A Brief history of immigration in the United States

Immigration patterns in the United States is widely seen as happening in four distinct waves. The first wave was between 1790 and 1820 and was primarily comprised of British and northern Europeans. The second wave ran until 1860 as the U.S. was undergoing rapid industrialization and expansion. This wave was primarily comprised of Irish and German immigrants. The third wave was comprised of mostly southern and eastern Europeans and ended in 1914. Immigration to the U.S. was then slowed by World War I and the introduction of an immigration policy that set quotas for the number of immigrants allowed into the U.S. based on their country of origin. This was in efforts to maintain the dominance of northern and western Europeans in the U.S.’s ethnic balance. Immigration was further slowed by the Great Depression and World War II. The fourth wave of immigration didn’t start until the quota system for immigration was done away with in 1965. This wave is still running and is widely dominated by Hispanic and Asian immigrants.

Facts about immigrant children

In 2005 there were approximately 11 million children who were considered to be children of immigrants. That is roughly 20 percent of all school-aged children in the United States. A majority of immigrant children experience more social and economic difficulties than native-born children. For example, immigrant children tend to have challenges in English proficiency and are more likely to be poor and to live in inner-city areas. As a result, immigrant families often live in racially, ethnically, and linguistically segregated neighborhoods. Compared with the general school-age population, immigrant children in general and within each racial-ethic group were more likely to have physical disabilities and less likely to have health insurance.

Immigration and schools

Schools are regarded to be the most important social institution for absorbing new immigrants; there are few other institutions as directly affected by immigration as our nation’ s schools. These children bring different life experiences and beliefs, cultural communication patterns, languages, and educational traditions with them when they go to school. However, U.S. public education has, historically, widely rejected maintaining the heritage language and cultural values of immigrant children. Instead, there has been an emphasis on a rapid Americanization in curricula and instruction aimed at assimilating immigrants to the norms of the dominant culture. This subtractive model approach positions the immigrant students as having multiple deficits and facing many unnecessary obstacles in finding academic success.

The current emphasis on testing in our schools is particularly difficult for immigrant students because it requires rapid English acquisition and quick cultural adjustment regardless the age of arrival, age-appropriate education attainment before the entrance of U.S. school, etc. Immigrant students bring a wide diversity of individual strengths, knowledge, and cultural identity to the classroom that these tests place a diminished value on. It’s important that teachers find ways to celebrate and develop these differences. To do this, it is important to keep in mind the needs of immigrant students at different ages. From birth to age 8, children start to develop a strong self-consciousness and sense of identity. It is important to involve parents during this time to find the best path and program for their children. During middle childhood, it is critical to help children understand how experiences with racism can influence the paths of their academic futures and career aspirations. This will help them negotiate barriers they may encounter. Through adolescence, it is important that immigrant students have access to programs focused on helping students finish school, acquire work skills, postpone parenthood, and keep physically and mentally healthy. This can help empower students to overcome barriers of unsafe neighborhoods, family poverty, and lack of health insurance or inadequate access to health care. To work with immigrant students of any age, community outreach is an important strategy.

So what?

In recent years, North Carolina has become a leading New Gateway state for immigration and has seen drastic increases in immigrant populations. Compared to the traditional gateway states, schools and educators in the New Gateway states are facing more and different challenges, such as a higher percentage of recent immigrants, newer immigrant ethnic communities with less resource, more demanding on language and other services, etc. It is imperative that we seek to better understand and serve the growing number of immigrant students we are seeing in our classrooms. Educating Immigrant Students in the 21st Century: What Educators Need to Know offers insightful and informed recommendations or how to best serve our growing immigrant population for educators at all levels. More of Dr. Rong and Dr. Preissle’s recommendations will be explored in future postings here on The Well.

Tips from Dr. Rong

Understand how the demographics are changing.

Before any of us are able to plan effective strategies for working with our immigrant students, we must first understand their social and economic profiles. Only then will we be able to make sound social and educational decisions that have our students’ best interests in mind.

Be empathetic.

Immigrant children are often in a very difficult situations. Their home culture may not be aligned or be conflicted with the dominant culture in schools. Adding to this situation, they are in a country where issues of immigration are highly political and emotionally charged. It is important that we, as teachers, are able to put aside our personal opinions about the politics of immigration and do whatever we can to help every single student in our classrooms grow and learn. It is also important that educators take an additive approach, i.e. recognizing the strengths in immigrant cultures and help these students learn based on the knowledge they have. It is important that we recognize the situation our immigrant students are in and identify what we can do to help them find success in our classrooms.

Act now.

The United States has entered a new era of immigration. Recent immigrants and their children now comprise more than 20 percent of the population in the U.S. The time to act is now. The immigrant population has been overlooked in our schools for too long.

Researcher bio

Dr. Rong’s 25-year career includes teaching, research, consultative and administrative experience in the United States and China, including six years as a K-12 literature, history and geography teacher in rural and urban areas of the People’s Republic of China. Inspired to make a real difference in children’s lives and the society in which they live, she uses interdisciplinary research to explore three aspects of educational equality: the education of immigrant children of various ethnic groups; the education of Asian-American children and education in China – especially the education of migrant children in China’s urbanization movement. Dr. Rong’s major contributions to her field include elaborations on theories that conceptualize the relationship between variable educational achievement patterns and the multiple stages of children’s socialization into American society. Her more recent studies attempt to link the updated theories and research findings to educational policies and practices. This research seeks to provide recommendations for schools, immigrant families and their communities so they can help immigrant children adjust to school and society.

A full biography can be found on the School of Education website

Download video

Transcript

Dr. George Noblit (0:04)

I’m George Noblit, a professor here at the School of Education at UNC. Right now we are working on an idea with LEARN NC to try to think about how we can help schools solve the problems they create. So often, we’ve been working through schools trying to get them to fix curriculum problems, to try to change curricula so the students will achieve. We see moments where we get change, but no real evidence that it’s sustained or sustainable.

