Rising Up:
A whole new world: Embracing English Learners at Pittsburgh Concord PreK-5 and the district overall

2025 | Written by Faith Schantz, Report Editor

In a classroom at Pittsburgh Concord PreK-5, a group of 5th graders sit at tables with books open in front of them. A chart labeled “A Protected Place, Okapi Reserve” stands on an easel near a smart board. Plants line the windowsill. Teacher Beth Thompson directs students to look at their books.

            “The first page will tell you what kind of story or article this is going to be,” she says. What does the title tell us? A protected place. “Touch the yellow word on your book right now.” They know this word, she says. “Who has a connection to something we’ve already studied?…Ooh, I love the hands.”

            Her own hands keep moving. She points to her eyes when she says “see,” makes a barrier with her outstretched fingers to illustrate “protect,” throws a beach ball globe to children who want to speak, and indicates the posted “sentence starters”—“I see…,” “I know…,” “I think…,” “I wonder…,” “I predict…,” “The text says…,” “I learned….”—to help students frame responses.

            A boy recalls that Yellowstone National Park protects wolves. “Who can add on?” Thompson asks. “What does it mean to protect something?”

            A girl with long black hair says, “To save something?” Thompson asks her to put it in a sentence. “To protect means to save something,” she says, with more confidence.

            Thompson shows a still from a video about the Okapi Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She tells the class she didn’t know how to pronounce “okapi” at first, okaPEE, okaPIE? Who wants to say what this animal reminds them of? One child offers that it looks like a zebra. Another says he thinks the okapi are “almost extinct.” Why does he think that, Thompson asks. Because they’re “very rare,” he says. She presses: What does “rare” mean? “Only a little bit of them,” he explains. A girl raises her hand and the ball is tossed to her. “I never saw that animal before,” she says, “so maybe there are no more of those animals anymore.” A third child agrees that the okapi are endangered. “I know this because I search in Google which animals are almost extinct, and I saw that animal.”

            Thompson reminds them they have a 4th grade friend from the DR Congo, and they will hear people speak with a similar accent in the video. After it plays for a few minutes, she pauses it, points to the roof of a house, and asks them what it’s made of. “Sticks.” “Plants.” “Oh, Ms. Thompson!” one student says excitedly. Maybe the okapi are endangered because people used too much of their food supply for roofs, he says. She reminds him that the rainforest has lots of plants. “I like where you’re thinking, though,” she says.

            A classmate wonders if the okapi are dangerous. In the already engaged group, this question stirs a new level of interest. Tell me what you’re thinking, their teacher says. Do you know, or do you wonder? Speak it in a sentence. A boy says the animals are herbivores; therefore they aren’t dangerous. A girl agrees, because in the video, “they look relaxed.”

            By the end of the class, students have shared ideas with a partner, repeated key words in unison and clapped out the syllables, written and illustrated definitions, and identified the purpose of the text in front of them: to inform, or, as they chanted and clapped out with gusto, “Real facts!” Some of the children—whose home languages are Spanish, Arabic, Swahili, Dari (spoken in Afghanistan), and Pashto (Afghanistan and Pakistan)—added sticky notes with their unanswered questions to the chart. “I wonder if the Okapi is an especial animal of Africa?” “I think the Okapi is special because there are a little of them.” “I wonder what does the name Okapi means?”

[subheading—A changing landscape]

            Concord is located in a residential area along Brownsville Road in Carrick, near a small business district that includes a Nepali restaurant and an Asian grocery store. The first Report to the Community, published in 2006, records the Concord student population as 87% White. Now, Concord is one of the most diverse elementary schools in the city, with about 30% White, 30% Black, and smaller percentages of Hispanic, Asian, and Multi-ethnic students. By the end of the 2024-25 school year, 130 Concord students were identified as English Learners (ELs), a number that fluctuated over the year as children came to Pittsburgh at different times, some from countries new to the school. Even as late as May, Thompson notes, the school had just put in an order for new flags.

