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GRADUATES’ REPORTS OF ADVOCATINGFOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

Luciana C. de OliveiraPurdue University

Steven Z. AthanasesUniversity of California, Davis

Beginning teachers, who graduated from a credential program focused on preparing advocates forequity and with attention to teaching English language learners (ELLs), had reported in surveysbeing well prepared to teach ELLs and promote equity. Focus groups illuminated teachers’ reports of ways they advocated for ELLs. Reported classroom acts included creating and maintaining safeenvironments for English language use and development, differentiating instruction and designinginterventions for ELLs, and responding to sociopolitical issues related to race, language, and class.Reported advocacy beyond the classroom included seeing inequity and addressing it with lunchtimeand after-school tutorials and clubs, and with family contacts and home visits. Sometimes, such advo-cacy also included critiquing institutional practices or policy, and proposing or building alternatives.Three cases illustrate accounts of school challenges in meeting needs of ELLs, and document possi-bilities for how advocacy for ELLs, even in the first years of teaching, can be pursued.

Keywords: English language learners; advocacy; new teachers; teacher education

Over the past two decades, there has been asignificant increase in the number of immi-grants to the United States (Nieto, 2002).Students in U.S. schools increasingly come froma variety of economic, linguistic, cultural, andethnic backgrounds. These students bringdiverse experiences and expectations to school.In California alone, according to the CaliforniaDepartment of Education (2005), English lan-guage learners (ELLs) number over 1.5 million,with more than 1.3 million Spanish speakers (or85.3%). A persistent achievement gap existsbetween ELLs and native English speakers(Kindler, 2002), and students from non-English-speaking backgrounds have higher dropout

rates than English-background students (Ruiz-de-Velasco & Fix, 2000).

To minimize this dropout rate, promote learn-ing for ELLs, and close the achievement gap,both new and experienced teachers need prepa-ration and support. Home cultures, socioeco-nomics, home languages, time of immigration,parents’ relationship with the school, and otherfactors also shape the educational experiencesand needs of ELLs. Teachers credentialed asbilingual educators typically develop moreadvanced and specialized knowledge, and expe-riences for bilingual and English languagedevelopment (ELD) contexts. However, particu-larly in urban and rural contexts in the United

Authors’ Note: The authors contributed equally to the preparation and writing of this article.

Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 58, No. 3, May/June 2007 202-215DOI: 10.1177/0022487107299978© 2007 by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education

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States, an increasing number of teachers haveELLs of varying degrees of English proficiencyenrolled in their courses. Teachers requirepreparation to meet the needs of thesestudents.

In this article, we draw upon a 5-year investi-gation of a teacher credential program with astrong record of preparing teachers for workwith ELLs. The program tested an innovativemodel centered on developing advocates forequity. Related studies found that the programinfused issues of cultural and linguistic diver-sity throughout the curriculum (Athanases &Martin, 2001), and that graduates reported theprogram prepared them well to meet the needsof diverse youth, and ELLs in particular, and toassume the role of advocate for these students(Merino, Martin, & Pryor, 2001). For the presentstudy, we used focus groups of program gradu-ates to examine work with ELLs. We asked thefollowing research questions: (a) What did grad-uates report about ways they engaged in acts ofadvocacy for ELLs in and beyond the class-room? (b) What challenges arose in this work?

FRAMEWORK

Preparation to Teach ELLs

In U.S. schools, teachers work with a growingnumber of students for whom English is anadditional language. Debates about how best toeducate these students focus on issues in instruc-tion, assessment, and mainstreaming. However,educators agree that ELLs must develop Englishproficiency and meet demanding standards(Gándara, Maxwell-Jolly, & Driscoll, 2005). Onecentral issue is responsibility: Who shouldaddress the needs of ELLs? Researchers empha-size the need to prepare all teachers to addressthe language and content-area needs of Englishlearners (August & Hakuta, 1997; Villegas et al.,1995). ELL teachers in schools can be part-timeteachers, permanent tenured teachers, part of anESL (English as a second language) and/or bilin-gual program, if both exist, part of supportservices, or part of subject-area departments andgrade levels. Often content-area teachers andteachers of ELLs function in separate school

worlds, and ELLs remain locked in ESL ghettos(Valdés, 2004). However, mainstream teachersof all content areas and all levels of responsi-bility for students need to develop instructionto meet the needs of ELLs.

Teachers of ELLs must address languageneeds (oral language proficiency, literacydevelopment, and skills in meeting languagedemands in content areas) and cultural needs(including understanding classroom normsand literacy expectations; de Jong & Harper,2005). These teachers need to be able to differ-entiate instruction, develop knowledge ofstrategies and techniques for second-languagedevelopment, and work closely with familiesand communities (Goodwin, 2002). Teachersalso need to be savvy about issues of languageself-esteem as ELLs work to develop Englishproficiency (Garcia, 1996). Clearly, teachersneed to develop a sense of language as both apersonal and national resource and not a prob-lem (Escamilla, Chávez, & Vigil, 2005).

