Students in Hawaii's public schools come from a much wider range of ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds than those in mainland states. Although Hawaii's educators are also more diverse than in mainland schools, they are both less diverse and culturally different than their student population. One challenge for Hawaii's education system, identified in the 2003 State Superintendent's Report, is "bridging the differences of ethnicity and culture to make educational and economic opportunity real for the state's future citizens."

Improving achievement for poor and lower income students is another challenge. Nearly 44 percent of the state's student population is eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, and achievement data indicate that these students' test scores in math and reading are well below the state average. Since 1992–1993, although overall public school enrollment has increased by 3.3 percent, the number of students who receive lunch subsidies has increased by more than 48 percent. The state has also seen a marked increase in the number of students with limited English proficiency and the number of students needing special education services.

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Instructional Strategies for English Language Learners Are Tailored to Individual Needs

The tremendous cultural and linguistic diversity at Queen Ka'ahumanu School—including one of the largest populations of English language learners (ELLs) in the district—presents unique challenges and opportunities. Students speak many languages including Japanese, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese, Spanish, Marshallese, Chuukese, Kosraean, Pohnpein, Nepalese, Tamil, Mandarin, Russian, Ukranian, Samoan, Tagalog, Ilocano, Visayan, and Tongan.

When the school adopted a reading model based on daily 90-minute uninterrupted reading blocks, English for Second Language Learners (ESLL) Program Coordinator/teacher Diane Murakami recognized that students learning English needed more support. "The model is very structured, and it has a lot of pluses," says Murakami. "But the ESLL students needed more to address their needs."

In response, the school devised a schedule that alternates reading blocks with targeted English as a Second Language (ESL) services. Each day while the lower grades are doing their reading block, ESL students in the upper grades have a 45-minute block during which they are provided with supplemental ESL services. Then the groups switch. ESL services continue throughout the rest of the day for the remaining grades that are not serviced in the morning. This enables the school to be in 100 percent compliance with federal and state guidelines in providing services to identified language minority students. When students come for the ESL period, Murakami and her team are able to assess what each student needs, whether it be help with language proficiency, acculturation, or basic survival skills, and provide instruction to address those needs.

"Every situation is different, and every student is different," Murakami explains. "The students may come from the same cultural background but their individual circumstances are different. You can't just take a one-size-fits-all approach." That philosophy is infused throughout the ESLL program, which draws on a variety of strategies and activities to serve students learning English and their families. "It's important to generate your own philosophy about learning and about working with culturally diverse learners," says Murakami. "Then bring in whatever you think will work best."

In her ESLL classes, Murakami uses an interdisciplinary curriculum design that integrates both academic content knowledge and language skills. This year's theme is "Communities: Past, Present, and Future." For the unit on the past, which was set during the medieval period, she developed standards-based lessons with both content and language objectives where students role-played various scenarios through the eyes of the people who lived in those times. The unit on the present explored the ecosystem, or "community" of the tropical rainforest, and the future unit this year will be on space. Themed curriculum provides opportunities for English learners to practice listening, speaking, reading, and writing while gaining content knowledge and higher-level thinking skills.

Murakami also strives to provide her students with learning strategies, such as memorization aids and graphic organizers. "I tell the students that they also have to learn how to learn for themselves. We can provide them with information and the tools they'll need to access it, but they have to take responsibility for using it in a way that makes sense for them."

At Queen Ka'ahumanu, every classroom has several students who speak a first language other than English. Murakami stresses the importance of enlisting support from regular classroom teachers, and providing them with information and resources related to ELLs. "If you have an informed staff," she says, "They will be aware of the needs of ESLL students and will be better able to address them."

She offers an overview of the ESLL program for the faculty and staff at the beginning of the school year, and holds "mini-awareness sessions" throughout the year. Recently, she conducted a series of Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) inservice training sessions to raise awareness of the model and instructional practices that work with ELLs. Though sheltered instruction has been around for years, these sessions were held because the SIOP takes practices used in sheltered instruction and puts them into a specific framework.

One piece of advice Murakami offers teachers about being culturally responsive is to give English language learners enough time. Too often, she says, we expect results too quickly. "Last year, a student from Vietnam came into first grade late in the year not speaking a word of English," she recalls. "All we got from him was a blank stare. I had a tutor sit next to him and try to assist, but he had no response at all. His parents didn't speak any English either, so there was little or no English language support at home. We kind of just had to give him that wait time."

"This year wasn't much different," she continues. "We tried to do interactive learning activities with him, but we still didn't get much response. Then one day, just recently, he started talking! He was sitting next to another student from Micronesia who was limited English proficient, and he started helping the other student with his work."

