Funciones de la plantilla o personal del Servicio de Prevención Mancomunado Mancomunado

Features of the school impacted, positively and negatively, the amount of English learning achieved during the intervention. The school provided a nurturing, caring environment sensitive to the students’ personal and learning needs, with a teacher ratio and orientation that supported learning, following the New Educational Environment philosophy

(Sulimani, 2002), by students who had failed in previous frameworks. Still, some factors in the environment detracted from learning. Disruptions, including the cancellation of many English class hours, students’ use of their cellphones during and between classes, the no-

homework school policy, and teacher absences, diminished learning. Chaos sometimes reigned due to students’ behavior. Focusing students’ attention on learning was challenging. The school provides tremendous support, including emotional, academic, transportation and nutrition, acknowledging that its learners come from complex backgrounds and home circumstances. Some students come from homes without financial or organizational resources, and are provided informally with tea and bread for their midmorning break. All receive a hot lunch. Their families may not function effectively in meeting basic and routine daily needs.

Teachers at this school collaborate to exchange information about their shared students and work as a team, as advocated by Sulimani (ibid.). Though they might have been expected to experience burn-out from working with this challenging population, they were at the school for the long term, out of choice, and displayed tremendous maturity and generosity in dealing with their students’ multi-layered issues and challenging behaviors. They seemed to accept the complexities of their learners’ needs and did their utmost to advance the students within the existing constraints.

Students sometimes arrive at the school with negative stereotypes of the school, and the issue of whether they will take the English matriculation exam affects their motivation:

They need this assurance [of taking the Bagrut exam], because when they come to this school, they feel already that this is a ‘bad place.’ … when they come here, they come here because …they were dropouts from other schools, or they weren’t accepted; it’s the second or the third choice. Many of them have extremely terrible homes, and they have homes that are very dysfunctional…So when they come here, if they don’t get the matriculation exam, they say, “Oh, we are right, this is a school for dummies” and it’s not!…it’s a great place to learn if you have difficulties! (Orna exit

interview, May 31, 2015).

Among factors found to diminish learning was the reduced time for learning due to a long delay in beginning the intervention, frequent class cancellations and absences. It was my intention to maximize the intervention period for the 9.5 months of the school year (September 1-June 15.) Ultimately, I was able to involve the participants in learning for 6-7 months. We started late and, toward the end of the school year, the learners were already distracted by ‘spring fever’ and disruptions in the learning routine.

This is typical of the Israeli school system. Many hours theoretically dedicated to learning English are diverted for alternative purposes or cancelled. In practice, learning time is far less than the number of hours formally available, increasing the urgency of using them effectively. English classes were often cancelled due to Sarah’s medical absences or

absences of teachers earlier in the day. Sarah confirmed that one class had had about half their English hours cancelled:

Every Thursday their lessons got cancelled – every Thursday! … I had two hours with them per week – one hour on Sunday with you, and one hour on Tuesday. But many times, the double lesson Thursday was cancelled, or if not cancelled, then just one or two students would come (Sarah

exit interview, June 7, 2015).

In contrast, due to his English class schedule, Yoav, who progressed the most amongst the participants, was the only tenth-grade participant who had few of his English lessons cancelled. He had a double class for independent work with the app on the day I was at the school.

Yoav…had only Sunday and Monday. Yoav didn’t have a lot of classes cancelled, actually. He had a lot of classes. So, you really see the outcome (Sarah exit interview, June 7, 2015).

This reduction in actual learning time was one factor shaping the intervention’s outcomes. Another was that the students at this school are not expected to do homework.

I told Orna and Sarah to get them to review at home, and I gave a little speech about review and automaticization. Orna said: "They won't do anything at home at all – that's the situation of their families, there is no support at home for doing schoolwork" (fieldnotes, Feb 1, 2015).

The fact that learners’ voluntary use of the MALL app at home was minimal confirmed observations by Shabalina et al. (2010) and Kam (2013) that language education software, even if game-like, does not attract learners to use it voluntarily without the support and enforcement of adults. Thus, available learning time was largely limited to class. Class time, as noted, was frequently reduced. Some students were absent from school for extended periods or during inclement weather. In summary, it proved challenging to achieve adequate learning time.