A Common Language

All I wanted was a washcloth.

After a 19-hour flight from Dallas followed by a full day of sightseeing in the summer Sydney sun, I checked into my hotel, thinking only of how wonderful it would be to wash the layers of sunscreen off my travel-weary face.

My hotel bathroom was well equipped with hand towels, bath towels, tiny soaps and shampoos, but nary a washcloth was to be found. I called down to the front desk, and asked if housekeeping could please bring me a washcloth. The person on the phone, who spoke Australian English, seemed a little flummoxed by my request but said she would take care of it.

About 45 minutes later, there was a knock on my door. When I answered, a hotel staff member handed me a tall pile of hand towels, smiled, and walked off. At this point, I was too tired to think, so I simply assumed that perhaps washcloths aren’t a thing Australians use. After all, it’s surrounded by ocean. Maybe everyone just brings their own loofah with them when they travel.

The next day, I mentioned this confusing incident to some Australian friends at lunch. At my mention of the word “washcloth,” they looked at each other with perplexity. So I did a little charades while describing the item I was looking for. In unison, my friends replied, “Oh, you mean a face washer!”

That night, back at the hotel, I called to request a face washer and within 15 minutes had a supply to last me the rest of my stay.

Sometimes, even in a place where everyone speaks a common language, knowing the preferred terminology for something can make all the difference.   

The same is true in schools. When there isn’t some standardization across the school, we risk confusing, frustrating, or completely losing the students. If a student goes to five different academic classes and several electives in the course of the day and each teacher has a different tardy policy, a different term for the activity the students are expected to be working on as the bell rings, a different policy for late work, a different test makeup policy, a different idea of what note-taking should look like, and a different organizational scheme for notebooks, the student has to juggle six or seven separate sets of guidelines throughout the day.

The power of AVID Schoolwide is that schools establish a common language and present instruction with a unified voice across the school. If the entire faculty of a school shares some basic understandings and terminology—about what the note-taking process entails, how students should organize their materials, where and how students should keep track of assignments and due dates, what a Socratic Seminar or Philosophical Chairs discussion looks like, how students are expected to use academic language, what students should be doing when they read critically in all classes, and how collaborative structures can enhance instruction and deepen student learning—students succeed with fewer impediments.

Imagine a student who experiences three so-called Socratic Seminars in one month of school in three different classes. In one class, the students and teacher arrange chairs in a circle, and the teacher introduces various topics for discussion and debate. The subjects for discussion range from school dress code to the winners of the MTV Music Awards. There is no grade, nor is there any follow-up activity. In another class, the students circle up and discuss a teacher-generated topic about a novel they had been reading. During the discussion, the teacher tallies the number of times each student speaks and assigns a grade determined by “participation and quality of discussion.” In the third class, the teacher gives students an article to read and annotate for homework. At the beginning of class the next day, students in triads generate questions for discussion. Students form a circle of desks and engage in 30 minutes of discussion to deepen the class’s understanding of the article. The teacher only interrupts to remind and encourage students to use the academic language stems they have been practicing in class. The following day, the students begin writing an essay about the article using the notes they took during the discussion to help them.

At the end of that month, if you asked that student to explain Socratic Seminars to you, you’d probably get a muddled answer since the student had three disparate experiences that were all called by the same name. If the faculty at that campus had only had  a shared understanding of the purpose and procedures of Socratic Seminars, students could focus on deepening their skills for rigorous academic discussion rather than learning to navigate the rules in multiple environments.

The AVID Site Team is a powerful force for maximizing the impact of AVID for all students on campus. With members from many content areas, the Site Team can determine what best practices should be disseminated across the campus and provide staff development to help establish a common understanding among the faculty. Having high-impact instructional practices in place for critical reading, note-taking, academic language, content area writing, collaboration, and organization is the passport students need to transfer learning and build overall academic skills throughout the instructional day.  

With a common language for instruction, we can keep students from driving on the wrong side of the road academically. When the academic language barrier is removed, everyone can work toward shared goals that will open doors down the road for success in college and careers.