years or 12 years or whatever it might be, and it’s just not been a work that they’ve done. Where do they get started? How do they get started incorporating this type of language development into that?
Into their curriculum.
Jessica Payano: Sure. So a few things, my first piece of advice is to always use the people who are already in [00:21:00] your building, right? We talked about our amazing ELD teachers, ENL teachers, right? I have a friend who from Brooklyn, I used to talk, teach with, and she’s here in Georgia now, not far from me.
And we were having a conversation. She’s a social studies teacher. and has an amazing ELD co teacher. And they get together, they talk. I have learned so much from ENL teachers in New York. So start there, start in your building with, hey, I’ve heard this thing that I am also a language teacher in addition to a science teacher.
Where do I start? Start there, at least. Let me say this to content teachers, science teachers especially. We love some vocabulary. Oh yes, we, what we do for our English learners is we got that vocabulary down. We love that. So let’s, what if we can think a little bit past that, right? In addition to speaking to your, ELD teacher, I am huge on language functions, right?
So the way that we use language, if we’re going to talk about cause and effect, if we’re going to use language to [00:22:00] describe, if we’re going to use language to compare and to contrast, those are all things we have to teach students. So one really quick takeaway, if you’re a science teacher, social studies teacher, math teacher who wants to say, I’m onto this, yes, I want to try this.
For a piece of writing, Let’s say your students are going to write a proof. Let’s say math teachers, your students are going to write a proof, write out the student sample. Think about a mid level student, like what a mid level ninth grader would write. Write out the student sample, and then what you can do from there is you can see the type of language that’s required for a student to do your task, to do that proof.
You want to take it a step further, you remove certain pieces, and there for your multilingual learners you can have some sentence starters and language frames to support them in that writing. That’s a really small piece I can give for at least a takeaway. It’s. Obviously a lot more involved in that, but again, speak to your ELD [00:23:00] teacher.
If you want something, I want to try this tomorrow, try that, but also talking to your leaders about, Hey, I really want to support my multilingual learners a bit better. What do you suggest from your leaders and what professional learning can I attend? And I have to say with some of the work that we’ve been, a lot of the work I’ve been doing with Mandi, we have a product here at Flashlight that’s scope and sequences.
And I have really been. I’m very fortunate to work on some science specific ones, some math specific ones, and I pour my heart and soul into those, knowing and thinking that that’s a place that a teacher could also start. So that’s another recommendation that I would have.
Justin Hewett: I love that. And I love that work that you’re doing.
I think the scope and sequences are really helpful in tying Flashlight 360 to the content in the classroom, which is exactly what we’re trying to talk about here today. And it’s interesting to me. Look, if a student doesn’t understand what a word means, can they understand the concept? I [00:24:00] don’t think they can, right?
They have to, we have to build understanding from the foundation up, and the foundation is language, and so we have to work through that language and help build that language understanding in order to teach students these different concepts that we ultimately want to teach them, right?
Jessica Payano: Yes. And Justin, you just reminded me of something, right?
Another thing that happens a lot of times is I’ll use science because that’s my world, right? As a science content teacher, we’ll want to jump into the meat of the content, but we haven’t given students the opportunity to build schema and activate prior knowledge that they have going back to that asset piece, right?
And they can build schema and they can activate their prior knowledge in their home language, right? So if they’re grouped with other Spanish speakers, for example, and you’re talking about, we’re not talking about photosynthesis yet, but we’re talking about the plants around us because we’re going to build some concept before we get into the science of it, right?
A student, a group of students [00:25:00] can have a conversation in Spanish about plants, what they know about plants, what they’ve seen of plants, how they’ve harvest plant, what they, whatever, gardening, whatever, right? The plants they see in the supermarket, some are green, some are brown, if they’ve gone bad, whatever.
That’s all concept building. That’s all. All prior knowledge that students have, those are assets that students have, even if they’re not yet speaking in English about photosynthesis, which trust me, they can get there and they can talk about the formula and the science behind it. I’ve seen it with my own eye and I’ve heard it with my own ears.
