How to Embrace and Support Multilingual Students with Andrea Bitner

0:00 You know, one in four across the country now comes from a multi lingual fab and it's really important that I'm just doing my due diligence in what I call exploring a movie and not the snapshot of their life. Welcome to the Leader of Learning podcast. I'm your host, Doctor Dan Krenis, and this is where I help educators grow their impact as instructional leaders because my research and leadership experiences have led me to understand that someone like you, regardless of your role or your title, can have a tremendous impact on your organization. I chat with inspiring guests who are truly making an impact as instructional leaders. Whether this is your first time listening or you come back for more, I hope you've subscribed to this show on your preferred podcast app so you don't miss any of the great episodes, topics, or guests. Anyway, I'm so glad you've tuned in. Now let's get started. Y Hey, Leader of Learning, Welcome into episode one seventy of The Leader of Learning Podcast. I was just wondering, are you getting my email newsletter? I have hundreds of people just like you who listen to the podcast and really enjoy the themes and the concepts and content that are shared here, as well as to the greater community of followers and subscribers. This is an opportunity to join hundreds of like minded individuals such as yourself, and not only stay up to date on everything that's

1:34 happening here with the Leader of Learning podcast, but so many great resources that I share around the ideas of leadership and inspiring and empowering others. So if you're not already subscribed, head to Dankriniz dot com, slash news, or even easier, go to the show notes for this episode in whatever app you listen to this podcast on and you'll find the link right here in the show notes. My guest in this episode is a passionate and inspiring educator concentrating on the vulnerable population of students known as English language learners. Andrea Bittner is an English language learner educator as well as an author and speaker, and someone who truly cares about high quality education for students who are in this population. And as you heard her say at the top of the episode, this is a population that now includes one in four students. Anyway, I do want to get right into the interview so that you can feel as inspired as I was talking to Andrea. So right after these messages is my interview with Andrea Bittner.

2:43 Welcome back, Leader of Learning to another great episode with an amazing guest. I'm here with Andrea Bittner, whom I've connected with for a while now as part of the Teach Better Entrepreneur mastermind. I love learning from Andrea. But she is an EL educator EL standing for English Language or English learners or English Language learners right, so they might be called something a little different in your neck of the woods, but an EL educator in year twenty three of her teaching career. She's an author of a book called Take Me Home, which I would love for her to talk a little bit more about in this conversation. As well, she's a speaker, getting to teach el's daily and traveling the world, inspiring and supporting many K twelve teachers and of course those English Language learners as well. Andrea, welcome to the show. If there's anything I missed about who you are, where you are, and what you do, please fill us in not at all. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. So twenty three years in education.

3:49 That's a little bit more than me, but we're getting up there. I guess first of all, i'd like to know, have you always been a teacher of English language learners? Now you know? I started out as a high school English teacher. I was hired right out of college Westchester University over the weekend, bright eyed and bushy tail at age twenty one, ready to go. And the first thing that I was learned about school was that I was given classes graduated on a Saturday. By Tuesday, I was a long term sub filling in for freshman academy at a local high school. And the first thing I learned was that those kids that I were working with hated school. They hated school. And I always say that that first year for me, they taught me more about education than I could ever teach them.

4:38 And I was going home and I was crying every night, and I was like, I just came out of this student teaching experience with all of these students that loved school and were totally engaged and ready to go. And what I quickly discovered their challenge was was that they hated school because they were freshmen in high school who couldn't read and it bothered me enough to go back to school. I continued to teach them, but I the following year. By that following year, I enrolled in a reading specialist program and got my master's in reading, and I started to work with middle school students then as a title one reading specialist, and I did that for a few years. And while I was working with those students at the middle school level, I started to work with English Language learners. And then I started to get more curious about, well, how can I equit myself to work best with English Language learners? So I went back to school again and then I got a certification in working with els. And so for seventeen of the twenty three years I've been teaching, I've been in the support role, working as an English Language learner, teacher, title I, reading specialist, etc. What do you think it was that allowed you or had you kind of gravitate toward working with whether they be students who struggled with reading as a reading teacher, an interventionist, or students who I won't say are struggling with but who are early on in learning a new language. Is that like, what did you learn about yourself? You know, I think I learned that the world was much bigger

