Interview with an EL Teacher
Hello everyone and welcome
to my latest vlog. In today's entry, I am sharing and interview with Bethany
Cobb who is the ESL lead teacher at Stockdick Junior High in Katy ISD.
In addition to Ms. Cobb
being the ESL team lead, she teaches a 6th grade sheltered ESL classroom. A
sheltered ESL classroom is a classroom comprised only of ESL students where
they are taught grade level content in English, in a manner in which they
can comprehend. In order to qualify to be in Ms. Cobbs classroom,
the students must be within their first 3 years of enrollment in United States
schools and be on a certain level with state and district language tests.
When asked about what part
of English language acquisition is most challenging for her students, what Ms.
Cobb describes aligns with TESOL’s English Langage Proficiency Standards, where
the first standard to be obtained is social language with academic language coming
far after. (Wright, 2019) She added that an additional challenge that her
students face is that much of the initial acquired language is casual “text
speak,” that then has to be corrected into proper grammar and spelling.
I was interested in hearing how Ms.
Cobb felt about ESSA, particularly since she had previously taught under NCLB. Ms.
Cobb described that before ESSA, there was no standard for testing the
proficiency of EL students and that it lead to many challenges when students
would move from one district to another. Under ESSA the students are now tested
and classified the same across state which is much more consistent and resolves
the previous challenges. However, even though the EL students are now able to
be properly identified, ESSA does not provide enough differentiated support for
students to be successful in high stakes testing.
I really enjoyed getting the chance to
talk to and learn from Ms. Cobb. I am so thankful that there are teachers
dedicated to the success of EL students and I look forward to being able to
implement some of the strategies she described in my own classroom.
Mathewson, T.
G. (2016, October 18). 4 ways ESSA will change how schools serve ELL
students. Education Dive.
https://www.educationdive.com/news/4-ways-essa-will-change-how-schools-serve-ell-students/428266/.
Wright, W. E.
(2019). Foundations for teaching English language learners: research,
theory, policy, and practice. Caslon.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteBrittney,
ReplyDeleteA wonderful interview that you have there. It is pretty amazing that you were able to interview the ESL lead teacher on your campus.
I am glad that you talked about NCLB and ESSA, and it reminded me back to what Wright had to say on page 136 when he says that when it comes to ESSA and accommodations, "providing tests in the ELLs' home language or using other accommodations is not as easy as it might seem. Extensive reviews of the research on testing accommodations for ELLs have found only a limited number of studies, and most of the findings are inconclusive... [one finding concludes that], 'Unfortunately, research on the validity of accommodations is very limited and the validity of only a handful of accommodation strategies used for ELLs have been experimentally examined'" (2019).
Hopefully, with further research of this accommodation/testing, we could be able to improve these assessments and actually influence more ELL students with better education and opportunities.
Wright, Wayne. Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, 2019. Print. Third Edition.
Hi Miguel. I was excited about being able to interview the head of the ESL department also! Assessments are something that’s challenging for all ELL students. I like that Ms. Cobb talked about teaching the students the strategies that would be available to them on the STAAR test, such as using their dictionaries. This gives them practice with those resources so they’ll be familiar with them when it comes to test time.
ReplyDeleteBrittney,
ReplyDeleteIt was lovely hearing about Katy ISD, I did not get the pleasure to visit during my observations. I was not aware that there was a sheltered ESL class within the district. I think it truly takes a trained teacher to be able to adapt instruction to the numerous students coming into middle school. Wright states that “teachers should purposefully use bilingual strategies to help students engage with complex content and texts and learn to use oral and written English for academic purposes” (p.115). These students have different needs more than the usual variety because they are immigrants and do not have the same experiences as the other students. The teachers must use more strategies, including bilingual ones, to meet these needs.
Wright, W. E. (2019). Foundations for teaching English language learners: Research, theory, policy, and practice. Caslon.