Dean Smith

BLE 407

M2- Part A: Think, Connect & Respond

Does Arizona law support what the authors are proposing? Or, are there aspects of the law that

may make working with emergent bilinguals more challenging in Arizona?

● Yes Arizona law supports what the authors are proposing, however changes need to be

made.

● Arizona Prop 203 aims to place students who are English Language Learners (ELLs) in a

fully immersive English only environment.

○ Pros: Past research has shown that the best way to learn a new language and

culture is to fully immerse yourself in it because it forces you to learn the

language. Another example is a common saying “the best way to learn how to

swim is to jump in the deep end”.

○ Pros: The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and a federal court ruled in favor of

the State in Flores vs. Arizona. This meant that the courts deemed that the state’s

mandatory four hour block of english instruction for ELLs did not violate the

federal Educational Equal Opportunities Act.

○ Cons: Newer research has shown that the best ways for students to learn a new

language is to allow them to continue to build on their primary language. This

allows them to continue to build up their base while forming more meaningful

connections from their prior knowledge to English.

 ○ Cons: Many bipartisan lawmakers and many members of the public agree that this

law is outdated and should be either removed or significantly changed due to this

law no longer being the best way to teach English to students.

○ Cons: Lawmakers have already passed pieces of legislation to provide educators

more wiggle room around this law. One piece of legislation halves the required

amount of immersion time from 4 hours to 2 hours.

○ Cons: Arizona is the only state that still has this type of law still in action.

Arizona also happens to rank in the upper 40s for states with the best education.

● In the textbook the authors talk about spending classroom time to purposely make

students who are learning English feel welcomed by building around their primary

culture and language and creating a welcoming environment in the classroom for students

who are Emerging Bilinguals (EB). Assignments that follow the Arizona laws while still

relating to their culture could be where they write about themselves and if they can’t use

their primary language, they can use pictures.

● The other main points in the textbook were to be genuine in the classroom because kids

will notice when you’re not. As well as an emphasis on creating that safe and secure

environment for your students.

● The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) creates state unified standards, rather than

district standards for the process of identifying and assisting ELL students.

○ Pros: This helps prevent some students qualifying as ELLs and others not

qualifying, resulting in them not being able to receive the help they need.

○ Pros: Standardized testing focuses on the growth and improvement of students

resulting in ELLs not being punished for bad test grades.

 ○ Pros: The higher the English proficient rates in a school are, the more funding

they receive, this incentivizes schools to try and get their students as proficient as

possible.

○ Pros: Under ESSA, a school cannot receive a high rating if a specific group of

students is consistently underperforming. This means that unlike in the past, the

schools can’t keep ignoring that group of students and still receive high marks.

● While Arizona laws were originally aimed to benefit the students, older laws with the

exception of Prop 203, laws such as No Child Left Behind, NCLB have been removed

and replaced with laws that better support the students. New laws have been put in place

to provide work arounds for educators dealing with old laws such as Prop 203 that have

yet to be removed.

● Again, yes Arizona laws support what’s in the textbook. However, many of the older laws

need to be changed or removed in order to best support the students.

What questions do you have about how you will support the needs of emergent bilinguals?

● How would my boss or whoever is in charge know, if I chose to communicate with my

students in their primary language (using spanish to help a student better understand the

directions)?

● What are the penalties for breaking the Prop 203 laws?

● The way I plan to support the needs of my students who are EBs is to really take the time

to get to know them. I really want them to feel like my classroom is a safe place for them

and to be able to learn because they might not be able to share everything they know

because they don’t know how to say it.

● More ways I plan to support EBs are using technology to best assist everyone, an

example that immediately sticks out to me is Google translate.

● Since I plan on teaching history, having everyone share about their backgrounds and their

culture is fully relevant to my class. This also helps create that strong sense of community

in my classroom.