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Sarah Whitfield: [00:00:00] How am I supposed to teach a student if I don’t know the language? That’s where those low prep, high yield strategies come in. And my biggest thing is, It’s empowering our ML teachers to support our content teachers. So that’s where I come in and I’m able to hopefully support our ML teachers and support our content teachers because we all know that those are just the strategies and like I said, those high yield scaffolds and strategies that was going to support all learners, especially as we move into just having a really diverse population of students at every single school.
Justin Hewett: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the ML chat podcast. I am your host today. My name is Justin Hewett. I’m here with my co host
Mandi Morris: Mandi Morris,
Justin Hewett: and we just had the best conversation with Sarah Whitfield from Cabarrus County, just outside of Charlotte in North Carolina. Mandi, I loved a lot of the things that Sarah talked about as far as.
Working in small groups and her summer camps [00:01:00] or summer school, what jumped out to you the most from this conversation? What did you enjoy the most?
Mandi Morris: You can tell that Sarah really has the heart of a true coach. She’s willing to take time for things to grow and build momentum and she can see work as iterative.
And I feel like that’s just really at the heart of a coach. And it seems like she does a lot of intentional coaching work with the teacher. She supports both in ML and in content.
Justin Hewett: Yeah I think the thing that’s jumped out to me the most that kind of underscores that is when they started their summer school, they didn’t necessarily start with this super comprehensive, all the bells and whistles kind of a summer school, but they got it started and over the years they’ve been able to layer on additional pieces to it.
And now it’s this very comprehensive summer school that I think if anybody looked at it, they would go, Oh my gosh, I don’t know how I would ever get started doing that. And I think they’ve just done a really good job of starting small and then iterating and continuing to build on it. I think [00:02:00] you are going to love this conversation today with Sarah Whitfield.
Let’s get in there and go join the conversation. Sarah Whitfield is the District ML Instructional Specialist for Cabarrus County Schools in Concord, North Carolina, just outside of Charlotte, where she serves as a leader and advocate for multilingual learner education. With 15 years of teaching experience as both a classroom teacher and an ML teacher, Sarah is also an adjunct instructor at Greensboro College in the School of Social Science and Education.
Sarah earned her undergraduate degree in elementary education from UNC Charlotte. Along with her master’s degree in curriculum instruction with a TESOL concentration. Sarah, we are thrilled to have you come and join us on the ML chat podcast. Welcome.
Sarah Whitfield: Thank you for having me.
Justin Hewett: Hey, we have been looking forward to this.
We’re grateful you took the time to come and join us. We would love to get to know you a little by maybe starting to learn a little bit about your district and the students that you serve in Cabarrus County [00:03:00] schools. Do you mind just maybe telling us a little bit about. The size of your school district, the students you’re serving, so on and so forth.
Sarah Whitfield: Yeah, absolutely. I am the ML Instructional Specialist for Cabarrus County Schools. So it’s right outside, 20 minutes north of Charlotte. It’s a medium sized school district. I would say we’re just, we’re growing. We’re growing exponentially. So we have about, as far as just students, maybe 30, 000 students.
But for our MLs, our multilingual learners, we have about 3, 700. And we have grown just So much in the past 10 to 20 years. So that is always on our minds and how we are planning and how we’re serving our students and our families and how we’re supporting our teachers as well.
Justin Hewett: What is driving all of that growth within the district?
Is it bringing a lot of English learners or is it bringing a lot of everything?
Sarah Whitfield: I think it’s bringing a lot of everything, but I do think it is bringing a lot of English learners to our area, whether that be families that might move [00:04:00] in and different areas of our. County. A lot of our multilingual learners are Spanish speaking families, but what’s growing, which is interesting, is our families that speak Tamil and Telugu.
And so that’s changing a lot in our county, in our district. We’re getting used to multilingual learners and having that grow, but then also Makeup of the languages and the families diversity is changing. We have to change with it.
Justin Hewett: What were those languages again?
Sarah Whitfield: The second one is Tamil and Telugu and then there’s Hindi.
I think so a lot from India.
Justin Hewett: Are they are those? Obviously Hindi is from India The other two, where are those from?
Sarah Whitfield: Those are also
Justin Hewett: Indian. Indian language. Okay. So just different provinces or whatnot. Oh my gosh. That is interesting. And you have the triangle there. I forget the name of that, like medical triangle where there’s so many biotech companies.
