Our Philosophy & Approach

We believe…

• Learning is not limited. Learning is intrinsically rewarding and engaging, and our job is to find entry points so all learners can experience the wonder and awe of truly seeing and sharing understanding.
• Achievement encompasses a person's character, thinking skills, behavior and values related to academics, physical development and fitness, and the arts.
• There exist universal values and common threads that weave the global community together. We view our job as finding those threads and communicating in a way that allows others to understand through their own lenses, experiences, and cultural norms.
• Language is critical to several essential processes: Negotiation is a key skill for navigating the constraints of time, the challenges of cultural differences, and the decisions related to individual expression and presentation. Collaboration is necessary for shared understanding to develop. Responsible individuals support their arguments with evidence and listen respectfully to others. Planning and communication, both verbally and nonverbally, enable one to resolve conflicting points of view encountered in experiences and in source documents.

We honor different ways of thinking

Respecting, even without completely understanding, another way of communicating is an essential life skill for 21st Century/global citizens. We respect different perspectives and honor different ways of thinking. One's language and one's identity are very closely entwined. The structure of the language, its idioms, and the way it is taught all provide a window into the culture and its values and beliefs. Language is more than a vocabulary list and a system of rules and functions. Language communicates a way of thinking and being. When one embeds this understanding into daily instruction – of whatever subject matter – we move closer to the oft-stated goal of global citizenship and lifelong learner.

We will honor what learners bring to the classroom

We will honor their experiences, their languages, their cultures and their values. We want to respect and honor the knowledge they have acquired and provide them with keys and insights in how to communicate with people from other cultures who speak English, who hold different values and beliefs, and whose decisions are based upon different assumptions.

We teach the learner, we teach learning versus teaching content

We get to know the learner and what he/she does and does not understand. We explore and research the learner to determine what might be interfering with understanding, to what degree understanding has been acquired, and to what degree the learner can independently apply the targeted skills in different contexts. If we do not focus on the learner, then students will only reach understanding through hope and through their own means instead of through purposeful and intentional design by the teachers.

EAL does not stand alone. It is every educator's issue because, fundamentally, it is an equity issue!

We do not operate on the EAL deficit model of the past. Demographic patterns show that EAL students have become an integral part of the population of most international schools. International educators therefore must be conversant in the strategies that will provide for and create success with these students. Attitudes need to change to the perception that our job as educators is to provide optimal learning for all students and EAL students are no different. Their needs are not an additional burden but part of our core responsibility as educators to support the learning of the children in our classrooms.

Every teacher is an EAL teacher. All teachers look after/are responsible for all children who are entrusted in their care. In this kind of model, mainstream teachers do not envision as their responsibility any need to modify or differentiate the classroom environment to accommodate students since it is often perceived as the responsibility of the EAL teacher to make their students fit into a sort of 'one size fits all' instructional model. The EAL catalyst sites theoretically represent a shift away from this model towards more of an 'ecological' one in which all administrators and teachers are trained in EAL policies and practices so that the whole school environment is responsive to meet all the learning needs of a classroom.

Language learning is developmental and it directly impacts the success of the learning process, because language is the key to knowledge and information. Along that line, access to the proper [language learning] tool becomes an equity issue: if school does not provide the necessary support to language learning, students from different language background will be disadvantaged and their success can be short changed.

From the EAL perspective – Given the high numbers of ELLs in most classrooms - all teachers have to be EAL teachers regardless of their disciplinary specialty. Most do not have the theoretical background nor the skills. Many do not have the expectation that this should be their role. The WLI EAL initiative aims to pilot the development of curriculum designed to scaffold learning for all students across the language proficiency continuum. It will support EAL students in achieving the degree of academic language proficiency required for success in an English medium school.