Bridging a gap between languages

MONTROSE — School districts are faced with many challenges and Montrose County School District Re-1J is no different. With a growing immigration population, the district is driven to make sure all students, English speaking or not, are receiving the education they are entitled to.

Over the last decade the district has returned its non-English speaking students back into their neighborhood school, worked toward training mainstream teachers in English as a Second Language (ESL) strategies and hired staff to merge the gap between separate cultures.

But as non-English speaking students continue to arrive in the district, with all levels of academic skills, administrators at both the state and district level know there is still a long way to go to meet the No Child Left Behind requirements and merge cultures of different languages.

“We have the opportunity in a lot of ways to become richer and grow a little fast and understand each other a little better,” George Voorhis, district superintendent, said.

A growing population

In the 2006-07 school year, there were 957 ESL students enrolled in the district, slightly more than 15 percent of its population.

“The first year I was here (5 years ago), there were 14 (ESL) students. Teachers realize now at 80 students, that it is blowing up and we are having a huge immigration population come in. They are realizing there is just not one or two (ESL) students in their classroom, now they may have five. That is 20 percent of their class,”  said Eric Handke, Montrose High School ESL teacher.

Patty Voorhis, district ESL coordinator, said 90 percent of ESL students speak Spanish. Other languages include Vietnamese, Filipino, Tagalog, and Cora.

Cora is a growing indigenous Mexican population that has been arriving in the area since the 1960s, Patty said.

There are also students from Russia, China, Africa, Nepal, Tibet and Uganda.

“These are the students on the CSAP (Colorado Student Assessment Program) tests who are non proficient and are not achieving well,” Voorhis said. “That is the gap we are required to close through the federal NCLB law. And so we really have to focus on the needs of those kids and help them acquire the skills they need to meet those requirements.”

“Best Practices”

“We have a sense of what is best practice. We are not guessing what works.” said Barbara Madina, English language acquisition for the Colorado Department of Education. “But we know we are not where we want to be.”

When a non-English speaking student first arrives in the district, the first job of the teacher is to identify the student’s English-speaking ability, said Patty. Last year, with the help from teachers and parents, the district developed a handbook to assist in the process.

“(The student) fills out the home language survey, every student by law has to fill out this form. They identify themselves as immigrant or not and what is their first language — if it’s English, Spanish and now we have Cora,” she said.

The teacher then decides whether the student needs to be assisted in English and enrolled in the ESL program.

Next the student is given a Colorado English Language Assessment.

From there the process determines which level the student is at, either non-English proficient (NEL), limited English proficient (LEP), or fluent English proficient (FEP).

According to the testing, the district places the student into a level and he or she works through that particular program. Patty said after they move to FEP, the student is monitored for two years while in mainstream classrooms.

“It takes the stages about five to 10 years sometimes,” she said.

Norma Valenzuela, 14, is one of those students. She arrived from Sanora, Mexico with her mother and sister earlier this year. It will be her first full year in an English-speaking school.

Her mother brought her and her sister to Montrose so they can get better jobs and have a better life, Valenzuela explains in Spanish. “Yes it is scary,” she said, adding that being here with all white kids, she’s scare she’ll not understand and nobody will help her.

But she is receiving help. When she arrived at school, she was paired up with another Spanish-speaking student. She also receives help from Handke, who spends his days traveling around to different classrooms helping with the newly integrated Language Institute program at MHS.

ESL students who are struggling academically or are within the first couple years of their stay in the United States, are enrolled into the Language Institute.

The program provides support for the students through grouped core classes, including math, social studies, science and English at a ninth-grade level.

At Montrose High School, each content teacher has the assistance of Handke.

This is the first year for the program to include all content classes. Last year the program grouped students only in science classes.

In a perfect world, Handke said, “It would be a two-year program with four content classes, and two ESL teachers. Maybe one for freshmen and one for sophomores.”

Last year Handke had the assistance of a paraprofessional, but this year he is on his own. He said that at this point he’ll take either another teacher or a para.

“When is it merited, with 77 students, to having another teacher?” he asks.

There are currently 19 ESL teachers for the district’s 11 schools. Two teachers are part time. The district did recently create Patty’s ESL coordinator position and through grants are funding a outreach position held by Patty Edstrom, both bilingual.

Before Voorhis arrived at the district, all ESL students were bussed to attend school at Cottonwood. It was a financial move, allowing the district to spend less on ESL instructors.

“Although it was cheaper, kids weren’t getting a good education and it was hard on the school,”  said Voorhis.

Moving students back into their neighborhood schools was a move in a positive direction.

Jorge Anchondo, Olathe Middle/High School ESL teacher, said school with low non-English speaking students provides an environment for those students to learn from English-speaking students.

But he said it works both ways. At Olathe schools, where half the population is Hispanic, the environment provides peer support and cultural experience.

Anchondo said every student is different, learning at different levels, makes the ESL program complicated and complex.

“There is no silver bullet,” he said to help ESL students reach proficiency.

Staffing is one of the biggest challenges Voorhis said. With Patty’s new position, she works to set up classes and inservice for teachers who would like to take advantage of ESL strategies. By training mainstream teachers, the hope is to relieve some of the load ESL teachers must take on.

Joe Garcia teaches Middle American History to Language Institute students at MHS. He took advantage of classes held last summer and this summer by Handke.

“The strategies are more engaging and hands on, making it easier (for students) to understand,” Garcia said.

Voorhis said the district has also teamed up with educational providers such as Mesa State College to train their former students.

District students who are interested in education and are bilingual can apply for a four-year scholarship to Mesa State.

“I would like to see an increase in the number of people in our district, or at least a comparative number of people in our district, that have some cultural capacity, some language skills, and those types of things that help our second language population,” Voorhis said.

Like any program development, it takes money.

In the 2006-07 school year, the district spent $758,004.77 on salary and instructional materials for the ESL program, said Karin Slater, district chief financial officer. The district received $62,880 from the state to help cover the costs.

State funding is determined by the district’s October official student enrollment count. The district must report those who qualify for the ESL program.

The state requires the money be used for quality instructional programs and professional development.

“A school person will say they get money, but it is not enough,” Madina said. “Getting the allocation with the rate of growth has been problematic.”

The flip side

As the district works towards educating non-English speaking students, they are also discussing how to provide more opportunity for the rest of its population. Through the ESL program, the district is providing a crucial entity to the world outside a bilingual population.

“Certainly learning a foreign language of any kind in a global economy is important,” Voorhis said. “One thing we haven’t discussed is when should we be teaching foreign languages in American schools.”

Voorhis said he’s never been comfortable that schools provide a foreign language early enough. One thing he said he’d like to propose in the future is that the district “take a long hard look at our foreign languages and how we do it,” stressing more on-line opportunities.

Anchondo agreed saying the world is getting smaller.

“This discussion is an old one, but it’s time to change that attitude. There is no point to pretend the world is going away.”

It’s a hard attitude to change. Voorhis has been in education for 30 years and said he has not seen it yet, but he’s hopeful.

“If we can look at our education as much from a global standpoint, a critical thinking skill standpoint, contingent planning standpoint as much as a we are right now with just the NCLB and CSAP scores, I think we’ll see the pinnacle swing that way a little bit more, and learning a foreign language will, should be an initial part of that.”