I wonder if that drives a lot of that growth.
Sarah Whitfield: And then Charlotte’s a big in banking as well. And so Concord and the Kibera’s our area is [00:05:00] just a really good, I think, place. Cause you can still commute to Charlotte. And then, of course, it’s still very family friendly around here because we’ve got the big city of Charlotte, but then you’ve got the outskirts.
I love Cabarrus County. I love Concord, our area.
Justin Hewett: Yeah, I love that. I love that when we were talking about Cabarrus County, you said, yeah, born and raised now here you are working in the school district.
Sarah Whitfield: And that’s been my platform. I was born and raised, obviously. I’m sure you could never tell by my accent that I was born and raised in the South, but my thing is I’ve always felt at home.
It’s just my area. I’m proud to be from here, but my thing has been that I want. learners and every family that comes into our county to feel welcome. And so I hope to be a kind of a bridge to where we were before and how we’re growing.
Justin Hewett: I love that. Welcome to Cabarrus County. I’m going to help you find your home and get settled here.
I love that idea. Tell us a little bit about your department there within the district. What does that organization look like?
Sarah Whitfield: In leadership within the district, we have a Title III director, Katie Wagner and she’s my director, [00:06:00] then there’s me, who I’m a specialist an ML instructional specialist, K 12, all grade levels, so I support our ML teachers, I do a little bit of content, I do support content teachers as well, doing professional development, all those things and some parent engagement as well, and then we have our ML data manager, so So it’s the three of us at this level.
So only three of us here. And then, but we have 46, some of them one to one with schools, but there are some teachers that do share schools as well. And we also have five interpreters. So five Spanish bilingual interpreters that are housed under us as well. We just have three at the district and then we have 46 ML teachers.
Mandi Morris: From your position supporting this changing demographic that you have in your school district, it’s interesting that you noted you have five interpreter translators, but Spanish, could you talk a little bit about what is it like [00:07:00] right now from your seat, from your role to support an influx of students with families coming from India and how that’s shifting resources, shifting the way that you think about supporting newcomers.
It’s so
Sarah Whitfield: funny because, and you might be able to. Agree with this. It’s funny when I was in teaching and I was in the classroom, I felt when I was an ML teacher, I would say that’s, I’m an ML teacher and they say, Oh my gosh, you’re bilingual. And I want to say yes, but I’m not. So I could not claim that.
But for that, the first thing for five district Spanish bilingual interpreters, we have that. But then we are able to go to an outside contractor for interpretations of other languages. So we’re able to serve. All of our families. And so that has been a solution we’ve done as a department. Also, as far as the instructional side of things, we’ve had a lot of, Oh my gosh, we can just translate, right?
If an ML student is in there in your classroom, you can just translate. And how am I supposed to teach a student if I don’t know the language? And so we’re like, that’s where those low prep high yield [00:08:00] strategies come in. And my biggest thing is. Empowering our ML teachers to support our content teachers.
So that’s where I come in and I’m able to hopefully support our ML teachers and support our content teachers because. We all know that those are just the strategies and like I said, those high yield scaffolds and strategies that was going to support all learners, especially as we move into just having a really diverse population of students at every single school.
Mandi Morris: Yeah, I love in the notes that you sent ahead of time, you noted that you’ve got a curiosity and an interest in growing work and supporting English learners as newcomers and secondary supporting content teachers. Tell us a little bit more. What does that look like? Like in your school district and you’ve got 46, I think you said teachers you’re supporting, what does that look like for you?
It’s a work
Sarah Whitfield: in progress. One of the biggest things that we’ve talked about and we’ve tried to model for our ML teachers and even model for our content teachers, [00:09:00] leadership and schools is collaboration among all the there’s all the stakeholders, but no trying to get rid of those silos. I think that’s one of the biggest things because we have 46.
ML teachers, and we have about 3, 700 ML students. And that’s just the ML direct students have to figure out a way to collaborate. And for those students, when they’re in those content classrooms to, especially the secondary, to be able to be supported, especially when we have newcomer. Students, that is one of the biggest asks that we get a lot.
If we get a newcomer student in a middle or high school setting, but a lot of times I always come with the idea that our content teachers, they want to know what to do with our students, especially newcomer students. A lot of it is just presuming and assuming that they want to do it, but they just have to be able to have tangible, practical things that they can use.
