Interview: A State-Level View of Dual Language Learners Policies

This post is the first in a periodic series of interviews from New America’s Dual Language Learners National Work Group. The series, titled “Spreading the Word(s),” is a key part of the Work Group’s “spotlighting” track of work (outlined in our launch post). The interviews seek to draw attention to people doing interesting policy, advocacy, and instructional work with dual language learners (DLLs).

Nitza Vega-Lahr, PhD., Director, Georgia Coalition for English Learners

Dr. Nitza Vega-Lahr is, in her words, “hardly objective” when it comes to issues related to DLLs and multilingualism. The Director of Georgia’s Coalition for English Learners was born in Cuba and raised in Colombia. She married a German, and eventually raised a set of trilingual twins here in the United States.

The Coalition grew out of Vega-Lahr’s day job as the Director of the English Learners Program at the Atlanta Speech School’s Rollins Center for Language and Literacy. Her team received a planning grant from the Goizueta Foundation — this eventually led to the Coalition’s formation in 2012 (see below).

Q: Tell me about the origin of the Georgia Coalition for English Learners.

It started at the Atlanta Speech School’s Rollins Center for Language & Literacy, as part of our larger efforts focused on training teachers to use best practices on how to build a child’s language, vocabulary, and critical thinking skill. In other words, we set teachers up to put students on a path for success in school by building their language and literacy.

The Coalition was originally supported by the Goizueta Foundation, during the early planning stages, which over a year. Now we have made a promise to have every dual language learner in Georgia on a path to read to learn by 3^rd grade by 2020 — it was evident that to get there we needed a collective effort, involving the commitment and shared vision of many stakeholders, and thus, the Coalition was born.

Q: What’s the structure of the group? How does it work now that it’s off the ground?

Our Vision Team represents more than 60 different organizations across many sectors — public and private. Our broader group functions through a Leadership Team that guides the work around a common agenda focused on elements critical for DLLs and their families.

More specifically: we have Action Teams pursuing targeted strategies this year. These include efforts around: clear messaging and communications, teacher preparation, family engagement, involvement of the business community, and support of the Talk With Me Baby initiative — a collaborative effort geared to increasing parents’ capacity to talk with their young infants. Our role here is to ensure that messages around home language and the value of bilingualism are delivered to linguistically diverse families.

As a coalition leader, it is important to remember that there is a balance — all of our members are deeply engaged and committed to this work — there is a clear understanding that no one will be successful in his or her own arena if we don’t all engage in the collective effort.

Q: What’s the current state context in Georgia? How are policies and classroom practices changing?

There are currently lots of exciting opportunities for us to embed our work. Georgia’s Dept. of Early Care and Learning (DECAL) recently won close to $52 million in a Race to the Top — Early Learning Challenge grant. This award has generated a variety of efforts that afford powerful opportunities to support Georgia’s young DLLs on the following: family engagement, assessment, emphasis on cultural responsiveness and competence, and the role of home language in instruction.

DECAL has also partnered with WIDA Early Years and adopted WIDA’s Early English Language Learning Standards to use in conjunction with the state’s early learning standards (GELDS). WIDA is conducting 2 cohorts of trainer of trainers on supporting language development for DLLs this year.

Teaching young DLLs is the responsibility of ALL teachers, not just specialists, but in order to do so, Georgia’s teachers must have the skills and strategies needed to succeed.   The Atlanta Speech School’s Rollins Center is developing the Cox Campus, an online portal that delivers FREE training to all teachers of children birth to 8 on language and literacy. We are currently working to develop content on relating to DLLs, so teachers will have the skills needed to work with and support them effectively. Our dreams for the Cox Campus are big — we hope to support teachers through resources, coaching, and opportunities to build a community of practice.

We’re also involved in the Talk With Me Baby (TWMB) initiative that I mentioned earlier. Funded through a $1.5 million grant from United Way of Greater Atlanta, TWMB is a multi-agency effort to promote “language nutrition,” that is, rich language exchanges between parents and their young children. It aims to support this through interventions with health professionals and families, a public action campaign, and innovative training for current and future nurses. Our Coalition works to support the best possible language nutrition for DLLs by encouraging their families to engage with their babies in their home language, while at the same time, promoting the message among health professionals to lift up the value of bilingualism.

Finally, in the K-12 arena there is a lot of interest in the growth of dual language immersion programs and some very effective and successful programs already in place — perhaps some of this attention will bring change in practices for older language learners as well.

Q: How about the politics of language learning?

This is always a difficult topic. We know what the research says about what it takes to do things right with dual language learners. We have been very successful already in putting out consistent messaging around the support of home language. There is much more to be done in communicating and translating the research for all, and in making the connection to best practices.

One important point is highlighting the important contribution DLLs can make to improving Georgia’s place in the global economy! Our DLLs bring great assets to the table: they are sophisticated in the skills of navigating two, and sometimes more, worlds with different languages and cultures. Let’s build on these assets. Bilingualism is good for all children!

Note: This post is part of New America’s Dual Language Learner National Work Group. Click here for more information on this team’s work.“