Admins, Here's How to Support your EL Teams during ACCESS Testing

 With ACCESS testing coming right around the corner (and the Winter Blues taking hold), it's important to nurture a sense of support for EL, Bilingual, and Dual Language Teams. Here are some ways that administrators and coordinators can provide support to their teammates. Of course, everyone receives and accepts support in different ways - knowing your colleagues and their preferences is important!

1. "Do you need help in creating your testing schedule?"

Asking your colleagues if they need support in creating their schedule may be helpful. Offer to sit alongside the educators you serve as they are tasked with creating the Rubics-Cube-Level-of-Difficulty ACCESS Testing Schedule. This is incredibly difficult to do, so sometimes having a thought partner is helpful, especially if your EL teacher works alone. Please be sure your teachers still have access to their DUTY-FREE LUNCH and their plan periods! Teachers must eat and have time to breathe. Keep Day One of testing "light" so that as tech glitches, troubleshooting, or disruptions happen (they will!), teachers have time to recalibrate for the next day. Also remind them that if at all possible (it may feel impossible), also prioritize FUN in their schedules. Find time to get outside with students or unwind with a Mindful Meditation break, or bust out some board games to let both students AND teachers find some balance together. If your school is one that is against jeans (please don't be this school), encourage your teachers to wear jeans, hoodies, and gym shoes on testing days. They will have enough to deal with, and jeans do not negatively impact anything (not their professionalism nor any test scores). If your school is lucky to have a technology coordinator, create the schedule with that teammate as well, because there will be tech glitches!

2. Co-sign those Emails!

Many times, our small EL teams are tasked with not only creating a very daunting and grueling test schedule, but they also have to communicate the schedule with everyone else in the building - content teachers, classroom teachers, fine arts teams, student services teams, etc. These weeks of testing can cause disruptions to "normal" services that we provide, so sometimes we battle a lot of guilt when not being able to meet with regular groups, or missing out on our co-teaching blocks. The guilt can be exacerbated when angry teachers or teams express their frustrations with not being able to provide those services. Having an adminstrator co-sign the email can be a huge support! Remind teams across the building that this is a mandated test that the EL teacher did not create (believe it or not, your EL teacher may get an email from an angry teammate who accuses them of designing such a lengthy assessment- no, really- it happens!), and that this teacher and our students deserve our unwavering support.

3. Show Up on Testing Days

Let the teachers you serve know that you are going to be there on Day One. "I can help with grabbing kids from classrooms and getting them to the testing location" or "I can go grab those extra papers" or "Let me run to get those pencils in other room!" can go such a long way, especially during the first day of testing. Please be careful in your messaging and let your teachers know in advance that you're there to help them with it, not observe them as they do it. Helping large groups of first graders put on headphones and clicking through buttons on a device is lengthy, and having another teammate in the room can really help. You may go the extra mile (if you haven't already) and you can get certified as a test administrator and YOU can also administer tests to support your students! No, your schedule may not allow you to do this every day, but this may be helpful to your team if you can swing it.

4. Express Appreciation 

Especially if your team is small or you only have a small-but-mighty-team-of-one (which is often the case!), please lean in and offer extra appreciation. These testing weeks are stressful, and if they're doing all the coordinating, organizing, scheduling, testing, and also trying to maintain some sense of "normal scheduling," they are likely fried during these weeks. Find out your teachers' appreciation styles (have you read Lead with Appreciation? HIGHLY recommend!) and use a variety of appreciation methods (hand-written notes, a small physical token of appreciation, a public shout-out, an extra plan period, an act of service, etc.) throughout the testing weeks. 

5. Nurture Good Vibes

There's a lot of fun that can be incorporated across your EL department. Ask teachers to send in one positive, uplifting, energizing song and compile them into an EL Energy PlayList that teachers can play in their classrooms (either with or without students). Load up a Starbucks gift card and send the team one QR code that they can scan at the drive-through for a morning pick-me-up (one drink per teacher, please!). Generate funny ACCESS-related Memes just for some laughs by using a generator like this or this. Surprise teachers with a scheduled break where you go in and cover their class while they relax in the teachers' lounge or run a quick errand.