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Empowering English Language Learner Family EngagementThis capstone aims to support any people who work, or plan to work, closely with English language learners (ELLs) and their families. From personal experience and discussion with others who work with ELLs, family engagement was seen to be a high concern in the area of ELL education. ELLs, like all students, are impacted by the level of support they are given. Providing students with support from home, school, and their community offers more opportunity to learn and a more positive view of education. To increase family engagement among the ELL population, schools and educators must be provided with tools or strategies to empower family’s engagement in students' learning. Understanding why ELL families may have limited or no engagement in students' education is the first step to supporting them. Debunking misconceptions that are tossed around about ELL families and their views of education opens many opportunities for supporting families in ways that work for them. After understanding is built by getting to really know families and learn about them, support can be provided through language support, interest topic based lessons and assignments, communication, homework support, and community support. Strategies and supports, such as those provided in this capstone and Teacher Toolbox (Appendix D) can be modified to fit any and all families and their learners. In applying strategies to support and empower families, along with meaningful reflection from educators, it is intended that families will feel more welcome, be more meaningfully engaged, and learning for students will improve.
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Extracting Violence from the English Language Arts ClassroomInformed by research and discourse from the contemporary movement for police/prison abolition, scholar Erin Geary makes the case for nonviolent schools, an ask that seems obvious, but, in many ways, is foreign and controversial amongst educators and administrators in America. Geary situates her study within the lived context of her own English Language Arts classroom and asks herself how she can provide a physical/emotional space conducive to learning that refuses to banish and exclude for the sake of “order.” In Geary’s nonviolent classroom, the flow of power is examined and disturbed, students’ needs are met, and conflict is mended rather than punished. Geary provides concrete techniques, resources, and ready-made lesson plans which cut-at-the-root of subtle, stubborn school violence and trouble the assumption that some students will always be “the bad kids.”
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From Isolation to Inclusion: How to Become a Successful ESL Co-TeacherThis capstone project aims to support classroom teachers and English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers in co-teaching models. In co-teaching, two teachers (in this case an ESL teacher and a classroom teacher) work together to teach and evaluate a group of students. Traditionally, many English Language Learners (ELLs) have been serviced in a pull-out model where they leave the classroom to work with an ESL teacher with other ELLs. However, as the population of ELLs continues to grow, co-teaching is becoming a more popular tool to service students, as it allows them to receive necessary accommodations and scaffolds without having to leave the classroom. With the introduction of co-teaching, both classroom and ESL teachers need training on what is co-teaching and how to execute a co-taught lesson. A successful co-taught lesson first begins in the co-planning stage, and it is imperative that both teachers work together to know what each person’s role is and that the lesson is truly collaborative. As there is no one model for co-teaching, teachers have the autonomy to choose which model works best for their particular students, lesson, or style. Through the use of collaborative documents and lesson plan templates, classroom teachers and ESL teachers can work together to produce lessons that support students’ academic and linguistic needs.
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First Language use with English Language Learners in the Elementary ClassroomIn recent years, the number of English Language Learners (ELLs) in the public school system of the United States has been rising. Within my capstone project I will be addressing how incorporating ELLs’ L1 promotes second language (L2) and content learning in elementary school. This is a prevalent issue due to the fact that teachers are unsure of how to incorporate students’ native languages into classroom curriculum. Literature on this issue discusses how Translanguaging, multiple languages in the classroom, and culturally responsive instruction all incorporate ELLs L1 usage to promote L2 development. To mitigate this issue, I have created a professional development course. The PD within this capstone is created to help teachers understand and implement multilingual strategies into their classrooms. Implications for further research curated from this capstone project include finding what strategies are the most effective when incorporating ELLs L1s in the classroom.
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Increasing Family Involvement for ELLsThis capstone project aims to support all school staff, including teachers, administrators, cafeteria workers, office staff, and bus drivers who work with English Language Learners (ELLs), also known as English Learners (ELs). At East Elementary School, ELLs are being impacted by a lack of family involvement. Communication issues, culture clashes, lack of support for families, lack of services, unwelcoming school environments, rapidly increasing ELL population, parents' experiences with school, and socio-economics can all contribute to the low family involvement for ELLs. To increase family involvement among ELLs, a comprehensive plan has been constructed to mitigate this issue. Solutions to the problems at East Elementary include updating school signage, having translators present at all school functions, translating school materials, and hosting a family night out for ELLs.
