We want to start highlighting some of the amazing work that Snorkl’ers are doing! In the spirit of that, here’s our newest monthly segment — educator spotlight 🎉
This month’s spotlight is: Bree Wee at Kahakai Elementary!
A little background -
Bree is an absolute champ who has been teaching and supporting EL students for the last 23 years. This year, she’s been doing a ton of heavy lifting as the (only!) EL coordinator for her school in Hawai’i.
Over the past year, gone from having just one student pass WIDA to a whopping *20*! She’s made her classroom a safe space for EL students to express their thinking in supportive, fun contexts. Her approach to building a culture of belonging really shows -- when I first talked to Bree, she had a student in her classroom who didn’t want to leave, who had started out the year not wanting to speak, which we can all agree is absolutely magical 💜
Bree attributes some of this recent success to the way she’s been using Snorkl over the past year. We think she might be giving us a little too much credit, but, in any case, we are so excited to share how she’s been Snorkl’ing in her classrooms.
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Let’s set the stage - tell us about your learners.
Our EL students are of 14 beautiful cultural backgrounds. We have students from Vietnam, Russia, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and from all over the Pacific Islands of Micronesia and Hawaii. Many of our students come from large, multigenerational families who enjoy the comfort of food and conversation - so we do a lot of BOTH in class.
How do you Snorkl? Walk us through a typical Snorkl session in your classroom.
We Snorkl as a TEAM. Being a group who thrives in relationships, we do it together. After we present a prompt, take some time to think or write about it, we respond for the whole class to see & listen. Students sit on our big, blue class couch looking at the screen and picture prompt. One at a time, students take a turn coming to the hot seat and speaking their thoughts into the computer.
Students on the couch listen and write the score they would give their peers on their mini whiteboards. This really helps all students know the expectations (from the rubric) and listen to good (and not so good) examples. The most fun part is waiting for Snorkl to pop the score out! Speakers can’t wait to see how they did and scorers like to check if they gave the speaker the same score.
What was your breakthrough moment?
Before I realized Snorkl had a HUGE compilation or premade prompts and lessons, I was making my own. I used photos of our class - students LOVE writing and responding to prompts about themselves and their friends. But the real breakthrough was seeing students have fun speaking, that fear of not saying something just right faded, that meant everything to me.
What are some teacher moves & instructional routines you’ve incorporated?
I really like making sure students have a rubric handy, a super simple kid friendly one. Once they know how to “win” they try so much harder. The other move that helped our class was being their example. I always provide good examples of how to succeed and then some not so-good-ones, saying, “Do not be like Ms. Wee.”
What have you seen as a result of some of the work you’re doing?
Students LOVE EL class. They ask every single day, “Do we have EL today!?”. EL class isn’t a place they “have” to go, students “want to go”. I love that our students feel EL is a “special place to belong”...It’s like a little club.
We have worked really hard on building our EL program to become a community and thrive within the entire Kahakai Elementary Community. We use our 4th grade EL students as EL Ambassadors to teach the Kindergartners. This is so empowering for the 4th graders and the Kinder have buddies to look up to. We have Sunshine Club in the morning to help with attendance, Lunch Bunch every Monday, and an EL class shop to make sure all the SEL and necessities we can meet are met. But the best part? More parents are getting involved and showing up to school. We want our students, all of them, to feel like family -- It’s happening, one voice at a time…
What’s some advice you might give first-time EL teachers or coordinators that you would’ve wanted to tell past you?
Just keep showing them tough love. Not simply love, but tough love. These kiddos are so cute! But cute isn’t going to get them to thrive -- we hold our EL to high expectations and still hold them accountable despite having possible language barriers. We know protecting them isn’t going to help them in the long run, so we provide as many opportunities for them as we can, meet them where they are, all while holding them to high standards - because we love.
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We’re so grateful for this window of insight. We love to see students thriving. And, as Bree’s said…the scores speak for themselves!
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