IDIOMNew York State Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages

Table of Contents pg. #

Collaborative Conversations 1Conversations in Support 3Acting 4Resources for the Common Core 6Talking is learning 10Small Talk 14Conversation Table 24

Regular Features / Special Announceents pg.#

Promising Practices 8Book Review 12SIGs and Regions 17Members Only Website 18Editorial Notes 22Upcoming Idiom Themes 22Calendar and Announcements 22NEW Membership Form 23

Vol. 41, No. 3 http://www.nystesol.org Fall 2011

NYS TESOLAnnual Conference

Oct. 28-29Marriott Hotel

Melvillewww.nystesol.org/annualconf/

That effective collaboration benefits students (and teachers alike) is affirmed by the well-deserved attention it has received most recently in the professional literature (see, for example, DelliCarpini, 2008, 2009; Honigsfeld & Dove, 2010; NACTAF, 2009; NEA, 2009; Pawan & Ortloff, 2011) and in the TESOL educa-tional community (e.g., themes of 2011 New York State and Kentucky TESOL conferences). Acknowledging the importance of collaborative exchanges among teachers is not a completely novel idea, though. Close to three decades ago, Judith Warren Little (1982) examined the differences between more and less effective schools and found that the more effective ones had a greater degree of collegiality.

She noted four unique characteristics of collegiality (or collaboration) in suc-cessful schools, where teachers participate in the following activities:

• Teachers engage in frequent, continuous, and increasingly concrete and precise talk about teaching practice.

• Teachers are frequently observed and provided with useful critiques of their teaching.

• Teachers plan, design, evaluate, and prepare teaching materials together.

• Teachers teach each other the practice of teaching (pp. 331–332).

Consider what Warren Little’s (1982) frequently quoted four key ideas could mean for ELLs in today’s schools. What if we translated her seminal findings into a contemporary framework of four Cs, in which “collaborative” serves as a defin-ing adjective, followed by a key activity or desired teacher behavior necessary for improved student learning?

• Collaborative Conversations: Through enhanced communication, all teachers have the opportunity to develop ownership and shared responsibility for ELLs’ learning.

• Collaborative Coaching: Through an encouraging school climate and support-ive framework, teachers offer and receive feedback on their teaching practices.

• Collaborative Curriculum Development: Through curriculum mapping and alignment and collaborative materials development, teachers match both their longterm and day-to-day instructional goals and activities.

(continued on page 20)

Collaborative Conversations*by Andrea HonigsfeldThis Issue’s Theme:

Conversations

Vol. 41, No. 3 (Fall 2011) 1 NYS TESOL Idioms

From the President’s Desk

by Nanette Dougherty, NYS TESOL President

Dear Colleagues,

I hope you have been enjoying a happy, healthy and restorative summer. I would like to up-date you on some changes and challenges facing educators. On July 13, I attended the Bilingual/ESL COP (Committee of Practitioners) meeting at Teachers College, Columbia University. The most major changes include the New Evaluation Law for K-12 teachers and principals:

1. Annual evaluations for all teachers and principals2. Clear, rigorous expectations for instructional excellence, prioritizing student learning3. Multiple measures of performance4. Multiple ratings: Four performance levels to describe differences in teacher effectiveness5. The new system should encourage regular, constructive feedback and ongoing development6. Significance: results are a major factor in employment decisions.

You can view all documents discussed at the COP Meeting at the following link: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/biling/bilinged/BilingualESLCOP.html. For more information about the Common Core Standards, please consult the website at: http://www.corestandards.org/ and see the article in this issue. Though it was not considered at this meeting, the 14 Bilingual/ESL Technical Assistance Centers (BETACs) across New York State closed permanently onJune 30, 2011. This puts both our schools and our LEP/ELL populations at risk of not hav-ing the appropriate resources to meet their educational and programmatic needs over the next five years.

Our new Commissioner of Education, Dr. John B. King, Jr., may not be familiar with the importance of the resources offered by the BETACs. You may e-mail him directly at: jking@mail.nysed.gov. In addition, you may email the NYS Board of Regents on this issue at: RegentsOffice@mail.nysed.gov.

At the Melville Marriott October 28-29th, I will be passing the gavel to our incoming President, Rebekah Johnson. I would like to thank the many wonderful members of my Executive Board and the many SIG and Region Leaders for their service to the organiza-tion. Special thanks to Cornelia Randolph, a constant support and inspiration, and Fran Olmos, for her guidance.

You will be receiving ballots for the Executive Board slate in the mail shortly. Thanks to our Nominating Committee, led by Cornelia Randolph and Terri Brady-Mendez, for their time and efforts. Members, please do not forget to vote for your new leadership in our organization by returning your ballots. As always, please continue to keep in touch with issues, concerns, and ideas on how our organization can best serve you. Best wishes for a great school year to all.