            In general, changes at Concord mirror changes in the district and the region. According to AXIOS Pittsburgh, immigrant and refugee families who settle here are helping to reverse the overall population decline. Similarly, in the Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS), children who were born in other countries are the only group of students whose numbers are increasing. Jonathan Covel, director of English Language Development (ELD) for PPS, says that over the past three years, their numbers have grown by about 50%. Out of 18,312 K-12 students in the 2024-25 school year, 1,798 (9.8%) were designated as ELs.

While some families have gravitated toward specific neighborhoods—there’s a Latino community in Beechview and a Somali Bantu community in Northview Heights—newcomer families are “spreading out” more, Covel says, with people moving to the West End, Crafton Heights, Homewood, and the Hill District. Children can enroll in a regional ELD center such as Concord or in their neighborhood school. Along with growth in the ELD centers (identified by an icon on the school pages in this report), schools with rising numbers of ELs include Pittsburgh King PreK-8, Pittsburgh Morrow PreK-8, Pittsburgh Sunnyside PreK-8, and Pittsburgh Westinghouse Academy 6-12. Some schools still have no English Learners. But “those numbers are rapidly dwindling,” he says.

Along with numbers of students, the diversity of the languages they speak is also growing, which Covel calls exciting, with Uzbek (spoken in Uzbekistan), French, and Portuguese making gains. Last year, Uzbek climbed into the top five out of the roughly 47 languages spoken in the district, joining Spanish, Arabic, Swahili, and Pashto.

[subheading: “Welcome to the USA”]

Especially in their first days, Covel says “the schools really wrap their arms around this group of kids.” ELD teachers serve as points of contact, introducing students to others, and making sure they know where to go. Calling those teachers “a tireless group of advocates in addition to their roles as educators,” he says they act as “champions” for students; for example, working with the cafeteria staff if a child has a dietary restriction.

Concord Principal Jamie Kinzel-Nath describes an English Learner’s early days as “a lot of tears, a lot of hugs, and [a time when] a lot of good things happen.” Some children who have enrolled at Concord over the years had never been inside a school. “We position the ELD teachers and all of the support staff to be able to support teaching families, here’s how you come into the school, here’s how we walk into the building, here’s how you go to the bathroom, here’s where we get breakfast, here’s where we come to community time,” she says. A staff member may also meet with the family and an interpreter to help them better understand expectations and routines. Some families come to Pittsburgh through a settlement agency, such as Hello Neighbor, based in Larimer, or Jewish Family and Community Services(JFCS), based in Squirrel Hill. In those cases, “they’re a partner in that mix, too.” Kinzel-Nath says students often respond to their new, strange surroundings by going mute. When possible, school staff will pair a child with a classmate who speaks the same language to help a friendship form. Newcomers also take a course called “Welcome to the USA” that orients them to the culture of school.

When children enroll, they are tested—or “screened”—for their level of English proficiency, either by ELD department staff or an ELD teacher at their school. Thompson, who has a master’s degree in reading as well as English as a Second Language certification, also uses her own training and knowledge to pinpoint what a child needs. Students with little exposure to English will have two periods with Thompson or another ELD teacher, with one period focused on basic literacy skills, and one devoted to content-rich reading and discussion. During the schoolwide intervention period, some students return to Thompson’s room. She also works with students in their regular classes, in what is called a “co-teach” model, coordinating with the classroom teacher to offer tailored instruction. As students’ English advances, or if they come in with existing knowledge, they stay in their regular classrooms with co-teaching support.

[subheading: How do you teach a child to speak English?]

            Thompson came to Pittsburgh after teaching in a bilingual school in Texas and in Nicaragua as part of a global outreach program through her church. In Texas, ELs generally came from Mexico and spoke Spanish. At Concord, children in the ELD program come from about 22 countries and speak 11 or more languages. How do you teach a group of students who don’t share a common tongue?

