Let me begin by saying, I'm no expert. There are education and language experts out ther that are much smarter than me. They know much more about educational theory and language acquisition than I ever care to know. That is my disclaimer, so let's start the discussion:
What do you know about ELL? Is this a new acronym for you? For me, its a label, that as an educator, is always in the back of my mind. ELL stands for English Language Learner. ELL students are those students who grew up in homes where English was not the primary language. You can always tell, in the education world, if there is a serious concern with students when they give it an official set of letters (ADHD, PBIS, RTI, etc.). Working with the diverse student population that I do, ELL students make up the large portion of our school. It was recent conversations with both administration and faculty that compelled me to write about this as a topic this week.
What sparked my mind dwelling on ELL students specifically was a conversation a group of teachers had in regard to a group of our students who indeed were struggling with their reading and writing due to ELL barriers. There seemed to be two camps: One which was sharing and discussing academic interventions to support our ELL students in their reading and writing. The other seemingly washing their hands of these students as they felt they will never be ready for college, despite anything we have and continue to do to support them. And to be fair, both camps' attitudes are felt at one point or another by every adult in the building...sometimes in the same day.
Now, part of the audacity of my school's mission is to get inner-city, under resourced students ready for college (hence the "college prep" part of our title). By choosing to work with this demographic, one has to be both an idealist and a realist. Ideally, I would like to believe that with enough attention and enough hard work, we can indeed get a 9th graders from a poor economic means, and diverse cultural backgrounds ready for college regardless of the fact that they read and do math like a 5th grader. Putting this into practice however sometimes proves more challenging than walking on water.
This may indeed be easier...
...than this.
What's that? You would like to spice up the challenge even more? Sure, lets throw in the fact that a significant portion of our students are indeed ELL. What often needs to be reminded to the adults in the building (including myself I am ashamed to say), is that ELL does not equal learning disability. Life, may in some ways be easier if it did. We could draft up an IEP (another of those damn acronyms, meaning "individual education plan), as we do with students with disabilities, and get them support from the Minneapolis public schools and tap into a multitude of resources and social workers to help keep them on track. However ELL is NOT a disability. Information acquisition, writing ability and complex reasoning are not an issue. Translation is.
I have become especially sensitive to the ELL students as of late because of the Spanish class I am taking. On a weekly basis we are required to write a 4 paragraph paper. The topics are usually pretty basic. As an example, one assignment was to write an instruction letter to our teacher on "How to have a good time in Minneapolis." In my mind, I know without a doubt, how to have a good time in Minneapolis. I can explain to any English speaker how to do it. I can write volumes and volumes in English about how to have fun. However when it comes to writing this in Spanish, it simply takes a 5 minute writing assignment (in English) and turns it into 2 hours of translating, checking, and double checking my work to make sure my damn verb conjugations are correct. And despite my dilligence and attention to detail, I still end up with a garbled piece of caca writing that looks like a 7th grader with an IEP wrote.
Now, flash over to our students. They are completely capable of learning the content we are teaching. As an example, say they are comparing an contrasting Marxism and Capitalism.
vs. 
Not an impossible task but could pose a small challenge to any 11th grader in high school. First they have to read the material, and in their minds translate what is written into their native language. Then they have to form their arguments, then they have to translate their arguments back into English. They turn it in and receive a low grade, not because their comparisons and contrasting were bad, but because they couldn't for their lives put together a grammatically correct sentence. Tough stuff right?
Unfortunately, this is a very real situation. Some of our brightest students are ELL. Sadly, unless they have the work ethic of a work horse, they will rarely demonstrate their academic capabilities. The rock-and-hard-place for us is that we can't lower our academic standards for these students. As they struggle with their language, English first students at other schools are mastering the material with only 1/8th the effort.
Ready for the kicker? Our students are American born. This is the thing that keeps me up at night... If you are a 1st generation immigrant, or exchange student, Colleges and Universities have all the supports a person could want. They even are given certain allowances in their writing because of their status. But not if you are an ELL that was born on this side of the border. What are the ELL Americans to do? They are almost a "hidden" demographic, that gets very little attention. Well, part of our school's job is to not only get the ELL Americans into college but, maybe more importantly, we HAVE to teach them how to navigate the college's writing and math centers. We have to connect them with the right supports and right programs so that they can be successful. We have the task of finding the right colleges where we know, without a doubt, they will be able to succeed (which I might say, our college counselor does indeed do a superb job).
Ultimately however, I need to say this: if an ELL student isn't learning, then it is the fault of the teacher. If our students aren't learning its not because they aren't capable, but because the lessons aren't scaffolded in a way which will best support our students! Obviously traditional methods of teaching haven't worked and continue to not work. I have learned in my 7 years of education that there is a ginormous difference between teaching and learning. Just because I may have taught it, this doesn't mean that it has been learned. I have heard it a million times by some of the best teachers, "I don't get it, I taught it a million times!" Unfortunately, they never checked for how much was learned. My challenge then for myself and all teachers who work with ELL students: always support the students learning, not the teachers' teaching. We need to find new ways to reaching our students, to tap into their knowledge, and overcome the language barrier. At the same time, holding them to the writing and reading standards.
How then do we do this? Well that, I will leave to the experts...