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Effective Coteaching for ELLs: How can content area teachers and ESOL specialists co-teach effectively?Coteaching between content area teachers and English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) specialists is increasing. Although inclusion in the content classroom creates the least restrictive environment for ELLs, many challenges exist for both teachers and ELLs in cotaught classrooms. This capstone seeks to mitigate these challenges through conducting a literature review and offering Professional Development (PD) to address the question: How can content area teachers and ESOL specialists co-teach effectively? Literature is reviewed through a sociocultural learning theory lens. Some common challenges include lack of set co-planning time, ill-defined teacher roles, and a sense of the ELLs being the sole responsibility of the ESOL specialist. The PD is targeted for new coteaching pairs of seven through 12th grade content area teachers and ESOL specialists. In three sessions spread out across the school year, coteaching pairs will practice planning, communicating, and reflecting on coteaching practices. The goal of this PD is to improve teams’ overall coteaching practice to better support ELLs. Through effective coteaching practices, ELLs can receive individualized content and language instruction in an inclusive environment. Further research should be conducted to study the effects of specific coteaching strategies as well as further investigate ELL perspectives on coteaching.
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Vocabulary Emphasis to support English Language Learners Perseverance in Solving Exponential Function ProblemsThis curriculum project showcases a collection of lessons designed to promote mathematical literacy by unpacking vocabulary terms that have multiple meanings. The project includes four sequential lesson plans that follow the Exponential Functions unit. The motivation for each lesson is to encourage student discourse by creating a space for exploration and discussion. Each lesson aligns with the New York State Next Generation Learning Standards for Algebra 1.
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College Coaches’ Mental Health Literacy as it Relates to their Student AthletesOver the past decade, mental health has been a growing topic of discussion. Evaluating previous research, young adults, and specifically student athletes, face a variety of stressors in their lives. Student athletes have the responsibility to perform well in school and in their sport while maintaining their own physical and mental wellbeing. The purpose of this synthesis was to review the literature on college coaches’ mental health literacy as it relates to their student athletes. Coaches spend a significant amount of time with their student athletes and are able to recognize certain signs and symptoms of mental ill health. Mental Health Literacy of coaches is imperative to being a source of support to their student athletes. There are numerous variables that influence whether a student athlete seeks help for their mental health issues, however, coaches with a high level of Mental Health literacy are in a better position to ensure their student athletes are taking the necessary steps to seek help. This literature review shows that coaches are in a position to be an initial source of support for their student athletes. Coaches’ with a higher mental health literacy are able to create a more positive, stigma free team environment that promotes help seeking for mental health issues.
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Adherence and Accessibility in the Workplace: Directly Consulting with Disabled Workers and Prospective WorkersThe purpose of this study is to gain insight concerning patterns of the experiences and outcomes of the studied population to inform best practices, services, policy, and further studies when looking to improve the conditions that the studied population enter during the time frame the study examines
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Professional Development: Arts IntegrationThis is a lesson plan designed to demonstrate the ways different forms of art can be integrated into the teaching of mathematics
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Preventing Misclassification of ELLs into Special Education ProgramsThis capstone project aims to provide a solution to the current problem of overidentification of English Language Learners (ELLs) students in special education programs. ELL students are a growing population across the country and have been negatively impacted by the lack of knowledge regarding the issue of misclassification and identification. The research shows that teachers, administrators, school counselors, and school professionals need support and additional services to adequately address the concerns of ELL students. Many different strategies can help prevent the misclassification of ELL students, including professional development, dual language programs, use of translators, parental involvement, response to intervention approach, and pre-referral strategies. Since education professionals do not feel competent when making decisions regarding ELL students, this project presents educational based training by means of professional development concentrated on identification and proper placement ELL students. School districts must start providing educators with the knowledge and tools necessary to accurately classify ELL students so that they may be successful in the future.
