Arkansas District Welcomes English-Language Learners

Since the mid-1990s, northwestern Arkansas has enjoyed an economic boom. Headquarters to such companies as Wal-Mart and Tyson, Inc., the area has grown exponentially during the past decade, with much of the credit going to the state’s burgeoning poultry industry. Springdale-based Tyson, Inc., is the world’s largest poultry producer.

A low unemployment rate has drawn thousands of immigrants to the area in search of jobs. Transplanted from countries including Mexico, Laos, Vietnam, and the Marshall Islands, these newcomers to America quickly found prosperity in the Ozark Mountains.

The Challenge Posed by New Immigrant Students

Although this recent migration has been beneficial for the for the region’s economy, it has posed a challenge for area schools, according to Dr. Jim Rollins, superintendent of the Springdale School District. Many of the immigrant job seekers and their families speak languages other than English.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the Springdale School District had virtually no language-minority students, Rollins reports. During the 1999-2000 school year, the district served 2,247 English language learners, who spoke a total of 16 different languages. Of those students, 1,811 speak Spanish, 272 speak Marshallese, and 122 speak Laotian.

"We weren’t all that prepared at first," Rollins says. "We certainly had a wake-up call."

As the district began enrolling large numbers of immigrant children, it worked with the local poultry plants to identify new immigrant families, how many children they had, and the ages of the children. The district then administered the Language Acquisition Skills (LAS) exam to the children to assess the their English language skills on a scale of 1—5 (with Level 5 indicating fluency and Level 1 meaning a minimal level of English acquisition skills), according to Dr. Marsha Jones, Springdale’s assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.

Says Dr. Rollins, "Once we know the students’ level of readiness, we are able to address their needs."

Along with their language differences, many of the students had no educational background in their native countries, forcing the district to personalize the academic process to focus specifically on these students’ needs. The district has tried to keep student-teacher ratios low in order to provide as much one-on-one instruction as possible, he says.

"We’ve had to modify the way we deliver services based on the readiness of the children to deal with the material," notes Rollins. "It’s much more than a language issue. Obviously that’s a challenge you have to deal with, but you also have to deal with the core content area and getting those kids on board [academically] as they’re developmentally ready."

That developmental process includes more than just academics, Jones says. It includes overcoming the language differences to help ensure that the students’ basic needs are met.

"We teach them to understand basic questions like, Are you hurt? Do you need to go to the bathroom? Are you hungry? Are you cold?" Jones explains. Teachers also learn commonly used phrases in the student’s language so they can communicate basic instructions.

English-language learners are also taught skills that will help their families integrate into the community. They are given an orientation to the community so they will know where the post office and hospital are located and how to establish telephone and other utility services.

Rollins says the orientation is an ongoing process until a certain comfort level is established. He emphasizes, "We want people to know that we appreciate them, we respect them, and we welcome them here. We want to do all we can to help them become members of the community as soon as possible."

Each school in the Springdale School District brings in translators for parent/family nights at least once a semester to answer questions and to help immigrant families learn about the resources that are available to them in the community. According to Jones and Rollins, parents have attended those meetings quite well, and the staff at each school building has been involved in making these parents and students feel welcome.

"Virtually every caring adult in our schools is involved in trying to create a system by which a good transition can be made to our community. It’s a whole-school initiative," reports Rollins.

When they first arrive, English-language learners are placed into classrooms according to their level of performance on the LAS exam. Those with a need for additional language acquisition skills are placed into "sheltered" classes, according to Springdale School District Curriculum and Instruction Program Coordinator Judy Hobson. These classroom settings allow teachers to teach the state-mandated curriculum while developing a student’s English language skills.

"We have a different curriculum for ESL students only in the fact that we consider the LAS levels," Hobson says. "You can’t expect a Level 1 first-grade student to get all the first-grade curricula if they have to learn the language, too."

The sheltered classes provide additional help to immigrant students according to their educational background. For example, some students may not have previously received the level of instruction required for the math taught at the grade level in which they have been placed.

Secondary students also benefit from the sheltered classes, since they provide further orientation to the American culture, Jones said.

"Students are expected to understand American history or civics because they are required courses," she said. Teachers often must provide immigrant students with more background to such courses. "For example, we sometimes have to explain to them what the U.S. Constitution is — by high school, kids that have grown up here would have some notion about how our government is run."

However, Jones points out that the English language learners in sheltered classes are not secluded from the other students. "They’re not taken out of the rest of the program, but they’re given more intensive assistance at the beginning of their career with us," she explains.

At every step in the process, students are made aware of what the school expects them to accomplish, Rollins says. Although the school district holds ESL students to the same standard as students in the regular classrooms, he adds that teachers and staff are always there to help the English language learners.

"I think our families sense that, and barriers that would make this process even more difficult seem to come down when the children and their families understand that they’re welcome and that we see them as an integral part of our system. We want to do everything that we can for our kids who might be struggling with a language barrier or even the lack of content in terms of being ready to handle our standards."

To help ESL students meet those standards, teachers must be aware of specific teaching strategies. Many teachers in the Springdale schools have had to adjust the way they ran their classrooms to accommodate the English language learners, but Hobson says that when the strategies are implemented in a classroom, every child benefits — from the special education student to the gifted student.

"ESL has benefited other learners, who in the past might have been left out," she observes. "Language-needs students are being better served as well as learning-disabled children and slower learners."

Teaching Strategies that Better Serve ESL Students

Hobson listed the following examples of ways Springdale teachers have modified their teaching methods to better serve ESL students:

• Speaking simply and clearly to the students. Using prompts, cues, facial expressions, body language, visual aids, and concrete objects (for example, when teaching math, use money or a calendar; when teaching social science, use maps, flags, and field trips) as much as possible.
  