Despite these needs, new teachers reportinadequate preparation to address learning ofELLs (Darling-Hammond, Chung, & Frelow,2002; Gándara et al., 2005). According to anational survey on experiences of U.S. teachersin work with ELLs, less than 13% havereceived any preparation or professional devel-opment in teaching ELLs, but 41% have taughtthese students (National Center for EducationStatistics, 2002). Even when teacher educationprograms address diversity in curriculum, lin-guistic diversity generally remains unad-dressed (Zeichner, 2003). Efforts have beenimpaired by insufficient placements in schoolswith adequate numbers of ELLs, lack of super-visor knowledge to guide relevant instruction,and a slim research base that has yet to informeducators about which disciplinary and peda-gogical bases best prepare teachers for suchwork in which kinds of communities (Merino,1999). There has been, however, some discus-sion in the literature regarding the pedagogicalcontent knowledge teachers need related to lin-guistic diversity (Adger, Snow, & Christian,2002; August & Hakuta, 1997).

A key problem is lack of faculty preparationto address ELL issues in teacher education

coursework. Both teacher education facultyand students may benefit from explicit atten-tion to myths and problematic beliefs heldabout English language, language and learn-ing, ELLs’ native languages, and ELLs andtheir families (Meskill, 2005). Even when aprogram engages in substantive professionaldevelopment to prepare faculty to integrateELL issues, individual instructor changes maycome more readily than program-wide infu-sion of linguistic-diversity content (Costa,McPhail, Smith, & Brisk, 2005). Also, preserviceteachers may learn concepts about accommo-dating instruction to ELL needs, but facultymay provide few practical tools and practicesfor doing the work (McDonald, 2005).Moreover, a focus on standards, scripted cur-ricula, and techniques in the current climate ofstandardized testing leads to a “misprepara-tion” of teachers, who fail to develop diverseand flexible repertoires of strategies for work-ing with an increasing number of ELLs(Balderrama, 2001).

In addition to these concerns, unpreparedteachers (generally, without teacher creden-tials) are unequally distributed to low-incomeschools serving mostly students of color, manyof them ELLs (Darling-Hammond, 1997;Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2002; Shields et al.,2001). This is particularly problematic inregions with high numbers of ELLs. InCalifornia, for example, teachers reported fourmajor challenges of working with ELLs: com-munication with parents, lack of knowledge ofhome and community matters, lack of suffi-cient time to teach English and content, and theextremely diverse academic and linguisticneeds of ELLs (Gándara et al., 2005). For newteachers, in particular, with or without teachereducation, such challenges can be daunting.

Learning to Advocate for ELLs

Though learning to develop K-12 students’basic and critical thinking skills of contentareas is central to teacher education, alsoimportant are the issues of equity and inclu-sion (Cochran-Smith, 2005). By equity we meana concern that funding should go to those in

greatest need (Kohl & Witty, 1996); instructionthat targets high achievement for all learners—working to close achievement gaps (Cohen &Lotan, 1997); and learner support that is differen-tiated to ensure equitable outcomes (Haycock,2001). In the case of ELLs, instructors withresponsibility for teaching these students need topay particular attention to resource distribution.This may include availability of texts and materi-als that both challenge and support ELLs (Oakes& Saunders, 2004). It also includes availability ofhuman resources in support of work with thesestudents, and resources for parents and families.

Bilingual educators in particular need to beconscious advocates for language rights andresources of ELLs (Hornberger, 2004). Policy ini-tiatives (such as Proposition 227, California’sEnglish Only initiative that passed in the late1990s) often constrain teachers’ use of students’first languages in mainstream classrooms. Evenwithin larger policy environments, local envi-ronments shape teachers’ decision making onlanguage policy. Therefore, teachers of ELLsneed not only language and methods but alsoknowledge of how their decision making on lan-guage use in class is in fact language-policydevelopment (Varghese & Stritikus, 2005). Asadvocates for ELLs, teachers may need to scru-tinize curriculum and instruction, as well asassessment in a time of high-stakes testing.Testing ELLs in their first language, forexample, can yield more positive results thanEnglish-only testing (Escamilla et al., 2005). Inthese various ways, then, an advocate for ELLsis equipped with knowledge, skills, and dispo-sitions for working with these learners anddevelops an understanding that these studentsmay need particular advocacy.

Studies of the Possible: One TeacherEducation Program’s Attention toEnglish Learners

Clearly we now know more about teachers’perceptions of the need to work with ELLs andof their reports of feeling inadequately pre-pared to do so (Balderrama, 2001; Darling-Hammond et al., 2002; Gándara et al., 2005).Researchers need to document not just the

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probable (what likely will occur) but also thepossible—what can be done, and how it isorganized, developed, and pursued (Shulman,1983). This means studying graduates whoreport feeling well prepared to meet ELLs’needs. For this reason, the present study, partof a larger research program, examined reportsof graduates from a program with a history ofattention to ELLs and some perceived successin preparing teachers to meet these students’needs (Athanases & de Oliveira, in press-a;Athanases & Martin, 2006; Merino et al., 2001).

The program is part of a California univer-sity that, at time of the research, credentialedbetween 105 and 125 teachers each year.Teacher education faculty included researchprofessors, clinical faculty (who served as leadsupervisors for student teaching), and K-12adjunct faculty. Students completed credentialsdesigned to increase knowledge of culture anddiversity, and of ways to effectively teachstudents developing English proficiency.Student teaching lasted an academic year indiverse, generally high-need urban and ruralschools, with an average of 60% of students onfree or reduced lunch. Program graduatestended to work in high-need schools andremained in teaching at unusually high rates(Merino et al., 2001). In line with other U.S.efforts to recruit and support new teachers ofcolor (e.g., Bennett, 2002), this program madesuch efforts and moved from no students ofcolor to an average of 27% in 4 years, andslightly higher rates later (Merino & Holmes,2002). The program articulated roles for newteachers to adopt for work in diverse schools,with advocate for equity a key role. Led by thedirector, a Chicana with a history of research inELL learning issues, teacher educators andstudents reflected on the advocate role in meet-ings, faculty retreats, and classes.

