Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:00]:
Welcome to avid kids to another episode of the leading equity podcast. A podcast that focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their schools. Today's special guest is miss Kaja Patel. So without further ado, Kaja, thank you so much for joining us today.

Kajal Patel [00:00:18]:
I'm so happy to be here, with you today and talk about this topic that's so important to all of us.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:24]:
Well, I'm excited as well, and we're gonna be talking about biliteracy, multilingual learners, and we're gonna just be chopping it up for a little bit. But before we get into today's topic, Kajal, I'd love for you to share a little bit about yourself and what you currently do.

Kajal Patel [00:00:37]:
Absolutely. So my name is Kajal Patel Belo. I lead Biliteracy at Amplify. We're an education company. I collaborate across the company to advance our Spanish offerings and in service of multilingual learners. I get to work with and learn from experts in the field and school and district leaders and our own experts. We have a team of people with deep experience in multilingual and Spanish education. Myself, I'm Indian American.

Kajal Patel [00:01:03]:
My my parents immigrated here from India, and, also, they grew up in Kenya. And I grew up in a home a multilingual home. They they speak 4 languages. I don't. I speak only 3. But You

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:01:16]:
said only 3. Like like, I speak only 1. So I think go ahead.

Kajal Patel [00:01:22]:
Yeah. They I spoke Gudrati in the home at, until I went to preschool. I just always had a passion for education also and loved language, and, I ended up studying business and Spanish in in college and ended up in kind of the business world for several years. But I just really wanted to have a deeper social connection and impact with what I was spending my time on, and I began to seek opportunities in education. And that was 20 years ago, and Amplify was in its early years. And when I learned about Amplify at the time, it had a different name. But when I learned about this place, which is really focused on providing students with, engaging the students in rigorous learning and providing teachers with the tools that they need to to understand students' needs and respond to them. I I just had to work there, so I then made it my mission to work there.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:02:18]:
Awesome. Awesome. Well, again, I like how you just like, I only speak 3 languages, not 4 like everybody else does. I'm like, wait. Hold on. I just speak 1. So so that's still a gift. And I always tell people, like, it's that's important is sometimes at schools, we tend to treat students a certain way because English is not their first language, even though they might speak 3, 4 languages, 5 languages.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:02:44]:
But because English is not their first or their strongest language, sometimes our students get treated mistreated. And so I wanna start my conversation with you with talking about why is it important for us to do multilingual assessments and what could happen, I guess, if those assessments are ignored?

Kajal Patel [00:03:04]:
This is so important to us. I mean, first, just kinda just grounding in the number of kids we're talking about as of 2019, and I know that's a little bit old. But 10% of students were multilingual and English learners. And at that time, it was projected that by 2025, which is pretty much now where we're at, that that number was gonna be 25%. So it's fast growing and historically underserved. And so I I just wanted to frame on the number of kids that we're we're talking about. And when multilingual students that are still in their English learning journey, when they're assessed in in only English, the skills that they have from their other language or other languages, literacy assessment is very important in the early grades because it helps educators understand, okay. How do I support this child so that they can learn how to read? I mean, that's really, really important.

Kajal Patel [00:03:57]:
But when they're assessed in English, they the the students may be then generally seen as struggling readers, and the needs that they have may not get addressed because we're seeing them as struggling readers when they may actually have those skills in their home language. So we just have to make sure that we're first of all, if we have the opportunity to assess them in their home language, we should take it. It's not always possible. There's so many languages. I mean, I I'm gonna talk about Spanish because 75% of those multilingual learners that I that I mentioned, their home language is Spanish, but there's there's other children. We can't always assess in the home language, but then we have to interpret our assessment data accordingly and remember that, okay. Just because this data may look a certain way, what might be driving that? They are still learning English. Where are they in that journey, and how can I support that? And and and there's ways that educators can then work with students differently based on that.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:04:51]:
Okay. This is a good start. So I I I'm curious because you mentioned something about they may not be a strong reader in English, and so they get labeled as struggling readers. And maybe they're reading at 2nd grade level, and then at 6th grade or something like that. Those kind of conversations come up. And I always say we need to have an asset based approach when we're looking at our education system and looking at our students. So okay. So maybe they are reading at a second grade level.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:05:16]:
However, they're able to read. They are reading at a certain level, and how do we build from that? But I I'm curious. What are some of the things that we can pick up? Let's say we are able to assess a student in their home language. Right? What are some of the benefits to those assessments, and how does that apply to the classroom for a teacher or even support on a school leader level?

