Lisa M. Dorner, Ph.D.

teacher, researcher, life-long learner

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.

Change…& Bilingualism for All?

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Exactly one year ago today, I sat at work and saw email after email announce the closing of schools, the pausing of travel, what felt like the shutting down of society: change was certainly upon us. The COVID-19 pandemic had shuttered school buildings, forced learning (or the attempt at learning) to go online, and entirely changed our ways of life, from shopping to working to gathering with friends. And then came more reports of Black men killed by police, not to mention further injustices and inequities to various marginalized groups laid bare by the pandemic: higher rates of COVID infection and death among low-income, Black and immigrant populations, and less access to educational opportunities in urban and rural districts across the country as the pandemic spread far and wide.

In the midst of all of this, I had the opportunity to re-analyze data collected about the development of language immersion schooling in the Midwest for an edited book titled, Bilingualism for All? Raciolinguistic Perspectives on Dual Language Education in the United States by Nelson Flores, Amelia Tseng, and Nicholas Subtirelu. I see this book as part of broader conversations about educational and racial equity happening across the country right now, as we considered who has access to bilingual programs and how they work or not for marginalized populations.

Historically, the phrase “bilingual education” brings to mind specialized programs for children from immigrant families who speak languages other than English at home. In the past 20 years, however, there has been widespread development of what is now called “dual language” education, which ideally (though with many challenges) brings bilingual education to a wider group of students. Some programs aim to purposefully integrate immigrant/transnational youth who speak a shared home language (e.g., Spanish) with English-dominant youth. Other programs are designed to support bilingual and biliteracy development in children who come from mostly monolingual, English-speaking homes. This is the kind of program I followed for nearly 10 years.

I have to say, it was an amazing school and educational opportunity for a very diverse group of students. This program was designed by a bilingual African-American woman and met its main aim to bring bilingual education to Black youth whose families had never had this kind of opportunity before. However, as I discuss in the chapter of Bilingualism for All?, state and federal policies that focused on English language arts development promoted a slow shift in the school away from their founding aims. After many years of reportedly low standardized test scores, the school was pressured to change its approach to language education; as part of this, they decided that students needed to perform proficiently on English exams before they could be taught content material in another language. Essentially, this positioned Black youth in the school as “language-less” – as not even being competent in their own native language of English – completely neglecting the actual multilingual and multiliterate capacities that Black youth have and do bring to school. (For more on the richness and history of Black language in the U.S., check out the Black Language Syllabus and Marcyliena Morgan’s work.)

The change at this school was slow; it was subtle. But it had real material consequences in terms of whether and how Black youth from this city could continue to access and develop bilingualism in a way that has been possible for students who live in more advantaged circumstances. In future work with schools and educators, this underscores the importance of studying change itself, of asking why and when do we change our educational approaches, and what are the outcomes of doing so? What new policies or practices cause us to position a certain group of students in a certain way? Does this result in inequities of access or opportunity? How can we advocate for (re)changing those policies to (re)position youth and instead recognize and center their capacity and creativity?

For sure, the only lasting truth is change. The hopeful news is that if we inquire into our circumstances, if we consider a range of perspectives and unintended consequences of the policies around us, we may be able to bring about helpful rather than hurtful change. How have our current circumstances changed you? And what change do you want to bring about?

Rethinking Educational Equity

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You know that image of a fence, with the kids trying to peer over it, but they can’t unless they have different sized boxes? We often use that image in education, to highlight differences between equality and equity. We discuss how giving everyone the same access or kind of education might be “equal,” but not equitable: providing the same things in education (the same size box) doesn’t actually provide similar access or fair outcomes for kids (the ability to peer over the fence). We talk about the need to create different sized boxes. We have to differentiate to be equitable, and educators do try: we provide special education services for the child with autism; we design English language development or bilingual courses for children and their transnational, immigrant families; we offer counseling for students living with trauma.

And what about racial equity? What kind of boxes have we created here? Or is this even the question we should be asking? By thinking about equity in terms of building boxes, we put most of our attention on individual children and what they need. It implies that if we simply help the kid by offering some additional services, we’ve achieved equity. But sometimes we need to rethink – or open up – the whole fence, don’t we?

Today, we stand at a new crossroads. We’re living, right now, with a pandemic that we have not figured out how to manage. We’re living, right now, in a world built by and still defined by colonialism and institutionalized racism. Our current health crisis has only exacerbated and shown a bright light on the inequalities and inequities that exist all around us: in health, education, economic opportunity. It might be time – not to provide a new set of boxes – but to take down the whole fence, open new doors, and start all over.