Analyses of program documents, syllabi andassignments, student work samples, teachereducator portfolios, and faculty meeting fieldnotes found the program infused attention tocultural and linguistic diversity and equityprogram-wide (Athanases & Martin, 2001).Assignments and experiences addressed theseissues in courses such as cultural diversity andeducation, language development in the

Chicano child, teaching language-minoritystudents in secondary schools, and communi-cation skills for bilingual teachers. Five differ-ent multiple-subjects instructors documentedhow they prepared teachers to address ELL lit-eracy and language needs across subjects,using group activities, demonstrations, andmodeling, applied practice, diagrams, visualcues, dramatic readings, pictures on over-heads, hands-on learning, and activity-basedinstruction. Charts and other visuals illustratedhow to organize, assess, and support ELLs inseeing, reading, and recalling information. Intheir computers class, all multiple-subjectsteachers created multimedia projects to assistELLs with literary elements, incorporating pic-tures, simple graphics, and sounds to conveyinformation in multiple formats. Math meth-ods required lesson plans with ELL considera-tions, and guests demonstrated ways to teachabout language issues in math and to under-stand semantics, syntax, and vocabulary inmath texts. In secondary science methods,teachers included in lesson plans ways theyaddress language demands for ELLs; threetimes a year created lessons on “common top-ics explicitly serving needs of ELLs”; and cre-ated and discussed concept maps aboutteaching science to ELLs. Veteran scienceteachers demonstrated methods to work withculturally and linguistically diverse youth.

Surveys of more than 300 program gradu-ates indicated new teachers felt well preparedto assume the role of advocate for equity inclassrooms and schools, and to meet the lan-guage needs of diverse students (Merino et al,2001). Graduates reported that ELLs’ needsprompted acts of advocacy in classrooms andbeyond (Athanases & de Oliveira, in press-a).They often traced advocacy to coursework, andreported that long-term school-based appren-ticeships aided efforts when supervisorsprobed on equity in conferences and seminarsand when schools included role models asadvocates for equity (Athanases & Martin, 2006).Graduates identified several teacher educators aseffective in fostering in new teachers a passionfor teaching and advocating for ELLs and inmodeling a range of relevant strategies. Projectscited as particularly effective included analysis

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of a case study of students developing Englishusage (using work samples, observations, andinterviews) and design of an instructionalintervention to strengthen learning of a partic-ular ELL in class.

Many teachers cited program attention toacting on behalf of learners rather than com-plaining of problematic school circumstances,and learning to engage co-advocates amongschool leaders, staff, colleagues, and parents(Athanases & Martin, 2006). Bilingual teachersreported learning ways to advocate for ELLsthat were especially salient for their teachingcontexts. Teachers reported learning that otheractions new teachers could take included prac-tice in articulating positions on bilingual-edu-cation issues; reading studies about bilingualeducation and practicing talking to a schoolboard about reasons why bilingual educationmight and might not work; and learning howto survey colleagues and schools about schoolpolicies and school political climate as theyrelate to support for ELLs. Several teachers alsoreported learning in the program the impor-tance of participating in policy forums on edu-cating ELLs, and described the impact ofaccompanying an instructor to a governmentforum where such concerns were debated.These were reports of graduates’ preparationto advocate for ELLs. The present study, how-ever, features reports of enacting advocacy forELLs. The following questions guided thestudy: (a) What did graduates report aboutways they engaged in acts of advocacy forELLs in and beyond the classroom? (b) Whatchallenges arose in this work?

METHOD

Participants

This study was conducted at a Californiauniversity credential program. Sixteen teachereducators and more than 300 program gradu-ates participated in the larger study. The pre-sent study is informed by reports that drew onthe larger database. To increase both candoramong research participants and research cred-ibility, the director recruited several outside

researchers and “newcomers” to the programto study program materials, to design andadminister a survey, and to recruit for and con-duct focus groups of graduates. From a pool ofgraduates who agreed to participate in focusgroups, we selected participants, with little ifany knowledge of them as students or newteachers. We included participants from allprograms—multiple subjects and secondary(both regular and bilingual)—and a range ofsecondary subjects (math, science, andEnglish). We recruited 48 participants, butbecause of last-minute schedule conflicts forsome teachers, 38 participated.

Five 3-hour focus groups of 5-10 teacherseach were conducted. Slightly more than onethird of participants were teachers of color,mostly Mexican American, with several AfricanAmerican and Asian American. Most hadtaught for 1-3 years, with a few of slightlymore experience. Participants’ teaching contextsvaried, with a preponderance of lower incomeurban and rural communities, with culturallydiverse students and high numbers of ELLs inschools and classes. Urban sites tended to bevery poor, often with populations at nearly athird African American, a third Latino (mostlyMexican American), a third Asian of varied eth-nicity, and small numbers of White students.Most ELLs were native Spanish speakers, butfirst languages included Vietnamese, Hmong,Lao, and Russian/Ukrainian. Several ruralschools had many children of migrant farmworkers. Graduates with bilingual credentialsworked in diverse communities and in classeswith primarily ELLs, and in some cases in bilin-gual or ELD classes.