(0:40)

Kids, however, are the ones that could take on school in a different way. The kind of examples we are talking about are taking a curriculum– that the kids see as problematic or kids see as crucial to their success in school and they are not succeeding in it– and then ask the kids through the media to work on that curriculum, to create maybe a guerrilla’s handbook to algebra I, maybe the wacky writer’s guide to surviving creative writing courses, maybe how to learn to read for kids who reading is seeming to be a problem. We get the kids to take it on.

(1:22)

We’ll work with them through LEARN NC. We’ll have faculty and students here at UNC linked to groups of kids– the kids can be individuals, but we will probably go for kids who are facebook friend sets or connected through various kinds of community organizations. They are going to diagnose the local school or school district for the areas where kids are running into trouble and where the gaps in achievement are becoming apparent. And then we’ll have the kids take on the bits of curriculum. That way, they can figure out how to solve the problems in their own way.

(2:01)

We hope that means that we will then be working outside in to schooling and helping schools deal with problems they play too much of a role in creating. We think the kids can solve these problems; they’ve got all the talent.

Researcher bio

Dr. Noblit studies the various ways knowledge is constructed and how the competition over which knowledge counts construct powers and difference. This process means exploring both the highest reaches of theory and the everyday lives of people as they struggle to make sense of the world. To Dr. Noblit, “there is not a theory-practice gap, only a failure of imagination.” Dr. Noblit conducts funded evaluation projects, most recently on A+ (arts-enhanced) schools (the subject of his 2009 book), charter schools, and prison education for youth adult offenders in North Carolina. “For me, evaluation and policy studies are a way to be part of larger political processes in our society,” Dr. Noblit says, “and to help shape the agendas of important innovations.”

A full biography can be found on the School of Education website

Video download link: http://www.learnnc.org/lp/media/video/Noblit.mp4

Community newspapers

In Lauterer’s textbook, Community Journalism: Relentlessly Local, he identifies a community newspaper as being one with a circulation of fewer than 50,000 and has a distinct “local-first” take on all of its content. These types of newspapers don’t engage in the “shock and awe” type of reporting that is conducted through stake-outs and ambush-interviews and is intended to startle or shake up the audience. Instead, a community newspaper may cover local reactions to a national or global event, the happenings at a town hall meeting, a local school sporting event, or a trip a local resident recently took. They might also publish wedding or anniversary announcements, the school lunch menu, or any other information of particular interest to the local community. While these types of items may not conceptually fit in a widely circulated newspaper, they fit perfectly with the “local-first” emphasis of community newspapers.

The Durham VOICE

Jump started by a grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, The Durham VOICE was first launched in September 2009 to serve as a local newspaper for Northeast Central Durham, an area coined “the bull’s eye” by local police and officials because of its high incidence of crime. A driving purpose behind the creation of this paper was to give the residents of Northeast Central Durham, a population that has historically been underrepresented in civic discussions and decisions, a source for timely information as well as a venue for civic engagement, positive identity, and local pride. The paper is kept running today by grants and private donors. This type of funding allows the Durham VOICE to run ad-free.

The students

The Durham Voice is staffed by Journalism students from UNC and NCCU as well as teenagers living in Northeast Central Durham. The university faculty and students working with the paper offer free photo classes in the community during the summer, work with classroom teachers in the local schools during the school year, and serve as ongoing mentors to the youth interns working for the paper. Through their work with schools, the staff of the VOICE has helped to revive two local high school’s newspapers that had fallen out of existence. For the youth interns, this is a real opportunity for them to get hands-on experience and develop leadership, writing, photography, and technology skills that will broaden their ability to make themselves heard as well as expand their education and career options. Recently, the VOICE received a grant that allowed them to hire a full-time teen mentoring coordinator to work with the youth interns and other local teens.

The evolution of the VOICE

The idea for the Durham VOICE was first brought to Lauterer by the members of the UNC Department of City and Regional Planning in their efforts to revitalize the “bull’s eye” of Durham. Lauterer incorporated the VOICE as an experiential learning project in the community journalism course he teaches at UNC. First launched in September 2009 as a multimedia website, the VOICE added a 16 page monthly print edition in February 2010. The first year of this printing was hosted by The Daily Tar Heel, UNC’s student newspaper; after that, WRAL began covering the cost of printing. The monthly issues are distributed to schools, offices, convenience stores, churches, and businesses throughout Durham.

So what?

Lauterer doesn’t see the Durham VOICE as a one-of-a-kind type of project. Instead, he sees this as a project that can easily be replicated around the state and around the country. The benefits of a project like this are not limited to the youth who are directly involved. The university students who work with the local teens get to experience learning outside of the lecture hall. The community that is placed at the forefront of the newspaper is getting a voice that they did not have before. This is the type of project that can have true, lasting impact on all of those involved as well as the entire community.

Tips from Jock Lauterer

There’s no such thing as too many partners.

Having community partners is absolutely critical. These partnership come in many different forms, some offer funding, some offer resources, and some offer support. Having the support of local community members and organizations is important in two key ways. First, it is through local support that you will be able to gain access to the community. Second, working with like-minded people and organizations paves the way for powerful work to get done.

Contact someone at your nearest college or university.

Lauterer noted that he is often surprised that more K12 schools and teachers don’t contact their local college or university to start a partnership. There are many individuals in higher education, not just a school of education, who would love to do more work with local schools and teachers. If you have an idea, don’t be afraid to reach out to your local college or university to see if someone there might be interested in partnering with you.

Mind the digital divide.

When the Durham VOICE was only published online, Lauterer commented that he was made very aware of how many community members didn’t have access to the Internet. While printing is an added expense, it is an imperative expense in order to guarantee access to the very community that is being reported about.