We’re giving them the opportunity to use their assets, use what they have, their background knowledge, their home language, and then we’re teaching them the content and the language to be able to do all of that in English eventually. So thank you for bringing that up and reminding me of that. That’s really.
Low lift, high leverage strategies there to get multilingual learners learning and engaged.
Mandi Morris: There’s something else you mentioned there, and it’s collaboration. When we are asked to do a task on our own, that can be isolating [00:26:00] and intimidating, even as an adult. And if you’re a student, and English is your second language, and now you’re asked to perform in a language in front of your classmates, your peers, that is not native to you.
That is a very exposing and intimidating experience that piece you talked about of building schema, making connections or making connections with background knowledge. The collaboration piece is also huge because you’re gathering ideas from others where you might have gaps. But then you’re also affirming ideas that you had that maybe you felt a little shaky about.
This seems like a good idea in my language, but is this what they do? Is this what they talk about? And I think there are benefits of grouping students in different types of pairs and partnerships. So there’s a benefit to thinking about your groups for same native language. There’s a benefit to mixing up your groups where you have students from different backgrounds and languages, cause they’re all bringing different assets.
There’s a benefit when you’ve got [00:27:00] those native English speakers paired with MLs, because that’s where you get that affirmation. Oh, I have that idea, but I was like, maybe too timid or afraid or nervous to say it. Now I can attach it to this person who I see as being a native. Being from here and it’s validating the idea that I had and I can build on it.
So I really, I appreciate that so much. I think it’s a great teaching strategy to use. And it’s something like you said, if you want something to go and implement into your classroom, that’s a pretty quick thing to do. You can start there. Jessica, I’d love for you to talk a little bit about. Backwards design and the work that we’ve done together, backwards design is paramount in thinking about what are the learning objectives, what are the language objectives, how are they braided together, and how do we prevent the work that students are doing that’s supposed to be intergrading the content and the language, how do we prevent it from feeling like a worksheet?
Or feeling, how is it a meaningful experience? So can you talk [00:28:00] some about how do you think about backwards design and what advice would you give to teachers to get started?
Jessica Payano: So if we’re looking at the final task and I did a lot of project based learning performance tasks, right? If we’re looking at that final task, and I know this sounds like a lot, but, and teachers are coming from different places, right?
And different environments, different schools. So some schools have purchased a curriculum for you. So there are in many curriculums, there’s a sample student answer, right? So like I said before, really taking that sample or writing it out yourself and trust me, I’ve done both. I have not written it out.
And I have written it out. The times I have written it out, I have seen, Oh, there’s a problem here. Like I can’t do a piece of this. If I can’t do a piece of this, that means the students can’t do a piece of this because I have not written or created this task in the right way. Something’s off here. There are 10 times I’ve not done that.
And we get to the final, I’m [00:29:00] talking 11th graders writing. Multilingual learner, newcomer, 11th graders writing a 10 page lab report, right? These kids were amazing. But getting stuck I get how this connects to this. And then I’m getting stuck I see why you don’t get it. But if I had taken the time to write that out and to flesh it out, maybe mine was not 10 pages, but flesh out the pieces.
really seeing oh, there’s a problem with the task, or there’s a problem with the lessons leading up to the task. There’s a problem with the activities leading up to the task. Also, it’s not time wasted in that regard, and it also gives you, like I said before, those sentence frames, right? So it really thinking about the end in mind really is helping you to get students not only with that content, but the language there they are going to need for that task.
Justin Hewett: I love what you have on your website. So you’ve have a website lit science by JP. com and you have so [00:30:00] many different resources here and you know that people can come and engage with. And then if you go to you have a teachers pay teachers page. With so many different resources here, Jessica, I can tell you love building curriculum, you love building content and.
What, how did you figure that out? How did you figure out that you love doing that and you have a knack for it? What you put together is really well done.
