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Classroom tales: A diary

November 10, 2010

Time for an ELL Update

by Ruben Brosbe, at 1:07 pm

I teach in a school filled with English language learners. Most of their families are originally from Dominican Republic, followed by Mexico, then various Central and South American countries. To meet the needs of these students and their families my school and most schools like it send out letters and report cards in both English and Spanish. Pretty good effort to help our ELLs, no? There’s only one problem: not all our ELLs speak Spanish.

While the majority of the students in my class and school speak Spanish at home, a growing number do not. Over the past few years (and longer in many places) the demographics of my school’s community and the Bronx in general have been shifting to include a growing number of families from West Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. In spite of the changing ELL population, it doesn’t seem like the school or the city is keeping up pace.

A lot of ESL providers still equate ESL with speaking to the students in Spanish. And tonight I handed out English report cards to several families who don’t read or speak English fluently. If the city isn’t making report cards readily available in Arabic, Fulani, Vietnamese, Hindi and the numerous other languages spoken by our students, it needs to start. If translation into those languages is available (I imagine it is) then schools need to step up to have these materials on hand to meet the multilingual needs of their population. We all know English Language Learner doesn’t just mean Spanish Speaker. It’s time for our practice to reflect this understanding.

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  • Ms. Smith

    ELL’s have been poorly treated in this city since Rudy Guiliani tried to do away with bilingual education in 2000. Update the materials? We have ELLs in small schools who are all in the same class regardless of level.The state now only funds ELLs for three years regardless of the level of their education in their first language. Students choose schools for their bilingual programs but schools do not hire certified bilingual teachers or teachers who speak the native language at all. ELL’s are rountinely given to ELA or special ed teachers with no training who use methodology and tests that are not supposed to be use on ELLs. I can go on and on . It’s seems like translating report cards should be the least of their problems

  • Jean Hopkins

    They are in a foriegn country mostly by choice for economic and life enriching reasons. Some or most of the onus for learning the language should be in their court. Outside of the schools there is no reason to learn English – television, magazines, news etc are all in a multitude of languages. People live in a nonEnglish ghetto. There is no motivation to learn English….witness store personnel jabbering on and on in Spanish.. ELL should occur outside the school system on the immigrants time….Children when immersed learn English rapidly. Notices should be sent in English and I am sure concerned parents can find someone to translate for them or suffer lack of knowledge and perhaps even… consequences. Stop this expensive bending over backward nonsense. It creates a passive underclass that just demands more. European immigration had no such crutches and excelled in America….do not underestimate the power of hard work and motivation.

  • roma giudettij

    I have to say I agree with Jean.  There is no motivation to learn English.  For many of the kids and parents understanding English is like understanding the Centigrade reading of temperature.  I see it there along with the Fahrenheit reading, but I don’t really know what it means, and I certainly don’t need it to understand whether I should wear a sweater or not.  

  • Ms. Smith

    The Americans rear their ugly head. Obviously the above writers are not ELL teachers. Immigrant students are the best in the system They are highly motivated and intelligent but academic English takes time. Students who come into the system as teenagers cannot be”immersed” without losing out an important content knowledge. It is our responsibility to do it right not to pander to the unscientific nonsense of people who still cling to the myth old of “days of ole”. My European parents never had to pass an English regents and years of English school has not succeeded in teaching them how to write a college level essay.

  • roma giudettij

    Ms. Smith, agreed the educating of ELLs is much more complex than I acknowledged.  It’s not that I don’t think ELLs are intelligent or that it doesn’t take time to learn a second language.  I speak, read, and write English as a second language having grown up in Rome.  However, what I notice is that we continue to ghettoize or marginalize many of these kids.  I understand that you need to have good literacy in your first language in order to learn a second language well, yet what I see happen is the students get a lot of L1 and the transition to L2 is not pushed.  I worked in a school where everything was taught in Spanish.  All the kids spoke Spanish.  All the teachers spoke Spanish and the kids learned English for an hour a day.  They were middle schoolers and for 3 years they were immersed in Spanish with the idea that gaining literacy in L1 would make it easier to learn English.  But they never felt an urgency to learn English.  Agreed, our ESL students are highly motivated, but that’s not enough.  Unfortunately the U.S. is n’t New York and when you leave New York, there are very few jobs for people who don’t speak, read, and write English well.  Agreed also that immigrants of yore were able to get good jobs while not reading or writing academic English.  My great grandfather never learned English, but worked as a gardner at a public library thus earning a good salary.  So there is a lot at stake for these kids in learning academic English.  I think we need to do a better job of helping them and their parents learn English.

  • Jean Hopkins

    I absolutely expected Ms. Smith’s response. Of course there is a power base that wants entitlements. It involves jobs, money and power. Of course it will be defended by those who benefit financially(and socially). Intensive ESL education should be done outside of the actual school environment funded perhaps partly by Federal monies(not a big fan but will agree) and tuition by those needed EXTRA help. In NYC it has reach a breaking point. Enough is enough. Why is it so different TODAY? Basic attitudes of today’s immigrants who blatantly fly back and forth to their mother country yet reap the freebies of the US. The “Days of Old” were very proud to work hard and strive to succeed in an alien land. It was an embarrassment not to…first generation did not necessarily go to college ..maybe second..maybe third..it was an earned privilege..a ladder to climb…. With the advent of widespread television learning English should not be as difficult as it was in those “days of ol”…it should actually be easier….unless of course you refuse and watch other stations and basically refuse to learn English….well then I guess you better demand translations and translators and special classes and special books and extra checks and better housing and medical care..and air conditioning and transportation to all those free md appointments and vouchers for student uniforms…and free education and special consideration for testing and don’t forget to bad mouth the US through the whole process(creating some PC guilt so you can get even MORE)…….wow I am almost as exhausted writing it as I am paying for it…

    Let the reponses begin…doesn’t matter…there really is no justification for what is occurring in NYC….and you already have the entitlements…enjoy…just know it is not deserved. It is a gift.

  • Ms. Smith

    Kids who fly back and forth to their”motherland” and refuse to learn English are not the norm by a long shot. Enough said.

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