Researcher bio

Jock Lauterer is a senior lecturer and the founding director of the Carolina Community Media Project in the UNC Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Through his career he has also taught journalism at Brevard College and Penn State; he has co-founded, published, and edited of two newspapers (McDowell Express in Marion, NC and Daily Courier in Forest City, NC); he has authored several books on journalism; and he has been recipient of the National Geographic Magazine Faculty Fellowship, the Ed Vick Prize for Innovation in Teaching at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and the Bryan Award for Public Service at UNC-Chapel Hill.
More bibliographic information can be found on the School of Journalism and Mass Communication website.

The Durham VOICE: http://durhamvoice.org/

Transitional readers & texts

Transitional readers are children who can recognize many words, including more difficult and content-related words; integrate meaning, syntax, and phonics consistently; employ many strategies to figure out new words; read independent-level text with fluency, expression, and proper phrasing; and summarize texts they’ve read. At this point these readers are becoming more comfortable with longer and more complex texts while growing more aware of story and text structures. Transitional readers need books that will foster and scaffold their reading development.

Books for transitional readers are called many different things: early chapter books, first chapter books, transitional books. Publishers may also have their own terms for these books; for instance, Random House calls them “Stepping Stones” and Harcourt calls them “Green Light Readers.” Regardless of what they are called, these books scaffold the readers’ needs in many ways, often by including features such as brief paragraphs, short sentences with line breaks at the end of each sentence, chapters that can be read in a single sitting, a table of contents that lists each chapter title, challenging and unusual vocabulary, and illustrations that enhance the text.

Multicultural literature, motivation, & achievement

Motivation has been proven to be a key factor that determines reading success. Research has suggested that children prefer to engage with literature that reflects their own experiences. When children of color encounter characters that look like them and have stories that mirror their own experiences and culture, they are more likely see how reading can play a role in their lives and are more motivated to read. Additionally, to become proficient readers, children must be able to make connections with what they read. In efforts to make meaning of what they read, children draw on experiences from their own lives. If the culture they are reading about is different than their own, they may not interpret the intended meaning. For instance, what one culture may view as verbal play, another may interpret as hostile or aggressive dialogue. Having the opportunity to see their own culture reflected in their reading can help motivate and increase the reading achievement of all children.

Critical race theory

Critical race theory (CRT) is a way of studying the effects of race in a wide variety of fields. In order to combat the inequities caused by racism, CRT explicitly addresses race. A basic premise of CRT is that racism is so embedded in our everyday lives that it seems normal to most Americans. An essential element of CRT is counter-storytelling: the telling of stories that question and challenge the premises or myths held by society, particularly those held by the majority. The ultimate goal of CRT is to create change that will bring about equity and social justice for all.

Research findings

Dr. Hughes-Hassell and her research partners used a CRT lens to examine transitional books. They were interested in finding what percentage of books recommended for transitional readers feature people of color, which individual groups of color are represented, to what extent those groups are represented, and the race or ethnicity of the authors of these books.

To determine which books they would focus on, the researchers used the Fountas and Pinnell Leveled Book List database, which contains more than 32,000 leveled books. These books range from level A, which is intended to support young children beginning to read, to level R, which is intended to support fluent readers. The books that can be identified as appropriate for transitional readers are those leveled J through M. The research group collected all of the titles in the leveled range, omitting picture books, nonfiction titles (excluding biographies), and books designed specifically for reading instruction. This left the researchers with a total of 556 titles.

Of the 556 books analyzed, 83.5% had at least one white main or secondary character while only 25.8% had at least one person of color as a main or secondary character. African American children were the people of color most frequently depicted, followed by Asian Americans. In the collection, there were more books featuring non-human characters as a main or secondary characters than there were books featuring an African American, Asian American, Hispanic, American Indian, or multiracial as a main or secondary character. There were no books that depicted characters from more than one race or ethnicity that did not contain a white character. Many of the titles that did depict multiple races were series books that depicted school groups. Finally, authors of color only accounted for 12 — that’s 2.2% — of the titles in the collection.

So what?

With just shy of 50% of the current student population being students of color, what the publishing industry is currently making available is not representative of our students. This creates a distinct disconnect between schools and our students’ home cultures. It is imperative that teachers and librarians work to bring more multicultural texts into the school and classrooms to help close the literacy gap that exists among our students.

Tips from Dr. Hughes-Hassell

It’s not just about the characters being the right color.

It’s important to remember that it is not just about the color of the characters. The characters need to be involved in believable situations in ways that are culturally appropriate and accurate. Otherwise, students will either identify the representation as inauthentic or feel further alienated in their own home culture.

Demand the books.

Above all else, publishing companies are businesses. If you want to see more multicultural books published, get in touch with your local book distributor and the publishing companies to let them know. The more a publishing company hears that their clients want multicultural books, the more likely they will be to print them. It is also important to be mindful of the book order forms you send home with your students. Do the books promoted on the order form reflect the diverse cultures in your community, school, or classroom?

Find the books.

It’s important to remember that the large publishing houses are not your only options. You will often be able to find a much better selection of multicultural texts through smaller, alternative presses. The Cooperative Children’s Book Center has compiled a list of small-press publishers and producers of multicultural materials that are owned and operated by people of color. This list is a great resource for locating a smaller press and finding the multicultural literature that is appropriate for your students.

Be proactive.

The first step is getting the books. Once you have the books, don’t just file them away on a shelf. Promote the books to your students. Use book talks or book trailers to let the students know about the books and to help develop their interest in the books. Don’t just be proactive with your students, be proactive with your colleagues and parents or guardians as well. When you find a good book, let your colleagues know about it. Let your students take their books home to share and, hopefully, read with their parents or guardians.

Researcher bio

Dr. Sandra Hughes-Hassell is a professor in the School of Information and Library Science and coordinator of the school library media program at UNC Chapel Hill. Her research interests include multicultural resources for children and young adults, delivery of information services to children and adolescents, information needs of underserved youth with a particular focus on urban teens, critical race theory in IS/LIS research, leadership roles of school library media specialists in education reform, and authentic integration of technology into the K-12 curriculum. Dr. Hughes-Hassell was recently awarded a grant from the federal Institute for Museum and Library Services to fund a summit on closing the literacy gap for young black males.