What I’ve done in the past is I’ve done language rich. Classroom PDs. And [00:10:00] sometimes what we’ve done instead of having whole staff PDs is being able to say, we have done those things, but what we’re trying to do now is train our teachers, train the trainer, train our ML teachers to go forth and to do those things in their schools.
So that’s been one of the biggest things we could do as far as professional development, but also we’ve done a lot of culturally responsive. Professional development and coaching on that. When you do get newcomers about acculturation and how we can support these students, linguistically and social, emotionally, I
Justin Hewett: love hearing you talk about the content teachers in that you have to approach it, assuming that they are looking for resources, that they want help.
And I feel like I hear a fair amount, which is that our content teachers don’t necessarily care, or maybe they do care, but they don’t have time. They’re teaching so many classes. They got so many students all together. How can I really worry about this newcomer in this class or here or whatever it might be?
But for me, it feels like you flipped that [00:11:00] over and you said, they do want the resources. They want help. I’m wondering where that comes from your perspective, because that does feel different than the narrative that I hear.
Sarah Whitfield: So it probably comes from my experience as a classroom teacher before, to be transparent, I’ve had more experience as an ML teacher than I have as a classroom teacher, but I think I come from a place of empathy and understanding how I felt as a classroom teacher.
I started out as a kindergarten teacher and then I made the shift into teaching ML and you don’t know what you don’t know. And I think one of the biggest things that I’ve learned is. Any kind of shifts in thinking is you can actually have a shift in thinking and you can have a growth mindset with certain things so that it comes from my experience as a classroom teacher, I think, and one of the things that I want to tap into as we go in our county in our district is I think it’s so important that ML teachers or ML educators.
If you’re in leadership, you’re communicating to your [00:12:00] leadership content teachers, but I also want to flip it a little bit and talk about how content teachers can help us. Like I want it to be a two way street a little bit because there’s so much we can learn. I think all through the years that I’ve worked, I’ve, I love co teaching collaborating, but some of the best things I’ve learned has been from content teachers.
And that’s one of the best things. To be an ML educators, to be able to go on these classrooms and see the great things that they do. What I’ve taught my teachers this year has been great. We’re training our teachers. We’re giving them professional development. What we have done is we’ve given them guidance to go into grade level meetings, PLC meetings, ways that they can communicate.
With their content teachers. And one of the things that we did was we made sure to tell them before you go into a PLC meeting or grade level meeting. First of all, set the scene. How would you like for this to go? Do you want me to plan along with me? You would you like to talk about a student in particular?
How would you like our time to be used best? So as I’ve gone in and collaborated with [00:13:00] content teachers and as our ML teachers have, that has been a So I think it’s been really beneficial. And I also suggest to them that they ask our content teachers, what are you already doing for your ML students?
Because I know, we know that you are doing great things. So just like students, we have to be asset based with our teachers. So that’s one of the two things we’ve done.
Justin Hewett: I love that approach. It reminds me of that old saying about don’t treat your child as they’re acting. Treat your child as what you want them to become.
And a lot of times people. They tend to respond the way you expect them to respond. And I think a lot of that comes down to your perspective and your mindset. And I can tell that there’s just a really healthy perspective in the way that you and probably your team, I’m sure it’s infectious down through the organization and how they think about working and collaborating.
Co teaching, co planning with the content teachers. And I see that as being something that’s not unique necessarily to, to Cabarrus County [00:14:00] School District, but it is pretty special. It is a unique way to approach it. I think.
Sarah Whitfield: And our teachers, we have a great blend of ML teachers in our department. And I think that’s a lot of them were classroom teachers before, but some of them were.
Multilingual learners themselves. And then also some of them have just been ML teachers. And that’s great too, because they have so much expertise. I just love the outlook that content teachers have. I always tell the content teachers, you are. An expert in your content. And some of them are like, I’m not, but I’m like, you are.
And our ML teachers are, I try to, I have a beginning cohort of teachers within our ML department. I meet with them quarterly and I just tell them, I said, you’re the language expert in your school or school. So you have to exalt that a little bit, but also collaborate and be able to connect with the content teachers.
But if you can look at it that way. The content teachers are going to have their strengths and you have to tap into their strengths as well. But also you are the language expert and the specialist in [00:15:00] your school. So you have to harness that yourself.