Focus Group Procedures

To promote and tap teachers’ reflections onpractice, preparation, and professional needs,we used focus groups as a research tool to tri-angulate other data and to illuminate surveyresults (Morgan, 1988; Stewart & Shamdasani,1990). Unlike surveys and structured individ-ual interviews, focus groups allow participantsto take some control of conversation by articu-lating ideas in the context of others’ remarks

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(Bergin, Talley, & Hamer, 2003), allow partici-pants’ voices to be more dominant in theresearch process (Krueger, 1994), and captureaspects of opinion formation (Fern, 2001).Focus-group discussions began with groupbrainstorming of things recalled from the cre-dential years, prompted in part by programartifacts displayed on two tables. Talk pro-ceeded through ordered turns, then cross talk,and included moderator probes for elabora-tion. The moderating style adopted was non-judgmental reflective listening, conveyedthrough nonverbal communication and verbalmeans of clarifying, paraphrasing, reflectingfeelings, and summarizing (Fern, 2001).

Members of discussions often participateunequally, due in part to gender, culturalnorms, and perceived status of groupmembers, and in focus groups men typicallytend to dominate and interrupt (Brown, 2000).Our groups had few men, and their participa-tion did not reveal dominance. However, weworked to ensure that no participants weresilenced. We attended to nonverbal signs ofdesire to speak, intervening at times to encour-age the silent and discourage the dominant,particularly watching to see if those culturallyor linguistically in the minority of otherwisehomogeneous groups might withdraw, espe-cially in disagreement. (See Athanases &Martin, 2006, for more details of focus-groupprocedures.)

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

Background data included year-end surveyscompleted by more than 300 students over 4years, rating significance of 14 program ele-ments in developing knowledge and skills forwork as advocates for all children. (SeeAthanases & Martin, 2001, for an account of thefull data set, and Merino et al., 2001, for selec-tive survey results.) Program documents alsoserved as support data.

Core data analyzed for this study were tran-scripts and field notes of five focus groups.Teachers reflected on topics, including theircurrent conceptions of advocacy, relevantpractices, ways the program did and did not

prepare them for this work, and ways schoolssupported and constrained their advocacygoals. We audiotaped discussions and changednames later to assure anonymity. We tran-scribed focus-group discussions and subjectedthese to a series of procedures to identify unitsof analysis so that relevant meanings of discus-sions could be managed, maintained, andexplicated (Stewart & Shamdasani, 1990).

We reviewed all five transcripts totaling 300double-spaced pages plus moderators’ reflec-tive notes written directly following focusgroups. We developed emerging categoriesand themes. We found that teachers’ concep-tions and illustrations of advocacy for ELLswere embedded in narratives. Guided byBruner (1986), Carter (1993), Connelly andClandinin (1990), and others, we parsed thenarratives for features of story structure. (SeeAthanases & de Oliveira, in press-a, for detailsof structure and content of the full corpus ofnarratives.) For the present study, we repeat-edly reviewed and analyzed teachers’ actionsdescribed in their narratives that exemplifytheir practices of being advocates for ELLs.Using the constant-comparative method(Merriam, 1998), we analyzed themes thatemerged in our repeated readings of theseactions. Other discourse data, such as reflec-tions and commentaries on fellow participants’narratives, were used in conjunction withteachers’ narratives to support, extend, andrefute emerging analyses. While we soughtcross-cutting themes, we also examined datafor outlier perspectives that might complicateor disconfirm patterns in the data. (Examplesof this arose in teachers’ perceptions of thequality of their teacher-preparation experi-ences related to advocating for equity, and arereported in Athanases & Martin, 2006.)

To inform this analysis, we also used theconstant-comparative method (Merriam, 1998)to analyze teachers’ discussion reports of waystheir credential program did and did not pre-pare them to advocate for ELLs. We balancesummary and quotation to capture both pat-terns and precise illustrations (Morgan, 1988),and use cases to illuminate themes. Italicshighlight themes in teachers’ language and

their words and phrases; quotation marks sig-nal whole clauses of teacher language.

RESULTS

In all five focus groups, graduates told nar-ratives about ways they advocated for ELLs.We discuss actions the teachers reported, andthen highlight particularly complex cases ofadvocating for ELLs beyond the classroom.

Advocacy for ELLs in the Classroom

Creating and maintaining a safe environment.Teachers reported establishing a safe environ-ment for language use and practice. This envi-ronment included ways to enable all ELLstudents to feel safe to take risks. For example,teachers reported engaging students in speakingwhen they appeared timid or self-consciousabout speaking. Another component was help-ing ELLs to voice needs and clarifying thatthey are being heard. An elementary schoolteacher noted:

I’ve worked hard to keep my environment verycomfortable for my children. If my student is tryingto tell me something, they know they can use thewhite board to try to draw what they’re trying todescribe to me. They can take my hand and take meto what they’re trying to tell me about. That waythey feel comfortable to take risks and even some-times, even when I don’t understand her [I say],“Okay, okay, thank you”—knowing that she hearsme and that I hear her. And if a child gets upset andneeds to talk to me, I’ll tell them, “Tell me inSpanish.” And I don’t know it, but it all comes outand they can just release everything. (Chris, FocusGroup, May 29, 2000)

This excerpt shows this teacher’s variedmeans of ensuring that ELLs have a safe place tospeak to fellow students and to the teacher.Finally, varied language groups promptedteachers to establish social inclusion, so allgroups of ELLs had a safe place to participate inclassroom activities and with each other. Whenstudents of different language backgroundsappeared excluded, teachers reported interven-ing to ensure the preservation of a classroomenvironment that was inclusive.