A full biography can be viewed on Dr. Hughes-Hassell’s website.

Dr. Hughes-Hassell has also compiled a list of transitional novels about African American children along with many other resources for teachers and librarians on her website.

Immersive media

Immersive media allows for a deep sense of social or physical presence. This sense of presence can allow educators to incorporate powerful pedagogical practices in online learning environments. Some key types of immersive media being used in education are simulations, serious games, virtual worlds, and augmented reality.

Simulations

Simulations are used to create an experience that is as realistic as possible but may be too difficult, too expensive, or too dangerous to physically experience. For instance, if a class is studying hurricanes, they may use a piece of software that enables them to manipulate weather scenarios to better understand meteorologic factors that impact hurricanes. This type of simulation would make an otherwise impossible experiment possible.

Serious games

These games are specifically designed and constructed for the purpose of training or learning specific content. These types of games are also referred to as educational games. These games may be used to teach the physics of electrostatics, as with the game Supercharged!, or to learn about biological processes of the human body, as with Immune Attack. In a previous post, we explored Dr. Anderson’s research into these types of games.

Virtual worlds

Virtual worlds are online social spaces where users represent themselves in various ways and interact with other individuals in the online space. Currently, in education, a program called Second Life is being explored and used as a virtual learning world. Whether it is serving as a virtual classroom space or a virtual representation of Shakespearean England, teachers and students are able to explore the created virtual world and interact with each other through avatars — digital representations of themselves.

Augmented reality

Augmented reality combines physical context with network-based information in order to provide an enhanced view of the world around us. New on the scene of education, augmented reality is not yet a commonly used thing in schools. A great example of an augmented reality application is Wikitude. Through the use of mobile devices, Wikitude creates a virtual overlay for the users physical surroundings with information from all over the web. One way to think about it is as curatorial comments for the world, not just pieces of art in a museum.

Teaching and learning in immersive media

While immersive media is exciting and new for education, Dr. Bronack points out that it is not the tools that are important, it is the pedagogical approaches that are used with these tools that are of the utmost significance. Dr. Bronack, along with many other scholars, identifies some of the most compelling pedagogical approaches employed with immersive media, including presence, immediacy, and immersion.

In immersive media, presence is created in multiple ways. There is an environmental presence, which refers to the degree and ways the digital space reacts to the presence of those participating in it. The interactions of those participants with each other through the digital space creates a social presence.

Immediacy plays a key role in creating a sense of proximity and fostering relationships. While individuals may be separated by a great physical distance, expedient and immediate reaction from individuals or software helps to break down the disconnected feeling that can often be associated with digital spaces.

Ultimately, immersion is created by the combination of physical and symbolic cues to create a realistic experience that causes the participant to willingly suspend disbelief that he or she is engaging in a mediated space. The participant simply becomes engulfed in the media.

So what?

With more education programs going online, it is imperative that we continue to explore the best possible ways to teach and learn in digital environments. Dr. Bronack reminds us that when it comes to teaching and learning in digital environments, it is the pedagogical approaches, not the tools in themselves, that are important. As such, it is imperative that we seek and use tools that allow us to employ pedagogical strategies that we know to be powerful.

Tips from Dr. Bronack

Don’t panic.

When it comes to technology in education, campfire horror stories and tall tales of a friend of a friend of a cousin seem to abound. Contrary to much of the folklore and popular news segments, incorporating new technologies into your classroom doesn’t mean changing everything you do. Just as you evolve your teaching style with every curriculum, available resources, and class of students, the same can be done with technology.

Allow yourself to explore.

Through some simple exploration online you can find communities of people who are eager to help teachers incorporate new technologies into their classroom. Engaging with these communities and exploring new technological tools will better prepare you to use technology in the classroom as well as give you some insight into what your students are talking about.

Recognize that students today have different expectations.

Today’s students are highly engaged in new technologies. Through this, they expect to engage in different ways in their learning. Sitting back and passively consuming information is not how they engage in learning in their personal lives and it is typically not what they want in their educational lives either. Today’s students prefer engaging in more self directed learning with constant and regular feedback.

Researcher bio

Dr. Stephen Bronack is Associate Professor and Executive Director of LEARN NC. His scholarship regarding the use of virtual worlds, simulations, games, and augmented reality is helping to guide the development of new educational systems and methods of instruction of the Journal of Virtual World Research and the International Journal of Gaming based on social and immersive media across the educational spectrum. Dr. Bronack also serves as associate editor of the International Journal of Virtual and Computer-Mediated Simulations, and also as a reviewer for journals such as Personal Learning Environments, and the International Journal of Online Pedagogy and Curriculum Development.

A full biography can be found on the LEARN NC website.

There is a great deal of political pressure for school districts to buy packaged curriculum to increase teaching quality and educational outcome. Since the No Child Left Behind Act took effect, Title I funds have been strongly tied to pre-packaged curricula. Curriculum decisions are made by administration and implemented by teachers. As such, teachers must negotiate their own educational beliefs and the curricula with which they are provided. Dr. Catherine Darrow, postdoctoral fellow at FPG Child Development Institute, and Dr. Julie Ellison Justice, assistant professor of literacy at UNC Chapel Hill School of Education, have been researching how early-career teachers negotiate the implementation of packaged curriculum programs in their classrooms.

The research

Dr. Darrow’s and Dr. Justice’s current research focuses on the implementation of “commercial curriculum.” They identify this type of curriculum as pre-packaged curricula and lesson plans that are purchased from for-profit educational publishing companies. These curriculum packages come in many different formats, but can generally be identified as scripted or open. Scripted curriculum is organized in a directed presentation with a strict chronology and can include instructions for the order of the lessons, the materials to be used with the lessons, and transcripts to indicate what should be said in the teaching of the lessons. Open curriculum provides packages of texts, word lists, and other materials that can be used in instruction. Unlike scripted curriculum, there is no suggested sequence or pace.