6:11 than the bubble that I came from. And so, you know, I was raised in a smaller town in Pennsylvania, about fifteen minutes south of the Philadelphia Airport where I still live today, and I, you know, grew up in a very typical family with you know, normal challenges and winds and all that good stuff. And I had never really stepped foot even out of my state, you know, let alone, out of my culture or out of you know, the norms you know that I grew up with. And so I got curious about working. I think we're even noticing that the world was much bigger than where we are. When I had this really good friend in fifth grade, her name was Irena. She's still a friend of mine today, and she came from Russia, and she came to school and I remember vividly her learning English and we were buddies and we used to play on the playground together all the time. And that was the first and only time in my career, until I had stepped out into teaching, that I had met someone from a different place with you know, different values. And I used to go over to her house and hang out with her parents and get to see, you know, different perspectives on the world. And so I think that coming you know, from that small town, you know, and moving into the mentality of the world being much bigger is what really attracted me to I can help these kids, I can work with these families and respecting, accepting and admiring them for who they are and what they bring to the table. You've talked a lot just in the first five minutes here about you know, how how when you got started, especially in your career, and

7:42 as it's gone by, how much you yes, you've taught students, but how much they've taught you too. I think that's so cool. It's kind of a theme I think so far in your answers. Let's dive in a little bit deeper to you know, working with English Language learn and some of the tricks of the trade. I guess I first wanted to ask you, just out of sheer curiosity, a couple of questions. First, what terminology is current and what terminology do you prefer? Because we've had a lot of them over the years. I'm in your eighteen teacher of teaching and being an educator, and I've heard them all from ESL to el to MLLL is what really my district uses now multi language learner. But I'm just curious about that and also how, in your expert opinion, teaching English language learners has evolved over the years, because I think what I've seen is it's kind of like special ed where it's gone from more pull out and secluded and self contained to really more like mainstream and inclusivity. And so I'm wondering if that's what you've seen too, So terminology and then the changes over over time. Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more. You know, the term English Language learner, you know, even here in Pennsylvania, it back you know, when we first started education, I do believe it was e s L.

9:13 Then they went to el L English Language Learner, then the state decided to chop off and L, and then they went to e L. And yes, I have also seen ML's MLL in Texas. I believe they're called eb's Emergent Bilinguals. So as I've traveled the country, you will see a variety of labels that you know they're placing on students who are learning the language. But what I say to people is, no matter what acronym. You know, people want to place on that class master label when they come in. Who you're meeting at that time is a young person who's coming into your building with a gift. Their parents have gifted them with the opportunity, along with their teachers, to become bilingual. So it's a really great, you know, opportunity to work with these students and families in our career. So yeah, it's always changing, but right now I believe ML's or MLL's is what I'm seeing the most of Your second question was in terms of how it's kind of changed over time, and I agree, I'm seeing the same kind of changes over time. But what's really awesome is that the intensity of what I call that educational lens and accountability is coming onto schools now to recognize English language learners as having more of an asset than a deficit. You know, when I worked with the young people from Taking Me Home, one of the first messages they asked me to share with people relates to what you're saying, and what that is is that being an English learner is not a condition. You know, it's not even a transition. It's an expansion. It's an expansion

10:46 of skills, and they're coming to you ready. You know, with the set of skills, they have to expand upon those to grow even more. And so yes, there is a lot more accountability now on schools tied to you know, the federal government, the local government, the local school systems to shift and take a look at how these students are performing and how we can better support them and engage with success with their families. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better podcast Network, Better Today, Better Tomorrow, and the podcast to get you there. Explore more podcasts at www dot Teach Better Podcastnetwork dot com. Now let's get back to the episode. I really like what you said there, and I would agree at least in my personal experience in my district. And we have a former English language learner as our superintendent, and she is a very fierce advocate for English language learners, and I think that has helped our district, who has a very high population of English language learners, to understand like you said, that it's more of an asset. And and and students who already know multiple languages or are you know, learn learning a second language really have an advantage. Uh. And and it's it's interesting to look at that way, and I really appreciate that,

