Music Teachers Leading the Charge to Develop Academic Language for English Language Learners and Beyond

• In Event: Moving Emergent Bilingual Students to the Center: Transforming Leadership Preparation in a District-University Partnership

Abstract

See “Front Matter for Next 3 Papers” for purposes, modes of inquiry & data sources.

Perspectives: This paper features the perspective of a candidate who entered the program feeling central (not peripheral) to the educational endeavor and who was focused primarily on general education students rather than those at the margins. It features his growing awareness of how his vision and work had been limited, and how shifting his attention and developing new knowledge to serve the needs of EBs improved his performance as a teacher and leader overall.

Substantiated conclusions: This paper relays the experience of a music teacher/district visual and performing arts (VAPA) director awakening to the linguistic needs of LTELs in his classes, and how to effectively address them. This improved (not sacrificed, as he had feared) his students’ performance readiness! The paper also shows how he came to see himself and VAPA teachers as a powerful lever for supporting LTELs and language development generally in the district, along with how he strategically led others to see, implement, and spread his vision for language-based improvement in VAPA. This paper highlights ELL shadowing (Soto, 2012) and systems thinking (Senge, 2006) in the program curriculum in cultivating urgency for change and the skills needed to strategically lead it.

Scholarly significance: There is much talk about the need for literacy and language development to be attended to across disciplines (Uccelli et. al., 2015), but little evidence that this happens much in practice. This paper shows the specific mechanisms by which changes in thinking and practice to support literacy across content areas can be brought about within the context of leadership development focused on social justice. Overall, our symposium advances the conference theme. It shows what can happen when a university and district take joint responsibility for educating their most underserved students. And it shows the power of placing EBs at the center of leadership development for equity-driven improvement and change.

Author

• Brian Belski, Anaheim Union High School District