Mandi Morris: Sarah, I’m curious what advice you would give for this situation because we know it happens and I just love this mindset that you have of assuming best intentions.
Like the content teachers doing the best that they can with the resources and knowledge they have at hand. And the ML specialist is that what’s like student in the center. That’s the focus of our work. What advice would you give to a coach where they are just really struggling to find willing partners?
Hey, we wanna do this collaborative work, but we’ve got resistance up and down. We don’t know where to start. We can’t get people on the same page. What advice do you give to that coach or that specialist in your role to say, start here. Kind
Sarah Whitfield: of what I alluded to before. Start with. Being able to focus on what those teachers are already doing, or whatever, that grade level, that department.
Because really, I think about the learning [00:16:00] experiences that I’ve had in the past. Being able to start and say, you already are doing a lot of these things that are great for multilingual learners, and they’re great for all students. And sometimes when you feel like you have those small wins, it’s easier for you to get buy in from others, if you look at it through the asset lens.
And that’s how. I would start that and sometimes you have to just have the small moves. Let me talk about those small moves. The way I work with beginning teachers, and I’ve also worked with veteran teachers too. And sometimes it’s, if you say, oh my goodness, if you could just add, if you could just do these talk moves or just try this structured conversation, just try this.
And that can make just a little tweak. And if I knew that when I was a beginning teacher or if when I was struggling that would have made all the difference because if I knew that I didn’t have to change everything that I was doing, that I was doing something right, I think that would have been like, oh my gosh, okay.
So let’s try this for a little bit, and then we’ll come back around and maybe we’ll try [00:17:00] to change it again. I think we talk to our students a lot about growth mindset, or we should be, but I don’t know if that’s as communicated to teachers. I try to put myself back into that mindset of being either a beginning teacher or if you were in it when you were in the classroom.
Sometimes I just wanted somebody to tell me that I really was doing something good. And also giving them choice, giving teachers choice. To what they want to learn about that is one of the biggest things to them. I think giving them some kind of choice about it.
Justin Hewett: It’s awesome that you have such a great team out there, 46 ML specialists or teachers out in schools and that you’re working with and doing that work.
What does it look like for training, for professional development? I imagine that you’re leading, you’re doing a lot of that coaching and training and kind of putting systems in place. Do you have pods where you’ve got. You work with the K 5s, or then maybe you break them up by K 2, or 3 5, and 6 or anyways, how do you break that up to make sure that you’re working with your teachers and giving them [00:18:00] the supports that they need?
Sarah Whitfield: In our department, we have our elementary, K 5, And then we have our middle and high school. But when we do our PLCs, we have K 5, elementary, we split it in half, elementary to secondary, middle and high school are together. And it’s just, there are different needs with each one of those levels. With elementary, the scheduling is going to be different.
So it is with high school, the needs are going to be different. For example, in elementary, we’ve pushed our district and we pushed our teachers. To obviously have a more collaborative approach in elementary. It’s more of a hybrid service. Of course, they can still pull small groups, but we really want our teachers collaborating, co teaching, co planning, whatever way they can do that.
That’s what we have pushed them to do, but that schedule is going to look a little bit different at the elementary level. And then for high school, it’s definitely gonna look a little bit different because they’re mostly Co teaching and pushing in, and then they have a [00:19:00] newcomer class that comes to them.
So there’s just different, and obviously there’s different needs. A different level. So we have tailored that according to what they need now for like when we have done some of the PDs that we’ve done. So we’ve done thinking for K 12. We did beyond translation. What can we do? Because a lot of times what we get.
For secondary classes is, Oh my gosh, I don’t know what to do. I’m translating everything. So we said, okay, here’s some things that you can push up. You can collaborate with your content teachers with, and here’s some things that you can do instead of translations, a great tool, but we have to do other things as well.
So that was more of a secondary push. So you’re, we’re able if, when we split those two up, we’re able to differentiate for each.
Mandi Morris: Sarah, I would love to hear you. about the WIDA presentation that you did, and you’re talking there specifically about your SLIFE and SIFE students. I am a big fan of [00:20:00] rotations and stations and secondary.
So while you’re talking about those secondary PLCs. I think this is a great connection of maybe how are you utilizing the PLCs or utilizing your teachers when they’re going out and working in secondary. What does that look like beyond translation, right? In the secondary classroom, share with us, what is that work for you?
