Heriberto Cordero looks over a “data wall” with the school’s reading scores.
When Principal Heriberto Cordero arrived at Fair Haven School four years ago, the classrooms still had chalkboards. The computers were “antiquated.” And the biggest “red flag”? Classroom shelves had hardly any books in Spanish for bilingual students to work on their reading skills.
“Literacy is literacy, whether you’re talking about Spanish, French or Chinese,” Cordero said recently. “Once you can get a child to move in literacy, you can get them to transfer over to any language.”
Cordero now has stacks of papers around his office for each of the grants he’s managing to bring in more resources to Fair Haven, helping newcomers with limited English get up to speed with their classmates.
Each year at Fair Haven School, Cordero’s faculty does its best to help non-native speakers catch up on their math and reading skills, while also learning the English language over a five-year period.
But even as those students make gains, new arrivals from foreign countries who are starting from scratch don’t stop filling up the classes, leading to vastly different language abilities within the same grade.
That never-ending task — bringing all of Fair Haven’s English language learners up to proficiency, as more new arrivals claim desks each year — is Cordero’s daily challenge on Grand Avenue within the district’s largest elementary school.
International Student Body
Principal Cordero.
More than half of the 800-plus students at Fair Haven grow up speaking a foreign language.
Since he’s arrived, with additional state support, Cordero has been able to mount smart-boards over the black slates, connect students with their own tablet or laptop and stock the shelves with books in multiple languages. He has also realigned the school’s programming to make sure teachers are working together on supporting English language learners across grades, even though their fluency might differ immensely within the same grade.
Previously, “everyone had a personal opinion about the right way to do it,” switching back and forth between the level of English and Spanish from year to year, Cordero said. “In every program, there’s a big variety [in students’ English language skills], so technically they were all right individually. But when you put it together, it made no sense for kids.”
The school long had three tracks for English language learners: a transitional bilingual program, in which students begin in Spanish-only classes but gradually add more English over several years; a newcomer program, in which Arabic and Pashto speakers rapidly transition into English within a year; and an English as a second language program, in which tutors provide support in English-only classes.
Cordero said that his team has delved into the data to get a better sense of how each program was working, particularly as students transition out of English language learner status.
They found that the exit from the transitional bilingual program was rough on students. “The supports in Spanish were great, but they were so low in English,” Cordero said.
Overall, throughout the city, New Haven’s ELLs are growing just behind the statewide average on measures of how quickly they progress in their reading and math classes each school year.
Last year, compared to other Connecticut schools districts with large populations of ELLS, New Haven came up in the middle of the pack. When it came to measuring English literacy and oral skills specifically, its ELLs finished behind Stamford and Danbury, yet ahead of Hartford, Waterbury and New Britain.
As a solution at Fair Haven, Cordero brought in the Center for Applied Linguistics to help teachers with making specialized language clearer to English language learners. That model showed how students can pick up unfamiliar academic words with demos, pictures and objects, then reinforce those definitions with small-group discussion.
Getting that right is particularly important because English language learners don’t get extra instructional time to work on their language skills. They need to learn a new language at the same time that they’re staying on top of their math and science lessons, making it essential to “front-load vocabulary,” Cordero said.
“There should be no excuse if a child has been with us five years, we should have had some sort of impact in moving that child either to proficiency or really close or identified a special need,” Cordero said. “We should have something; we can’t just ignore it.”
Dual-Language Immersion
Fair Haven School.
Soon, that might not be as much of an issue. Fair Haven is moving its students from transitional bilingual programs into dual-language immersion programs. In those classes, students learn all their subjects in both English and Spanish, ideally ensuring they’re picking up the concepts while becoming bilingual.
“The premise of the transitional bilingual model is to strip away Spanish and throw them into English as quickly as possible, the faster the better,” Cordero said. “Dual-language capitalizes on the knowledge of English and Spanish that students bring to the table already. It’s much more powerful to be proficient in English but not forget Spanish.”
That model is building up year by year at Fair Haven, now reaching up to the second grade. Unlike some dual-language immersions that end in middle school, Fair Haven will eventually extend it through eighth grade.
Tech in Fair Haven’s language development STEAM lab.
Through a School Improvement Grant from the state, Cordero is also building on technology that allows students to work on math and literacy at their own pace, while also buying more textbooks and other kits in multiple languages.
One of his teachers is also running a language development STEAM lab that builds up language skills through robotics, coding and other tech lessons.
“The kids here have never had that. It blows my mind, the possibilities that we have for our kids, many who come from a disadvantaged place,” Cordero said. “We’re doing everything we can to make them at an advantage in the world.”
I thought Gethings was a star.
https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/fair_haven_principal_leaves_for_branford/
Now, NHI says she left Fair Haven in terrible shape.
Personally, I wonder why money is being spent on smart boards at $6K or more a piece when textbooks are lacking, teachers have to buy there own classroom supplies, and librarians and teachers are being let go. And coding is great, but aren't reading and math proficiency more important? How many students are reading at grade level? Passing the state exams?