From Watering Down to Challenging - Amber Nelsen & James Block

Does this scenario sound familiar or resonate with you? Each day, each week in classrooms around the world teachers ask EAL specialists, “Do you think he/she can do it!?”, referencing an assignment, task or test. “Do you think I should make him/her do the same test or give him/her something easier?”

The idea of “watering down” refers to the ways that often our ELs are perceived to not be able to complete the same work that a non EL can complete. In this shift #3, we are tasked to look at the ways that we can advocate for our educational community to not water down, but instead find ways to make things challenging for ELs, in a similar way to how they might for a non EL.

If the classroom teacher wants us to give ELs something easier, then we are lowering the cognitive demands (see Bloom’s Taxonomy below). Providing academically rigorous tasks for our ELs can seem scary to some since it relies on giving power back to the students to use their mother language which is oftentimes not a language we ourselves are proficient in. Despite this though, it is important because, as Staer Fenner and Singer (2020) state, to grow learners’ language, they need access to “rigorous and intellectually rich learning opportunities.” Initially, it was stated as multilingual learners, however, we believe that this is for all learners, being exposed to rich language learning.