Sarah Whitfield: What, when I presented that at WIDA, this came from. The directiveness in our district, the curriculum instruction department, they had, especially in secondary, they were thinking, how can we differentiate for students? What can we do? So small group, we know small group is great within those content classrooms.
With this curriculum instruction leadership, the other specialists, the content specialists, they were planning small group instruction, train the trainer models, lead, leader teachers would come from the secondary schools and they would take, they would have the training from, The district of how to incorporate small group instruction into your instruction.
And so I thought I was a part of this and I thought, Oh, my [00:21:00] gosh. This would be great because for our demographic as well, because in my role, I get to go to our data digs, we call them here in Converis County. So it’s great. I love, I do love going to those because I get to be a face and I also get to give resources out to our content teachers and to our assistant superintendents MLs.
I got some feedback about. Cause I had a teacher talking to me at one of these data digs. And she was like there’s so many gaps and there’s this. And there’s that, what do we do? We’re not sure if the student even has foundational literacy skills. And I said, very confidently, we just meet them where they’re at.
And she said, I get it. But she said, our teachers don’t really know how to do that yet. So it was a middle school and I thought it was a aha moment for me. And so that’s where my brain started. I was like, okay, so how can we do this? We can meld two things together, two things coming from the district and we can also say we [00:22:00] need to support our life or newcomer students.
And how can we do that in the secondary classroom? I thought, okay, small group, that’s the way we can do it. So that’s where I started with that. And I thought that it just was a need for in our district. And we tell our teachers, I wanted to model also how to collaborate. At the district level. I tell them that all the time.
I tell our teachers, we still do this at this level as well. So we’re collaborating, we’re trying to find entry points of how we can support at a systemic level. I thought, Oh my gosh, this will be great. If I could not just tag along, but also collaborate and plan with our other specialists. And it was math, ELA.
So that’s where that started. I’ve had newcomer slife instruction has always been close to my heart. The reason it is so close to my heart is because in 2017, I came back into teaching multilingual learners and I. Went to a middle school. I had three schools, I was itinerant, and I had a [00:23:00] middle school that had not had ML students in a long time.
There was some redistricting a little bit at that time, demographic was changing. And so not only were there MLs at that school, now there were newcomer. Students. And so I remember I was like, what do I do? I’ve taught elementary newcomers before I have to talk. And now I’m going to teach middle school newcomers.
So what I did was I reached out on Facebook. I was part of these groups and I was like, what do I do? And I connected with actually Carol Salva and I’m sure as a lot of people do. But that was the start of. Getting to understand newcomer and slife. And so what I did at that school, even back in 2017, I had a book study on boosting achievement.
I think two or three content teachers showed up, but that was a win for me. And so it’s just like those steady things that you can do those small things. And I thought, Oh my gosh, they’re still showing up for a book study. And that’s where I got my interest in the, my love of. Learning more about newcomers and that also [00:24:00] helped with my professional development a little bit because I was able to control my own professional development.
I can connect with other people that kind of started that way back when, but for my presentation, I was like, that’s a big thing for me, but if we can take two things and put them together. Two for the price of one, and so that’s what I did. I thought our content teachers need, maybe I can put in some scaffolds, teach them how to scaffold in these small groups.
I’m always about working smarter, not harder. So I tried to incorporate that together. And I think that the way that I did that, I wanted to focus on content teacher support. That was one of the biggest things that I wanted to do in that presentation and show that it’s still a journey. It’s still something we’re working on.
And that’s okay. Just like with our life students and our newcomer students, they have their own learning journey and we’re
Mandi Morris: always learning. In the past, when I’ve done coaching or work around PLC groups and then developing that muscle to do stations in secondary, because we know that there can be some resistance to stations in secondary.
That’s an [00:25:00] elementary school thing. We don’t do that here. It’s actually, it’s so engaging. Students love it. They can learn routines to make it effective. But then the question is always, Where do we get the data in order to inform instruction? And then data looks really different for our language learners because we need the data pieces for productive language.
And our state language assessment is giving it to us once a year. That’s something that is so powerful about the work that we’re doing here at Flashlight 360 is an opportunity for students to produce language. Have really clearly defined feedback from teachers, use that data to inform small groups. And this is something that we’re both passionate about, like aligning that formative assessment to content that really drives that small group instruction.
