In-Service Professional Development in Nashville

I met Kue Paw¹ in November of 2007 when her family was being resettled by Catholic Charities in Nashville, Tennessee, from a refugee camp in Thailand. I was working in the Office of English Learners of Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) as an English language development specialist, after five years of teaching in Massachusetts. Educating English language learners (ELLs) was not new to me, but Kue Paw and her family were some of the first refugees I had ever met. Her case manager brought her and her family to our district’s centralized assessment intake center for non-English speakers, and Kue Paw and her four younger siblings entered our new International Newcomer Academy. When she entered one of the district’s zoned high schools the following year, we kept in touch.

In May 2011, she needed to pass two more online courses to graduate. She asked for my help, and we spent afternoons together working on Algebra II, among other things. She was very smart, and a quick learner – but after four years, she still only scored at the beginner level on the state English proficiency assessment. Although she made great progress, I felt four years was not enough time for her to learn English and academic content at the high school level. However, with additional tutoring and a string of good teachers, she was able to pass and graduate. She went on to a state university to study nursing. Kue Paw is an amazing person who has faced many challenges and hard times, and who calls my sixteen-month-old daughter her “sister.”

What about the others – the 12,093 students currently classified as Limited English Proficient in our district, who are expected to meet grade-level content standards while learning English? Do the teachers in our 143 schools know how to best meet the needs of ELLs in their classrooms? How can we improve? What do our graduates who are English language learners look like? Are we preparing them for college and career?

Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) is home to approximately 80,000 students. Twenty-four percent of our students speak a first language other than English. They speak 131 languages and come from 146 countries. On average, the number of new students who speak a language other than English entering the district has increased about 5 percent each year over the past five years. Nashville has been an active resettlement site since 1975. Our oldest immigrant communities include those who arrived in the mid-1970s speaking Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian. Our newest arriving communities in the 2000s include Somali, Burmese, and Bhutanese refugees. During the years in between, Nashville has welcomed others, like Kurdish, Spanish, and Arabic speakers.

MNPS has ELLs who were born here to families who have been in Nashville for years, live a pretty average life, and begin school with us in kindergarten. We also have ELLs who enter our district as high school students, have no native language literacy, have had no prior schooling, and have experienced atrocities that most of us only see on the nightly news. We know many ELLs and their families face linguistic, cultural, and financial struggles that we must consider in our classrooms. The instruction for each English learner is unique and must be well-crafted. To serve Nashville’s ELLs well, we have an ongoing need to increase the number and effectiveness of ESL staff.

In 2009, Dr. Jesse Register joined MNPS as the director of schools and initiated a reform effort known as MNPS Achieves to raise student achievement across all subgroups of students, including ELLs. In mid-2010, when I became executive director of the Office of English Learners in MNPS, I jumped into action, leading the MNPS Achieves Transformational Leadership Group for the Achievement of English Learners. One of the first initiatives that this group of district employees, community members, and parents established was ESL Endorsement Partnerships.

​These partnerships, funded through the U.S. Department of Education competitive grants, have been essential in meeting the need for building instructional capacity. As teachers of ELLs know, ELLs’ academic achievement is dependent on the strength of the teacher’s cultural responsiveness and ability to differentiate instruction based on factors like language proficiency level, background, and learning style. To best serve our students, we must know about native language literacy, education history, life experiences, and English skills. Once we have that information, teachers of ELLs must use their knowledge of second language acquisition theory, linguistics, curriculum design, best instructional practices for ELLs, social emotional learning, culture and community – not to mention ESL standards and grade-level content standards – to facilitate instruction that best meets the needs of the students in their classrooms.

We looked to our local universities for collaboration, and we found three dynamic partners:

• Belmont University. We collaborated on a program of professional development for middle and high school content-area teachers. Our goal was for current MNPS middle and high school teachers to become more effective in teaching English learners within their content area; the professional development consists of language and culture; Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol; structure of the English language; literacy across the secondary curriculum;and English language learners. In 2011-2012, forty-five teachers participated and in 2012-2013, seventy-five.
• Lipscomb University. We collaborated to create an ESL endorsement program of study in which participating current MNPS elementary classroom teachers earn twelve graduate credits. Courses are: culture, communication, and community in the ELL classroom; theory and practice in second language acquisition; grammar for ELL teachers; and curriculum design and instruction in the ELL classroom. In 2011-2012, 125 teachers participated and in 2012-2013, 70. In 2013-2014, 140 teachers are projected to start the program.
• Vanderbilt University. The first goal of this partnership was to create more effective ELL teachers at the elementary level. Participating teachers earn fifteen graduate credits and an ESL endorsement. Courses are: foundations for ELL education; educational linguistics/second language acquisition; methods and materials for ELL education; assessment of ELL students; community immersion project; and classroom mentoring. In 2012-2013, ten teachers participated, and in 2013-2014, eighteen teachers are projected to start the program. Vanderbilt leaders will also collaborate with us during the partnership to put together a sustainable plan of professional development for use after our five-year grant term.

We have completed two years of our Belmont and Lipscomb programs and one year of our Vanderbilt program. Our first cohorts of teachers (2011-2012 school year) have just completed their first year of teaching with their new knowledge; we have not yet received English proficiency or achievement test results for the 2012-2013 school year. But the shift in the district and Nashville community is apparent. Teachers in our district are eager to participate in the program, because they want to be better teachers to ELLs in their classrooms; they also realize that the ELL population in the United States is growing and that adding this endorsement will make them more marketable in the field. Pre-service teachers in and around Nashville are also recognizing this need and want to be prepared to teach the students sitting before them when they enter their first classrooms. They are asking their deans of education for ESL Endorsement opportunities in their undergraduate programs of study. Institutes of higher education have responded to this request and have rewritten their elementary education undergraduate degree programs to include ESL courses leading to an ESL endorsement. School administrators and district recruiters are actively seeking teachers from around the United States who are dually endorsed and already have experience and the know-how to teach ELLs.

Our school district serves one-third of the ELLs in our state. We must lead in best practices and solutions for the education of our multilingual students and continue to work together with community organizations for more support for our immigrant and refugee families. Nashville is changing to welcome and better serve our growing immigrant population. By continuing partnerships with key organizations in our city, MNPS hopes to reach many more students like Kue Paw so that all English learners have the opportunity to receive excellent language instruction and rigorous, high-quality content.