12:18 you know, I'm a couple of schools in my in my district, including mine, actually have dual language programs, and it's kind of fascinating to think of multi language learners kind of have a clear advantage in a program like that because they already know a language and they've at least started learning another one. Where it's almost like the English speaking students who are in the dual language program are slower at learning and adapting to a new language and some new nuances and and things like that. But it is pretty cool to see. I don't know if you see other program like do a language programs like that out in you know, when you travel and when you consult, But it's it's kind of cool that we have programs like that. I think it's definitely another way of you know, not just mainstreaming English language learners, but like really immersing them and your native English speakers into the same program where they're getting you know, both languages and and lots of different exposures to not just the language, but even like cultural aspects as well. Absolutely, and you know you'll see that, you know, in the el program. We are working on reading, writing, listening, and speaking. And so if you think about it in a dual language approach, for students that are already speaking a different

13:48 language at home, they do have that advantage because they get that daily practice, maybe you know, the of the listening and the speaking of that language at home if it's the language that their parents, you know, also speak. If you're an English speaking student and you don't have a family at home that is speaking let's say Spanish, if you're in a dual language program, then you would be doing all of that work at school. So that practical application is something that I think that gives your English lie wage owners an advantage in that situation. Hey, Leader of Learning, we'll be right back with the episode. But I wanted to talk to you again about a product that I've been using to boost my focus and productivity and I think you'll really like it too. It's called magic Mind. Magic Mind is the world's first productivity drink. It's a tasty drink shot made with all natural ingredients that you can take for a boost of energy and focus, eliminating fatigue and conquering procrastination.

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16:15 Cheers to being more productive. Talk to us a little bit about the work that you do, not just in your classroom, but also with the educators that you speak to when you travel and you consult. And because I'm curious, especially for my non el teaching population who's listening, and I have a pretty big mix of classroom teachers, administrators, district administrators, even higher ed, what would we need to know about what goes into working with this special population of students who have this asset, like you said before, of having this like emerging, you know, superpower of learning a new language.

17:03 You know, I think that's a really great question and one of the first things you have to do, you know, as a continary teacher, a school leader, an English language learner teacher is team up, right, because no one achieves success alone. I'm a huge John Gordon Fan I read a lot of his work and that's one of the first, you know, pivotal points that he makes is that more people you can involve in putting together a project or a brainstorming session, you know, or working together towards a common goal, the more success that you will have. And so for our English Language learners in particular, you have to team up because your English Language learner teacher is going to be your point person that's going to provide you with the most information about this student and family. No two English language learners are the same. You know, when I was teaching at Interborough High School, you know, about a decade ago, when I did the work that I was doing there, you know, I had students who had across the border.

17:57 I had students that work students, I had adopted students. I had students who had waited ten years for a visa it came after their parents. I had students that had come before their parents. And I had students who were born here in the US, and most of them now are you know, one in four across the country now comes from a multi lingual family. And so as the EL teacher, it's really important that I'm bringing this information to the team, and it's really important that I'm just doing my due diligence in what I call exploring the movie and not the snapshot of their life. Because I had students who came in who were already proficient in five languages. I had students who came in that were wicked readers and writers but needed English language support with listening and speaking. I had students who were the opposite that could listen and speak all day long to English, but if you put a piece of literacy in front of them, they really struggled. And I had students who were, you know, interrupted education, who had come with traumatic situations and were working on all four And so when I would bring that information to the team, that's the first thing they needed to know. What is their English language proficiency level? What did their former schooling look like before they came to us. Did they move in from down the street, did they come from a state over, did they move from a different country, you know, what did that look like for them? And the other piece too is what language did their parents prefer school communication? Because not all parents prefer their first language, some of them prefer English, and so a lot of communication