I wonder how you’re thinking about, you mentioned your data dig. How are you thinking about that data? And then those small groups? They
Sarah Whitfield: have, it’s through ELA, it’s math. There’s a lot of different data, [00:26:00] but you’re right. That’s only sometimes it’s. The data that we have through benchmarks, especially, it’s maybe three times a year.
And like you said, the state, like we do access testing, so it’s only once a year. What I told them to do is doing the formative assessments. It’s through writing and looking at the writing. But, I do think, honestly, it is hard sometimes for teachers to be able to look at those things. We know, okay, we have a rubric.
They’re supposed to write, have this according to their language level, their proficiency levels. But, I can see it being hard. More streamlined. Maybe, if you had something.
Justin Hewett: Yeah, no, I think so too. It’s something that you said earlier, Sarah, about your ML teachers are specialists. They’re the language specialists.
And it’s just interesting to me that so often when I feel like our ML teachers walk into a PLC, oftentimes they walk in empty handed. They might have that rubric, but that’s about it. It’s interesting because sometimes they walk into that PLC and they feel like they’re almost less than. The [00:27:00] content or the classroom teachers.
And so for us at Flashlight, Mandi, I love you talking about the formatives and the power of being able to get that data. Ultimately, one of the things that we’ve heard is from our ML teachers that when they can walk into that PLC meeting and now not only do they have right now data on their Students in regards to their speaking and writing from flashlight, but they also can play the students recording and show the teachers what this student can do and where there’s work to be done.
And the powerful thing about that is now the. Now that ML teacher gets to feel like a specialist, they get to really adopt that mindset and run with that. And I think it changes the perception of the ML teacher within that PLC. And so maybe talk to us a little bit about how important planning, whether it’s in those PLCs or it’s just co [00:28:00] planning and how important that is to the success of doing this small group work like you’re talking about.
Sarah Whitfield: So I think that is where the ML teacher can be an asset to how we can take their language proficiency data, whether it be formative or summative, and we can say, you know what, right now, this student is maybe working at the word phrase level. Right now. So we can plan some things. Maybe we can have some sentence frames and we can expand that in this small group.
Say if it was a small group with writing. I do think that co planning is so important with that. We’ve also told our teachers, we said sometimes co planning one on one. They’re like, Oh, but Sarah, we don’t have co planning time. There are other ways that we can do this and we’re able to share. I also think we talk about.
We say co planning, co teaching, any way you can collaborate, but co assessing is a big idea too. That is another entry point that we’ve told our teachers to be able to co assess or to talk about some of the [00:29:00] assessments that they’ve had, whether that be their classroom benchmark data that you can look at that will give you some ideas, but then also we know that the language part, we have to put that language part in as well.
And a lot of times our teachers, they have, of course, they have their. The work samples and things like that, but I do think when you think about it, because we tell them our teachers definitely do a lot of speaking practice and things like that, but it is good to share those things. Because I know when I was a classroom teacher, I thought I didn’t think with the domains of language.
I just. I knew that I had to teach students how to read and I knew I had to those things, but that’s where I think the ML teacher can come in and say, Oh my goodness, this student, we know he’s his speaking level. We need to work on that. What are some ways that we can put some structured conversations in?
What are some ways he or she’s going to be able to practice his speaking proficiency with the content? And so those are ways I think the ML teacher can be an asset. And again, I always tell my teachers. [00:30:00] To have an idea, to be able to go in with something as great, whatever kind of information you have on a student, and sometimes we have our language assessment, but it’s always good to have more on hand, and whether that be work samples, whether it be, just have a good.
idea of what the whole child can do because, like I said, I put myself in a, the content teacher’s perspective and I didn’t think with the domains of language and that was just me being reflective and transparent and until I started to do that and once you talk to teachers as the ML teacher, once they talk and you’re able to tell them, I think it’s like Ding.
Oh, maybe we do need to work a little bit on speaking. Maybe I could put a few more things in here to help with that.
Mandi Morris: Sarah, I’m so excited and I want to make sure we have time in our conversation to go here too. I’d love to hear you talk some about your summer programming. I’m super excited to hear about what you’re doing.
I think a lot of school districts are looking at opportunities to support language learners through [00:31:00] this summer. Talking about data again, that’s an important opportunity for us. to have baseline data for students before the school year even begins to set them up for success before the school year begins.