Diversifying and tailoring instruction for ELLs.Teachers reported diversifying and tailoringtheir instruction as an act of advocacy to meetlearning needs of ELLs. Acts included jugglingdifferent kinds and levels of language support.This was due in part to great diversity amongELLs, in terms of home country, first language,English proficiency, cultural norms, readinglevel, learning style, gender, life history, andbehavior. Some classes had many or exclusivelyELLs; other times acts involved tailoring instruc-tion to meet the needs of a few ELLs in a moremainstream class. Teachers reported tailoringinstruction in varied ways, trying to “juggle”competing needs of diverse students. Daniel, asixth-grade teacher in a diverse agricultural-based community, noted that after presentingmaterial once, he revisits it for those who need it“a different way, whether tactile, verbal . . . youmight have to say it in a bunch of different waysso that every person in the class will understand,and that’s where educational equity comes in.”

Acts were reported across grades, fromkindergarten through high school, andincluded supports to develop different Englishskills in listening, reading comprehension, andwriting. Teachers also reported balancing cur-riculum coverage with tailored standards-based instruction. One reported “making lotsof modifications for individuals but keepingthe group going as a whole” to maintain cohe-siveness. Addressing diverse levels of readi-ness in academic content and literacy inheterogeneous classes was raised by highschool teachers of all subjects represented.

Diversifying curriculum, however, was noteasy. New high and middle school teachersreported managing a wide range of academicpreparation. Numbers on their watch werehigh for some—32 8th-grade language artsstudents, 5 times a day; 170 math students overfive classes; 130 9th- and 10th-grade Englishstudents, half ELLs. Managing so manystudents on timed class schedules made diver-sifying lessons difficult and phone calls homefewer. An English teacher described one class:

And you have one student who speaks no Englishand two students are somewhere else in English,and no money for pull-out programs, and you’re

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one teacher, and you have 32 students. How do youadvocate for equity in your classroom? Copyingthings in my spare time . . . I find myself at the endof the year just going, “David, read your book.” I’mtired. (Leslie, Focus Group, May 29, 2000)

Narratives frequently included knowledge ofand reports of preparation in particular instruc-tional strategies, but challenges in using theknowledge and pedagogy. For instance, a 10th-grade science teacher, formerly a research sci-entist, remarked, “I still haven’t yet found ahappy medium on how to deliver this equi-table education to them.” She noted that theideal is to set the bar high and modify lessonsfor those who need it. But, she noted, “In prac-tice it can be extremely difficult.” An Englishteacher, speaking of just one of her five classes,echoed this concern of accommodatingstudents she knows will learn material in verydifferent ways: “That is very hard to do inpractice when you’re dealing with 35 students. . . But I’m getting better at it this year.”

Responding to sociopolitical issues. Teachersmentioned ways they advocated for ELLswhen issues such as cultural dominance,racism, and linguicism filtered down into class.Some students expressed the undervaluing ofnonmainstream, non-White cultures, and someresisted hearing students speak languagesother than English. In some cases, ELLsexpressed internalized biases against nonna-tive English speakers. In all cases, storiesincluded accounts of special actions, words, oractivities teachers used to respond to theseissues. One teacher described several Latinostudents hiding their command of Spanishbecause it was not perceived either in or out ofschool as a “prestige language.” On one occasionshe led a discussion of valuing cultural differ-ences and learning to use each other as languageresources. Robert described his school climate:“There is a huge split in that high school of themigrant kids and the ‘farmer kids.’ There is avery large split of Caucasian/Hispanic. And youcan tell walking at lunchtime down the cam-pus.” He addressed institutional racism head-onin class, and noted how White students wouldsay, “Huh? What are you talking about?” And

Latino students would respond, “Well, I knowwhat that is.” He noted the complexity ofworking toward equity requires more thanprograms and staff awareness and communityoutreach: “It’s so much thicker and deeperthan the last unit you taught or your goals as aschool.” Addressing the issues openly in classdiscussion was one contribution he believed hecould make.

Susan, a new third-grade teacher at a ruralschool with many ELLs in class, told how some“Anglo students” were policing Spanish use inclass by ELLs. She responded with a simulation:

I acted like I was speaking a completely differentlanguage—it wasn’t English, it wasn’t Spanish. Itwas a hard subject and I gave them dittos on it, andI was showing the picture but going “blah, blah,blah, blah, blah.” . . . Basically, at the end I said,“Now imagine how all these students who come tothis country who are new and have to listen to usspeak English all day. How do they feel when theysee me or another teacher up there?” And we had abig discussion and we made a circle and they said,“It feels awful, you don’t understand the assign-ment.” . . . I was like, even though I’m not supposedto speak Spanish to you guys like by majority I toldthem that it’s their constitutional right to speakwhatever language they feel. They should be free toexpress themselves, when they can’t find the wordsin English. But, that simulation—it opened theireyes. (Susan, Focus Group, July 18, 2000)

Susan, like Robert, directly confronted theissue, using the simulation as tool. Three otherteachers in her focus group recalled the powerof a similar simulation in which they had par-ticipated 1-2 years earlier in the credentialprogram in a math methods class. Theyreported how their instructor had invited aspeaker in to teach in an African dialect andhow the experience, and their debriefing of it,had a lasting effect. Susan was the first toreport adapting the simulation to her class con-text to confront linguicism.