Murakami is emphatic that allowing more time does not mean expecting less from ELLs. "We cannot lower the expectations we have for these students. We still want them to meet high standards. But we have to allow them enough time to get there."

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Students, Parents, and Teachers Work Together To Chart Goals for Student Success

Linapuni Elementary is a small K–2 school serving residents of two nearby federally funded housing projects. The community has a higher than state average of households with public assistance income and families with children living in poverty. Approximately 99 percent of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

Like many of Hawaii's public schools, Linapuni is highly ethnically and linguistically diverse. The school's total enrollment is just over 200, with more than a dozen racial and ethnic groups represented. Approximately 45 percent of students are English language learners, and many of the children come directly into school from their home country.

Helping all students to meet high academic standards, while responding to the unique needs of English language learners and students and families living in poverty, is Linapuni's challenge and mission. Inspired by professional development training based on researcher Ruby Payne's work in poverty, ELL teacher Suzanne Kobatake, preschool/ special education teacher Colleen Uejo, and kindergarten teacher Virginia Park collaborated to design a parent-child lesson on goal setting that links children's and parents' goals with academic standards.

One premise of Payne's work is that students from poverty bring with them the "hidden rules" of their culture, which are distinctly different from the hidden rules of middle class culture (Payne, 1998). Because school culture is based on middle class norms and values, students and families who don't come from middle class backgrounds need to be introduced and acclimatized to school culture and expectations before effective teaching and learning can take place. The three teachers decided to focus on goal setting because, as Kobatake explains, "Goal setting impacts student and parent learning at all grade levels."

For preschool parents and children, Uejo used a playful, hands-on approach to introduce the concept of goals. During orientation week, she brought parents in and had a variety of art supplies on the tables. Parents were invited to cut out paper dolls and dress the dolls as their child. Next, Uejo had parents cut out a heart shape to add to the doll, and write on the heart what their goal was for their child. Examples might be that the child will learn to write his or her name, or know the ABCs.

Once parents had generated their goals, Uejo then showed them how those goals could be matched to the state standards. She notes that, "For many parents, this was their first introduction to what a standard was." Uejo then used "backward mapping" with the parents to determine what steps were needed to reach the goals.

The next phase was to work with students to get them to take responsibility and generate their own goals. In Park's kindergarten class, "The challenge was, how do I get a five-year-old to understand the goal-setting process?" She began by searching the Web, and came up with information about making wishes, setting New Year's resolutions, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

Next, Park found books from the Harcourt reading series, such as I Need a Lunchbox and A Birthday Basket for Tia, which related to the goal-setting theme. The class read these stories and discussed the themes over several days, then brainstormed around the question, "What do you want to be able to do?" Once the children chose a goal, they indepen-dently drew a picture of their goal, and then Park wrote the goals down. The goals could be related to home, school, or both—such as being able to jump rope.

The class discussed how goals can be hard to achieve and that it takes time to reach a goal. Park reviewed So Say the Monkeys with the children as a negative example of not attaining a goal—the monkeys started to build a house but then they got distracted because they found some food. Another book, I Like Me, was used as a positive example of not giving up.

Park then posed the question, "How are we going to achieve our goals?" and worked with students to develop a three-step action plan. If the goal was to get a good grade, for example, the action plan might include: 1) focus, 2) do my homework, and 3) finish my work on time.

That same day, Park sent a letter home to parents about what their children could already do, and asked them to set a goal for what they wanted for their child. Although there was a range in how well students and parents—particularly those with limited fluency in English—were able to articulate their goals, in many cases the goals the children set for themselves and the goals the parents set for their children were aligned.

After students and parents had identified goals and developed action plans, Kobatake conducted a follow-up workshop for parents. Participants looked at standards, benchmarks, and performance indicators related to the goals. Kobatake worked with parents to differentiate between long- and short-term goals and to break out bigger goals into specific, measurable, short-term goals. They developed a three-step action plan similar to what the children had outlined. Additional follow-up workshops are planned in which parents will assess, students will self-assess, and everyone will evaluate how the child is doing on his or her goals.

While all three teachers emphasize the crucial role of parent involvement in student achievement, they also note the importance of motivating students to become self-directed learners. They work with students to continually assess progress, and teach students how to assess themselves. "There is a limit to how much we can involve the parents," says Kobatake. "We try to encourage the child to take responsibility for his/her own learning goals."

When several students in her class were reading below grade level, for example, Kobatake worked with them to write up learning contracts and develop action plans that included tasks like "do my homework," "practice at home," and "learn words on the word wall." Since they signed their contracts they are much more motivated— students will come into class announcing "I did my homework!" As Kobatake points out, "It's much easier to get them to learn the rules when they generate the rules themselves."