Kajal Patel [00:05:39]:
I'm gonna go earlier down to maybe kindergarten, right, when a a lot of kids are coming into school, even 1st grade, coming into school, and we have these really foundational skills that support reading. Phonological awareness, like the the ability to, you know, understand and manipulate sounds and, know, some of the early decoding skills. Those skills are transferable Mhmm. Between English and Spanish, and that's true in alphabetic languages. And so if you're able to assess a student in their home language, I'll just say phonological awareness, which is one of the skills or early decoding skills. And if we can see that they have that skill in Spanish, maybe if we assess them in English, and we should do both languages because most kids, many of the kids are are actually have exposure to both of the languages. We can we should see what we learn from both. But if we assess them in English, we may see in that data that they are still struggling on that skill.

Kajal Patel [00:06:34]:
But if we see that they have that skill in Spanish, we know that it's transferable as opposed to them not having that skill. So those are 2 different things. Is it a matter of transferring that skill to English and supporting English literacy and acquisition, or is it a matter of the that they actually need help in that skill? And depending upon where they are, maybe we can help them in their home language. And we're able to give educators guidance on on how to support that transfer as well. And we're able to give them a picture of, okay, here's the whole picture of the student, and here's the skills that they have in Spanish, and here's the skills that they have in English. And, okay, let's look at that together. And our data has shown some pretty eye opening things about what happens when you only assess in one language.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:07:23]:
Well well, go ahead. I'm listening. Tell me more.

Kajal Patel [00:07:26]:
Yes. So we did a study crossing 21,000 students that are that are k three, and these students, are Spanish speaking multilingual learners, and and they were assessed in both English and Spanish. And I'm gonna focus on kindergarten for a second here, and what this what our data shows is really just the degree to which and if we were to assess them in English only, how this misidentifies students as being at risk. So in kindergarten, when students were assessed in English, the data showed that 72% of them needed tier 2 or tier 3 intervention. But this is the same when the same group of students, their Spanish assessment data showed 33%. So if we had only assessed in English, and in most places, that's something that is happening for a variety of reasons, we are missing a huge part of the picture. The English assessment data is not really reflecting the students' literacy skills, and so assessing both in both languages gives a more accurate understanding of the literacy skills. It reduces those misidentifications and then helps educators better support literacy and language development.

Kajal Patel [00:08:36]:
And those numbers are very important because we could maybe surmise that that would happen, but knowing the data is so important and can help drive assessment policy and practices that may then require, in cases where it's available, Spanish assessment or require other data sources be used to understand the student's literacy.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:09:00]:
So, basically and I love how you said those skills are transferable across languages. If we are doing these multilingual assessments, then we're able to see, you know, do they have the ability to do phonemic awareness or any of those basic mechanics. So even though, again, English may not be their first language, which we tend to assess students be based off of how they can speak language or speak English, but it doesn't it doesn't tell the whole story. It it doesn't share with us what we need to support this student to help them build upon whatever skills they already have. So this sounds like an asset based approach to our students.

Kajal Patel [00:09:39]:
Absolutely. When we when we don't do it, it perpetuates a bit of that deficit based approach. I think with the number of kids that we're talking about and especially with the Spanish speakers and and because there are Spanish assessments, that are valid and reliable and technically adequate available, it's really important to try and do that. I mentioned that it's not always done. There are various barriers. 1 is staffing. To do this type of observational assessment with with a child, you you want to have a a Spanish speaker. And Spanish speakers in a in a particular school to do this type of an assessment, we wanna be able to give it to the child, understand the child.

Kajal Patel [00:10:22]:
But often when there is is not that available in the school, it may prevent that type of an assessment being done. But there are other things that can be done. Right? We can we can actually seek that out and staff someone to do it. Another barrier is simply just not knowing that that this data would look the way that it would or that looks the way that it looks. And by not doing it, what's actually happening? And so I think it's just really important to emphasize the impact of misidentification and the degree to which students can be misidentified.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:10:58]:
Okay. Okay. So I wanna throw something at you because it just got me got my gears turning. I'm thinking about implicit bias, And and here's what I mean by that. So sometimes we see an incoming family. We look at the last name, Rodriguez or or Lopez or or or certain certain ethnic sounding last names, And we assume, oh, because of their first name or last name, this individual English may not be their first language. And we assume that they are not capable of whatever. Especially in kindergarten, like, I know a lot of Spanish speaking families will speak Spanish only until kindergarten, and then English is part of the the kindergarten process, or that's the expectation sometimes.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:11:43]:
So if I'm an administrator or whoever is responsible for ensuring that these assessments are being done, what are maybe some tips that you could provide to to us so that we're not, you know, putting our foot in our mouth or or or maybe ways that we can ask questions. Is that just based off of the intake forms that are coming in? Like, what other languages are being spoken? Like, give us some tips so that we're not just looking at someone's neighborhood, someone's last name, first name to say, oh, well, English probably isn't their first language.