Advocacy for ELLs Beyond the Classroom

Acts of advocacy for ELLs took someteachers beyond the classroom and occurredoutside the boundaries of class time. Fourteenof the 38 focus-group participants (or 37%)

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reported such acts. Across the narratives thatincluded these acts beyond the classroom onbehalf of ELLs, one central theme recurred: see-ing inequity that warrants redress. Most of thenarratives, however, included two additionalthemes: challenging or critiquing institutionalpractices and proposing and building alternatives.We include three teachers’ cases that illustrateall three of these themes.

Some teachers reported seeing inequity andadvocating for ELLs, without critiquing orengaging institutions. These acts were of twokinds. The first involved extending instructionbeyond class time and space. Drawing ontheir knowledge of “classroom interventions”conducted for ELLs during their credentialprogram, several teachers reported continuingthe practice, setting the bar higher for a student,designing supports, and assessing languageprogress. These interventions often included ses-sions during lunchtime, and before and afterschool. One teacher reported scheduling meet-ings that helped her talk with students about“how to help them as learners.” Others reportedparticipating in or creating after-school clubs tosupport literacy development and computer usefor ELLs. The second kind of advocacy beyondthe classroom, that did not include critique of theinstitution, was home and family contacts of var-ious kinds. This included getting to knowstudents personally to engage them in languagelearning. One teacher noted: “I get to know themat home. I call them; I go do visits; I go to theirbirthday parties. I know my kids really well.” Inother cases, these contacts engaged familymembers as co-advocates in plans and interven-tions for language and academic development.

In contrast to just seeing an inequity thatwarranted redress, many of the narratives alsoevidenced two other themes: a critique of insti-tutional practices that enable the inequity tooccur, and using action to propose and build analternative to the problematic practice. Severalof these cases involved locating appropriatematerial resources for ELL learning at variedlanguage levels, including a hunt for betterworks to support students transitioning toEnglish. Teachers reported seeing inequity inthe lack of such materials in schools, and intexts that were accessible but often merely

picture books and overly simplistic. They chal-lenged this practice, as they knew ELLs neededenriching materials that set the bar higher. Bylooking for resources to strengthen their cur-riculum for ELLs, teachers built an alternative tothe inequitable practice of using inferior mate-rials for these students. Several reported work-ing on content integration (Banks, 1995), aninfusion of cultural and specific linguistic con-tent into curriculum. One teacher noted theneed, because for her students the dominantculture was desired: “The minority culture,whether it has a beautiful rich language withan incredible history, and incredible literaturegoing way back, it doesn’t matter, the childrenjust don’t want to be identified.” She worked ather school site to secure better resources,images of the possible, to help students believe“Oh, I could do this, too. I came from this back-ground, too. She did it, I can do it.”

Critiquing institutional practices and build-ing alternatives are rare acts for new teacherswho seldom deviate from school norms. Casesthat include such acts instantiate the possible(Shulman, 1983), providing needed documen-tation in the research literature of ways advo-cacy for ELLs gets developed and pursued. Forthis reason, we examine three teachers’ narra-tives that illustrate beyond-classroom advo-cacy for ELLs and involve these acts. Thesecases are representative of those narratives thatincluded all three themes of beyond-classroomadvocacy for ELLs, and have been selected toillustrate a range of acts teachers reported.

Diana: Access to testing and public libraries.Diana had taught kindergarten for 1 year in avery low socioeconomic status (SES) inner-cityschool with mostly Latino, African American,and Asian students. Diana’s acts of advocacyfor ELLs started in her classroom, but wereprompted by outside institutional practices.Diana’s first act involved her critique of testsdesigned by outsiders. Diana’s school hadthree kindergarten classes being tested: onegeneral, one ELD/English only, one Spanish/English (Diana’s). The test examined basicthinking and skills, and was to be adminis-tered in Spanish to Diana’s students. She noted discrepancies between test versions in, for

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example, the number of colors children had toidentify and the number of physical movementskills, making the English version more rigor-ous. Diana administered the Spanish versionbut used parts of the English one for those sheknew could understand it: “I know that thechildren in my class were perfectly capable ofhandling some of the material.” She knewresults would be compared, and she wanted toensure that her students were not judged intel-lectually inferior based on a problematic test.She also raised the issue at her site that the testscreated by agencies needed scrutiny.