Thinking about what we might do, what we need to do, in education helps me understand the idea to defund the police. It’s the systems around us, that have been built over centuries, that are hardest to fight. It’s the desire to integrate our schools, but the reality that real estate agencies still guide families to particular neighborhoods and many white families still self-segregate by settling in mostly white suburbs. It’s the desire to improve the achievement gap with policies — but those policies only further the deficit discourses of racialized and minoritized groups by constantly reporting what they “lack.” It’s the belief in standardized tests to classify one’s worth and opportunity to go to college — . . . and on and on.

Next year, school will not look like it ever has. And this could be an incredible opportunity. How can we rethink education around the whole child, the whole community? How can we work together to share ideas and resources? How can we move away from defining kids as a standardized test score?

There are amazing things we can do if we demand it of ourselves. But we have to take our time, and we must take some risks. What if we don’t start school on August 24? What if we don’t use the ACT and SAT for college admittance? What if schooling is not age-graded? What if learning is self-paced, with small group facilitation as needed? What if we valued the trades the way we value “college for all”? What if school districts provided learning opportunities beyond “K-12”? What if learning meant more than reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic — or uploading 30 worksheets every Friday? What if high school credits included internship hours from a job? What if high school didn’t have to end at age 18?

Right now, in the middle of a pandemic, we are asking educators to do more than ever — with less than ever. Teachers have become professional fundraisers, IT specialists, computer delivery personnel, and video producers. As much as any of us can follow their lead, let’s jump in, and let’s re-work our ideas of equity. We don’t have to build new boxes to jump over the fence. We have to tear it down, together, open doors, and (re)build something new.

A Culture of Inclusion – or Not?

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This image is a hand drawing of a photograph from a school district website ~2015. On their homepage, this district had a rotating, colorful set of pictures, with children working together, learning, and studying. At a glance, we might feel pride if this was our district, agreeing with the words written next to the images: “innovation, vision, leaders, inclusion, rising to the challenge.”

But we must take a closer look: Who are the children in the images? Who is centered? Who actually feels included in the district, and who is considered a challenge?

In a recent publication, “School District Responses to Cultural and Linguistic Change: Competing Discourses of Equity, Competition, and Community,” Dr. Sujin Kim and I explore these questions through a study of website design and district visions and missions (as of July 1, 2020, the full text is available at this link). We found that some district websites used a promotional genre “to sell” their quality to viewers (presumably families who either live or might be moving to the area). One website was quite jarring, putting words like “innovation” and “vision” next to white children, while placing the phrase “rising to the challenge” nearby the only Black student pictured. Meanwhile, Asian children, who made up a sizable number of students at this district at the time, were only ever featured with their faces blurred out or backs to the camera, as in the picture above, which suggests the very opposite of “inclusion.” Only one district in our study employed a narrative genre, using their website to tell the story of their development as a community that welcomed immigrants and refugees, with accompanying photos of smiling children with different skin tones and clothes, such as hijabs.

In our current times, it is (again) all too apparent that our country needs to learn that #BlackLivesMatter, that people of color, including immigrant families and multilingual indigenous peoples, have not been included, have been disenfranchised, have even in some cases been eliminated. I hope that by raising an awareness of the discourses around us, we can begin to break these cycles of exclusion and removal. This includes carefully attending to the ways that pictures and words come together in our lives, which are increasingly displayed and lived online: What subtle (or not so subtle) messages are they sending? How can we change harmful discourses by re-working images and words that we use and that we choose to share?

Tweet your ideas to #ChangeTheDiscourse @lisamdorner

Multilingual Family Engagement

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Migration. Whether searching for greater opportunities or enriching experiences, or escaping poverty or war, people are on the move. Worldwide, the United Nations reports that more than 250 million people do not live in the country where they were born, an increase of 49% since 2000. In the United States, the percentage of children who have at least one immigrant parent or caregiver grew from 18% to 27% between 1997 and 2017. More than 20% of households speak a language other than English. Some schools that have never served students who speak other languages now have to design English language development or bilingual education programs. (Dorner, Song, Kim, & Trigos-Carrillo, 2019)

In this recent article published in Literacy Today, colleagues and I reflected on how schools manage this kind of change, especially: How do they integrate, support, and reach out to immigrant, multilingual families? Research has long suggested that traditional family engagement in schools fails to incorporate diverse communities in meaningful and empowering ways. This contributes to ongoing marginalization based on race, ethnicity, class, language, and immigrant status. In our work with various school districts, we encourage educators to shift their thinking from what families might need to how they, themselves, can lead. In the article, we provide examples of how to host literacy days in families’ languages, what we learned, and how to work with parents as partners in developing school-wide events.

We conclude: Too often, schools view home languages and cultures as deficits, with families merely receiving information and services.  If families and classroom teachers are at the center of family engagement, they will be leaders and agents, and together we can transform our English-only and monolingual spaces to multilingual, culturally sustaining ones.

 This article originally appeared in the November/December 2019 issue of Literacy Today, the member magazine of the International Literacy Association.