How are you integrating that program? What does it look like for your school district and what are the outcomes you’re really driving towards? It’s the summer
Sarah Whitfield: enrichment program for first year newcomer, secondary newcomers. What we’ve done in the past before I got in this position, I was actually a teacher in this program and it is two weeks long.
And I make sure that we have. Given it the name of a summer enrichment because it gives our students opportunities, we start thinking about the future for these students, of course, they’re going to get practice with academic English and the content through the, through this program, but they’re also gotten opportunities for community leaders, community partners to come in and talk to them about what’s available to them, what is in their future.
So [00:32:00] that has been one of the best experiences that’s come out of my job. I, like I said, I was a teacher before, but we do it at the end of the school year in June, usually, and we provide everything like we will provide lunch. We provide technology for them. I think I opened it up the second year last year.
So it’s first and second year. And it’s interesting because it’s like lots of different languages. So it’s six through 12. Students 6th grade through 12th grade, and we have our ML teachers teach them too. So I always contract four of our ML teachers and some of them might be bilingual as well. So what we do is they have a time in the day where it’s half day.
They have, first of all, we use I get transportation for Cabarrus County. I said at the end of last year, I said, oh my gosh, this has been so great because it’s cool to see at the district level, at a bigger systemic level collaboration. We had nutrition, we had transportation, all pitch in to [00:33:00] help. It was just great.
And so transportation is provided. So our students get there, it’s guaranteed nutrition’s provided, and so they have time in their classrooms where they get to either use technology, they get to learn and do the teacher’s plan, and they would do it like a regular newcomer class, but they have to use the content as well, and so then they have a project at the end where they have to present, and I give them choices, I’ve created that, I gave them choices of, you know, What they’re going to present to the rest of the group.
So for instance, last year I had a choice board of it’s like a culminating project. They had to maybe respond to a Ted talk, an inspirational Ted talk, Emily Francis’s, her book, they responded to that. That’s about immigration story. So it builds them up. They’re in their classes. They’re learning. But then they also have to present at the end of the time there.
And then also I brought in like our local community college. They came and talked about enrollment, just talking about their future as [00:34:00] well. What options that they have, what resources are out there to their families. So it’s. It’s just a way to get them started. And we also had ways that I had a teacher come in to be able to teach them about how if they’re transitioning from eighth grade to ninth grade to high school, how can we make this transition easier for you?
What’s going to be expected of you? So it combines the academics, the language. Social emotional learning and they get to connect with each other. And it really is cool to see different languages, different backgrounds, but they all have the same experiences. So it’s really cool to see. It’s just, it’s my baby.
I love it. I’m learning. And one thing that I would like to do this coming year is put a parent engagement part to it. I think we could really just thinking about how. We can strengthen that a partnership and just to understand how the parents of our newcomers could see they have so many assets and so many great things that they’re already doing for their [00:35:00] students and also just be able to partner with them would be great.
So that’s what I’m thinking for as we move forward. And I’ve thought about we do it in June. I thought about what, if we do it, not at the end of the year, but if we do it for the school year, that has been how I’m going to shift maybe as well, because I think that’s going to be so important to. Gets newcomers ready if they’re making that transition from either 5th grade to 6th grade or 9th grade and getting them ready for that.
So those are just thinking ahead. It’s been such a great program. So many connections are made within that. And again, so many connections are made from the outside community.
Mandi Morris: I love going back earlier in the conversation. You talked about small moves and I feel like what we’re hearing from you over and over again is that this work is incremental and you’re growing it.
And I love hearing about when we started the summer program, it was this and then it grew and then we added our second year kids and now we’re going to extend it to families and it’s. Doing a summer school program is big work [00:36:00] and I love hearing about the collaboration sounds like it’s just at the heart of everything that you do between your ML specialist and the content teachers, transportation and nutrition, and your teachers for the summer school program.
So it just, it sounds like there’s such good work going on in your school district and that it’s continuously growing with really collaboration and assets at the heart of it. We. I would love to do some rapid fire questions here as we’re coming closer to the end of our conversation. These are fun, like a few questions and we’ll hear your responses.
I’m giving some advice to the teachers and other specialist coaches here listening today. What is one piece of advice that you would give to an ML teacher? Just
Sarah Whitfield: being
Mandi Morris: able
Sarah Whitfield: to shift being able to shift what you think it is okay like that again That’s one of the biggest things just being able to say oh, I thought this before but now I’m learning something else Whether it be about a student [00:37:00] another teacher or a parent whatever.
