Lisa M. Dorner, Ph.D.

teacher, researcher, life-long learner

On Writing

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response to writing prompt by dorner

“How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” – E.M. Forster

In October of 2023, I decided to attend a writing retreat. And what a treat indeed: two days dedicated entirely to writing, with workshops and keynote speakers and food provided, in a beautiful out-of-the-way setting. I did this in the midst of So. Many. Other. Situations. that needed my attention. You know, the usual: work, family, health issues, finances. But I went anyway. I was inspired to go after I found out about the opportunity from one of my very good friends – a writer and my walking partner, who, in fact, I do believe provided the inspiration FOR this very event! (Thank you, my friend!)

I am here because I wanted to carve aside time to actually think and write, to set aside space and opportunity for the very thing that is at the heart of my work – communicating ideas – but is something that I rarely get to do any more. So why not try it out? Try to block out the emails, the texts, the planning, the arranging, … All. The. Other. Work.

And so now, here I sit, writing this.

For our first session, I chose “Prewriting.” It was amazingly crafted by the instructor, helping to pull out from the group of writers in attendance what they do to write – why they do it – and what sometimes stops them from doing it. One of the very important insights from this session was that we are always writing. Pre-writing or writing is not something that just happens when you actually put pen to paper or fingers to a keyboard. It’s the thought that hits you in the shower, on the walk. It’s the story that comes to you when you’re chopping vegetables. It’s the email or text you compose to your friend. It’s the quiet time, the loud times, the active times, the silence. It’s the routines and the surprises. It’s what you’ve read and experienced. It’s the people around you. It’s the people that haunt you. It’s the places you’ve been. Or the places you want to go.

This is all true. In fact, the idea for my next blog entry came to me on the 2.5 hour drive to this writing retreat, a drive that started on I-55 north out of St. Louis, toward Chicago, a trip I’ve taken hundreds of times in between my family’s hometown and my husband’s. Perhaps this is what led my brain to pre-write and consider the idea for my next blog focused on space and how it shapes who we are, what we think, how we communicate, and also (in tune with this current event I’m experiencing) what we ultimately write about.

This wasn’t the only insight I gained from the retreat, though. We also reflected upon how writing is deeply personal and how writing is hard. These may not seem like deep insights or something that we need to be reminded about. But in the field of education research – what I essentially do with my work time and help others learn how to do – we spend a LOT of time writing. I don’t think we acknowledge the personal and the difficulty often enough in academic writing. We’re just supposed to know how to do it and do it well by the time we get into graduate school. However, how can we sustain a career of writing if our work is not somehow personal to us? And, ultimately, who reads our own writing the most? We do! (Well, we do if we edit our work like we should! 🙂 ) We also don’t acknowledge often enough how hard it is. It is, as our instructor pointed out, a technology, something we learn, a craft we have to practice. These are additional, important insights that I will carry with me, as I continue on my own writing and life journey, and as I support others in theirs.

So, as I finish this retreat, I’m working on my next blog entry, which I hope will become a new regular series. I’m going to aim for once per month, and maybe someday that will turn into once per week. I will draw from all the pre-writing I naturally do in my daily life (thank you to my instructor, our class, and feminist scholars for pointing out the richness and ideas generated from everyday lives!); I will acknowledge and revel in the difficulty of the work; and I will do this as a gift to myself, to recognize that writing is deeply personal, even as I share it here, with you. Adelante and onward to this new writing and sharing journey!

Equity in Bilingual Education is Possible!

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Cover Art for Critical Consciousness in Dual Language Bilingual Education

Together with Drs. Deb Palmer, Claudia Cervantes-Soon, Dan Heiman, and Emily Crawford-Rossi — and our amazing cover artist, Martha Samaniego — I am excited to post that our new edited volume has been published! Critical Consciousness in Dual Language Bilingual Education: Case Studies on Policy and Practice (2022) is now available. If you want to see what the book’s about, the introductory chapter is FREE on this page – just click on “Preview PDF” in the upper-right-hand corner! And if you’re interested in buying the book, please use the code AERA2023 at Routledge, for a 30% discount (good til May 31, 2023)!

In our introduction, we noted that this book came to being “amid challenges that feel insurmountable: millions of people from Ukraine, Ethiopia, and Yemen fleeing their homes due to unprovoked and civil wars; countless Central Americans pleading for asylum in the United States; and an on-going pandemic disproportionately killing people of color. Black, Brown, LGTBQ+, and other marginalized communities continue to experience violence and inequity across our educational, legal, and civil institutions time and time again.”

But then, we continued: “there is hope and love in the world too. People are welcoming refugees into their homes, youth are committing their lives to activism against racism, and new organizations are working to fairly distribute life-saving medical care. We know how to fight back against oppression. But it takes opening our hearts and minds, developing our consciousness of inequities, and figuring out how to take action.” 

