Paving a common road for all

Deirdre Newman

“Every day I wake up and try to imagine being in Cambodia and

learning chemistry,” says Karen Kendall, the school district’s new

Director of English Learner Programs.

Kendall’s empathetic attitude exemplifies why the district

selected her to devise a Master Plan for English Language Learners

and lured her away from a coveted job as principal of Harbor View

Elementary School.

The master plan is a direct response to a federal decision handed

down in October that deemed English language instruction was being

taught to students at the expense of their core classes. If the

Newport-Mesa Unified School District didn’t create a systematic plan,

it faced losing federal funding.

After spending months meticulously crafting the plan, Kendall now

leads the programs, using her expertise like a Sherpa in the

Himalayas to guide the district down the path she cobbled together

from piecemeal elements.

It’s a position well-suited to Kendall, who started with the

district teaching English as a second language 13 years ago.

Her priorities while creating the master plan, which amounts to a

whopping 191 pages, remained the same during the implementation

period: clarity, consistency, compliance and continuing improvement.

“It took trillions of hours to make sure it was a comprehensible,

legal and viable document,” Kendall said. “I want to help people, not

make it harder.”

Kendall, who started her educational career as an English teacher,

first came to Newport-Mesa to work with students and adults trying to

learn English. She was drawn to this specialty because of her

compassion for their struggles.

“It was in the mid-’70s and a big wave of Vietnamese refugees had

just arrived,” Kendall said. “As an English teacher, I saw how

desperately immigrants needed English-language skills.”

She quickly rose through the ranks, ending up in charge of Harbor

View. She was hand-picked by the district to create the master plan

based on her English language instructional background and the

writing skills she honed while helping the district craft its

strategic plan. It took nine arduous months to complete the master

plan, which Kendall jokingly refers to as her “baby.” Trustees

approved it in July.

The plan is an amalgamation of every process, procedure and

guideline district employees must use to be legally compliant, with

the district’s philosophy interwoven through it. While she didn’t

have to start from scratch since each school had its own plan, she

did have to meld all the different elements.

“Everyone was doing an excellent job before, but it was quite a

network of freeways,” Kendall said. “Now we’re all on the same road

to success.”

The instructional aspect of the program embodies ongoing

strategies for English learners.

Some of the specific aspects of the plan that Kendall worked to

clarify included streamlining the process of changing the status of

students from English learners to English proficient.

“When all their assessments indicate they’re ready to move on,

then that process will be completed in a timely and consistent

fashion,” Kendall said. “We want to help them spread their wings and

be in a mainstream environment.”

The plan also provides a consistent path that allows teachers to

follow their students’ progress and take appropriate action if more

assistance is needed.

Kendall also went to great lengths to describe all the processes

using a clear language that would be common to all schools.

While the overarching goal of the plan is to assist students in

learning English, enabling them to access the core curriculum remains

a priority.

The strategy to achieve includes multiple training sessions for

teachers, ensuring that they use the correct strategy for each child

at the right time, and work with counselors to make sure students are

enrolled in the right classes, especially in high school.

“Along with that, everyone is trained to know the reality -- that

it’s hard to access the core until you have some English in place, so

English is still the first priority,” Kendall said.

While both the federal and state governments have been critical of

the district’s English language learner programs in the past,

Kendall’s plan has earned the respect of state officials, who have

invited her to discuss it at two statewide events.

Since Kendall invested so much of herself in the plan, she said it

was a natural decision for her to oversee its implementation. After a

vacation in Hawaii earlier this summer, she returned to the district

relaxed and refreshed to start fleshing out her department, which

includes some teachers on special assignment roaming district schools

in support of the plan.

While Kendall said her six years at Harbor View was a peak

experience, she is eager to use her skills to serve all students in

the district.

“The excellence I valued at Harbor View is the same excellence I

value here,” Kendall said.

* DEIRDRE NEWMAN covers education. She may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at deirdre.newman@latimes.com.