The research project included ten early-career elementary school teachers all in their first or second year of teaching. Four of the participating teachers did not complete the study. Of the six remaining teachers, two were using a scripted commercial curriculum and four were using open curriculum programs. The participating teachers were interviewed at the start and conclusion of the research and completed weekly surveys about their experiences with curriculum.

Research findings

Teacher as selector, supplementer, and modifier

The early-career teachers often struggled with implementing the curriculum in a way that best addressed the needs of their students. To do this, they selected which aspects of the curriculum to emphasize and which materials to use to best accomplish their goals. These teachers ultimately viewed their own role as being critical to assessing how the needs of their students were being met by the curriculum and how they could improve the curriculum for their students. However, overall, the early career teachers reported that they believed the curriculum they were using was primarily effective for their students.

Influence of the principal, coaches, and other teachers

The early-career teachers’ perceptions of the principal’s attitude toward the curriculum had a great deal of influence on how they addressed the curriculum in their own classroom. If they thought their principal didn’t particularly care for or about the curriculum, neither did they. When the early-career teachers did need assistance or advice with the curriculum, they most regularly went to their fellow grade-level teachers or teaching assistants. They seldom approached their literacy coaches for fear of negative consequences if they were implementing the curriculum in a way didn’t meet expectations.

Perceptions of being monitored

All of the participating early-career teachers felt as though they were being monitored and evaluated by school and district administration; however, they reported that they were seldom asked about their instructional practices and when they were observed they rarely received any feedback. Yet still, the idea of being monitored often influenced the decisions these teachers made about content and materials in their classroom practice.

So what?

As current federal policy requires identification of curriculum plans that will address schools’ courses of study, it is unlikely that commercial curriculum will fall out of favor because these well-known packages can easily fulfill this requirement. It is important that teachers think critically about the curriculum packages they are being asked to implement.

Researchers’ tips

Help early-career teachers learn to approach curriculum materials in a systematic way.

This is a task for both teacher preparation programs as well as practicing teachers. Early-career teachers typically enter the classroom with ideas from their teacher preparation program and then look to their mentor teachers for advice on how to navigate the curricular landscape. It is important that they have a way to approach the many different curricular packages they are likely to come across through their careers.

Don’t be too married to any one curriculum package.

Changes in curriculum are inevitable. Whether it is the result of a change in administration or a change in teaching venue, curricular changes happen. It is important for teachers to be flexible in their own teaching and not become overly connected to any one curriculum package. Teachers should remain aware of the different curricular packages that are available and the different approaches they use. Having this information can help to make the transition to new curricular packages much easier when they do inevitably get changed.

Be critical about what you use with your students.

No one curriculum is perfect. It is important for teachers to critically evaluate how a curriculum package addresses their students’ needs. When implementing a scripted curriculum, it is imperative to not turn a blind eye on the students or the implication of the curriculum. What kinds of tasks is the curriculum asking of your students? How will your students respond to that? What is the end-goal for the students in the curriculum? How does the curriculum propose to get them there? No one knows students like their teachers know them. Teachers have access to this important and valuable information that curricular packages may not take into account.

Researchers’ bios

Dr. Catherine Darrow

Dr. Darrow is the Project Director for the Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI) Kellogg Grant and an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) postdoctoral fellow at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Dr. Darrow specializes in developing and employing measures of implementation fidelity in order to understand the degree to which teachers deliver instructional programs and to identify ways to better support teachers in adopting new curricular packages. More information on Dr. Darrow can be found on the TRI website and the Frank Porter Graham website.

Dr. Julie Ellison Justice

Dr. Justice is dedicated to the training of competent, exemplary teachers.  In her work as a teacher educator, she encourages her students to become teachers who are both professionals and learners. Her goal is to prepare teachers who listen to their students, continue to learn about their craft and advocate for their students. Dr. Justice is studying how ideology influences policy, often trumping research, best practices, or any conversations in the professional fields. When ideology drives literacy policy, she believes that some children will win and some will lose. A complete bio can be found on the UNC School of Education website.

Often, when we hear stories of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds making their way into upper-level classes and eventually higher education, the stories are clearly about individuals overcoming adversity to find success. Dr. Juan Carrillo, assistant professor at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Education, has been researching the narratives of Mexican-origin “scholarship boys” who have attained a graduate-level education. His work highlights both the gains and losses these individuals encounter as they make their way into academia.

Mexican-origin scholarship boys

Dr. Carrillo’s study focuses on Mexican-origin “scholarship boys.” He uses the term “Mexican-origin” to identify the participants of his study as being of Mexican descent. All of the participants were born and raised in low socioeconomic, urban areas on the United States and are the children of Mexican-born parents.

The idea of the “scholarship boy” is a theoretical framework that addresses the identity struggles that can be experienced by working-class students who achieve achieve high levels of educational attainment and pursue, at minimum, a master’s degree. Many first-generation students who achieve high academic achievement assimilate into the middle-class culture of schooling. Scholarship boys are different. They do achieve high academic success, but they fight against bounded and linear forms of assimilation. This resistance can lead scholarship boys to not be considered academically successful because their own notion of being successful may not be in line with the institution’s. Many of the scholarship boys’ experiences are filled with angst and tension as a result of the relationship of their desires to achieve at high levels in school and the needs of their working-class homes.

Research

Dr. Carrillo’s research focused on the experiences of four Mexican-origin scholarship boys. Two of the participants were professors; two were graduate students. Dr. Carrillo conducted four interviews with each of the participants and analyzed documents such as journals, emails, essays, and creative works. This data was then used to create holistic portraits of his participants. Dr. Carrillo noted three main themes among his participants. The first was the concept of home as the idea that where you are from influences who you are and how you make decisions. The second was the enactment of masculinity as an intellectual performance. And the third was about the culturally-situated intelligences of the Mexican-origin scholarship boys within the institution of education. Within these themes were issues of personal disconnect and tension with the culture of education.