Jessica Payano: Thank you. I really appreciate that. I love to write. I love to read and I love to write, right? I love, love, love science. In college, discovered that I also loved literature and writing and creative writing.
So I feel that. Yeah. And. I should also mention that in my time as a New York City public school teacher, I was not given a curriculum. We didn’t have a curriculum that was paid for and given to us. So I was making everything from scratch [00:31:00] or I was taking at the international high school I worked at. I was taking things other teachers had created and modifying them, right?
So that was a better scenario because at least it wasn’t a blank page and trying to look at the standards and come up with all the activities. So I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s a little bit of, I, I thoroughly enjoyed the creative process and still do. I love writing. Mandi knows this. Whenever we’re working on a scope and sequence, I’m like, get me writing.
I want to get to the writing. And I love the creativity. I love thinking about how will a student interact with this? How could I make it in a way that every student can find an entry point and engage and interact no matter what, no matter where, and even though it’s Building everything from scratch my first year almost caused some serious burnout.
It honestly, it almost cost me, caused me to quit teaching, which I’m glad I kept going, but I did realize. I loved creating and then I [00:32:00] loved putting it in front of my students, engaging with it, having them engage, and then seeing where, oh, that could have been different or that worked really well, right?
And it just, the creative, I believe that as human beings, we are all creatives in different capacities, but all creatives. And it really just, curriculum writing, creating instructional resources, just speaks to my creative being, my creative self. So it was really from my work in the classroom. Sometimes it was like waking up at four o’clock in the morning my first year, like I need to have something to teach.
And I taught at a school where kids. needed a lot of support. It wasn’t just throw up notes to write down. And that thought came back to me that I was saying before Mandi about worksheets, right? It’s very different. And this is a struggle. So my, my experience mostly is with middle school and high school, right?
Sometimes it’s a struggle for middle school and high school or secondary teachers to conceptualize middle schoolers and high schoolers with a, what they think is a worksheet in front of them. But I like to [00:33:00] counter and say, it’s not, they’re not worksheets. They are customized graphic organizers, very specific to the task to lift the cognitive burden that our multilingual learners have of learning the content and the language at the same time.
So if we could put more on the paper, so they can focus on Those language objectives, and those learning objectives, rather than looking up, trying to listen and understand what the teacher is saying, scribbling notes, and then answering a question, or then collaborating with a peer, or then, it really takes that cognitive burden away, and all those different pieces.
I’m a very big proponent, and love to create customized graphic organizers that are customized to a task.
Mandi Morris: That’s really special. There’s a big difference between a one size fits all and the backwards design it takes to think about what is the task objective, the learning objective, and how do I build the scaffolds for my students that are uniquely designed.
Or source them from amazing educators like you, or like [00:34:00] you said, reach out to your colleagues, right? That who’s across the hall, who’s done this before and can give you advice. But having resources that are really supporting students to that final task so that they have the content knowledge, the content vocabulary, but then also the forms and functions of the language in order to complete that final task at hand,
Justin Hewett: it strikes me how much empathy you have for the students as you’re building.
These pieces, Jessica, like I’m just thinking about as you’re sitting and you’re working through it and how this you’re talking about how you want, you’re anticipating that students will engage with it and how you want to create multiple axi points so that every student can access it and get into access the curriculum, access the.
The content and understand it, be a, be an active participant in this. And it just really resonates with me that you have a tremendous amount of empathy for the students and teachers that you’re building this for. Where does that come from?
Jessica Payano: So when I was younger, [00:35:00] my mom, single mom, whenever we had a shared Day off.
We usually like one day like Martin Luther King Day or something like that. She would actually bring me to volunteer in our neighborhood on Meals on Wheels. So we used to take meals to elderly in our neighborhoods and just, and so that just, I think, instilled in me and then volunteering in the nursery and church and just volunteerism started to instill in me.
Wow, there are a lot of amazing folks out here and as I give, they give to me, if that makes sense, right? As you’ve always heard, you feel like you’re giving, but you feel like you’re taking more. And the same started to happen in teaching, right? I was a teacher, but I was learning so, so much from my students.