19:30 needs to happen in the beginning in exploring that movie of the assets and the challenges that the student is bringing to the table. And the best person to do that to team up with is the EL teacher and the team, and the best people to interview about that are the students' parents and so providing communication resources to districtwide. You know, how do you communicate with your English Language learner parents who do prefer a language other than English. Are you calling them with your guidance counselor to interview them, to ask them their thoughts, answer their questions, find out their goals with their student, hear about their prior school experience and any traumas that may or may not have happened. And when you can gather all of that now you can start to plan for instruction and making sure that everyone in the building knows who your English Language learners are because eighty percent of the time they're not with their YEL teacher, they're with everybody else. And so that's why I really get intense about everybody in the building has to be on board with working with our students and families. Just to second that everybody in the building has to be on board with many of the or all of the initiatives that take place in school, because it's hard to develop and implement initiatives when not everyone's on board. I just had to throw in my two cents there. Sure, No, that's really fascinating. And as you were talking, I'm thinking that I know for sure there are technology

21:02 platforms and even student information systems like power School who have kind of adapted over the years to I think helping schools partner with families in this way. For sure, you can look in power School if your district uses it to see and and you know, hopefully the family themselves have have filled out that information, but to see what their preferred language is. There are apps like parent Square and Talking Points and probably others that allow teachers and schools to communicate with families in whatever language they would prefer, whether it's their native language or not. You know, basically, the teacher or the school sends out a message and then it gets translated into any language or not. You know, maybe, like you said, the family still prefers to receive communication in English.

21:53 As you were talking, I think you answer this question, but I just wanted to make sure, like in terms of of sort of the teaching model, the instructional model that's happening, you know, predominantly at this point, is it that co teaching model where for the most part, I think you said about eighty percent of the time, and I'm guessing that's an average that our English Language learners are spending in mainstream classes with their you know, native English speaking classmates and colleagues, and then a little bit of work just with the ELL or MLL teachers. You know, it depends on their proficiency level of English and reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Every state has different recommendations for dependent upon their proficiency level and their screener or in the state of Pennsylvania, it's our Access Score, which is our annual exam for English Language learners to take that determines their proficiency level during a given year. So depending on that will equal the recommended amount of time that an English Language learner teacher needs to support those students in the classroom. That can look different from state to state, but it can also look different in terms of classroom support.

23:06 For example, sometimes you push into the classroom, sometimes you pull out in the classroom. At a high school level, you could have scheduled classes where a teacher who is certified in English and also as an EL teacher for a short period of time can serve as the English teacher primarily until that student is right. I believe it's one year until they're ready to go into the mainstream classroom. They have newcomer academies in different states where students get to spend find an amount of time in the newcomer academy if they fit that criteria. So it's really a case by case basis in terms of the student's needs. But every place has different recommended amounts of times to service those students until they exit, and the exit criteria is important to consider as well, because that can differ from state to state. Fascinating stuff, it really is, and you know, I know that, and I will leave all political beliefs out of this statement, but it's just what I see. The evidence is there that more and more students are are coming into our schools all the time in these situations where English may not be their first language, and and it depends how fluent they how fluent they are in English when when they come in, and it has become a very big responsibility and a very big priority, uh for schools to educate these students and and and have them adapt and assimilate.

24:38 I'm going to say as quickly as possible. It's it's probably not the best way to put it, but you know, but in order to really succeed in in school, I never really got to know him well enough to hear a whole lot of his stories. But as you were speaking, I was thinking to my grandpa, who came to this country when he was ten years old. And I think you even alluded to the fact that sometimes parents come over and then their kids come years later, and that's what happened to him. And he worked so hard, especially at learning the language and losing his accent pretty quickly. That I mean, obviously he was much later in life when when I got to really know him. But I could never tell that he spoke a different language when he was younger, and that he came from a different country. It was like, it was always really fascinating to me, like I can't believe that. I just I could never tell. And they, I'm sure they didn't have you know, English as a second language programs or classes or anything like that when he you know, this was we're talking like the nineteen twenties and thirties. So yeah, yeah, absolutely, And you know, speaking about the fact that you couldn't hear you know, whether he didn't have that accent, that's a physical piece because if you come over to a new place like the US as an adolescent, the physical muscles in your throat have already formed your accent. You have an accent. I have an accent. People hear me and they know him from Philly, right, So it's it's impossible. What I'm trying to say is it's impossible for