Four recommendations

Reconceptualize gifted education

What does it mean to be gifted? Gifted education is both culturally and politically loaded. Just as schooling promotes certain values, social norms, and perspectives, gifted assessments are also laced with these cultural perspectives that, for the most part, do not address the perspectives of minority students. Teachers need to work towards unpacking these cultural and ideological underpinnings of giftedness as an effort to disrupt the status quo.

Schools as sanctuaries

Currently, the schools system is set up in a similar fashion to an assembly line. Students learn certain things in certain spaces and then move on. This approach to education compartmentalizes and approaches academic goals as a linear sequence of events with a singular ending point of “achievement.” This doesn’t make sense for a society as diverse as ours. Everyone’s idea of “making it” isn’t the same. This leads to a disconnect and turns schooling into an unwelcoming, at times even hostile, place for those who do not share the same idea of “making it” or “achievement” as the school. Schools need to be places where achievement is not the politicized term that it is today. Schools need to be spaces where individuals can explore the many aspects of achievement as they develop. Schools need to be sanctuaries.

Sacred spaces in higher education

Colleges and universities pride themselves on having a diverse population and having first-generation college students. However, simply getting these students into higher education isn’t where the work is finished. Universities are reflections of the dominant society’s social perspectives; this often leaves students from non-dominant cultures feeling isolated and uprooted in an unfamiliar space. These students need to have space to fellowship with similar individuals in order to help them make sense of the often disorienting construction of values and demands of the cultural production of the university. This space also needs to allow the students to talk back to the university to help create a more open and democratic institution.

Scholarship boy literacies

Literacies are plural and contextual. Scholarship boy literacies are situated in the embodiment of a critical, multiple consciousness. In this context, there is a heightened emphasis on empowerment; every word, movement, and action is an important enactment of empowerment. It is important that educators embrace a critical consciousness in order to support and develop the scholarship boy literacies.

So what?

Latino students are among the lowest performing groups at the secondary and post-secondary level. Dr. Carrillo’s work is helping to identify where and how the educational system is failing this population. As our nation’s population continues to grow more diverse, the function of our schools must also change. Dr. Carrillo’s study offers insight to some specific changes that could yield a world of change for all students.

Dr. Carrillo’s Tips

Make the situatedness of school explicit.

What counts as education? This question cannot be answered objectively because it relies on the exchange in interplay of multiple contexts. Dr. Carrillo found that most of the participants in his research did not feel that their view of education was in line with their educators. As such, schooling became something that they needed to overcome in order to find their own success. The cultural and political influences on education should be made explicit with our students. This can help our students navigate the different cultural worlds of home and school.

Don’t ignore the tensions.

There are some things that are just easier to avoid discussing. Things like the tensions of gender, race, or class. However, it is imperative that educators recognize and openly discuss these tensions. Students, especially students who are not members of the dominant culture, recognize and live in these tensions. These tensions can be external (tensions with the system) or internal (tensions of feelings of losing their own culture). Ignoring and not addressing these tensions only serves to further isolate the students.

Make their histories accessible.

The participants in Dr. Carrillo’s study identified the library as a sanctuary. It was there they were able to explore their own cultural history in a more meaningful way than it was being done in the classroom. This cultural knowledge helped them better understand themselves and the system.

Channel the fight.

In Dr. Carrillo’s study, there were many themes of competition and struggle. The individuals he worked with were empowered by the education they came to on their own terms. For them, knowledge is strength. This force will be there no matter what educators do. If educators ignore the tensions and don’t help students unpack where they are from, this force can turn to damaging things. Educators can help students unpack their home culture, make sense of the system, and channel their fight to issues of societal injustice that are important to them.

Researcher bio

Carrillo’s research includes a focus on Latino/a, Chicano/a education, Latino males (k-12 & higher education), the social and cultural foundations of education, and anthropology of education. His current work explores the schooling trajectories of working-class, Mexican-origin males.  He is particularly interested in exploring competing conceptions of “making it,” intellectual masculinities, the gender gap in education, and the strategies used by Latino “ghetto nerds” to succeed academically all while affirming a hybrid cultural identity.  Additionally, he is a co-principal investigator in the evaluation of the Blue Ribbon Mentor Advocate program within Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. He will focus on the impact of mentoring relationships on Latino male students.

A complete bio can be found on the School of Education website.

Dr. Lynne Vernon-Feagans, the William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of Early Childhood and Intervention and Literacy and Professor of Psychology at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Education, assembled a team of researchers to address this situation for young, struggling readers in rural communities. Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI) is an intervention strategy that combines professional development and student instruction through synchronous web-based conferencing.

Targeted Reading Intervention

Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI) is a classroom-based, teacher-delivered reading intervention designed for rural struggling kindergarten and first-grade readers. Teachers participating in TRI are engaged in four professional development activities: 1) a three-day face-to-face summer institute as an introduction to TRI content, 2) weekly or biweekly literacy coaching via webcam, 3) weekly grade-level meetings to discuss children’s reading performance and progress via real-time web conferencing, and 4) monthly or bimonthly two-hour professional development sessions designed to meet needs expressed by the teachers via real-time web conferencing.

The TRI instructional model has teachers working one-on-one with struggling readers while other students in the classroom are working at literacy centers, working independently, or receiving instruction from a teaching assistant. The one-on-one instruction consists of a fifteen-minute lesson that comprises four components: re-reading for fluency, word work, guided oral reading, and extension activities.

Elements of one-on-one instruction

In re-reading for fluency, the teacher asks the student to re-read a selection that the student has previously read and that is at the student’s independent reading level. The purpose is for the student to develop word identification automaticity and reading fluency. In word work, the teacher is provided with a small collection of diagnostically-driven strategies for helping the student manipulate, say, and write words and text to develop phonological decoding and sight-word recognition. These strategies help students develop an understanding of alphabetic principles, sound-symbol relationships, phonemic segmenting and blending abilities, decoding and sight word practice, and, eventually, how to chunk and read multi-syllabic words.