            Thompson says visuals are key. For example, her students read a story that involved bird watching. “We know what birds are, we’re watching, but what does it look like when you go bird watching?” she says. “They had a little background, but as soon as we typed it into Google and hit ‘image,’ then they [said], ‘Oh, okay.’” She enlists the class to come up with hand motions as cues, and sometimes pairs an image with touch. “I try to get them up and moving and fully engaged, connecting pictures and movements with the language they’re obtaining during the day so it’s retained at a higher level,” she says.

            Actual objects are even better. “If we’re reading about a bean plant, we will grow the bean plant in our window,” she says. “That’s engaging for any learner, but especially language learners. They need to physically see, feel, and touch tangible things.” For a unit on life in the soil, she reached out to her father, a retired entomologist. “He’s going to come in and talk to them about insects and show them his beekeeping suit, and let them feel and touch the tools beekeepers use.”

            To appropriately support and challenge students whose English proficiency varies, Thompson prepares different materials. For “A group,” those with less proficiency, it’s “fill in the blank. I set up the sentence, the response. …And then, they’re watching and listening for, how do we complete that big idea? It’s a more simplified answer. Whereas, B group, I don’t have those supports for them, but they are still listening and thinking and remembering the big ideas, and they’re finishing those thoughts. And then, C group, I take it to the next level where they don’t have any of those supports. Can you form that on your own?” For example, A group might fill in words to make a basic statement about the Okapi Preserve. C group would be asked, “Tell me why are they protecting the okapi,” Thompson says.

            “There’s a delicate balance that we strike when we have children who are initially supported in pull-out courses,” such as the ones Thompson teaches, Kinzel-Nath adds. For the general education (non-ELD) teachers as well, “This is about getting smarter about [asking] what are the indicators that are telling us these kids are ready for more.” She recalls that early in her career, when she was a learning support teacher, a boy from Burma had enrolled in her school, as one of the district’s first ELs. Not knowing any English, he didn’t speak at all. He was assigned to a life skills support class (for children with disabilities) until she intervened. “It really made me hold onto that notion that we have to make sure we’re not allowing kids to sit idle in any learning space, and that we are challenging and pushing and doing so in a loving way,” she says.

At Concord, where many students have IEPs for special education and their own unique needs, “That’s a big core part of the academic work that’s happening at this school. I think as a district, as a whole, we’ve got to keep getting better at that because the needs are getting greater every year.” When it comes to ELs, “if we’re doing our due diligence and ensuring the foundational skills are there, they can achieve high things and should be exiting our ELD program. That’s the goal.”

To help students reach that goal, according to Covel, schools can request direct support from the ELD department, which includes a translation and interpretation manager, a testing coordinator, instructional specialists, and family liaisons. Department staff also help school staff set up systems and structures and advocate for equal access to programs for ELs[FS1] . Covel says the department aims for a partnership rather than one-shot professional development. For schools newly enrolling ELs, the question is, “What supports do you feel that you need from our office that we can collaborate on?”

Schools can also request interpretation and translation services. Through the department, teachers who need to speak to a family member whose English isn’t proficient can arrange phone calls with an interpreter on the line. Thompson says she has to reserve a chunk of time for such a call because of the pauses for translation, but it’s often the most effective way to exchange important information.

Last year, the department purchased “Pocketalk” devices, which facilitate two-way spoken and written translation for more than 70 languages. How many devices a school receives involves “a negotiation” with the principal, Covel says. The district also uses the family engagement tool TalkingPoints. TalkingPoints can translate written messages and also has a “talk to text” feature, allowing family members to speak in their native language to produce translated messages for the school staff.

The department, in turn, works with WIDA, a multi-state consortium that offers testing services, help with setting progress goals, and other guidance for both ELD and general education teachers. The PA Department of Education also publishes standards and guidance specifically for English Learners.

[subheading: Supporting the whole child]

            How quickly a student exits the ELD program depends on more than the quality of their classroom instruction. In general, according to Covel, “The research says that it takes up to two years to get on par with a native English-speaking peer, like ‘playground English,’ I call it, to be able to have informal conversations and to feel comfortable. To obtain the same level of academic English, it could take five to seven years,” or more. One factor that influences that rate is a student’s previous level of education. “We have kids that are coming that have had excellent formal schooling in their countries of origin. They just need help with the English acquisition piece…. Other kids that we’re seeing have never been in a school or had interrupted schooling. We are seeing growth in that group of kids, and they require different supports,” he says.