Peace and blessings to you,Nanette Dougherty, President, NYS TESOL

P.S. We’re so very excited to be launching our new Members Only website - please read more about it in this issue and log in soon to check it out. Please contact us with ideas!

New York State Teachers of Englishto Speakers of Other Languages

Officers and Executive Board 2010-2011

President, Nanette DoughertyNYC Public Schools

First Vice President, Rebekah JohnsonLAGCC, CUNY

Second Vice President, Christy BaralisSouth Huntington School District

Second Vice President Elect, Olivia LimbuPace University

Past President/TESOL Liaison, Constance Dziombak

Mount Vernon City Schools

SIG Coordinator, Laura Van TassellSouth Huntington School District

SIG Assistant Coordinator, Jennifer ScullyConsultant

Regions Coordinator, Tina VillalobosHicksville Public Schools

Assistant Regions Coordinator, Lynn Ellingwood

Brighton Central School District

Membership & Marketing Chair, Patricia Juza Baruch College, CUNY

Assistant Membership Chair, Drew FaganTeachers College, Columbia University

Curriculum and Standards Chair, Maria Dove Molloy College

Assistant Curriculum and Standards ChairPosition Open

Professional Concerns ChairPorfirio Rodriguez, East Ramapo CSD

Professional Concerns Assistant ChairPosition Open

Publications/Technology Chair, Fran OlmosYonkers Public Schools

Idiom Editor, Cara Tuzzolino WerbenNassau Community College

Dialogue Editor, Sue PetersonSt. John’s University

Webmaster, David HirschNew York City

Business Manager/TreasurerL. Jeanie Faulkner, Cornell University

Certified Public AccountantJim Stotz

NYS TESOL Executive Board Meetings and General InformationMembers are welcome to attend Board meetings. For information, contact:

NYS TESOLBox 185Teachers College, Columbia University525 W. 120th Street, New York, NY 10027Tel./Fax: (212) 678-3074E-mail: nystesol@nystesol.orgWeb site: http://www.nystesol.org

Vol. 41, No. 3 (Fall 2011) 2 NYS TESOL Idioms

Conversations in Support of High School ELLs

Adolescent ELLs are second language learners who are still developing their proficiency in academic English. Moreover, they are learning English at the same time they are studying core content areas through English. Thus, English language learners must perform double the work of native English speakers in the country’s middle and high schools. At the same time, they are being held to the same accountability standards as their native English-speaking peers (Short & Fitzsimmons, 2007, p. 1). Conversations with ELLs and colleagues are viable ways for ESL teachers to help their students navigate academic challenges. My short time at Jamaica High School has been filled with conversations that have driven my instruction to best support the ELLs in my charge.

Curriculum Experiments Based on Conversations with ELLs At Jamaica High School, an ESL support class is offered zero period, 7:22 to 8:06 a.m., to provide intermediate ELLs with additional targeted interventions. September 2011 will be the third year I am teaching zero period, and each year is an ongoing curriculum development action research experiment. I conduct the course as combined resource room and advisory class model. Based on daily conversations with my students about their challenges, I provide homework help; teach problematic topics in mathematics, science, and social studies; and as-sess and teach diverse skills necessary for academic success. The first year of the experiment, my curriculum included mathematics symbols and word problems; the living environment topics of scientific method, evolution, and organ systems; social studies topics of feudalism, estates, and analysis of political cartoons; English language arts topics of idioms, formal versus informal language, and dictionary/glossary skills; and academic readiness in test-taking strategies, study skills, time management, notebook organization, public speaking skills, and computer skills. I also taught graph skills across the disciplines. This class was one of a select few Jamaica High School English and ESL classes that benefi ted from TeenBiz3000 (Empower3000), a Web-based individualized reading program by Achieve3000.

Conversations with ELLs form part of the data collection that drives my curriculum chang-es. Several first-year students (participants in Experiment I) reported the lessons and activities helped them pass content-area finals and New York State Regents examinations. When asked how the support class could be improved for the following year, ELLs suggested that I allot more time to science, continue teaching math and social studies, and retain computer instruction on TeenBiz3000. One student, who was particularly resistant to my teaching anything but ESL all year, later admitted he benefitted from content-area instruction by his ESL teacher. All students expressed a deep appreciation for the bilingual content area glossaries I provided.