Diana’s act involved first seeing inequities inthe tests and then critiquing and challengingthem. Diana understood the importance ofacting against the inequity: “I just felt it wasreally important that their knowledge be con-sidered as widespread as the children in theother two classes.” She critiqued the test andbuilt an alternative:

I knew that they could handle the material. So I justwent ahead and did it kind of orally because therewas no place to actually record it in writing. I knewwhen I was judging their progress of the year thatthey were comparable to what the scores were in theother classes. (Diana, Focus Group, July 18, 2000)

Diana demonstrates that teachers of ELLsneed a personal level of commitment and needto know their students well to be able to act ontheir behalf. Diana reported another advocacyact for ELLs that involved parents. She noted:

There were times that it became challenging to lit-erally be on constant phone contact with most ofthe parents because, whenever written notices weresent home at my school site (which occurred 3-4times a month at regular intervals, and they wereprinted in Spanish as well as in English), oftentimesthe material didn’t make it home, which sometimeswith kinder it’s understandable, but oftentimes itwas not read even when it was translated. (Diana,Focus Group, July 18, 2000)

Diana’s response to the difficulty illustrateshow an advocate moves beyond seeing achallenge:

I did quite a lot of phone calling as well as trying tomeet with parents when they would drop offchildren before or pick children up after school.

There were times where it got a little bit tediousbecause the info was being disseminated; it justwasn’t being read. I was concerned in some casesthat it might be an issue of being able to read thematerial. (Diana, Focus Group, July 18, 2000)

In addition to phone calling and meeting withparents, Diana heightened communication withthem by structuring a field trip with children andparents to a local library: “Out of my class therewere only two children prior to going on thisfield trip that had actually been to a public librarybefore.” She used this as an occasion to introducethe families to resources, making sure all parentsand children obtained library cards. Diana wentbeyond her classroom to communicate withparents and to get them involved. Her case exem-plifies that new teachers can perform acts ofadvocacy for ELLs and their families.

Sondra: Rethinking the calendar. Sondra, a sec-ond-year teacher at a middle school withmostly Latino students and 98% on free lunch,told how staff continually discussed childrenmissing school in December for trips to Mexicofor family reunions and holiday celebrations.Most of the teachers, she noted, “are not [bilin-gual-credentialed] and not Hispanic.” Shenoted biases and missed learning opportuni-ties for students:

So, one time we were at a staff meeting, they werecomplaining yet again about the fact that thestudents are all gone for the month duringChristmas, and that they have to do lessons plans forthe students to take, and how difficult this is, and Ihad to listen to it. It was my first year, but that year Ifinally decided that I would speak out, and say—hoping not to offend them—but it does not makesense for us as teachers to know a fact about a cul-ture and not fix that fact, instead just complain thatthey do it and try to get them not to do it. I said,“Instead of complaining and fussing about it, whydon’t we go on a different calendar year, one thatwould allow them to have that month off? After all,the calendar was set up for our society because weneeded the months off during the harvest, and thereare so many year-round tracks that would fit thatmonth off.” (Sondra, Focus Group, July 18, 2000)

Sondra’s narrative exemplifies how ateacher of ELLs can act after seeing inequity thatwarrants redress. She challenged the current

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institutional practice and provided an alternativecalendar. Her use of “finally decided” suggestsa culminating realization, one that followedhaving considered speaking out before actuallydoing so. Her use of the conjunction “but” ispivotal, signaling how she chose to speak outeven though she was still a novice at her school.Her closing (“hoping not to offend them”)remark marks her internal struggle and signalsthe risk she felt in alienating colleagues even asshe made the choice to speak out. Sondra noted:

I saw the lights go on around the room for a coupleof people, and we had a new principal and sheimmediately perked up and liked that and took it toa school board member. We are now workingtowards trying to implement that. (Sondra, FocusGroup, July 18, 2000)

She closed with a coda: “It makes moresense to be culturally sensitive than culturallyangry.” Sondra traced her problem-solvingstance with colleagues about changing the cal-endar to accommodate the large number ofDecember family trips to Mexico to a teachereducator’s urging that new teachers avoidcomplaining and figure out how to resolveschool problems of inequity. Other graduatesnamed the same instructor for a range of waysshe prepared teachers to speak up about textsand other resources for ELLs, and told how shetook students to government forums to edu-cate them about current policy initiativesrelated to the teaching of ELLs. Sondra’s advo-cacy exemplifies how a teacher can respond tochallenges by considering and proposing analternative to current practices that seeminequitable for students.

Linda: Toward balanced bilinguals as linguisticrole models. Linda taught fifth-/sixth-gradeSpanish immersion. She explained what “rubsher wrong” about her principal’s practice ofassigning “role models of English” (often lowSES White children) to each classroom:

It does not matter that those children have spokenEnglish only. They are not role models always ofEnglish, and what it does is give the White childrenyet more power and takes away from the strength

of the Hispanic children that are truly bilingual.And what I would like to see . . . are balanced bilin-guals as the role model for the English speaking,because all you do when you give a Hispanic childa White child that speaks the language is you takeaway more of their powers; the right to be up thehierarchy in the classroom. (Linda, Focus Group,July 18, 2000)

Linda noted that she preferred language rolemodels who have struggled and gone throughthe same process of ELD as ELLs in class. Shefelt the inequity at a deep level: “It gets me thatthey think, just because they’re White, theirlanguage is a role model.”

