On My Bookshelf

 Recommend: New teachers with second language learners.

This was an accidental find while teaching in Japan and browsing through a random bookshelf in the office. Yet, it was one of the first inspirational texts that developed a critical part of my pedagogy, language is learned through creative play. A bit ironic that the company I was working for at the time took an extremely rigid approach to teaching with set scripts and limited personalization for students. Cary's chapters start with a case study example to highlight common concerns, such as supporting reluctant speakers and integrating grade-level content. I especially appreciated that the chapters quickly get to the point without the usual academic speech in other professional development texts. I highly recommend this book to teachers just starting their exploration into second language learning (especially with ESL students in regular homeroom classrooms).  

Recommend: All educators

This text provided a ground-breaking perspective on the silent phrase of second language learners that changed a significant part of how I engaged with Inuit students in Nunavut and how I view the progression of language development. I had never been a draconian teacher who enforced an English-only classroom, but Chumak-Horbatsch's critical point ties to more recent findings about culturally-responsive practices. Students who feel safe will communicate (primary language, gestures, drawing, familiar words), and the responses to those attempts to communicate significantly impact the student's development of the second language and their sense of self as a learner. It reads more like an academic text, but the chapters are comfortable for breaking into smaller chunks over a few days. 

Recommend: School-wide or division-wide initiative with multiple educators involvement. 

There has been a shift in behaviour management towards self-reflection and cognitive development, and these resources were provided to staff as part of a school-wide improvement plan. The handbook focuses on responding to student conflict through a lens of collaboration at both the administrative and educator levels. At the same time, the text on restorative circles goes deeper into whole-class (educator and students) collaboration when encouraging communication. Though restorative circles can be applied in individual classrooms, restorative practices require buy-in from multiple educators who interact with the group of students and opportunities for these teachers to collaborate post-training. In my personal experience, I would have benefited from troubleshooting with colleagues who may have suggestions because of their experiences with these same students in different settings or years. 

Recommend: All educators

The series has three books that cover the stages of assessment in detail. Though I can not remember how this was added to my bookself, I had the pleasure of attending a conference where Sandra Herbst was a keynote speaker who advocated for student and teacher co-constructed criteria and for making the process of learning visible to students. These resources were the guidebooks that helped me apply the methodology of Self-Assessment and Goal Setting provides a clear approach with ready-to-use activities and templates for making "assessment for learning" the supported responsibility of the student rather a the top-down strategy applied by the teacher. Setting and Using Criteria looks at empowering students in the process of establishing criteria before they begin to work on school projects and then using this same criterion to assess their progress and make mindful changes to improve the final results. Conferencing and Reporting maintains the same foundation of collaboration as students take an active role in the unofficial (e.g. newsletters) and official (e.g. IEPs) documentation. I have witnessed first-hand the benefits of using these strategies, especially for students who struggle with teacher-led learning or have a limited growth mindset because of their academic challenges. 

Recommend: All educators but especially teachers working with ESL students (homeroom classrooms & specialists) and literacy teachers. 

There has been a significant move towards viewing students' primary language as a benefit that can support their learning of a second language, overall academic achievement, cognitive ability and social fluidity. The Bilingual Advantage collects the research that supports this positive development in ESL education and summarizes the findings with occasional case studies, activity suggestions and examples. I appreciated the references to Canadian contexts, as this is rare in professional development resources published south of the border. However, the writing style is highly academic and would benefit from being read in segments with opportunities for follow-up discussions with colleagues. I have had this book in my pile to read for a few years, and though much of the content matched what I had learned through other sources, there were new bits of information that I had yet to consider. In particular, increasing a student's primary literacy skills before working on literacy in English. I was aware of the benefits of acknowledging previously developed skills and regularly attempted to support the transfer of skills between languages with my students. But I found I was periodically stuck focusing on English only when the student had limited literacy experience in their first language. The result was significantly slow growth compared to peers (both literate bilingual and monolingual). Rodriguez, Carrasquillo, and Soon Lee highlight the argument that in this situation, literacy instruction should be in the primary language to build a foundation first. Then once they have moved closer to the at-grade skills, the process starts of supporting the shift of skills from the first language to the second language. It makes sense as it also allows the student to develop general language abilities (E.g. vocabulary, grammar structure awareness) to support the transition into bilingual literacy. Right away, I think of the typical "learn the alphabet" lessons where teachers try to teach ESL learners phonics using pictures of things that the students do not know the English words to describe and may not have exposure to in their first language (e.g. U for unicorn). Nevertheless, this text remains on my bookshelf as a resource for a more in-depth exploration of the influence of bilingualism on student development.

Recommend: Teachers of Adult Education (especially ESL)

The Adult Learner was added to my bookshelf during my first year as a teacher in Japan through the guidance of my mentor Allan Dawn. The majority of the students at the tutoring company were adults who had experienced more traditional paper and pencil methods of second language instruction. Their hesitation and challenges with speaking and listening were strongly related to their experience, limiting their ability to experiment and take risks with English. Knowles, Holton and Swanson present a methodology encouraging interactive learning methods, differentiation to meet the learner's needs and student-focused goal setting. The writing style is heavily academic, but each section has reflective questions that I found helpful during my initial exposure to the text. I can honestly say that this text was both the groundbreaking strike and methodical digging of the space for the foundation which my andragogy and pedagogy are built upon, especially since I was given the book soon after finishing my undergrad that had centred on lecture-based methods of instruction. Their perspectives continue to appear repeatedly in more recent research on best practices when teaching both adults and children. 

Recommend:  All educators. 

Student-Led Conferences was one of the books passed down from my mom when she retired from elementary education. Though the text was written in 1995, the foundations of empowering students through self-assessment, reflection-based portfolios and student-involved conferencing methods are still relevant today. Though I have yet to achieve the goal of student-led conferences, this book provided the structure for many related strategies I use in my classroom. A few of these include student-teacher conferences to collaboratively set academic goals, students engaging in the process of reflection when selecting work to include in their portfolios and students' reflections being written down in their own words for their families to read. However, the writers did not record pie-in-the-sky ideals as often found in many professional development documents but instead created a practical guide that can be followed as a step-by-step method or used with flexibility to meet the needs of individual classes and students. Their writing style was efficient, making this a text that can easily be read in one session to spark ideas, then re-reading the short chapter quickly when attempting a method they introduced. Furthermore, they included exemplars and lists that ensure educators are not starting from scratch. These included, but were not limited to, a template for a letter exampling the conference to parents, suggestions on how to respond to specific parent concerns that sometimes arise and a calendar of skills that will need to be taught to prepare students for the conference. Even if student-led conferences are not possible in your classroom, I recommend looking at this book for many smaller strategies that would empower and engage students to take an active role in their learning goals and outcomes. (Beyond the letter grades!)