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Shared Leadership Excerpt Chapter 4

The term “shared leadership” refers to the sharing of leadership opportunities and responsibilities among all members of the school staff and the grounding of instructional directions and initiatives in the empirical research evidence. The expertise that develops through collaboration in assuming leadership roles is distributed among all engaged parties.

Publication: Transforming Sanchez School

Topic: Policy, Leadership, and Advocacy

Specialty:

Object(s): reference

Table of Content

The table of contents lists the questions and the experts. You will find practical answers to questions about language for academic purposes, using students’ home languages as resources in learning, content and language demands, PD, authentic accountability and much more.

Publication: Common Core Bilingual and English Language Learners: A Resource for Educators

Topic: Policy, Leadership, and Advocacy

Specialty:

Elementary

Secondary

Object(s): document

Teacher Agency Excerpt Chapter 1

Isola and Cummins describe how the faculty at Sanchez School worked together to identify strengths and needs of their students, families, and the school. These educators then collaborated in the design and implementation of organizational and instructional changes that significantly increased the academic achievement of its low-income students from linguistically diverse backgrounds. This book documents the power of teachers to change the culture of a school through teacher agency.

Publication: Transforming Sanchez School

Topic: Policy, Leadership, and Advocacy

Specialty:

Object(s): reference

Teacher Leadership Excerpt Chapter 1

One of the most effective ways to transform classrooms for multilingual learners, including English language learners (ELLs), is to prepare all teachers to differentiate instruction and assessment in ways that build on what these students can do with oral and written language. Teacher leadership offers the opportunity to build collective capacity in differentiating for multilingual learners through purposeful collaboration.

All teachers need to share responsibility for the multilingual learners in their classes, but their roles and responsibilities differ. General education teachers need to know how to differentiate content-area instruction and assessment by ELD levels so that ELLs have opportunities to learn in general education classes. ELD teachers need to know how to teach and assess language through content, and how to support their general education colleagues’ learning. As general education teachers assume responsibility for the ELLs in their classrooms, ELD teachers can take on more of a leadership and capacity-building role in the general education program.

Publication: Differentiating Instruction and Assessment for English Language Learners: A Guide for K-12 Teachers, second edition

Topic: Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment

Specialty:

Teacher Leadership Excerpt Chapter 4

Transforming Sanchez School: Shared Leadership, Equity, and Evidence, by Raymond Isola and Jim Cummins, provides an example of how principals, school-based leadership teams, and community partners built a successful school through shared instructional leadership, focused and sustained professional learning, and community engagement. The story of Sanchez School offers detailed examples of how these diverse constituents created powerful learning and leadership opportunities for everyone involved and includes evidence of improved student outcomes over a 10-year period.

For example, Sanchez educators clearly define roles and responsibilities for teacher leaders within three primary shared leadership structures:
1. Grade-level meetings for all preschool through 5th-grade teachers
2. Instructional leadership team meetings
3. School Site Council meetings

Isola and Cummins emphasize the importance of educator identity, agency, and choice in transforming schools at the local level. Their work will inspire educators to action in ways that make sense in any linguistically and culturally diverse school context.

Publication: Transforming Sanchez School

Topic: Policy, Leadership, and Advocacy

Specialty:

Early Childhood

Elementary

Bilingual Learner

Object(s): reference

Teacher Observation Protocol

Ponte and Higgins developed this teacher observation protocol to monitor teachers' beliefs and practices along a continuum of professional learning. On one end of the continuum are traditional mainstream teacher beliefs and practices about teaching English language learners, and on the other end of the continuum are linguistically and culturally responsive teacher beliefs and practices. Teachers, teacher educators, professional development providers, field supervisors, and coaches can customize and use this observation protocol to gather empirical evidence of teacher learning over time.

Publication: Enriching Practice in Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Classrooms

Topic: Professional Development

Specialty:

Elementary

Content

Object(s): framework

Translanguaging Conversation Question 1: What do you mean by the Translanguaging Stance?

Here is a short clip of what you can expect from a series of recorded conversations between the authors of The Translanguaging Classroom: Leveraging Student Bilingualism for Learning, Ofelia García, Kate Seltzer, and Susana Ibarra Johnson, that will be available through Caslon Learning.

In this 2-minute clip Ofelia García explains the concept of the juntos stance. The juntos stance is informed by three beliefs of joint collaboration:
1. Students’ language practices and cultural understanding encompass those they bring from home and communities, as well as those they take up in schools. These practices and understanding work juntos (together) and enrich each other.
2. Students’ families and communities are valuable sources of knowledge and must be involved in the education process juntos.
3. The classroom is a democratic space where teachers and students juntos co-create knowledge, challenge traditional hierarchies, and work toward a more just society.