Kajal Patel [00:12:17]:
I mean, that's so important. I even myself, I have people have said, oh, wow. Your English is so good. It hasn't happened in a long time, but it has it certainly happened. So you mentioned the intake forms, the home language survey, learning as much as we can. I guess I'll just say, like, a home language survey is a tool, and those are surveys that where you can learn a lot about details about the home language in terms of how much is spoken and background and context and those sorts of things, which are important. But I I guess at a at a high level, I would emphasize how important it is to, of course, not make assumptions and to learn about the students, and there's a lot that can be learned from their families. So a couple of things.

Kajal Patel [00:13:03]:
During the intake process, yes, learning about the languages spoken at home, but I've heard some things just even in my in my neighborhood, about if the lang if the form only asks what are what is the language spoken in home and you only get to pick 1, and then the child may, all of a sudden, be because, you know, we're organizing lots of data. We're trying to get back to school and all that kind of stuff. But there there there may be and and and this does happen, but then there may be an assumption made. Oh, okay. This child needs, English language support, and that may not at all be the case. Maybe Spanish or another language is spoken at home because it's a gift and it should be spoken at home to maintain the language, but it but they also speak English. So I think I guess I guess my point with that is we should be able to pick more than one language to put first thing, which is spoken at home. When we talk about multilingual learners, 85% of multilingual learners were born in the US.

Kajal Patel [00:14:07]:
That number made some people find that surprising. They're coming into school with exposure to multiple languages. If we're talking about Spanish and English, both Spanish and English or other languages, it's important to understand what is the exposure, how many years of exposure. If if a if there's a child that is recently moved to the US, it's important to understand what education did they have in the country that they were coming from, what language or languages was that education in, because otherwise, assumptions, assumptions happen. And there's just a lot of information there that the families can provide about what the student already already knows. Are they re what what are they reading at home? What, from the parent's point of view, is the child really, really great at? What are they struggling with? All of those kinds of things need to be part of of learning about students when they come in.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:15:02]:
Okay. Okay. Alright. Alright. I'm gonna I'm gonna throw something else at you because, again, you got my gears turned in here. So you mentioned Spanish a a few times. It it seems to be, especially in the United States, I guess, is probably one of the more popular languages that you're gonna come across when you're working with students that speak other languages. And I'm just curious when it comes to assessments.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:15:24]:
You mentioned that there's thousands of languages out there. What if I can't find a test, an assessment for a dialect or or a language that is spoken? I can't find it. What would you suggest to support educators in those positions?

Kajal Patel [00:15:41]:
Talking to the family, using an interpreter, that can provide just really valuable information about the child's exposure to literacy and learning more about the child's exposure to literacy. Another thing that I would just add to that, which which isn't to your question, but I wanted to take this opportunity to add it Uh-huh. Is I think it's really important to encourage the parents to keep to keep it up in their home language. You know, we're always learning. Right? And in the past, there was a point of view that, oh, we really need to work on English, so we shouldn't do we shouldn't be using the other language because it's distracting, and the child isn't gonna pick it up, and it's gonna inhibit their their literacy growth and their and their learning English. We know that that's not true now. Myths persist. And and and I think educators want to help students, and sometimes in wanting to help students, they may, due to those kinds of misadvise that, and they used to advise that in the past.

Kajal Patel [00:16:41]:
Now we really wanna encourage parents when we are talking to them. Please keep up that literacy at home. If you are reading together in Vietnamese at home, please keep doing that at home. It is so important for a variety of reasons. The other thing I would say for educators is when you do assess in English, because the child will begin this is the child will begin to acquire English. And when you assess, you must keep in mind where they're where they are in that journey. It's important to assess because we wanna know how they're progressing and how they're growing so that we know how to inform instruction. But we have to interpret that data with a lens of where the child is in their English learning journey.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:17:26]:
Okay. I got you. Yeah. I I I appreciate that. It's it's one of those things I've seen, like, individuals that might be coming in from another country, and they're looking for better opportunities. And, again, the assessments are done, but we can't find the particular dialect that they speak. And so it makes a challenge. Oh, they say, oh, we can't help you, you know, go to another school.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:17:50]:
Those kind of things. But it sounds like what I'm hearing is, no. Have conversations with parents. Encourage your parents to continue to speak these language. I know some cultures, they will tell you, no. It's we gotta assimilate. We're gonna change our name to American sounded name. We're going to don't speak your language at home, or don't speak your language at school.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:18:08]:
And they just they tried to assimilate as quickly as possible because they realized maybe I think you're gonna get treated better. Those kind of things are are out there. You look like you have something that you wanna say.

Kajal Patel [00:18:20]:
I just I identify with that personally because, you know, I mentioned to you that, my parents in the home, we spoke with Dorothy. I grew up in a small town in Georgia, and, I really wanted to fit in. And I downplayed I acted like I didn't speak it. And sometimes they would say, you you know, say say a word in it, and then I would say something like, hello, and then they would they would find it really funny. And I just wanted to be like, oh, but I don't really speak it. And that that was a different time. Times are different now. I'm very proud of my language.