I can be very real for a moment, right? In my travels. So I went to Cameroon with the U. S. Department of State to teach at a medical school, English for specific purposes, right? So very content heavy for students who are becoming doctors, [00:36:00] veterinarians, et cetera, researchers, et cetera. I was supposed to be there for ten months.
I lasted for three. I struggled. with the language. I struggled with a new culture. I struggled being out in the village when I was a city girl. And so having those experiences, breaking down, crying, asking for salt at a McDonald’s in China, like all of those experiences and those were short term. And we have students who are here forever and they’re new and the language is new and the culture is new and it is just hard.
It is hard. If classrooms can be a safe space for students to feel like I am a part of this classroom. My teacher, my principal, the person who wrote this worksheet thought of me when it was created. How powerful is that for children? I also, the thought and the mindset of teaching our multilingual learners.
I like that term multilingual learners because the emphasis is on multilingualism, [00:37:00] right? So students can be. learning English. They can learn English. But what I used to do in my classroom, these were high schoolers, and they’re like, Oh, I don’t know the word for hypothesis in my home language. So what is it?
Let’s put it on your sheet. We have a box for a translation because now you’re learning that in Urdu. Right? You’re learning that in Spanish. You’re earning that in Arabic, learning that, excuse me, in Arabic so that you are developing your multilingualism. I had students who wanted to go back home to be doctors, to be researchers, to be teachers, right?
So it just, at the end of it, just students, right? Students and being around students and being inspired by their tenacity, their grit, their, they were still teenagers, right? Their high school, middle school teachers, they’re still kids, right? Okay. But just that energy, I really owe all of that to them and seeing them as an amazing example of what’s possible in this world.
This life in this world.
Mandi Morris: [00:38:00] Jessica, I’ve been so impressed over these months being able to work with you and inspired by working with you. I think often about how we can sharpen each other as educators, and sometimes people cross your path where it’s like, wow, they’re just sharpening or just like I’m learning, I’m growing and I’m so thankful that for the people in my career that I can think about who have sharpened me.
And I just so appreciate your knowledge around content. learning language, learning how those two pieces can come together. And it is, it’s so encouraging to me because I lived, I taught ELA, but predominantly was in that ELD space and definitely not science and math. And it’s so encouraging to me to hear you talk about this can be done in science.
This can be done in math. And even having had the opportunity. To watch you do that through backwards design, to be able to pull apart the math objectives, the science objectives, and to see, I knew this could work in theory, but then to watch a science teacher, like [00:39:00] a math side of the brain person, like really insert it and do it.
It’s been encouraging to me. So I’d say that for any of the ELD specialists listening that encourage your colleagues, you can do it. I’ve seen it done. It can be done with the right strategy and intention around backwards design and lesson planning. It really is possible to engineer a math classroom, a science classroom that is elevating students to the rigor, not watering it down.
But providing them the supports for their success and to show off their assets.
Justin Hewett: Jessica, this has been such a wonderful conversation. And I think all of our friends are going to really enjoy listening to this. And I appreciate you just sharing so much wisdom and your experiences here. We’d love to move to our lightning round where We will ask a number of questions and just give you a chance to give shorter and more brief answers that in many ways are some of the most action packed oriented content that people get out of this, [00:40:00] because it’s usually just so pertinent.
So I’ll ask the first question, which is what is one piece of advice you would give a multilingual teacher? And you can, this could be like someone who’s experienced a lot of years. This might be somebody who’s brand new in their career. You can choose how you want to take that.
Jessica Payano: Sure. Mandi said it before, start with collaboration.
Have your kids working in groups. Teacher centered is not going to yield the same results. Kids have to be working in groups and have peer to peer interaction.
Justin Hewett: Can I ask why behind that?
Jessica Payano: Yes, absolutely. For a lot of the reasons that Mandi mentioned, but also for translanguaging and translanguaging simply is the flexible use of language, right?