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Decreasing Over-Referral of ELLs to Special EducationThis capstone aims to solve the problem of disproportionate referral of ELLs to special education. To attain this goal, I first conduct a literature review on the topic. The research shows a disproportional referral of ELLs to special education because non-ESOL educators do not have the resources and are not collaborating to meet the diverse needs of struggling ELLs. MTSS are not being used in ways that support ELLs. To address this problem, a professional development for World of Inquiry School is presented with tools to support educators in mitigating this problem. The way my research showed to solve this problem is to provide educators with specific resources for ELLs to use within a multi tiered system of support (MTSS) and to give educators opportunity to practice collaborating during the professional development. This capstone’s goal is to decrease the over-referral of struggling ELLs special education.
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Using Project-Based Learning in Trigonometry: Mr. Baber’s Wall AssignmentThis Curriculum Project presents a series of five lessons designed to incorporate project-based learning (PBL) into a Trigonometry unit using the NYS Next Generation Standards Mathematics Learning Standards. PBL is an alternative to the traditional method of teaching (teacher-focused, notes, drill-and-practice, etc.) and has been proven to enhance motivation, participation, and learning in an educational environment. Since the project is the driving force of the curriculum, each lesson is tethered to different aspects of the project. Each stage of the project is intended to have a problem that you must solve, and through each lesson learned the students will be able to solve each problem as it arises. As each lesson is taught, the students can complete more and more of the project until the final day where they will bring it all together in a final PBL project.
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Improving Reading Strategies in the General Education ClassroomThis capstone project aims to support the development and use of new strategies that can be used to support English language learners also known as ELLs in the general education classroom. The strategies discovered and explained throughout this paper will be applied to real classrooms and data will be collected to show evidence of successful implementation of the strategies discussed. For the growing population of English language learners attending United States public schools, it is important that we support them academically and in their language development process. Implementing strategies into the classroom is an effective way to support English language learners in the classroom. There are many different strategies that can be used to support students academically and in their language development. The use of Spanish-English cognates is one vocabulary strategy that can be used in the classroom to support language development. Students are taught to look for familiar words as they read in the target language. They are also taught to use other words on the page to help them in determining the meaning of the unknown word, determining if the cognates are in fact true. Another effective strategy is the use of conversations in the classroom. Students can learn language through interaction with classmates. Finding ways to build a language learning and supportive community in the classroom and teaching students how to have meaningful interactions about books leads to support in reading comprehension. Lastly, we will discuss how parent engagement can be included into existing lessons. How parents can teach their children at home and bring a rich learning environment to the home and classroom workspace.
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Misidentification of English Language LearnersThis capstone project is designed to teach teachers about mislabeling. Mislabeling is when students are underrepresented in special education or overrepresented in special education. Mislabeling is caused by poor assessments, poor collaboration, and lack of background knowledge on language acquisition. When ELL are misidentified, they are being placed in the wrong instructional setting. Creating a cycle where they are falling behind monolingual peers and ELLs are unable catch up to monolingual students due to these misplacements. This project aims to discuss some literature on common studies showing ELLs, bilinguals, culturally linguistically diverse, and students of color all being misidentified. Some solutions presented in this literature are improving collaboration among teachers and ELL professionals. Increasing available resources for teachers and knowledge on language acquisition. Utilizing professional developments to teach teachers on implicit bias, culturally diverse teaching, and strategies to improve daily instruction.
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An Inch Becomes a Mile: Donald Trump’s Escalation of Victimhood RhetoricOn November 15th, 2022, Donald Trump formally announced that he was running for President in the 2024 election cycle. However, the nation he was addressing had significantly changed compared to the one he addressed on June 16th, 2015, when he came down Trump Tower’s escalator to announce his 2016 candidacy. Much of this change can come down to his words and the actions they inspired and enabled, as seen by the January 6th Insurrection and numerous other examples of far-right domestic terrorism. While there is a large body of established research that fully described the methods Trump used in winning the 2016 election, current research has been focusing on how his words caused the rise of political extremism during and after his presidency. This paper seeks to contribute to this ongoing discussion by using established methodologies of rhetorical analysis to posit that Donald Trump radicalized his supporters by leveraging ongoing social pressure to create a shared identity of hate and violence.