In the second year (Experiment II), I spent less time on dictionary/glossary skills; did not teach idioms; and, upon careful review of recent living environment Regents exams, added an ecosystem unit, a lesson on pH, and group activities on bar and line graphs. I replaced the for-mal versus informal English lesson with daily academic English and everyday English explana-tions and definitions. Students assessed their multiple intelligences(Gardner, 1983; Gardner, 1993, 2996; McKenzie, 1999), and learning styles (Dunn & Dunn, 1993; Dunn & Griggs, 2003, 2004, 2007; Missere & Dunn, 2005). I added native-language translations of key content vo-cabulary to my student notebook grading rubric. Groups researched continents and explorers an presented their PowerPoint slide shows to ELLs in other classes. TeenBiz3000 was replaced by Study Island, Web-based instruction built on New York State standards, that provided all Jamaica High School students practice for English, mathematics, science, and social studies Regents exams; and for national Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) and Advanced Placement (AP) exams. Based on requests from Experiment I participants for Internet resources for speak-ing practice, I created lists of Web sites and links with podcasts and speaking exercises. As I gear up for Experiment III in the 2011-2012 school year, I plan todevote more time to dictionary skills, such as alphabetizing, and content area textbook structure, with specialatten-tion to textbook glossaries and indices; the participants in Experiment II were lacking in dic-tionary/textbook research skills and did not make optimum use of these resources. I provided a list of Web sites and links for Regents practice and bilingual glossaries, and will again provide copies of bilingual glossaries in Experiment III. I have decided to step up test-taking strategies and content writing practice in the zero period support class beginning in September.

Vol. 41, No. 3 (Fall 2011) 3 NYS TESOL Idioms

Conversations with Families

Individual writing conferencesoften involve reinforcing the

student’s strengths and discussing specific areas in need of improve-

ment (Fountas & Pinnell, 2001). I had conversations with each

student about his/her multiple intelligences and learningstyle

profiles generated from the Dunn

(continued on page 26)

by Victoria Pilotti

All the World’s a Stage: Ways in Which Teaching Is Like Actingby Elizabeth Fonseca

Acting is a sport. On stage you must be ready to move like a tennis player on his toes. Your concentration must be keen, your refl exes sharp; your body and mind are in top gear; the chase is on. Acting is energy. In the theatre people pay to see energy.

—Clive Swift

Good teaching is one-fourth prepa-ration and three-fourths theater.

—Gail Godwin

If “acting is energy,” teaching is many things: a combination of knowledge, experience, awareness, expertise, and care. It is also the energy we, as language instructors, bring into the classroom that absolutely affects the order of the day. As a theater lover and past occasional per-former, I have often thought about the parallels between teaching and acting. Here are a few that come to mind.

You’re on stage. All eyes are on you. You’re the initial focal point of atten-tion. Your presence shifts the energy in the room. Sometimes, you literally have a podium, with desks arrayed in rows before you like patrons at a theater. There is noise, chatter, laughter, shuffling in the room until the lights dim. Curtain up! Enter stage left, the professor. Cell phones get put away, or at least discreetly placed to the side. Chitchat dies down. The room is hushed a moment, the pause of anticipation before the first words of dialogue are spoken.

All eyes are on you. An actor uses her body to convey information about her character before she even speaks. So do you. How are you dressed? Does what you wear convey some message about

your position in this play, your role, your persona as teacher, leader, or facilitator of the energy in the room? How do you walk in? Are your eyes downcast, reflect-ing your students’ spent energy at the end of a long week, or do they sparkle? Do you walk in the room with pizzazz, transmitting vital energy to them, to cre-ate the cycle of give-and-take necessary for effective language learning? Do you use gestures, winks, and nods to convey information, emotion, even comedy? These are things worth thinking about, because one of the most important ways you are like an actor is in this all-impor-tant function. Your energy and presence set the tone.

Just as audiences must have faith in actors and suspend their disbelief to fully enter into the world the actors are creat-ing, your students must agree to the un-spoken contract of trust that bonds them to you in a vulnerable learning situation. Your ability to create that atmosphere of trust is important; your dynamism helps your class generate energy that in turn feeds you and helps the learning envi-ronment be dynamic. This is important for learning as well as for the teacher’s ability to sustain energy and passion both within a class and over her entire run.

Actors use their voices as tools, rely-ing on not just word choice but inflec-tion, intonation, varying volume, and the judicious use of pauses to capture the audience’s attention, rivet them, spell-bind them, draw them forward in their seats wondering “What’s next?” You too can use your voice itself as a tool that weaves the bewitching spell of energy, dynamism, and trust that makes for a lively and effective learning environment. The show must go on. There are days when you can’t imagine generating that energy at all. On those days, you have to “act as if ”: put on your teaching persona

as an actor dons a mask or stage makeup, preparing herself to go before the lights. If you don’t show up, or show up without energy, you might flop.

