Teaching ELL's: My Philosophy

In the first part of my teaching career, that really is not very long, I taught at a school where 60% of the students were ELL students. The remainder of the students I had in my classroom were underperforming students who majority, came from poverty. With this blend of students in the classroom, teaching an ELL student was a  best practice for ALL students. It was common to hear the following suggestions, or have the expectation of these school wide practices:

• Word Walls
• Translated Texts
• Visual Supports
• Analyzing WIDA/ACCESS test data
• Breaking down words (Rootwords, Prefix, Suffix, Cognate, etc.)
• Summarizng, etc.

There was never a discussion about whether or not we believed ELL Students could or could not learn, it was more around, what are WE [teachers] not doing, to best support the students we have in our classroom.

Now, that I am at a school who's ELL population is 8.9% (exactly 64 out 722 students,) there is a different viewpoint of ELL students and how to support them. I have heard from a few teachers the things that make a teacher cringe, about "these kids." So, to better understand the philosophy of ELL students, I decided to enter a teacher who has been at the school since its founding.

"I think what makes it [teaching ELL students] distinctive is we must teach cultural literacy in addition to cognitive literacy of language and writing. The challenge is the cultural literacy component, but it is the most important because learning the culture of language provides more opportunity towards a better education." 

So then, what is the culture we are trying to teach students through literacy? In a world full of district assessments and high stake state testing, is our focus on supporting our students, like this teacher said, to be able to access a language, or be able to perform academically, so students believe that they truly educated? Meaning, are ELL students taught within our system that it is more important to know if the are scoring Unsatisfactory on a test rather than, that they have the ability to read, speak, write, and think in English?

Thinking about the many differences in both of the schools I have taught in, the one thing they both had in common was the fact that ELL students (and students who are behind in reading) are all able to tell you their ranking on a proficiency band of their skills, rather than finding value in the new language they are acquiring.