Voices of Duval County
Claudia Norez
ESOL Specialist
How many bilingual education programs are in your district? Can you please tell me what model of bilingual education you have in your district [or school]?
Answer: The only program Duval County has is the dual language program and the rest are ESOL sheltered for the children in need.
How many students are in bilingual education programs? What grades are included? What language(s) do your students speak in the bilingual program(s)?
Answer: There are 790 students in the elementary, 109 in the middle school, and 26 in the high school program. The grades that are included in these programs are K-10th. In the program, most of the students speak Spanish or Portuguese and a few of the students speak Albanian or Vietnamese.
How many bilingual teachers do you have? what are their languages?
Answer: They have a total of 55 teachers in the whole dual language program but not all of them are bilingual. Of the 55 employed 42 of the teachers are bilingual. 41 of the teachers speak Spanish and 1 teacher speaks Albanian.
How do you recruit, retain teachers?
Answer: To recruit teachers Duval county participates in a lot of job fairs as well as sending out fliers to the local universities. A lot of the connections are built in Puerto Rico to bring qualified Spanish teachers to Duval. To retain teachers in Duval they make teachers opinions vary valuable when making new decisions. Teachers have a voice in curriculum and things going on inside the school and with this it empowers teachers to stay.
Does your district offer professional development?
Answer: Yes
What assessments do you give in your program?
Answer: Duval county uses WIDA Access 2.0 for ESOL students to monitor how they developing. For all of the dual language students they use Ice Station which is a web based program. This measures academic achievements with Spanish language arts to monitor mainly their reading. They also use Las Links Espanol to assess Spanish language proficiency and it is given to the 8th graders
How do you determine if students are making progress in the second language?
Answer: Monitoring how the students are doing on the assessments listed in the above question. Some of the assessments are also done informally by the teacher. Also, has the students working on Biliteracy Pathways to monitor the proficiency in English and Spanish is staying on grade level.
What role do parents play in the program(s)?
Answer: Every school in Duval County has different programs you would need to consider each specific school to see exactly what they are doing. For example, they all with have PTAs and advisory committees that they can be a part of. As a district Duval has Parent Academy which offers free courses for the parents online with a varied number of topics on ways to educate parents on how to help their children. Duval also offers the center of language and culture which is specifically for parents and it gives them resources such as classes in English and Spanish.
Is there anything else you feel that we should know about Duval county and how they serve ELL students?
Answer: The dual language program is a two-way immersion program and they do the 50/50 model. This is provided to students who live in the school zones of where it is provided but students outside of the zone could apply to come to the school. There is a capacity within the program of how many students can be let in. The size of the dual language program inside the school varies between schools, in the bigger school it is almost half of the school whereas the small school West River Side is about 2/3 and the middle school is about ¼. Duval county has been offering this dual language program going on 10 years now and that is why there are only up to K-10th because the program is growing with the amount of years that it has been open.
Virginia S. Soria
ESOL Specialist
How would describe your position in title and responsibilities?
Answer: I am an ESOL Specialist for Elementary schools. I provide instructional support to teachers though one on one teacher support or through professional development sessions. For the past 2 years, ESOL specialists were also tasked to ELLs with direct support through small group instruction.
What school do you work at?
Answer: I am assigned around 30 elementary schools (third of the district). My focus of direct student support are for my schools with high ELL population (50+)
How many students are in your specific school’s bilingual education programs?
Answer: I do not support any school with the Dual Language program. I have a school that provides sheltered instruction for ELLs in grades K-5 (Crown Point Elementary). The rest of the school have mainstreamed their ELLs regardless of English language proficiency level (ELP) or date entered United States school (DEUSS).
What countries are your students from? (and approximate percentages for each)
Answer: Please refer to the ESOL page in the DCPS website.
What are the native languages spoken? (and approximate percentages for each)
Answer: Please refer to the ESOL page in the DCPS website.
What grades have bilingual education programs?
Answer: The Dual Language program is offered at 3 elementary schools (K-5), I middle school (6-8) and high school (9-10 this year)
Can you tell me if your specific school’s bilingual education program is dual language/two way immersion? Or maintenance / developmental bilingual education?
Answer: The district offers the dual language program at specific schools
Former Teacher
San Jose Elementary
Can you please tell me what model of bilingual education you have in your district [or school]?
Answer: At San Jose Elementary there is a two-way dual language immersion program.
How many students are in bilingual education programs? What grades are included? What language(s) do your students speak in the bilingual program(s)?
Answer: At San Jose Elementary about 1/3 of the school participated in the dual language immersion program. Within this 1/3 the grades included were K-5th grade. San Jose has a Pre-K but the program is not offered to the Pre-K students.
The languages spoken by these students was a vast variation. The primary L1 was Spanish but many students also spoke Tegalla and Arabic. The School hired many paraprofessionals to help in translating these three languages for the students.
How many bilingual teachers do you have? what are their languages?
Answer: Unsure as to the exact number of the amount of teachers. The English counterpart in every dual language pair was an English monolingual but the paired teachers who spoke Spanish were fluent in both English and Spanish. There were also many paraprofessionals who were fluent in other languages to assist certain students.
How do you recruit, retain teachers?
Answer: To recruit teachers, Duval county pairs with the Spanish government to bring teachers from Spain to teach in the dual language programs. They would hires these teachers on 3 year contracts. The paraprofessionals at the school were paid very little money just as in other schools in Florida around $10-12 and hour.
To retain teachers there were not many things set in stone to keep teachers in the school. There was nothing specific to dual language teachers as to how to retain them.
Does your district offer professional development?
Answer: Yes, for dual language there was inservice training before the beginning of the year and this lasted about 2 or 3 days. Once a quarter all of the teachers would work collaboratively to plan the course map for the following nine weeks. During this time there would be about an hour of professional development thrown in.
There was very little professional development given.
What assessments do you give in your program?
Answer: I gave them a WIDA assess test that is administered in the Spring. I personally did not evaluate my students based off their scores on this assessment but it is a test given to keep track. Some of the students were required to take the test if they were considered an ELL.
For Spanish assessment there was an online program.
How do you determine if students are making progress in the second language?
Answer: By viewing the testing above and simple tests given in class through both languages.
What role do parents play in the program(s)?
Answer: During the year there were 2 dual language presentations given by the dual language immersion classrooms. The parents of the students were invited to view the program and participate in it with their child. As a community engagement component there was not one that was reinforced to bring the parents and the school together to bridge the gap.
Is there anything else you feel that we should know about Duval county and how they serve ELL students?
Answer: Program was not well managed.