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Modeling Trade Wars: Applying Systems of Ordinary Differential EquationsSystems of differential equations have been used to model a variety of situations including population dynamics, reactions between several chemicals, and even the outcome of warfare between two nations. These types of systems are well equipped to model both simple and relatively complex situations involving several interacting parties; however, they seem to have never been used to model the interactions between nations engaged in a trade war. This text was primarily developed to showcase the ability of such systems to broadly model the key features of such a trade conflict. We begin by summarizing the main inputs and outputs of several historical trade wars and proceed forward by developing two models utilizing systems of differential equations that incorporate these inputs and outputs into their terms. Following this, we analyze both systems by finding specific solutions to each, by developing a general formula for each system’s equilibria, and by confirming the stability of these equilibria. After the model’s development and analysis, we apply these systems in the controlled environment of a hypothetical trade war. Finally, we conclude with a brief list of limitations that discuss several factors that hinder the accuracy of the proposed models.
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Influences of seasonality and habitat quality on Great Lakes coastal wetland fish community composition and dietsGreat Lakes coastal wetlands (GLCW) have been severely degraded by anthropogenic activity over the last several decades despite their critical role in fish production. Many Great Lakes fish species use coastal wetland habitats for spawning, feeding, shelter, and nurseries throughout the year. The goal of our study was to compare GLCW fsh community composition in the spring, summer, and fall months and investigate how water quality relates to fish diversity, the presence of functional groups, and juvenile fsh diets. We summarized fsh data collected from GLCW across the basin and used the coastal wetland monitoring program’s water quality-land use indicator to quantify water quality. Basin-wide, we found taxonomic and functional group diferences in community composition among three sampling seasons, as well as across the range of water quality. Water quality was positively associated with the abundance of small cyprinids and the relative abundance of some habitat and reproductive specialists. Seasonal differences were also observed for many of these functional groups, with more temperature- and pollution-sensitive fishes captured in the spring and more nest-spawning fishes captured in the summer and fall. In our diet study, we found that age-0 fish primarily consumed zooplankton in the fall, whereas age-1 fish primarily consumed macroinvertebrates in the spring. Moreover, wetland quality was positively associated with trichopteran prey abundance. We concluded that taxonomic and functional composition of fish communities in GLCW vary markedly with respect to water quality and season. Thus, a full understanding of communities across a gradient of quality requires multi-season sampling.
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Evaluating the use of hyperspectral imagery to calculate raster-based wetland vegetation condition indicatorField observations and measurements of wetland plants have traditionally been used to monitor and evaluate wetland condition; however, there has been increasing use of remote sensing applications for rapid evaluations of wetland productivity and change. Combining key aspects of field- and remote sensing-based wetland evaluation methods can provide more efficient or improved biological indices. This exploratory study set out to develop a raster-based Wetland Vegetation Condition Indicator system that used airborne hyperspectral imagery-derived data to estimate plant-community quality (via wetland classification and Coefficient of Conservatism) and vegetation biomass (estimated using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index). The Wetland Vegetation Condition Indicator system was developed for three Lake Ontario wetland areas and compared to a field-based floristic quality index and a dominant-plant based Floristic quality indexdom. The indicator system serves as a proof-of-concept that capitalized on the spatial and spectral attributes of high-resolution imagery to quantify and characterize the quality and quantity of wetland vegetation. A Pearson correlation analysis showed moderate r values of 0.59 and 0.62 for floristic quality index and floristic quality indexdom, respectively, compared to the indicator method. The differences are potentially due to the spatial resolution of the imagery and the indicator method only accounting for the dominant plants within each assessment unit (pixel), therefore disregarding understory plants or those with low abundance. However, the multi-metric Wetland Vegetation Condition Indicator approach shows promise as an indicator of wetland condition by using remotely sensed data, which could be useful for more efficient landscape-scale assessments of wetland health, resilience, and recovery.
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Reframing Social Work Education Using OERSocial work is, by definition, a profession devoted to the pursuit of social justice and the eradication of oppression, inequity, disparities, and other forms of injustice. Social workers are focused on the empowerment of marginalized people and communities and are expected to adhere to clear standards of ethical and competent practice. Additionally, the title of “social worker” is earned through the successful completion of social work education, either on the undergraduate or graduate levels. These social work programs are, in the United States of America, accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), which periodically revises and updates its Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS)1 and monitors the adherence of each accredited program to these standards. Essentially, CSWE determines the learning of every social worker in the United States.