  
• Using physical commands to enact an event. For example, pointing and nodding to an open door while saying "Please shut the door" is much more effective than giving the command in an isolated context.
  
  
• Establishing oral routines. Teachers should greet their students each morning and tell them good-bye at the end of the day to allow students to become familiar with and anticipate routine language experiences. Examples of this include: "Hello," "Have a nice weekend," "Bye-bye," and "How are you?"
  
  
• Making the student feel comfortable in the classroom. A smile, hello, and a pat on the back give a student a needed feeling of support in an unfamiliar setting.
  
  
• Encouraging the student to use English as much as possible.
  
  
• Using songs and poems to teach meaningful and useful phrases. This will open a conduit for students to begin to communicate with each other. This method, called chunking, should be simple, meaningful, varied, and fun. Allow students to draw pictures to express what they heard or thought about the material.
  
  
• Continuing to talk to the students. It is normal for ESL students to be silent for days, weeks, or even months. Talking to the student through this period will help them develop the active listening skills necessary for further development.
  
  
• Providing the first and most basic need for ESL students — a feeling of safety and comfort. "Children who are the most successful are those who feel most welcome and feel safe about their learning," says Jones.
  
  
• Including the ESL student in as many activities, lessons, and assignments as possible.
  
  
• Giving ESL students learning experiences and assignments that make them feel productive, challenged, and successful. These students need a variety of tasks and assignments that are closely related to what the students in the regular classroom are doing.
  
  
• Calling on the student in class as soon as possible. Even if the ESL student cannot speak English well, have the student come to the board and point to a map or circle a correct answer. Have him or her pass out papers and collect homework. These activities will allow the student feel special and useful.
  
  
• Maintaining high expectations. Be prepared for an ESL student’s success and progress and realize that these students are usually not a remedial population.
  
  
• Adapting a primary- or secondary-level mathematics test or textbook for the ESL student whose computational skills are well developed, but whose reading skills are not. This may involve deleting word problems completely.
  
  
• Allowing ESL classrooms to be noisy. Students do not learn how to talk unless they have the opportunity to use the language, Hobson explains. "They can’t learn anything if they never open their mouths. They can’t learn if they’re not allowed the freedom to speak without the fear of being intimidated or the fear of getting in trouble."

Jones adds that the methods associated with ESL instruction are nothing more than fundamental language teaching skills.

"Teachers who are experts in teaching reading and writing in primary grades are familiar with these strategies," Jones says.

"These strategies would be useful for teaching a child at any level or age, who is learning to read and write in English for the first time. ESL instruction is more a matter of just good teaching than it is a secret box of tricks."

Unlike the Springdale School District, which has had to build its English as a Second Language (ESL) program over the past decade due to a recent influx of immigrants, the Fort Smith School District has been teaching ESL students since the mid-1970s. Located 77 miles south of Springdale, Fort Smith is home to Fort Chaffee, a former refugee relocation center at the end of the Vietnam War. Thousands of Vietnamese and Laotian refugees were sent to the Fort Smith area during the 1970s. Many of the refugees permanently settled in the area and enrolled their children in school, according to Fort Smith School District superintendent Dr. Benny Gooden.

"As their children enrolled in schools, it was obvious that the school district was going to have to take a major role in helping them learn English and become proficient so that they could succeed academically," he said. "Our focus has been from the beginning, and continues to be today, to help students become proficient in English at the earliest possible time."

In the past that has been an uphill battle for the district, because it has always had a hard time finding qualified ESL teachers, Gooden said.

"The biggest challenge — it was a challenge in the early years, and it is a challenge today — is finding adequate personnel to teach those children."

Although Fort Smith’s ESL program was not perfect, over time it proved to serve the Vietnamese and Laotian ESL students well. As years passed, several Vietnamese and Laotian immigrants to Fort Smith received teaching certifications and became licensed to teach ESL students. In the 1990s, the district’s population of English-language learners changed from being mostly Asian to being predominantly Hispanic. During the 1991-1992 school year, 43 Hispanic students were served by the district’s ESL program, compared with 183 Vietnamese and 423 Laotian students. During the 1999-2000 school year, 726 Hispanics were in the program, compared with 110 Vietnamese and 194 Laotian students. The district was faced with, and is still facing, a shortage of Spanish-speaking ESL teachers.

Gooden reports that while the district had a well-established system of teaching Laotian and Vietnamese students and had the infrastructure in place to serve English-language learners, it lacked the staff to teach students who were primarily Spanish speakers.

Until recent years, the demand for ESL teachers in Arkansas was limited, so colleges and universities in the state offered little in the way of preservice ESL training.

"In Arkansas, until the mid-1990s, they didn’t even acknowledge ESL certification," Gooden says. "Only in recent years have we come up with an ESL endorsement or licensure for schoolteachers."

In addition to attracting qualified teachers, there were other difficulties in being one of the few districts in Arkansas that supported English-languagelearners in the 1970s and 1980s. The state did not provide any ESL funding until the mid-1990s. Like Springdale, Fort Smith currently spends close to $1 million annually on its ESL program. Most of that money now comes from state and local revenues. Before the mid-90s, districts were dependent on federal dollars to fund their ESL programs, according to Gooden. He recalls that before that time Fort Smith was alone in its efforts to lobby the state legislature for funding ESL programs and had difficulty getting the funding he needed. However, Gooden notes that now his "friends in northwest Arkansas" are "glad to stand shoulder to shoulder with me when we talk about ESL funding."

John V. Pennington is a freelance writer based in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

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