This leads us to the all-important teaching persona. As an actor slips into a role through preparation, curiosity, and the desire to share emotion and infor-mation with an audience, you can slip into your teaching persona, comprised of your sincere and genuine self with a soupçon of public-role poise, strategic sass, and teacher’s tools you’ve learned throughout your teaching days that help you on the way.

Is your persona the classic scholar? Do you have a little playful clown thrown in? Are you the compassionate guide, leading students to the knowledge they already possess? Can you switch hats to that of the taskmaster, pushing for and demanding the very best? It can be useful to think of the teacher role as composed of these different personae that serve useful functions in the various processes of learning, including enabling you to reach students of different backgrounds, needs, and learning styles. Even if you are not like that, your alter ego, “Pro-fessor Picky”, can be. Although you are more lenient, “Scholar Strict” can be called upon as necessary to whip an underachieving class into shape. Being a teacher is a public role that requires daily public speaking; why not train for it and find useful tools and approaches that may aid in maintaining your interest, creating a positive learning environment, and aiding in efficient classroom man-agement?

If you think some training might help you focus your body as instrument and help you channel energy more efficiently and effectively in the classroom, here are some suggestions to get you started:

• Take an acting class. Learn how to use body language, breath, and voice to create energy and atmosphere.

• Take a public speaking class. Learn relax-ation techniques, visualization techniques, and tips for effectively conveying a mes-sage.

• Join a group such as Toastmasters Inter-national, where you’ll learn tips for public speaking.

• Listen to and read poetry aloud. Learn about cadence, rhythm, and volume to use your voice more effectively—and to save it from too many of those hoarse, raggedy, “I’ve-spoken-too-much” days!

• Similarly, take a vocal or voice training class. Learn specifi c breathing exercises to strengthen your voice and to become expert in effectively and effi ciently using and saving your voice. Here is a website to get you thinking about your own parallels between acting and teaching: http://www/ jbactors.com/actingphilosophy/ acting-quotations.html

References

Godwin, G. (1974). The Odd Woman.New York: Ballantine Books.http://www/jbactors.com/actingphiloso-phy/actingquotations.html

Elizabeth Fonseca is an avid travelerwho has taught ESL/EFL in such countriesas Italy, Turkey, and the United Arab Emir-ates. Her work has been published in the Arabia Review and the Traveler’s Tales series, among others. Her interest in acting stems from high school and community theater days, as well as more recent poetry readings. She currently teaches at Nassau Community College in New York.<Elizabeth.fonseca@ncc.edu>

NYS TESOL Remembers Jeanette D. Macero

The field of ESOL has lost one of its most revered members, Jeanette D. Macero, who died May 9, 2011. Jeanette was passionate in her dedication to non-native speak-ers of English as exemplified by her teaching, mentoring and participation in profes-sional organizations.

Jeanette, one of the founders of NYS ESOL BEA (now NYS TESOL—see note below), was a leader in that organization nonstop until her retirement from Syracuse University in 1998, as associate professor of English and TESOL coordinator of lan-guages, literatures and linguistics. She moved to Medfield, MA to be near her family.

Many NYS TESOL members will testify to the mentoring they received from Jea-nette, who held leadership positions in the organization for her entire career. Jeanette graduated with a BA in English from Barnard College, an MA in linguistics from Co-lumbia University, and did doctoral study in linguistics at the University of Michigan. She was president, second vice president twice, and chair of various TESOL commit-tees: publications, paper selection, awards and nominations. Twice, she received the NYS TESOL Distinguished Service Award.

In addition to Jeanette’s full-time teaching at Syracuse University, she published skill books for beginners of English through Laubach Literacy (now known as ProLit-eracy), as well as a number of scholarly papers and addresses, edited books of read-ings, and acted as consultant to many groups.

All those who knew Jeanette are aware of her many accomplishments in professional organizations and her skillful teaching, but those closest to her will remember most her kind and compassionate manner to all she met and worked with, her hearty laugh, and her engaging personality. Jeanette’s friends and colleagues have lost a treasure.

Vel Chesser, retired from Syracuse University, can be reached at <vfchesse@syr.edu>

Editor’s note: With thanks to NYS TESOL historian George Morris: The very first organization was called NY TESOL (No “S” for State), then NYS ESOL BEA. The founding date is 1970 (hence our 40th anniversary in 2010). The split into NYS TESOL and NYSABE was in the early 1980

by Vel Chesser

Vol. 41, No. 3 (Fall 2011) 4 NYS TESOL Idioms Vol. 41, No. 3 (Fall 2011) 5 NYS TESOL Idioms