So that students can go between English and their home language to concept build, to make sense of the content, to make sense of what they’re learning. And research shows that the flexible use of language leads to. Better outcomes in English language development.
Mandi Morris: Yeah. I love that. Okay. If you were to say this is [00:41:00] one practice that I want to see teachers doing more of, I love the expression you used earlier.
Was it like high cost, low cost, high yield? What is that thing? What is that practice that you want to see teachers doing?
Jessica Payano: High leverage, low lift, right? We try to get a collaboration is one of those, right? And. I’ll say another one actually is taking the time to build schema. And all that means is we already have a network in our brains of things.
We know we have to give students the time to take what they already know so that they can attach it to the new content. So giving them the time to build schema, activate prior knowledge around the concept that you’re going to teach and let them do it with the language they already have, which is either their home language or very basic English.
We’re not front loading vocabulary. We’re not doing that. We’re letting them concept build. And before they attach it to the new learning. That is a very high leverage, low lift.
Justin Hewett: Yes. Assets based. Let’s [00:42:00] start with what students have. What do they bring to the work? I love it. So you’ve had a number of inflection points in your life, right?
I think that your experience in China was one of them. Sounds like that those first couple years in New York City, you was, you had some pretty big light bulb moments, right? When you think about your career and where you are today, right? And the work that you do, when, what was the epiphany that you’ve had that led to?
Where you are today. You can interpret that however you want and like wherever you want to take it I think it when I think about you today, I think about you doing the work of really building content for English learners that allows them to access and it’s not just English learners. I know you’re building content for all students But you’re building content with language infused into it, right?
Like where did that insight happen? What, can you share the experience or story that has led to this moment for you? [00:43:00]
Jessica Payano: Sure. Travel was huge. I bring, go back to my mom again. I traveled quite a bit as a kid and we would, my mom would find a good deal. Let’s say to the Caribbean, it would be me. Her, my stepdad and when my brother was born and just seeing other cultures, right?
When I was an adult, I said, I’m going to take this a little bit of a step further here and start going to some off the beaten path places where I was in some really out of my comfort zone situations with not knowing language, not understanding culture. And I knew that I was choosing to go on those trips.
A child who. is following a parent. And this was my husband. He is originally from the Dominican Republic, came to the U. S. when he was 15 and graduated high school when he was 20 years old because he was learning English and content. He is in a classroom right now with a master’s degree teaching students, right?
He’s a social studies teacher with a Multilingual learners and he’s teaching [00:44:00] them, right? So a lot of them, he’s teaching in English, right? But supporting where he can in Spanish. So a lot of that was life experience, life of how did it feel, right? And I just, I really truly feel that everyone, and no matter what your faith is or not, or whatever, that we all have a purpose, multiple purposes in this world and in this time, right?
So really just tapping into, and I’ve worked in different jobs, right? I was in sales before. It just didn’t feel like that was my thing, but just tapping into what really lights you up, what really makes you feel good. And. Having an impact on someone else while you’re simultaneously feeling really great about your life is what teaching and what curriculum writing has been for me.
So I would just say just pay attention to how you feel while you do things and just pay attention to that and certain things, light bulbs will start to go off. I really like this. But not so much this and then [00:45:00] see where that leads you.
Mandi Morris: This has been so wonderful today, Jessica. I’m like, I love you’re talking about finding your unique ability.
And that’s something that Justin talks about a lot and it’s what’s your unique ability in education, right? Where do you really shine and glow? And be a part of the community and bring what you can. It’s so clear what you bring to that community and what you’ve learned and gathered from others over the years.
Thank you so much for being here today. This has been an absolute pleasure to talk with you. And I look forward to continuing this work with you. Thanks again.
Jessica Payano: Thank you, Mandi. And thank you, Justin, for having me.
Justin Hewett: Oh, thanks, Jessica. It’s a pleasure to have you here. Thank you, Jessica Piano for joining the ML chat podcast.
