These excerpts from the journals are descriptions of how I discovered the cultural filters that existed which caused the 4-D Perspective for me and other educators of second languaculture students.

May 4, 1960

A Red Letter Day! I knew from the beginning that Albert knew more than Mr. Powell or the boarding school people thought. He writes his name the same every time but the A looks like an H. I think he needs glasses. He nearly puts his nose on the page. When I let him use my teacher's edition of the health book, since he felt left with none and there were no more books, he saw that it was different. I told him not to pay attention to the blur writing, that it was for me, the teacher. Today Franklin was translating for Albert and then watched as Albert wrote correct answers for a row of problems. Franklin exclaimed, "Teacher, he know how!" The boys all clustered about exclaiming and discussing the fact that he did, indeed, know how to subtract. Instead of continuing to talk about him as if he weren't there, one finally asked him a direct question AND HE ANSWERED out loud! Franklin ran to me excitedly exclaiming, "Teacher, Albert is talk, Albert is talk!" Albert's audible answer had brought tears to my eyes, so I simply answered Franklin with "I know." Someone noticed my tears of joy and commented, "You cry?" I said, "Yes, I'm crying because I'm happy Albert is talking," for by now he was conversing freely with 3 or 4 boys. Everyone finished their own work in between taking turns talking with Albert.

October 22, 1975

I had a nice visit with Terry. He was looking at a magazine and told me what was happening (in Navajo). He named things in English when he knew. I told him other names for objects in the pictures. Later, I asked him something and he answered, "No." I think that was his first spontaneous English utterance in class.
Next Day: Terry had been talking to Norbert when he came running to me and excitedly asked (in Navajo), "Huh? Teacher, you asked me whatever and I said, 'No,' not in Navajo but I said it in English, didn't I?!!" I confirmed that he had done so.

December 9, 1976

Back when I announced to Darlene, Shirlene, Lauren, Terry, Norbert, Rachael, and Ernie, "Inilta'goo dooleel," and brought out the books, there was a collective intake of breath and light of joy in eyes and then they exploded, "Hazel! Ernestine! Alexander!" (the kids already reading). They knew what I meant and do they ever pay attention to the new words and work. I have NEVER had such a motivated group in my entire teaching career. Yesterday I told Randall, "K'adee' inilta'goo. Ninizinish?" He smiled and nodded and proceeded to apply himself to learning what I presented. Today I said, "Randall is going to join our reading group," and he smiled. When I asked him to read, shyness overtook and he could not. They accepted it and Ernie read. Later in word card drill he knew one word and spoke up clearly and proudly.

October 13, 1989

Tried the writing while they write techniques today...I could not decipher enough of the first one in line's writing to know how to help edit, but it was his best effort to date! Not wanting to discourage him, I suggested we each read our own writing to the class. I began and then one by one I called on them as they volunteered to read aloud. This particular student "read" twice as much as he had written about his personal responsibility at school. Afterward, I asked them to bring their work if they wanted me to help them correct spelling/edit. This student was the first in line and was emphatic with his requests for help in all areas! This was the beginning of "Sheltered Interactive Editing."

May 3, 1990

Gave out the Basket Model of the scientific method today. At first, Henry had suggested the corn plant just as I originally thought of, but he saw the problem of upward growth being in conflict with downward movement of reading/writing when I pointed it out. When I asked about using the basket, he thought a minute and said, "Yeah! That would do it; it's the symbol of thinking like this (touched his crown) of the head." After I put the steps of the method on the basket design, I showed it to him again and he said it looked good. I checked with Jeanne and Margaret, too. All three said it should help and did not offend them. Henry pointed out that some elders don't like ANY use of such things—even the corn plant—but he thinks for my purposes, I should try it. Then I checked with Izzy. He said pretty much what Henry said. He strongly urged me to use it to help kids understand.

When I showed it to them, Jimmie's eyes lit up immediately! He smiled form ear to ear and exclaimed, "NOW I get it!" —even before I went through the steps again. The other kids thanked me but the look in Jimmie's eyes was when I knew I had succeeded.

January 2002
Sheltered English as a Second Language in the Second Grade Reading Block, Mountain View ES

This group has mostly monolingual Spanish-speaking students. At the beginning of the school year, I conscientiously attempted to introduce the Spalding phonograms according to the procedures defined in the guide book. In order to avoid introducing an impossible number of new words at once, I chose words from the reading story for the weekly spelling list, but marking them and noting/explaining the rules as applicable. I also tried to use Project Write techniques and cues to teach English usage. After two or three days of this, one child exclaimed, !Maestra, va ud. nos chocquar con todos esos palabras, sonidos, letras, y reglas! I had a mental image of a huge dump truck dumping a large load of sand around my little group of children—until they were surrounded and buried up to their necks, while I urged them to follow me to the destination.

So I held off on giving phonogram tests for a period of time and I gave up on teaching Project Write right then as well. Words missed by the majority of the group on the weekly spelling test were repeated by the following week. While they could "read" the story in the anthology, progress on the accompanying workbook activities was slow. I created sentence strips with sentences from the story and I marked the phonograms on these, too. This activity had very limited success since it took about three weeks for me to feel comfortable with moving on to a new story because it is vitally important that second language learners feel successful or self esteem suffers and intrinsic motivation is lost.

For the second story, I changed the order of Monday's class and introduced the story first. We read it aloud together several times. Then I wrote the new vocabulary words on 3 x 5 index cards, distributed them among the students, and had them form the sentences from the story. After reintroducing phonograms found in the text of the story, I conducted word recognition drills with the word cards. The illustration in this story not only served as context clues for number names but stimulated vocabulary development of color names, so I added color-coded color name cards to the word recognition drill/daily practice. For the phonogram review and practice tests, I concentrated first on the consonants that are common to both English and Spanish. Still, it required about three weeks before students could read independently with a fair amount of accuracy. But gradually, all began to experience successes both with the phonograms and with the spelling words.

Although I had been introduced to the Spalding Method in 1984 and taken initial training in 1990, I had never actually used the method for regular classroom instruction; as a Chapter I ESL instructor, when asked how to spell, I would cue according to the Spalding phonograms. When offered the opportunity to take the training on November 16, I readily accepted. This training clarified many details of the method for me and I have made further modifications in the daily reading block schedule, but as I daily monitor and adjust my instruction to meet the needs of the students, I find some modifications vital for proper sheltering of the English instruction of second language learners.