26:10 you to quote unquote us it. If you come over as an adolescent, your throat has formed, your muscles are there in the way you've learned to make sound, so it won't change. But if you come over below an adolescent age, those muscles are not fully formed, and you do start to acquire a different language. That's why you don't keep that accent that you started with when you were younger. And so I found that really fascinating. It's one of the first things I ever learned when I went to English Lineage learner school when we started the program years ago. Well, I know is he did used to tell me stories about how kids would make fun of him when he was younger and he hadn't quite lost enough of his accent. But I guess back in the twenties and thirties, part of gym class was actually boxing, and he used to use like legally speaking or whatever you want to call it, Like in school, he used that as a way to fight and get back at these bullies so to speak, who would tease him about his accent. I always that was a great story. I was used to like hearing that. And plus yeah, plus he played on the football team and they like didn't wear helmets back then, probably, and he used to like he used to use that as an excuse to take his aggression out on some people I think too. All Right, So I really want to know about this book, now take me home. I have it pulled up on Amazon.

27:33 It looks amazing, sounds amazing, and I know that it includes some really cool stories. So what can you tell us about that book? And and I asked you this off the air. I don't know if you're comfortable sharing on the air. I know you're working on a new one too, So if there's anything that you could tell us about that early project, that would be awesome. Sure, so take Me Home as a true story and based on eleven of my former English language learner students who are now in their late twenties and early thirties, and they give a first hand account of what it's really like to become bilingual in America. And this story was born out of an experience I had over ten years ago. I was working, like I mentioned earlier, with about forty different students at the high school level, with about twenty five different languages, and as I mentioned before, they come from all walks of life, adopted students, exchange students, crossing the border, students born here, students, etc. And I worked with one particular family at the time, the Lopez family, and I had taught all seven of their children over time, and they happened to be from the country of Alsalvador. And I've traveled to Alva Salvador myself a few times to do some work with some schools down and so there were all boys and one girl, and I started with Serio and worked my way down to Sarahio Junior down to Jeffrey. There was a Jeffrey from Las Vegas, all the way down to Nancy, the only female in the family. And so at that time we

29:04 had this huge classroom banner, and our classroom banner said, in my room, education is opportunity, education is freedom. What's your plan? Because our kids knew that no matter what their prior life experiences had been, their only plan could not be I'm not going to be successful here. Because at the high school level, we had a few years to work with them for their free time in education, and we knew that we would remind them often that mom and dad have given you this gift of the ability, along with your teachers, to become bilingual, and we're going to figure out what this plan wants to look like for you. And so every year, our seniors would have this alumni day where our alumni would come back and they would bring our seniors a T shirt and on that T shirt it would say wherever they were headed next. We didn't care if it was college, university, military, trade school, vocation, workforce, YouTuber, whatever it was. We were there to celebrate that they had finished this chapter of their life's plan. They were given the opportunity to sign that banner to say they had graduated from our program, and the alumni were there to share with them about what was waiting for them in this bilingual professional world. And so we went through this watcher plan mentality together and we had a lot of success, and all of those young family, the Lopez family I mentioned before, graduated with that mentality.

30:33 And about a year after Nancy, the youngest one, had graduated, I was teaching outside and there were a bunch of helicopters outside one day, and I thought, well, I hope everything's all right. There's a lot of helicopters outside today. And about an hour after I had that thought, my principal came down to get me to let me know that one of my students had been hit by the train, and unfortunately that student was Nancy, and unfortunately she died that day. She had a pair of headphones on and she'd made a decision to walk along the inside of the track and she didn't hear the acella and it came and it clipped her from behind. And so it threw our school community into a huge sense of trauma with these awesome kids and teachers and her family. And one of the most challenging parts of that day was that mom and dad were still learning English themselves, so when they got the call that something had happened to one of the kids. No one in the local force spoke Spanish, so they could kind of figure out that something was wrong, and they could kind of figure out that something had happened to one of the kids, but they didn't know which one it was, and so they stood there for hours waiting, trying to figure out which one of their children had passed away. And so in the coming weeks, we worked with immigration to be allowed to have Nancy's brother come back and bury her, which he was denied. We worked with the local school community and mom and dad to bury their daughter and navigate the language barriers and the funeral process and the Latino community. And the dad was a pastor, so the church would come and sit with them every evening, and so we were supporting the family during this experience. One of my jobs also at that time, was to

