So here I am sitting in the Heathrow airport, embracing the first moment I’ve had to breathe in what seems like months by reading my new book, The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way. I can’t help but thinking back to my experience at Harris elementary in Fort Collins, Colorado. This bilingual school has something really special that I can only wish policymakers and administrators will recognize. In this school, weeks switch off between instruction in English and Spanish instruction. This allows students from every background to grow and succeed both as students and as global citizens.
I met Dr. Norma Huerta-Kelly for the first time when I was 18 and she came to lecture my class on the importance of language acquisition and opportunities for native language instruction. I was instantly inspired by her hard work to be sure that every marginalized student, from those who were ELLs to children with autism, had a place in the classroom. I later student taught at Boltz Middle School where she was the vice principal. Two years later, I come to find that she has become the principal of Harris Bilingual School and I couldn’t help but explore my curiosity in this option school. I shadowed her and vice principal Denise Borunda for a morning and was astonished with what I found.
Haley: “So tell me about this school and the program.”
Norma: “In our program, you have kids all over the spectrum at all different ages and fluencies. We have two groups: the kids whose native language is Spanish who are English Language Learners, and then there are native English speakers who are learning spanish… As these students learn and grow, our teachers learn and grow with them. We are constantly making sure that this program is not boring for our kids. In order to do that, we make sure that our teachers are not only trained in things like conjugation and vocabulary, but the really important stuff like constructing meaning.”
Haley: “Can you explain to me more about that model and who plays a role in its implementation?”
Norma: “Our interventionists look at data. They’re fabulous, like data gurus. They have a real solid understanding-- literally Haley-- every child’s data. Literacy, math, reading. And they know exactly what the gaps are to support them and they’ve developed groups that they work with specifically for their targeted needs… I want to take this to a middle school level of this practice because that’s a gap that we have in middle schools. When you see what happens in a middle school where they have huge chunks of the day that are in English, and some that are in math, but there’s not a lot of intervention with purpose, it can’t be as effective as it can be.”
Dennise: “I grew up in an itty bitty little town on the border between Texas and Mexico and I was told not to speak Spanish in school. It was so hurtful and I struggled in everything. I became a reading specialist and when I taught in the middle school setting, they had my class an an elective.”
Norma: “And that’s what we don’t want at the middle school level. Kids should be able to do all the fun stuff without feeling punished for their language… That’s the great thing about constructing meaning in the classroom is that we are meeting those needs without targeting our students. No one’s getting pulled out, and those students are not being penalized.”
Haley: “I think that was the thing that I loved about Boltz was the inclusivity of the classroom community. The students who are ELLs and who have autism were all there learning together and I think that was key in the learning environment.”
Norma: “Well, it wasn’t like that when I got there. It took years for us to get there. There were very difficult conversations that I had to have with teachers where they would say ‘I’m not a reading specialist, I’m not special ed,’ Well guess what? We’re going to fill those gaps. It took a lot of work and it took years. We had to have teachers ask themselves, ‘what if it was my kid?’ We had wonderful veteran teachers who had been working for years and I respect that, but at the end of the day, you don’t know what you don’t know. These teachers weren’t trained in these areas and they were never pushed. It was never an expectation. But now we had to take a step up and say ‘this is about the chil, not the teacher.’”
Haley: “And that’s one thing I’m curious about: where do you draw the line between the teacher’s responsibility and the administrations responsibility to give the resources to teachers to teach those students and where do you find the funding?”
Norma: “Well, Haley, to be honest about the funding, you can figure out the funding. There are so many opportunities out there. It is an administrator’s responsibility to be fiscally frugal and to be thoughtful with their money. It may not be popular. But if it’s not in the best interest of the children in this building, I’m not going to spend that money. At the end of the day, it’s not that difficult from one school to another.”
Haley: “I really am inspired by what you do and to be honest, administration is very new to me.”
Norma: “You have to be courageous to be an administrator.”
Dennise: “It took me five years to actually apply to be an assistant principal after getting my license. It’s a courageous thing and you’ll know you’re ready. You’ll ask yourself what you were waiting for?”