            Another factor is a student’s age on entering the program. Arianna Aguilar, who until recently served as an immigrant and refugee youth services specialist for JFCS and ran a weekly program for ELs at Concord last year, knows this from personal experience. She emigrated to the US from Venezuela as a 3rd grader, returned to Venezuela, and emigrated again when she was in high school. Going through it as a teenager was “a hundred percent harder, even though I knew English when I came to the US a second time…. When you’re having the regular issues that teenagers have,” plus the weight of negative experiences, “it’s really hard. So [those students] need a lot of support and understanding and people who get it around them,” she says. To address the academic needs of older students, the district offers some “sheltered” classes that serve as an “on-ramp,” Covel says, including ELD math at Pittsburgh Allderdice High School and Pittsburgh South Hills 6-8; and ELD math, social studies, and science at Pittsburgh Brashear High School. He adds, “That’s a program that I would love to expand to other schools.”

            Finally, “Trauma plays a huge role in all of this,” he says. Some students have lived in or passed through multiple countries before they enroll in a Pittsburgh school. Some have experienced war. At Concord, a boy reportedly cries every time it rains because he thinks there could be a tsunami. Other Concord families fled gang violence. Such experiences are “not lost upon the children,” Kinzel-Nath says. At first, she notes, students and their family members tend not to talk about what they’ve gone through. Once they become acclimated to the school, though, they begin to share. “I just got goosebumps thinking about some of the stories.” By law, district staff don’t ask about a family’s immigration status[FS2] . So “they’ll tell me stories, but those do rest with me. That’s not collected anywhere. That’s not documented anywhere.”

            Due to the federal government’s crackdown on immigrants, the fear and instability are ongoing. Covel says that in the current political climate, “There’s a lot of concern among many of our families and kids.” Kinzel-Nath describes students as being “on edge.” When first responders came to Concord to introduce themselves as community helpers, some students asked, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, “Are they ICE?”

            With more people immigrating because of humanitarian crises, Kinzel-Nath has seen a corresponding increase in families’ needs. “Food scarcity is a bigger problem than it was ten years ago,” she says. “Poverty is worse for them as a whole.” Those who come through a settlement program receive an initial set-up. “But then, you see little girls coming in, and they’re in the same beautiful ballgowns every single day, and you [think], wait a minute. They need more. And so, we try to pack up bags, we take lots of donations. We just were able to get a washer and dryer installed.” Unclaimed lost-and-found clothing goes into the “Concord closet.” Students from Pittsburgh Carrick High School’s National Honor Society have conducted food and clothing drives on Concord’s behalf. Kinzel-Nath’s staff steps up when needed, including bringing in clothes for adults. “That’s been a big push the last few years…But we have a system now,” she says.

            Thompson remembers taking a boy from Sudan to the closet to find a pair of shoes that fit and shirts that he liked, “and seeing his smile and his excitement and his confidence, just getting a bag of clothes that he felt good in.” She shared her concerns about another child’s walk with the gym teacher. For a student to succeed academically, she says, “You have to really look at the whole child, and then that paints the picture of how are they developing, and why are they developing at this rate?”

            Beyond basic requirements, ELs also need opportunities to learn, play, and communicate without the stress of speaking another language, as well as spaces where they can grow their native language skills. Concord has been able to offer this to some extent, for example, through groups run by their multilingual paraeducators. The school also relies on advocacy organizations, such as JFCS; Casa San José, based in Beechview; and the Bhutanese Community Association of Pittsburgh, based in Brentwood; which provide programming during and after the school day.

