Cleaning off my desk for spring break, I found a good example of social justice ELD.
The target was "Expressing Needs, Likes, and Opinions" (NLO). After practicing some of the language forms and important words with more personal, basic subjects, we started focusing on the needs and opinions around educational issues.
This assignment was about writing your opinion and using NLO verbs and lead-ins. Students were given this sentence frame:
(In my opinion,)/(I think that) ___________________________ (need to/have to/should) _____________________________ because ______________________________ ________________________________.
My examples: In my opinion, schools should hire more teachers because the classes are too big and students don't get enough attention. I think that schools need to hire more teachers because the classes are too big and students don't get enough attention.
The assignment I found is from an 11th grade Mexican student who frequently skips classes, has been in trouble for drugs, has been suspended, and underachieves like you wouldn't believe. He is incredibly smart and personable. For me, he's a perfect example of how student behaviors are actually symptoms of a deeply flawed school system. The vast majority of the time, he's labeled as a trouble student, given work that is beyond his academic English knowledge with little support, sits through course after course of irrelevant curriculum that doesn't represent his culture, and either punished for responding, in my opinion, pretty appropriately to a racist, classist system, or else asked to jump through hoops for meaningless rewards that completely degrade the concept of education (i.e. Positive Behavior Support).
Anyway, let me stop my rant and give you the answers this student wrote.
Should undocumented students be allowed to attend public schools? In my opinion, undocumented students should be allowed to attend school because they want to learn and have a better future.
If you were in charge, what would you change at this school? I think that if I was in charge, I would have to change the classes schedule because this one we have doesn't work for me.
What could public schools do to honor ALL their students' cultures? I think that public schools should at least put other flags along the side with the USA flag.