In guided oral reading, the teacher employs strategies to scaffold a child’s oral reading of an instructional text, paying particular attention to the scaffolding of the the child’s ability to summarize, predict, and make connections and inferences. Finally, during extensions children are encouraged to practice reading by employing the skills they have learned with parents, classmates, and even principals. This increases the students’ oral language and, most importantly, confidence.

The research

A comparative study was conducted, examining the differences in outcomes for students between schools that received the TRI treatment (the experimental group) and those that did not (the control group). Within each teacher’s classroom five struggling readers were identified as the experimental or control focal group and five students reading at or above grade level were identified as the experimental or control non-focal group. The results of the study showed that the experimental focal group students, on average, scored higher than the control focal group students in word attach, letter/word identification, and passage comprehension. There was no significant difference between the groups when it came to the spelling of sounds.

Ultimately, students who received TRI significantly outperformed students who did not. All students in TRI classrooms — both struggling and nonstruggling readers — had higher selected reading outcomes than students in the control classrooms.

So what?

Research has shown that if a student does not develop reading skills by the end of first grade, he or she is likely to never read on grade level. TRI is a proven method to get students reading on grade level through coaching.

Tips from Dr. Vernon-Feagans

Creating an instructional match can be challenging, but it is important.

It can be a challenge to individualize the instruction in the classroom because so many things must be taken into account. However, matching instruction to the particular needs of the individual students is of the utmost importance, especially for students who struggle.

One-on-one time makes a huge difference.

While it can be challenging to provide prolonged one-on-one attention to students, it can make a huge difference. Spending the time to address the individual needs of a student will help him or her progress academically. Additionally, students relish the individual attention they receive from their teachers.

No one has all the answers.

It is very common for teachers to feel as if they need to be able to address every situation in their classrooms themselves. As such, there can be an unnecessary stigma attached to receiving instructional support. This shouldn’t be the case. Teachers are asked to do so much with so little; they should not feel ashamed to make use of the many different individuals and organizations that want to help teachers and students.

Pat yourself on the back every day.

I’m sure it’s not news to you that teaching is hard work. Sometimes, it’s really hard. Teachers often underestimate the impact they have on their students. A small word, a kind gesture — these things can impact the rest of a child’s life. As teachers, it is often hard to see this because our students leave our classroom, and often our lives, at the end of the year. But if we take a moment to look back through our own educations, we can undoubtedly identify those small moments with our teachers that made all the difference.

More information on TRI can be found on the Targeted Reading Intervention website.

Researcher bio

Over the last thirty years, Dr. Lynne Vernon-Feagans has focused her interest on children at risk — especially African-American children who live in poverty. As part of the Abecedarian Early Intervention Project, she led a study on children’s use of language in their home neighborhood and in their classrooms at school. The book she authored as a result helped educators and practitioners understand the disconnect between the children’s neighborhood language and culture and the school’s language and culture to help better understand the challenges faced by minority children during the transition to school.

A full biography can be found on the School of Education website.

I recently spoke with Dr. Dennis K. Orthner, professor at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Social Work, and Dr. Patrick Akos, associate professor of school counseling at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Education, about a program that makes explicit the connections between classroom content and career.

CareerStart

CareerStart is a middle-school strategy that focuses on promoting the relevance of core curriculum courses by relating the content of the course to career and job skills in the community. By promoting the relevance of the required core courses, the program seeks to increase student interest and engagement. The overarching goal of CareerStart is to positively influence the educational and career trajectories of all students, but especially those at risk of school failure.

Currently, over 600 teachers in seven school districts in North Carolina are using CareerStart lessons with over 30,000 students. The lessons illustrate the application of the core content in the professions of the surrounding community. By connecting to real-life scenarios, the CareerStart lessons can help students better see the connections between the content areas. For instance, language arts and math content are both applicable to fields of business and management. These connections don’t stop with the classroom; CareerStart emphasizes the involvement of parents, caregivers, other school professionals, and the community.

Lesson plans

A series of CareerStart sample lesson plans were written through a system of recommendation and peer review. There are ten sample lessons for each of the four content areas in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. Each of these sample lessons were designed for a one- or two-day student experience and have been updated and modified for the 2011-2012 school year. The lesson plans will also be update to be in line with the new Common Core and NC Essential Standards rolling out in the fall of 2012.

Because the CareerStart lesson plans are aligned with the state standards, they don’t ask teachers to teach things they don’t already teach. They just add a focused illustration of how the content is used in a professional line of work. For instance, a sixth-grade lesson on sound waves (NC SCOS science standard 6.03) asks the question, “why does someone with a job in music need to understand the elements of sound?”

One of the great things about the lesson plans associated with CareerStart is that they are not designed as a lock-step system. Teachers can scaffold and customize the lesson plans to meet their own teaching style and their students’ needs. As it is important to highlight local professions, teachers are encouraged to modify these lessons as well as to create their own.

The LEARN NC website houses a body of lesson plans for each level:

• CareerStart lessons: Grade 6
• CareerStart lessons: Grade 7
• CareerStart lessons: Grade 8

CareerStart research

A long-term study to determine the impact of CareerStart is being conducted. This research, involving over 7,800 students in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County schools, compares students attending middle schools that implement CareerStart to students at schools that do not. The current data tracks the students through middle school and on into high school. This research data shows that schools where CareerStart is implemented have students who are more engaged in their academic studies, have fewer unexcused absences, are less likely to get in trouble or suspended, and achieve higher test scores in reading and math. When these CareerStart students get to high school, they perform better on end-of-course tests, and have more credits toward graduation than their peers who did not receive CareerStart instruction.

So what?

Many studies have shown that student engagement begins to decline in sixth grade. CareerStart is a research-proven method that can combat this disengagement and increase the academic achievement of all students. Unlike some popular reform movements, CareerStart does not ask teachers to radically change the way they teach and conduct business in their own classrooms.

Tips

Ask your students about their career hopes.

Nearly all teachers recognize that students want to know how they will be able to use classroom content in the real world. But students are more interested than we realize in how classroom topics connect to their future careers. This is especially true for middle-school students. So engage them in that conversation.