Kajal Patel [00:18:57]:
I'm very proud of my heritage as an adult. But at that time, it was very hard, and it's still hard for kids in many, many, many places. And and I, have seen in my own family the urge and the desire to downplay, to make your name a different name, and those kinds of things. And, that's sad. We don't want that.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:19:23]:
We don't we don't want that. And, again, if we're if we're looking at creating a sense of belonging for our students, then they should feel comfortable and feel like their identities or backgrounds are celebrated, the food that they like to eat, the the way that they dress, the those things that are traditional to them. Because we talk about what's traditional or what's mainstream, but that's often American norms. You're gonna have students that are coming in from various places, various home lives, and various situations in which they might want to have to try to fit in and can't be themselves because they're gonna know that if they say something in their home language, they're gonna get teased or someone's gonna mock them because they rolled their r's or click their tongue or whatever it might be, and and those are those challenges out there. So I appreciate you for for sharing your vulnerability there.

Kajal Patel [00:20:11]:
It reminds me of something that's actually just really important in the classroom in in teaching in general as well, and and that is to really make it kind of a multilingual place. I mean, we may be doing English language arts. Okay. Yes. We are. But let's say you've got kids in the room with with different language backgrounds that are that are acquiring English. We have to value the home language and make it part of what we're doing. You know, multilingual students, they they're using their full linguistic repertoire, like bucket buck bucket of of language in their in their head, and they're making connections when they're reading and writing and listening and and and talking.

Kajal Patel [00:20:55]:
And so maybe this looks like letting a kid answer in their home language and then helping make that connection to English. Maybe it looks like letting them draft something in their in their language and then helping them make that connection and depending upon where they are. Right? And also helping them make those connections. And if we're talking about certain languages where there are a lot of cognates and similar sounds, we can it really help do that. And teachers, if they're finding depending upon where where you are in the country or even even your, like, town, sometimes certain languages are are very common in a particular classroom. And so there's ways to learn, you know, just enough about the language to to help make those connections. You don't have to learn a whole new language to support kids in their in their language.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:21:43]:
So what you're saying is I don't have to jump on Duolingo to learn someone else's language, Rosetta Stone or something like that. There's ways that I can still connect with my students even if I don't speak their home language.

Kajal Patel [00:21:54]:
You can learn some words and the the things that are in common, and there's a bunch of resources out there to do that. And and, actually, I came across, like, a a really good one that NYU had put out, and it really helps with academic language because that's a barrier. Mhmm. Academic language can can really be a barrier for kids because it can be more complicated. Right? The words are fancier, and so there's a resource I found that provides that academic language in. I mean, I can't even remember how many languages. It's a lot. But giving access to kids to, oh, well, these are what these words mean in in your language and then helping them understand that academic language is really important.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:22:32]:
Alright. Well, I I will tell you this. I I thoroughly have learned a lot in our conversation, and and thank you so much for, again, being open and sharing your personal story as well and kinda how this relates to the work that you're doing. I'd love for you to take us home with any final words of advice to our listeners.

Kajal Patel [00:22:50]:
Our country has a gift, which is a growth in multilingualism. I'm really excited about it. You know, the rest of the world is pretty multilingual, and I want our country to be too. And I think we should really celebrate multiliteracy and and help it and help it grow. I would love to, like, reiterate, you know, the the things that we talked about earlier with respect to assessment and the importance of doing it in the child's own language when you can and when you cannot, doing the other things that we've talked about to make sure that you're learning as much as you can about the assets that that student has so that they can get the right kind of support. And another thing I will just squeeze in here is that I think sometimes when people think about the support that multilingual learners need, they might think of it as a lot of extra stuff to do. And what I would say is that a lot of the ways to supporting them are good for all students.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:23:56]:
Mhmm.

Kajal Patel [00:23:56]:
1st of all, bilingual education is good for all students, and providing scaffolds and and things like that, you know, in our literacy curriculum, that's good for all students. Assessment is good for all students to understand where they're at and then figure out what to do with them. So I really yeah. That's that's what I wanna emphasize.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:24:17]:
Alright. Great. Great. Great. Well, listen. If we have some folks that wanna connect with you, what's the best way to reach you online?

Kajal Patel [00:24:23]:
They can reach out on LinkedIn, and, yeah, I would love to talk to them.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:24:27]:
And the website again?

Kajal Patel [00:24:28]:
For Amplify. It's amplify.com.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:24:30]:
Alright. Amplify.com. And folks will leave links to the show notes and everything to how to get in touch. Once again, I'm speaking to Kajal Patel. Thank you so much for your time.

Kajal Patel [00:24:40]:
Thank you so much for having me. This was really fun and important to talk about.

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