Reflection

If you told me two years ago that I would be teaching ESL in a high school setting, I would have rolled my eyes and told you that you were crazy. High school had always been my thing, but anywhere in the Secondary  English Language Arts world was my ultimate goal.

I grew up with a love for reading and writing. I had a healthy appetite for books and stories. I even kept a journal full of my deepest darkest secrets with a lock. That locked got picked from time to time by my brother and his delinquent friends but that never swayed my dreams of someday becoming a teacher.

But sometimes life just doesn’t go as planned and I honestly happy that I choose to accept my position as a level 4 esl teacher. And now my lofty dreams aren’t anything I long for anymore. I love my students and the work we do.

Seeing them acquire language and their growth throughout the academic year is truly amazing and rewarding. I love my job, but a problem I have is how in certain classes my students become lost,  forgotten about, and even failed.

As an ESL teacher at CHSE. Along with teaching level 4 English, Reading, and a Writing Workshop. I am also an itinerant for elective courses like Technology, Art, and Health. I work cooperatively with these classroom teachers to help support the ESL students in the elective classrooms.

During my time meeting the different classroom teachers through this push-in model, I have had the opportunity to meet and work with a variety of different teachers from different backgrounds, perspectives, and beliefs about their profession.

I believe that ELLs should have access to classroom content in a fair manner. And fair does not always mean equal. A single pan cartoon about “fair” assessment goes nicely with an Albert Einstein quote, “if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it'll spend its entire life believing its stupid.”

I believe this to be unfortunately true with some English Language Learners. They are sometimes seen as less than or dumber than native speakers when in actuality some of them are highly educated in their first language and have background knowledge about the content being taught in the classroom.

A tip that I always share with teachers is simplify the language not the content.  Some of my colleagues ”just get it” by which I mean they are open to differentiation, cooperative learning techniques, and adaptive assessments. They seem to inherently understands the struggles my students face everyday and not only from a language acquisition standpoint.

Then there are the resistant teachers that adhere to a SCWAAMP-y point of view we discussed in class. “Speak English!” I hear from down the hall makes my blood boil. The “American-ness” of only in English in SCWAAMP is not alway beneficial. Yes I do tell my level 4 to speak English sometimes because they are in my English and I know they can communicate effectively in English. But some of our ELLs in our school literally moved here yesterday.They need to speak Spanish, Khmer, Arabic or French Creole to other native speakers in order to get clarity about what is going on.   I also want to pull my hair out when these SCWAAP-y teachers ask me flatly “They are high schoolers, why can’t they write a proper reflection paper?”.

It is during these moments that I have to control the quick temper that I inherited from my father, take a deep breath, and use researched-back facts to advocate for my students. I first show these teachers the WIDA standards along with the laws that protect our ELLs. I do this intentionally because for some reason the whole “noncompliance” thing is the only motivation for differentiation.

I also like to show other teachers one of my favorite research-based website, ColorinColorado. Colorín Colorado is a valuable resource that I personally check weekly. It is a great website to support educators about best practices, information, and support ELL students and their families.

I also inform my colleagues about potential professional development opportunities RITELL (Rhode Island Teachers of English Language Learners). It is required that all teachers in our district attend a minimum amount of PD. This organization holds conferences twice a year that has numerous guest speakers and informative workshops for ELL teachers.

After several of these face to face encounters that Turkel would believe to be the most authentic. I realized there must be an effective and efficient way to reach all 250 teachers and faculty member in my building at once. I have recently been assigned as the ESL point person by my principal. My duties included reporting on any ESL news at faculty meetings.

So I attempted to create paper handouts with URLs to helpful resources for teachers with ESL students in their classrooms. I passed them out at faculty meetings, but I wasn’t sure if they visited these resources. And to be honest passing out a piece of paper was very techno-traditionalist in the simplest sense.

I want to be more of a technocrat, so I took  the original resources and laws on my faculty meeting handout and created a website using the website builder Wix. According to Prensky I’m a digital native, but I not all of my colleagues are, they are digital immigrants. So I wanted to keep my website clean, and easy to navigate. .

My intentions with this website is to reach my fellow faculty members by creating a website they are able to access information to support not only their teaching, but our English Language Learners as well. I believe a website is much more effective, efficient and attractive than a piece of paper with a list of URLs.

It is my hope for my new ESL department website to be directly linked to our school’s homepage so every single faculty member has easy access and I save trees in the process. Since the start of this  Media Literacy I have been reflecting on the idea that not everyone is tech-comfy or tech-savvy so I need to be able to reach those teachers. Through a thoughtful designed website.

Sir Ken Robinson says a school works well when teachers have strong support, I believe that this site will help support my faculty members who have little background or are unfamiliar with modifications, differentiation, and best practices when it comes to English language learners. And even for the teachers in the building who “just get it” can now have access to all the resources in one easy to navigate place.

I believe that once every single teacher in my school is able to familiarize themselves with my website and take time to review the resources they will be better prepared to create engaging lessons like Robinson argues humans and students are naturally diverse so it is just as important to create curriculum that reflects that.