Career orientation starts as soon as classes are selected.

While middle-school students aren’t typically ready to commit to a career, they are making life-long career decisions as soon as they start selecting their own classes. Students don’t often realize or recognize the impact their class choice can have on their future trajectory.

It can’t just be a guidance counselor thing.

Career education is something that all teachers teach, whether we acknowledge it or not. Our students take the things we teach them to their future jobs and careers. Making the explicit connections between academic content and career possibilities can’t be an effort that is undertaken only by the guidance counselors.

Researcher Bios

Dr. Patrick Akos

Dr. Akos’s research is conceptually based in strengths-based school counseling and centers on how school counselors can promote optimal development in early adolescence. In particular, his work articulates strategies to promote strengths and protective factors for students in middle school. In addition to his coauthored SBSC text, Dr. Akos has written broadly on developmental topics such as body image, racial identity, and resiliency; as well as education and counseling topics including aspiration gaps, differentiating classroom guidance, math placement in middle school, group work in schools, and the impact of counseling programs on academic achievement in middle schools.

A full biography for Dr. Patrick Akos can be found on the School of Education website.

Dr. Dennis K. Orthner

Dr. Orthner is a professor in the School of Social Work at UNC-Chapel Hill, Associate Director for Policy Development and Analysis at the Jordan Institute for Families, and the NC Program Director for CareerStart. His research interests include human services design and evaluation, public welfare and family policy, family strengths, and military families.

More information about Dr. Dennis K. Orthner can found on the School of Social Work website.

What is a learning trajectory?

A learning trajectory is generally defined as a content-specific learning path, a developmental progression, and/or a building of conceptual components. None of these ideas are mutually exclusive, but different researchers place more emphasis on different aspects of this definition. Learning trajectories are unique to both subject and content.

In Dr. Mojica’s work, she identifies a learning trajectory as a description of the order of a network of experiences an individual encounters in order to move from informal ideas to more refined, complex understandings. A key aspect is that a learning trajectory is not comprised by a single path. Instead, it is a network of paths that can lead to a more refined and complex understanding.

To help myself conceptualize what this kind of learning trajectory looks like, I use the idea of becoming a middle school science teacher. To start, I need to attend a college or university, but then I have several options. I could major in middle grades science education and go straight into the classroom as a licensed teacher. I could also major in a content area and go through a lateral entry or MAT program. Or if I am already licensed in another area of education in North Carolina I can take the Praxis for middle grades science. All of these different paths lead me to that same outcome of becoming a middle-school science teacher.

Now, bringing it back to learning, what are the pieces of information I would need to have in order to successfully complete a division problem? What are the different ways and sequences I might go through to get to an understanding of division? That networked web of skills is the learning trajectory for division. Ultimately, Dr. Mojica sees a learning trajectory as a tool that teachers can use to inform their instructional activities.

The research

Dr. Mojica has been researching the use of learning trajectories in an undergraduate elementary mathematics education course as a way to frame content instruction. In this course Dr. Mojica taught the pre-service teachers how to use their understanding of learning trajectories to inform their teaching practices. Particularly, Dr Mojica has written about the use of the equipartitioning learning trajectory. The concept of equipartitioning is focused on using rational numbers to equally divide a whole object or a collection of objects.

Over eight weeks, the pre-service teachers engaged in equipartitioning activities, discussed their solutions and mathematical structures, and became more familiar with the learning trajectory of equipartitioning. Through the use of a pre- and post-test, Dr. Mojica’s research indicates that the use of the equipartitioning learning trajectory greatly increased the pre-service teachers’ understanding of how to teach equipartitioning. Further, the use of the learning trajectory enabled the students to identify behaviors, strategies, and verbalizations associated with developing a complex understanding of equipartitioning. This ultimately leads to the pre-service teachers having a better understanding of the paths of student thinking while learning about equipartitioning.

So what?

Exploring and understanding learning trajectories as a teaching practice moves the focus of teaching back to the process instead of the product. Further, learning trajectories can give teachers insight to students’ progression in the learning process. When a teacher can identify where a student is in a learning trajectory, the teacher is able to gain a better understanding of where the student is in his or her thinking about the topic. This then allows the teacher to identify exactly what the individual student needs to reach the objective through his or her path in the learning trajectory.

Dr. Mojica’ tips

Use the students’ experiences.

Children bring a wealth of experience to the classroom. This experience is ripe with informal and intuitive knowledge that can be built upon to develop understanding of more complex concepts. For instance, a student may be responsible for packing his or her younger sibling’s lunches in the morning. That student is making decisions about what and how much to include in each lunch. This type of experience can be used in the classroom to explore many different academic issues. Additionally, allowing students to apply their own experiences in the classroom can increase engagement.

Be able to listen to the students.

Students process things in very different ways. Being able to listen to the ways they process without assigning labels of right or wrong is important. Student thinking is not a deficit; it is an asset. Exploring different ways to approach and think about a situation is important for the development of students’ critical thought processes. Instead of focusing on one right way of doing things, be willing to embrace the multiple right ways of getting things done.

Assessment isn’t a bad word.

Assessment has been stigmatized as a negative thing as it is often directly correlated with standardized testing. However, assessment is something that teachers do nearly all day. We constantly monitor how our students are progressing. Learning trajectories can provide a way of framing and assessing students’ thinking in order to better shape their learning experience.

Researcher bio

Dr. Gemma Mojica’s research and teaching interests focus on teacher education in elementary mathematics education. Her work examines the role of learning trajectories in prospective elementary teachers’ understanding of children’s mathematical thinking. Dr. Mojica is interested in how prospective teachers’ knowledge about students’ reasoning develops as they progress through their teacher education program into their initial teaching experiences. She is also interested in exploring the types of experiences in teacher education that support teachers in creating environments where all students engage in high levels of mathematics.

A full biography can be found at the School of Education website.

Video profile

In this video, Dr. Mojica talks about her research, her teaching, and what she likes about being at UNC.