32:07 speak at her funeral, and so I wrote this short poem and I called it take Me Home, and it was homaged to Nancy's crossing into the US. So I let that poem sit on my desk for a while, and a few months later I saw it sitting there, and I continued to teach these great kids and I thought, maybe somebody could be used, maybe this could help someone, this part of this story. So I send it out on a whim to a bunch of publishers, and this one publisher gets back to me and they say, hey, Andrea, we really like your poem, but we don't want you to write a poem. We want you to write a book, and we're going to give you six months to do it, and if you come back with something we like, we'll take you on and publish it. And I started to think to myself, well, I don't just want to tell her story. I want to tell all their stories because they're so different. And a lot of my students had experiences where assumptions were being made about them, where people thought, if you were an eel, they're all the same. And so I took that opportunity and I went back and found eleven of my former students who are now in their late twenties early thirties. I interviewed them over a period of about six months, and we created Take Me Home. It's told in the first person through their perspective.

33:19 We give a chapter to each student. We cover almost every continent and almost every experience we could think of. And it's written in the sense of their names were changed to names of strength, so we have characters like Volte and Charge and Embrace and Shine, etc. I was also able to meet with Nancy's parents, who I still talk to today and get her perspective on coming to the US, so she's included in the story as well. And it is written in English and it repeats in Spanish, all within the same book. So that's my long winded version of our work that we've done so far, and it's really making a great positive impact changing hearts and minds all around the world. That's really cool. It's i mean, obviously a sad story there, but really awesome how you and the rest of those students were able to tell her story and their story. You know. I hear a little bit of like Freedom Writers in there with Seed Folks, which I know is still a fairly popular book that's read in schools, and I know for sure that some schools have picked up your book as well and studied it with staff and students. So really awesome stuff. Anything you can tell us about the next project, you know, the next project I'm going to start working on this summer. I'm still doing great work and will continue to do great work with Take Me Home all around the country with teachers and educators, not

34:49 only in terms of reading it, but in terms of going out and talking to teachers, which has been awesome. But the next project is going to be a very similar style. I'm going to be interviewing about thirty different people with a variety of topics and creating their true stories to again help people gauge perspective of what it's like to be the many students that we see in our classrooms. Awesome, Well, thank you for the work you've done, the work that you are doing and will continue to do, including this upcoming project. It's always really cool for me anyway to hear about this stuff. It's not something that I have a lot of expertise in, and so I love learning about it, you know. I mean this is called leader of Learning, right. We're helping people grow their impact as instructional leaders, and I think this is such an important piece. And it's not just because I wanted to make sure I got this out there too. It's not just because our multi language learners, along with our students with disabilities, are those subgroups that everyone is so concerned about you know, making the mark on their state tests.

35:59 It's because we're really trying trying to get them to be successful, not just in school, but at the next level and like you said, wherever they choose to go after leaving our programs. So thank you for your work, Thank you for your time. Please share with the audience as well where they can connect with you. Of course, I will let the listeners know that Andrea's book Take Me Home, as well as her website and social media contact information will be in the show notes. But where can everybody find you if they need you? You know, the best place to find me is via the website, which is andreabitnerbooks dot com. You can also connect with me directly on LinkedIn or we're still calling it Twitter now or Twitter as well, but they are probably the three best places. The website, LinkedIn and Twitter, you can follow our journey and learn more about the work that we're doing with schools. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time and the amazing information. Amazing work. I know you and I will continue to stay connected, but I really appreciate you getting this out there for for the listeners, and yeah, just thanks, I really appreciate it. Oh. Thanks for having me. Well that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you haven't done so yet, don't forget to subscribe to this show on your favorite podcast app. If you enjoy the content covered on this show, I want to ask you to do this one thing for me.

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