            Last year, Casa San José staff met with Spanish-speaking students. Aguilar and a colleague conducted a program called Bridge Builders for the other ELs, many of whom are from Afghanistan. Aguilar, who has a master’s degree in bilingual special education, says they tried to make it as engaging as possible, including “learning through games and crafts and art, and sharing about our different cultures.” Her colleague, who is from Iran, spoke with children in Dari and Farsi, she says, and a few students were able to translate for a Pashto-speaking friend. To Aguilar, the Afghan students also liked to show off the Spanish they’d learned from their classmates.

            As she points out, sharing languages helps further hone language acquisition skills. There are social benefits as well. Last spring, JFCS was planning to partner with the Pittsburgh Community Science Workshop for an ice cream making activity with Bridge Builders, when it occurred to Aguilar, why not let all the students benefit? She invited the Casa San José group to join them. While they made ice cream, “We were asking, what’s your favorite flavor, to all the kids in their different languages. And we were asking, ‘How do you say it in your language? How do you say strawberry?’ So it’s promoting cross-cultural understanding and awareness, but also, in a very small way, just thinking, oh, we all like strawberry.”

            Covel, who became fascinated with the process of learning a second language when he taught in Japan for a year, says that supporting multilingualism is a district goal. When you speak more than one language, “The synapses in your brain are stretched in a good way,” he says. “You have to think between Language One and Language Two, and you have to navigate that space. What does this mean in English? What does this mean in Japanese? And then what are the implications of that?... It’s a whole new way of thinking that opens up your brain.” Even though instruction for Pittsburgh’s ELs is mainly in English, “We never say that you have to forget your home language because that would be tragic,” he says.

*

            In another Concord classroom, 4th graders work on a math problem using base ten blocks. A girl from Syria with a long, curly ponytail sits just inside the door, holding a pencil without appearing to make any marks. It’s May. She’s been a Concord student for a little over a week.

            Thompson’s classes offer students direct support. However, ELs spend most of their time in general education classes, with native-born classmates and teachers who may not have had training in ELD instructional techniques. Students who enter after the school year has started, like the Syrian girl, join an already established group. What does that mean for ELs, their teachers, their peers, and the learning environment of the class?

            Teacher Kevin Concannon and co-teacher Jennifer Weidner move around the room, asking questions and making comments. When Concannon visits his newest student, he asks her to show him six groups. He draws six rectangles on her paper and indicates she should cover them with the base ten blocks. She does, and he offers a high-five. Perhaps not understanding the quintessentially American gesture, she hesitates.

            In a recent national survey, about half of general education teachers reported they felt only “somewhat” or “not at all” prepared to teach their multilingual students. Thompson, who co-teaches, plans, and holds many hallway conversations with Concord’s general education teachers, believes more resources are needed from the district to help them feel “equipped and confident” when they teach ELs, and to fully include them in their classes. “It’s not just Ms. Thompson’s students. It’s not just Ms. Brown’s students,” she says, referring to ELD teacher Amanda Brown. “They’re our students.”

            With about a quarter of the student population in the ELD program and another quarter receiving special education services, Kinzel-Nath says she needs a systems perspective when she thinks about instruction. One form of professional learning she’s engaged in with teachers is designing, testing out, and debriefing a lesson, which “allows us to then have conversations about groups of kids within a classroom.” She prioritizes scheduling so teachers can meet in grade-level teams with ELD and special education teachers. Along with their professional learning community meetings, “that’s where the real work is happening,” she says.

            Kinzel-Nath also plans with individual teachers. Last year, after the district adjusted teacher assignments and class sizes in a process known as “leveling,” Concord lost some teachers, resulting in two 4th grades of 30 and 31 students. About 15 were English Learners. The district had also adopted a new math curriculum that teachers would begin using that year. As Kinzel-Nath remembers, Concannon called her and said, “Jamie, come on down here. I need help.”

            Together, they looked at the lessons in the curriculum. First, they discussed how to “get the masses up and running,” Kinzel-Nath says. Then they talked about what each subgroup might need. “We already know out of the gate, there’s a subset of kids that are going to struggle with even the basic language,” she says, referring to beginner ELs. They decided to use the daily intervention period to help those students develop their math vocabulary. PPS considers math to be a “universal language,” meaning Concannon wouldn’t have an ELD co-teacher. Kinzel-Nath was able to schedule Weidner, who teaches 5th grade math, as part-time support.