Problems in Linda’s narrative were complex.First, she noted racism in the administrator’spolicy: Even if White, native English-speakingstudents spoke standard English, she would beconcerned that it sends the message that Whiteis better, that only White kids can be models.Second, there was linguicism in perpetuatingthe notion that speaking only one language issuperior to balanced bilingualism, which couldbe modeled by native Spanish-speaking Latinochildren who had developed English profi-ciency. Third, Linda felt that less than excellentEnglish was presented as ideal from monolin-gual speakers of English. Fourth, the low SESWhite kids were not being served eitherbecause they were propped up as languagerole models when in fact they needed lots oflanguage support with standard English.Linda had begun to address her concerns withthe administrator. Linda first saw inequity in theschool’s practice, challenged the practice, andproposed that balanced bilinguals be includedinstead.

Linda made warranted points about wrongmessages conveyed by making monolinguals(rather than bilinguals) the models, makingWhites the models, and making a nonstandarddialect the target/model merely because it isspoken “natively.” But there is more to heropinion that warrants reflection. Linda’s ownassessment reveals assumptions about class,and how such issues of linguicism need to berevisited and discussed in ongoing forums sostances get examined. Linda’s teaching couldbenefit from reflection on how students from

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different social classes and cultural back-grounds may use language in different ways,and that these varieties need to be respectedand valued by schools and communities. AsValdés, Bunch, Snow, Lee, and Matos (2005)put it, examining their own judgments aboutstudents’ language “can help teachers avoidsending the message, either overtly or implic-itly, that the language spoken by certain groupsof students is in some way inferior to that spo-ken by others” (p. 132).

DISCUSSION

ELLs are present in many schools throughoutthe United States. These students, even afterbeing mainstreamed, continue to have particu-lar learning needs (de Oliveira, 2006). Newteachers in our study reported advocating forELLs in classrooms by creating and maintainingsafe environments for English-language use anddevelopment, differentiating instruction anddesigning interventions for ELLs, and respond-ing to sociopolitical issues related to race,language, and class. Teachers also reportedadvocating for ELLs beyond the classroom.Such acts included seeing inequity and address-ing it with lunchtime and after-school tutorialsand clubs, and with family contacts and homevisits. In some cases, such advocacy alsoincluded critiquing institutional practices orpolicy, and proposing or building alternatives.

Much of the work teachers reported may beattributable to having graduated from aprogram with attention to linguistic diversityand meeting the needs of ELLs suffusedprogram-wide. However, we cannot make thiscausal claim. Our study has several limita-tions. First, we sought a representative sampleof program graduates, but did not randomlysample. Those who agreed to participate infocus groups may have been more predis-posed to a positive evaluation of their experi-ences in teacher preparation and in their firstyears of teaching. However, our close lookthrough qualitative data collected in focus-group settings helps reveal persistent chal-lenges that even those who claim to be wellprepared may face, and ways new teachers

may be able to respond. Second, even thoughwe monitored our focus-group procedures toensure that no participants were silenced, wecannot claim that all counterexamples andoutlying opinions were expressed. Third, ourstudy relies on self-reports of teachers’ advo-cacy. This work will be strengthened by futureefforts to follow selected teachers into theirclassrooms and school sites for observationsof teaching and advocacy in action. Also,interviews with teachers, students, and schooland community members could aid analysisof the impact of such acts on student learning,family support, school culture, and schoolpolicy and practice.

Teachers did not report these efforts beingenacted easily or ending up cost-free. In somecases they recalled strategies and approachesfrom their credential program to meet needs ofELLs, but nonetheless reported complexities ofusing these in practice with multiple classesand many students (in the case of high schoolteachers) and in contexts not always support-ive of or well resourced for ELLs. There alsowere reports of exhaustion from challenges,and of impediments to advocating, includingprofessional risks. (Issues of confrontationswith other educators and professional risk areexamined in Athanases & de Oliveira, in press-b.) Nonetheless, teachers’ narratives reportedin focus groups were rich in reports of advo-cacy for ELLs. We need to know realistic possi-bilities of being change agents in schools(Banks, 1995; Villegas & Lucas, 2002), of newteachers enacting social-justice practices thatmay be rooted in teacher preparation (Quartzand the TEP Research Group, 2003). In the caseof ELLs in our schools, clearly many learningchallenges and inequities persist, some ofwhich call for advocacy. This study helps doc-ument teachers’ reports of the possibilities ofsuch advocacy for ELLs and how such advo-cacy can be pursued.

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Luciana C. de Oliveira is assistant professor of lit-eracy and language education in the Department ofCurriculum and Instruction at Purdue University. Herresearch focuses on the development of academic literacyin the content areas, second-language writing, and diver-sity and equity in teacher education. Recent publicationsinclude “An integrated language and content approachfor history teachers” with M. Schleppegrell, Journal ofEnglish for Academic Purposes, 2006, and “Advocacyfor equity in classrooms and beyond: New teachers’ chal-lenges and responses” with Steven Athanases, in press,in Teachers College Record.

Steven Z. Athanases is associate professor in theSchool of Education, University of California, Davis,where he teaches and researches diversity and equity inEnglish teaching in urban public schools, and teachereducation and development. Recent publications examinelearning of preservice teachers (“Learning to advocate foreducational equity in a teacher credential program” withK. J. Martin, Teaching and Teacher Education, 2006);in-service teachers (“Deepening teacher knowledge ofmulticultural literature through a university-schoolspartnership,” Multicultural Education, 2006); andnew teacher mentors (Mentors in the making:Developing new leaders for new teachers, coeditedwith B. Achinstein, Teachers College Press, 2006).