This is the heart of our new edited volume. In showcasing examples of equity and positive action in bilingual education and dual language programs, we hope to provide inspiration for educators and families alike, especially those working in primary and secondary schools in the United States. At the heart of each case study is the question: how can we ensure equity in bilingual education? Now, we share the volume with you, so you may ask this question of yourself and your community.

We truly look forward to your feedback on the ideas and stories presented in the book. Whether you are a student, teacher, principal, parent or community member working with bilingual schools, please contact us any time. You can find me at dornerl @ missouri.edu.

New Conference on Bilingual Education in the Midwest

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Do you work in a dual language program that serves bilingual and bicultural students? Are you interested in developing more equitable programs and enhancing educational opportunities at your school?

Building Raciolinguistic Justice in Midwestern Dual Language Programs through Research-Practice Partnerships is a year-long project supported by the Spencer Foundation; coordinated by me, Trish Morita-Mullaney, Deborah Palmer, and Amy Young; and implemented in partnership with many other bilingual educators and scholars. The project is designed to enhance and develop critical consciousness in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) in the US Midwest.

What is DLBE and why is critical consciousness important for it? Dual language bilingual education is a unique educational approach where teachers provide content instruction in English and another language, aiming to develop bilingualism, biliteracy, and biculturalism for a diverse student body. Yet despite the fact most programs integrate and serve students from various backgrounds, DLBE continues to face persistent challenges with equity, especially for students of color and youth who speak languages other than English (see here). This is true in all program models regardless of the label (one-way, two-way, 90/10, 50/50, etc.). In turn, we must build critical consciousness, that is, processes to study such inequities and take action to disrupt them.

The project has three main goals:

  1. Document and more deeply understand how Midwestern DLBE programs serve diverse students, especially children of color from bilingual and bicultural homes.
  2. Develop research-practice partnerships and new research agendas for understanding and addressing equity challenges through critical consciousness.
  3. Foster a community of practice and network of researchers and practitioners to build antiracist, equitable DLBE programs across the region.

We invite DLBE educators to join our webinar series this June! Partnering with the Cambio Center and CARLA, these four webinars will develop an understanding of DLBE challenges and opportunities across Midwestern DLBE programs. The webinars are organized around four actions that enhance critical consciousness:

  • Historicizing Dual Language Communities and Ourselves—Tuesday, June 14
    Learn about deconstructing mainstream explanations of the past and foregrounding individuals’ and communities’ local histories.
  • Critical Listening in Dual Language Education—Thursday, June 16
    Explore ways of engaging students, educators, and families with others for meaningful and transformative connection through developing curiosity and attention, sharing, caring, reciprocity, and responsivity.
  • Embracing Discomfort in Dual Language Spaces—Tuesday, June 21
    Experience and learn from the inevitable unsettled feelings one might have in recognizing, reflecting on, and acting against the ways in which our own privilege, sense of entitlement, or silence reify and reproduce social injustice.
  • Interrogating Power to Develop Equity in Dual Language Programs—Thursday, June 23
    Examine ways of calling out oppression, and working to push those in power to take note of injustice and to transform systems.

All webinars will take place on Zoom from 4–5:30 p.m. (Central Time).

For More Information

Pandemic Policymaking

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The COVID-19 pandemic was a crisis beyond most of our imaginations. In 2020 as school buildings closed, teachers started teaching online, students learned how to learn from home, and educational leaders managed a new kind of crisis. Principals had to figure out how to get meals to children in a socially distant fashion; how to provide access to the internet in areas that never had it before; and how to support families who didn’t have computers or tablets for their kids to use. In short, educators and their schools had to create all kinds of new policies, procedures, and practices in a relatively short amount of time.

But they didn’t do so alone – policies are never made in isolation. Responses to the pandemic were dynamic and social, as educators enacted policy in partnership with external organizations, families, and within their particular school districts.

In 2020-2021, colleagues and I worked alongside one elementary school and its non-profit partner to see how they managed and responded to the pandemic. We developed an ethnographic study to understand how policies were made and enacted over time and with others. We tracked the school’s policy responses, specifically the structures, resources, and discourses that shaped two policy areas: family-school communication, and access to remote learning. In this AERA Open article, we demonstrate that external partnerships can bring much needed resources to a crisis response, but existing structures and racialized discourses that exist within district and community contexts can hinder their best intentions for equitable policymaking. We concluded:

To “address the complex needs of the most vulnerable students,” it will take “grass-root associations” and myriad other actors “close to the field” (OECD, 2020, p. 19)…. School-community engagement has the power to shape crisis responses and policy enactment–but to fully understand such an interactive, negotiated process, one must understand schools’ external partners, their resources, structures, and discourses as well as their students, families, and communities. 

