Guiding Principles of Dual Language
There are some guiding documents called Dual Language Guiding Principles
When I became a dual language principal, I had no idea there were Guiding Principles for Dual Language learning that should guide my work. No one from central office mentioned it, the former principal didn’t mention it and teachers didn’t mention it. I tried to run our dual language program the same as our traditional English only section of the school, probably saying dumb things like “Just translate it into Spanish”, “Just figure it out” or repeating myself a little louder because I was certain the dual language teachers didn’t hear me the first time.
Once I participated in a federally funded project called Dual U, I realized how important the Guided Principles of Dual Language were. The foundational pieces of program design, language allocation, curriculum, instruction, assessment, teacher development and advocacy began to make more sense. I initially used the guiding principles as a learning tool to figure out just what I was supposed to be doing to make our program look like what these research based principles said. I figured out that there was no right or wrong with language allocation, when the students switched classes or what subjects were taught in what language. My greatest revelation was that the students must spend at least 50% of the day in the target language-this included lunch, recess and specials. I must have asked the presenters ten times and ten different ways trying to convince them and myself that we were at 50%. The reality is that we were not for the total hours in the day, just the academic blocks.. That prompted the journey of adding some specials (art, music, physical education) in the target language as well as working with teachers on incentives for students to stay in the target language for recess and lunch. Our school added an immersion strand in addition to our 50-50 strands. After, we began looking at speciality teachers like special education, gifted and speech pathologists. We began to recruit new bilingual staff and retrain existing staff to fill these positions to ensure that no matter what experiences a student had, it could be offered in either language.
The next big ah-ha for me was related to teacher development. Many teachers in North Carolina have very little preparation in university programs in working with second language learners and North Carolina has just started a bilingual certification program at UNC-Charlotte. While good teaching is good teaching, in a dual language classroom there are critical elements like integration of the curriculum, comprehensibility strategies (like GLAD or SIOP) and explicit attention to oracy that required a specific professional development sequence. I also recognized that no teacher can learn everything at once, particularly in August when teachers most want to prepare their rooms and greet the children. Having a clear sequenced professional development that starts with dual language 101 and the why we are a dual language school is critical. Assessing the teacher’s performance and interests for professional development are essential in individualizing and differentiating professional development.