Oh my gosh. I thought this before I might have made an assumption Oops, let me change how I’m looking at this one of the another thing pause. That’s rapid Just pause sometimes if you get stressed just pause I’m all about that patience. So yes, that’s so good. Take a breath, just be in the pause. It’s fun.
Justin Hewett: Yeah. Respond instead of react. I love that. I think that many of the worst decisions we make in our life are because we’ve reacted instead of responded. And I love that idea of just pausing tremendous advice. All right, next in the lightning round, what is one practice that you see, whether it’s in classrooms or maybe you’ve read about or you’ve done yourself, but what is one practice that you would love to see implemented more?
Sarah Whitfield: I am big right now, just on structured conversations, just talking, increasing speaking, gosh, that’s what I see in classrooms. That’s the [00:38:00] feedback when I was a classroom teacher that I always got. They’re like, oh my goodness. And before I became a language teacher, you need to get them to speak more. And I was like, wow, because we know you’re going to pacing guide as a classroom teacher.
And I was like, why? But now I see it and I also see it when I do professional developments. I have to stop myself. I think, oh my gosh, I’ve been talking for 10 minutes. I need to give them some time to just process it and talk with each other. So Just being able to give conversation, just letting, and it does, it could just be chatter.
It doesn’t have to be overly formal. Just let them talk.
Mandi Morris: That’s so good. I love that advice. And I love you talking about the structured conversations. That’s really powerful. And yeah, for adults too, for the professional learning that you’re leading in your school district. We all. process by talking things through.
So I love that. Thank you. Okay, next up, tell us about a light bulb moment or experience that changed your approach as a language specialist, a language educator.
Sarah Whitfield: As a learner [00:39:00] myself, I know a light bulb moment when I was talking about professional development, because I give professional development.
That’s my, that is me right now. I, the light bulb moment came when I knew that I could have, take charge of my own professional development, that I could make choices and I could do things that were not, I could have a PLN, I could have a professional learning network, I can make connections. So that was the light bulb moment that changed.
And as far as my students, I can’t think of one. Necessarily one magic moment. Again, just probably during that time, a few years ago, when I had those newcomers in secondary, they taught me so much during that time, that whole year that I was with them, just about the relationships we built that whole year.
It was such a great, it was a transformative year that I had my middle school newcomers, and that’s why I’m so passionate because they taught me. It was just a ding light bulb moment of. What they can do so much. And I, again, [00:40:00] like I said before, I might’ve thought something before and I was able to have more asset based asset mindset.
Yeah. That was probably the light bulb moment. Light bulb year for me.
Justin Hewett: I think everybody has an experience like that where all of a sudden they realize that, Oh, these students bring so much to this work. And when we were starting flashlight, we almost actually named it asset. Asset based learning because we just love that focus on assets and I still have the URL so I we went and bought it because I just I really believe in it so much and I think so much of this work is understanding where a student is on their journey or where is the teacher on their journey of understanding how to teach language.
And teaching language through content or whatever it might be. And so I love that focus. I love hearing that. And the other thing that resonated from your, that experience where you had that kind of light bulb moment, if you will, is a focus on relationships. And I think that’s the thing that [00:41:00] probably keeps us all in this work the most.
I think we’re drawn to it to make a difference and we get on a mission and then we get to know these students stories or these. Family stories, and it just really draws us in and we build these relationships that make us more complete, more of a person. Like we just understand more and get us that much further on our own mission.
Sarah Whitfield: Absolutely. It’s that I think the students, and like I said, I was, I’m from here, Cabarrus County, and just a girl from Cabarrus County, but I say it all the time that our students bring so much to us, they bring the world to us. And so that has been that group of students, but on continuing all the students I meet.
Every day in our schools and our newcomer program that we have. So they, they make it happen.
Justin Hewett: Sarah Whitfield. Thank you so much for being our guest here today on the ML chat podcast. It has been a pleasure to have you here with us. We’re so grateful for all the great work you’re doing in Cabarrus County and spreading that word, going to different conferences and giving [00:42:00] presentations and doing sessions.
And anyways, we want to honor you and the great work you’re doing. Thank you for coming on here and telling some of your story. About some of the great work you’re doing.