Resilience & Responses to COVID19

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It’s Wednesday, March 11, 2020. I’m in the middle of the university semester, teaching a graduate course on research methods. Spring break is soon and we’re headed to visit a few colleges for my son, who’s a junior in high school. But one email after another comes to my inbox. It feels like a slow wind that picks up into a tornado. My university announces that it’s cancelling all classes for two days, so professors like me can transition to 100% online learning the following Monday (!!). Universities across the country suspend all events, including admission tours. Doctors advise stay-at-home orders. And, my kids’ high school and middle school decide they’ll be virtual for the two weeks after spring break, which starts the following Monday.

I’ve been reflecting on my own kids’ experiences from this past spring (2020) and how they must’ve compared to other children across our district, where over 90% of students receive free/reduced-priced meals. While my kids attend diverse schools in the city, they are magnet schools often touted as the “best” in the state by typical/official (standardized test) measures, and they are not reflective of our wider community … here’s one story that gives a sense of what life and learning and the racial divide is like in our city right now. So, I’m wondering — if our kids didn’t have a good learning experience and struggled at times, with all our privilege, with two parents who can work at home and be with them, with more than enough technology, computers, internet access, stable and secure housing, and so on +++, I honestly can only (cannot) imagine what other families are experiencing: sharing 1 cell phone across 4 kids? Working long hours at the grocery store while the eldest kid tries to manage the toddlers at home? Being a newly settled refugee without all the network and support one normally gets from the International Institute? Having a family member die?

  • Excerpt from personal journal entry, May 31, 2020

I remember that initial time of the COVID-19 pandemic quite clearly – perhaps in part because I kept a journal, in part because it was such a change of pace, and in part because the constant ambulance sirens flooding to the nearby city hospital seemed louder, more often, and more alarming. This collision of school, work and life – of new spaces for teaching and learning – of constant, never-ending decision-making that seemed like life-or-death – all in the midst of the “dual pandemics” of COVID-19 and systemic racism – this all felt so very sharp.

And, yet, this collision is not behind us: this is something we need to keep talking about, as we face the third school year shaped by these pandemics. What do we know now, that we didn’t know last summer, and how can we prepare?

First, we educators are resilient and creative. This is a fact we cannot forget: although it’s been a year of stress, burnout, and loss, it’s also been one of a whole host of new efforts in education to support families, students, and each other. As my friend put it, “Social processes and practices can change very quickly, and do, when circumstances force them.”

Here are just a few things that teachers from across my state discussed learning during our recent Summer Institute for SEE-TEL (Strengthening Equity & Effectiveness for Teachers of English Learners), a National Professional Development grant project supported by the US Department of Education:

  1. Having parent-teacher conferences on Zoom removed a lot of barriers for multilingual families. All of a student’s teachers and their translator could be together at one time; there were fewer childcare issues or work-related conflicts for families. Consider what to keep from this past year, for example using technology to connect with families, even when we can meet in-person again.
  2. To help families acclimate to their community, one district held in-person, small group orientations for very recent newcomers. Another got special permission to provide one-on-one or small group instruction for newcomers grouped by language even when schools were shut down. Keep equity at the center and don’t hesitate to ask questions about trying new approaches: what works best for whatever is facing families and students at your school?
  3. Teachers said that they saw how access to and a shared understanding of technology were essential for all families. And relationships were central to providing that access and understanding. Using “show & tell” on families’ porches and sharing cell phone numbers and text messages helped teachers provide that extra assistance to their students. Make relationship-building central to your school culture: how can strong relationships support teaching, learning and access to resources?
  4. Students designated as English Learners didn’t all fall behind: teachers saw their growth, even after a semester of distance learning, which they demonstrated on standardized tests. They explained that co-teaching (content and “ESL” teachers working as a team) in virtual spaces helped tremendously. Don’t forget that you’re not alone as an educator – partnerships matter!

Second, we know a lot more about how to respond to a crisis in education. Since last summer 2020, I’ve worked with colleagues documenting a pilot school-community partnership that aimed to help families and educators respond to COVID-19. Meeting regularly throughout the year, we witnessed how educators, volunteers, community organizations, and families poured everything they had to support the immense challenges facing our school communities.

From this work, we created a checklist, a set of questions for school leaders to consider in “Getting Schools and Families Connected During a Crisis.” This is a living document we continue to adapt, not only as we learn more about schools’ responses and preparations for COVID-19, but also as we imagine how such a document could support a range of crises, such as those inflicted by natural disasters or events brought forth by climate change.

So, while there is perhaps more unknown than ever about this coming school year, and although we may face the same never-ending tornado of decision-making and choices, we are resilient and we have some ideas how to respond to a crisis. What is your #resilient story or successful #response to #COVID19 from last year? I welcome your thoughts @lisamdorner.