From Train Wreck to Triumph! My Experience Teaching ELL Students in a General Education Classroom….We. Can. Do. It. by Sarah Dollah-Said
I have been a teacher for over a decade now. I’m totally aging myself, but in that decade I have seen trends in education go in and out, policies change everyday, and testing lots of testing. In the time I have been teaching, I have worked in urban to suburban schools, taught all levels from students with difficulties in read to students at the honors level, and for two of those years crossed over into the scary side of education aka school administration. Through my years, I have faced many challenges like any other teacher on the planet. One of the biggest challenges that I may not have an answer for to this date is how to work with English Language Learners and advance their skills while helping them maintain their dignity amongst their peers.
I have had many past lives in my career when it comes to working with ELL students, one being an ELL language arts and reading block teacher in a departmentalized ELL setting, one being a self-contained multi-subject Arabic bilingual teacher to 9-12 graders all in one room, and one being an 8th grade language arts teacher in a school where 50% of students struggle to read at grade level and 20% of the population are English Language Learners. On those settings, new challenges were always faced with working ELL students to advance their skills. Of those teaching situations, I would say the least effective was being the one room bilingual teacher. I believe that the most effective was pushing ELL students into my general education classroom.
Now people will argue that expectations are too high and unfair when students are mainstreamed into general education language arts and reading courses. For all of you reading, I will take you on trip to my classroom down memory lane this last school year. Our ELL teachers had taught language arts only and felt that students needed more support in social studies. The plan was to teach social studies with language skills and the ELL students would be mainstreamed into general education language arts classes. Of course, I was to say the least apprehensive. What was I to do with newcomer students in a class where I was teaching skills through novels such as Ernest Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying and Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree ? The beginning was rough. I tried heterogeneous groupings, audio books, and reading buddies. Some days were a train wreck!
I found myself with my head my desk crying during prep because I felt so lost. I was a veteran teacher who taught ELL courses; this should have been a piece of cake! I was teaching out of a novel-based curriculum that was handed to me and not working for this group. I went down stairs to my assistant principal’s office to trouble shoot. I had told her about how in the past, I had done book club instruction to differentiate literature for different groups of students. I wanted these students to stay in my classroom and be part of the general population. I didn’t want to overwhelm them either. Because I had been working so hard with my ELL students, my more advanced readers were being lost in the mix.
As a class, we were about to begin reading Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree. I had found five different books that matched the themes of Carter’s book. It was a pretty simple overarching concept of coming of age. Twice a week, I read with students out of our class novel and then three days a week the magic of projects came to life through the book clubs. Students read and completed dialogue journals daily at home, and had interactive discussions and completed projects in the classroom.
Our newcomer ELL students came to life in that classroom. My group that struggled the most was reading Dan Gemeinhart’s The Honest Truth. This is a novel about an adolescent boy dealing with cancer who runs away from home to climb Mount Rainier before he dies. The book was at a 500 lexile level and the instruction became student centered with differentiated assignments on clipboards conceal any accommodations being made within the group. One student named “Alejandro” actually said, “This is the first time I have REALLY read a book at all, even in English.” We even got the author to Skype into our classroom and talk to us! They felt like they were on cloud 9.
Years ago, in another building and school district, while I had this same struggle with accommodating students and on top of that I was dealing with behavior issues in a self-contained class, a colleague asked me, “Why do you put yourself through this? Just give them packets so they’re quiet and you can get other things done.” I put myself through this because well, it’s my job to! I don’t have all the answers in educating ELL students and getting them to the level they “need” to be at.
What I can say is, in a dignified learning community, these students will grow. They don’t have to “meet standards” on the test that is being given out this week, but they can grow to love reading, become democratic informed citizens, and find themselves as they mature into adulthood.
Sarah is a language arts teacher on the northwest side of Chicago. She has over a decade of teaching experiences and has worked with students of all levels and abilities. Sarah has strong interests in differentiated instructional practices and integrating social justice themes across content areas.
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