This page is dedicated to help create an effective learning environment for emergent bilinguals. This learning allows students to innovate, collaborate, and share their ideas. The environment supports academic growth, language acquisition, and social-emotional growth.

Learning Environment

Radicalizing education for the betterment of every learner.

woman empowered through learning with a book.jpg

The Scenario

You are an educator; through research and practice, you became an expert in your field. You have learned and applied everything presented to you, from your new teacher training to last week’s professional learning community. Yet you have this gut feeling that you are missing something. Maybe you even realized that there is a need for student centered change in education or an extra push in your own professional career. You see kids receiving information, but they are not immersed in the material. They struggle connecting lessons with the life skills. You wonder, how can educators assist students in authentically learning while cultivating passion?The solution: a dynamic learning environment.

What is an Encompassed Learning Environment?

The main goal for learning environments is to create a culture. Rather than adapting and conforming to a pre-existing culture, learners and educators create their own via change. Change creates motivation and needed challenges that will lead education forward and prepare students for future challenges (Thomas & Seely Brown, 2011, p. 30).

There are three factors for successful culture creation:

Knowing
Making
Playing

Knowing

Knowing focuses on what is being obtained. Consequently, in a time where information is readily available, learners are confronted with an endless supply of sources. When education is focused on the essence of knowing, we ignite passion within the learner. They become fully engaged and desire to be masters of the content.

Making

Making connects the knowing to creating. Specifically, it is the establishment of a purpose. When information becomes inextricably bound with the context, we begin to make (p. 78). This part is the purposeful use of knowledge; which technology do we use to connect to others?

Playing

Playing is the final conclusive stage of creating a learning environment. Play transcends mere actions into who we are (p. 80). Play is the growing pains of learning; it is when one fails, succeeds, expands, and adapts the content, and it is the time when progress is evident through the sharpening of skills. It is the fun of growing.

Learning Environments for Translanguaging

Thomas and Seely Brown's book, A New Culture of Change, teaches about learning environments and its power to transform education. They believe that by creating a culture through play, learners can achieve success without compromising their joy of learning.

For newcomers and bilingual education, learning the second language is crucial for administrators and the state. However, current practices focus on presenting information in English without the natural experience of learning a language. By creating a learning environment through the idea of play, English Language Learners, ELLs, receive two major benefits.

ELLs learn the second language naturally as they did their native language. They learn to communicate in real world moments that help with the acquiring, not assimilation, of a second language and culture.
ELLs and all learners in the classroom create a culture that represents their unique values, beliefs, and experiences.

Through a new carefully crafted learning environment and my innovation plan, ELLs will grow to become fully bilingual without compromise of self, traditions, and languages. Memorization of vocabulary and practice via worksheets cannot prepare ELLs for the different dialects, customs, and informal-formal communication structures and expectations. The involvement of play allows learners to learn in the moment the cues, gestures, and tones of the society they now belong to. After extensive research, I have determined that the addition of technology and the freedom of expression contributes to building a road of progress for learners. It also provides opportunities for connecting with others who have established their own cultures or those in need of one.

A greater value that is brought by play in the classroom is seen in the confidence building of ELL students. Since they can use their native language while acquiring a second one, the feeling of alienation is eliminated. Play provides learners with the ability to master content in two languages. Bilingual students have been perceived as knowing little because they struggle with communicating what they actually know, enjoy, and feel. Through play, there is no misunderstanding of bilingual learners' capacity.

Bilingualism

All learners use the languages in the environment to collaborate and communicate amongst themselves.

Biliteracy

Learners use the language of dominance to think and create; however, they have pockets of time to practice bridging languages.

Culture

Through ePortfolios,

learners will express their thoughts, feelings, and creations in the means that best suit them.

Out with Old, In with What Works

Education as it stands has several areas of need. The most prominent is what students do with information. You will hear several people state that the current form of education is preparing students for obsolete jobs and ignoring the need students will have in the future (Sir Robinson, 2010; Harapnuik, 2015). Education in itself is not broken, but stagnant; it is not changing rapidly enough (Thomas & Seely, 2011, p. 22). The current system has separated the foundation of education and learning. No longer does it focus on what one desires to be, passion, but what is expected of learners to become several years ago.

To improve education, a change must commence. Beginning with the ideology and goal for learners set by the system. Followed by efficient and opportunistic preparation of staff. The principle of bringing in resources that students need and will benefit from in the present to the future will conclude to learners successfully innovating a world that is dreamt and desired.

One Heart at a Time

It is no longer teaching, but guiding and facilitating learning. It is important to open one’s mind to the possibilities and plan on overcoming difficulties. The average educator has 10-15 years of obsolete experience; it is going to be difficult and unpleasant for some teachers to move out of their norm (Walker, 2018). However, recrafting professional learning will be the start in preparing our future educators. With coaches and instructors to help implement and understand the use of play and technology; teachers can have the support they need, alongside the collaboration already taking place by peers. Removing an unrealistic time constraint in learning for teachers, they can take time to master their abilities. They will learn to educate through play themselves. Being able to accept the power of yet, educators will self-reflect and change their fixed mindset towards their role in education (Dweck, 2014). Each step, no matter the stride, will lay the foundation to an empathetic education system.

One heart will change several lives. Become the heart that your children deserve.

Reference

Gardner, A. (2010, February 23). The power of words. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Hzgzim5m7oU?si=ozUcibHbuOVEjOhS

Harapnuik, D. (2015, May 9). Creating significant learning environments (CSLE). YouTube. https://youtu.be/eZ-c7rz7eT4?si=MXRAwQBQNL4JbElV

Stanford Alumni. (2014, October 9). Developing a growth mindset with Carol Dweck. YouTube. https://youtu.be/hiiEeMN7vbQ?si=0FzAXLl7al9CzHtB

TED. (2010, May 24). Bring on the learning revolution!- Sir Ken Robinson. YouTube. https://youtu.be/r9LelXa3U_I?si=rQNADpCF_5XqBoD_

Thomas, D. and Seely Brown, J. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change.

Walker, T. (2018, June 8). Who is the average U.S. teacher?. National Education Association (NEA). https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/who-average-us-teacher#:~:text=The%20Average%20Teacher%20Has%2014%20Years%20of%20Experience

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