            Over the course of the year, Concannon used both new and familiar techniques. The math curriculum, for the first time in his experience, includes components for ELs, such as sentence starters like the ones in Thompson’s classroom. When students were learning the differences between a rhombus and a rectangle, which involves understanding a parallelogram, Concannon used the sentence starter “I am a parallelogram because….” He also posted pictures of angles and parallel lines. “Between the sentence starters and pictures to go with the vocabulary, they’re able to have an entry point into what we’re doing,” he says. Another strategy that supports both ELs and their classmates is small group work. In a small group, he says, students feel, “I can’t sit here and opt out.” Similarly, manipulatives, such as the base ten blocks, may be particularly effective for ELs, but they also can help any student “build their thinking out.”

            On that May day, he pauses students’ problem solving to give them time for multiplication games. The student from Syria joins a group seated on the rug. Weidner left the room briefly to find a Pocketalk device, but it’s out of power. Concannon claps for attention. Weidner looks at the girl, points to her own eyes, and points at him.

            “You’re doing a really, really good job,” he tells the class. “Some of you, I gave a crutch to, to help you with what you’re doing…Only use it when you need it! Use strategies.”

            Students return to their games and Weidner finds a power cord. While the device is charging, she calls over another girl and asks her to translate. In Arabic and with hand motions, the girl explains the game to her new classmate. When the Pocketalk has enough power, she chooses a language from the list of Arabic dialects on the screen that she thinks will be the right one.

            Weidner engages the boy sitting next to the girl from Syria. “You can talk to her now, because we have this,” she says, holding up the device. Talking into it, she asks, “Do you understand what we’re saying?” The girl listens to the translation but seems bewildered. Weidner chooses another dialect in the list and asks if she understands the game they’re playing. After hearing the translation, she nods. “It works!” Weidner says. She asks her to speak into it, and after a moment, she does. With a delighted smile, Weidner repeats the translation to the boy. “She’s asking, ‘What should I say?’”

            Concannon gives students time to finish their original task before asking for volunteers to present their work. The last student to place his paper under the document camera is the boy from the DR Congo who was mentioned in Thompson’s class. Slowly, with some prompting, he explains his solution. He finishes and the class breaks out into applause. Beaming, he returns to his seat.

            From the beginning of the year, Concannon says, he invests time in creating a learning community—building rapport, making connections, and establishing rituals and routines. In particular, “I’ve taught them that everyone has a voice and that we respect each other’s voice, each other’s opinions. And one of our biggest accomplishments throughout the year is listening to each other’s thinking and listening to each other’s strategies.” His students clapped for their classmate, he believes, because “he has really put in some time and tried. And even though he struggles, the fact he’s willing to participate and volunteer in front of his classmates is a big success for him.” Altogether, these techniques, attitudes, and behaviors make for “an inviting classroom” for ELs, regardless of when they enter, he says.

            Concannon has been at Concord for 18 years, teaching various grade levels and working as a math coach. When English Learners first enrolled, he remembers thinking, “Oh man, this is going to be really, really bad. They’re not going to be able to do anything.” Now, he enjoys seeing their development. On the one hand, he attributes their growth to the “homegrown work and sweat” of the principal and staff. “We’ve built this program, we’ve built this sense of community around these kids, and because of that, they’ve been successful.” On the other hand, he’s realized, “They want to learn. They want to be a part of this. They want to try…. [These students] have knowledge, they have initiative, they want to be able to participate.”

            Thompson adds that she finds beauty in the sight of students from multiple countries, speaking multiple languages, all aiming for one goal. Recognizing that “we have the same ability to progress when things are hard and when we work together as a team—that is a life lesson that we can pass on to our students. And it’s humbling and beautiful for me because I get to be part of that, and I get to grow with them, and I get to learn with them,” she says.

 [FS1]Link to the student rights box. (Not absolutely necessary.)

 [FS2]Link to students’ rights box