First Language Teacher : A Low Amount Of Second Language Teachers

After speaking with Mrs. Cannon she tells me she teaches all content areas, she has 15 English-speaking students, 1 Spanish-speaking student, and 1 Japanese-speaking student. Mrs. Cannon has been teaching for 3 years, however, she has never taught an English Language Learner (ELL) before. She mentions she is not concerned about reaching the ELLs because they can speak English.

When an educator walks into her classroom for the first time, she needs to be prepared to encounter students that come from a variety of backgrounds. The children will be in different stages of language development, and the educator must accommodate for each of these students. Magruder, Hayslip, Espinosa, and Matera (2013) state, “The US Census Bureau projects that by the 2030s, children whose home language is other than English will increase from roughly 22 percent to 40 percent of the school-age population” (p. 9). This increase in second language learners will cause the educator to accommodate for those needs. Second language learners “need teachers who welcome them and recognize their unique abilities, what they know, and what they need to learn” (Magruder, Hayslip, Espinosa, and Matera, 2013, p. 10).

The problem with both bilingual education and English-as-a-second language instruction in the United States lies in our unwillingness to treat English for non-speakers as an academic subject (Haas, 2007). While the bilingual programs in California are thought to be mostly for people who speak Spanish, there are also Asian students that need to be taught proper English before continuing their education. As one anonymous teacher points out: "I have had 32 different languages spoken in my classroom over a 25-year period. Eighty-four languages are spoken in our district."(Anon 1998 & Haas 2007). Which for most teachers mean that it is both educationally and economically impossible to teach every student in their own native language.

Doctors Ana Iddings and Mary Combs are Associate Professors from the University of Arizona who conducted research on how to help English language learners become successful in grades Kindergarten through 12 along with Dr. Luis Moll who is a Professor Emeritus from the named university. Dr. Iddings has conducted individual research on many topics, one being the education and professional development of teachers to work with English language learners (ELLs) and their families. Dr. Combs currently teaches courses in bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) courses on the graduate and undergraduate levels. Dr. Moll’s main research was conducted in education of Latino children in the United States.

This particular article starts out by introducing several numerical statistics in relation to the ever growing population of ELLs in the nation. For instance, one of the very first pieces of information you read states that 20% of the student population in the nation are ELLs. The article also states that many teachers consider themselves less-well are completely unprepared to work with ELL’s while only 12.5% of teachers have actually received 8 or more hours of training to be able to teach ELLs.

With the immigration population increase comes a language barrier increase. Therefore, English as a Second Language (ESL) tools in the classroom is essential. ESL was established in the 1970s when children of many mother tongues, crowded classrooms due to the immigration increase (Tomkins, G., 1981, p.

Sullivan (2011), reports that numbers have fluctuated between states with some reporting from zero to 17.3% and the average falling within 9% (Sullivan, 2011). Huang, Clarke, Milczarski, & Raby Huang (2011), indicate that since the 1980’s, the number of ELL students has doubled with more than 8% in the PreK-12 grades (Huang, et al., 2011). As such, the influx of students has also increased the need for not only new, but experienced teachers to provide language assistance as they acquire English. One reason for this need is that ELL students have the additional pressure of learning English and the content simultaneously and require experienced teachers. When these students begin to struggle, they are left with little resources and wind up being tracked for special education services. According to Stein (2011), there are many complex factors that place so many ELL students in special education services and one of the main ones is the characteristics of second language learning and its false assumption that a learning disability is present (Stein, 2011). According to Hall (2014), when students enter classrooms speaking very little English and the teacher is unable to communicate with them in their native language, ELLs can feel alienated and/or become easily frustrated (Hall, Quinn, Gollnick, 2014). Huang, et al. (2011), states that when

In addition, there is a lack of qualified, well-trained ESL teachers to hire even with enough funding. However, lack of ESL teachers doesn’t just happen overnight. Different

What surprise me was that in 2013 there was a total of 5.3 million ELL students throughout the country. This number is shocking, there are many ELL students in our classrooms settings and yet there are not enough resources and not enough prepared teachers that can work with ELL students in an effective way. It makes you think as a future teacher what should I be doing to better perpare myself for those studetnss? What kind of strategies should I used that would be effective to them. Not only that but as teachers we should also think about on how can we explain to ELL students that they need to maintain their home language while learning English? We, as teachers, see the importance of maintain both languages, of not only speaking it fluently

An ELL student presents a challenge because they may require extra attention and instruction for basic tasks, therefore taking up important instruction time. Gottfried addresses this as well in his findings. In the study, he finds that teacher training is one of the most important things. However, years of experience have little to no impact on a teacher’s ability to teach ELL students; what did have an impact was extra formal training in English as a Second Language (ESL) courses. The more specialized training in ESL a teacher had, the better achievement and socioemotional skills both ELL and non-ELL students possessed, and this is good news for teachers. There are unlimited resources available out there for teachers to partake in to help bolster their understanding and success in teaching new things and students with different requirements. Gottfried also points out that when policy-makers, teachers, and administrators focus on how to improve classrooms without necessarily focusing primarily on academic achievement, then ELL and non-ELL students alike may have increased skills in many areas, including socioemotional. Therefore, any teacher overwhelmed with the task of teaching any student that requires special needs or attention can find resources and training to help them

Gifted, ESE, and ESOL teachers need to be bilingual, a bachelor’s degree, and have at least two years of teaching experience.

Remember high school: homework, unpleasant teachers, deadlines, social interactions and standardized testing. Now imagine dealing with all of that, and other struggles, in a language you barely know; this is what the English Language Learning/English as a Second Language demographic faces daily. ELL/ESL students are twice as likely to drop out of high school as native speakers (Maxwell). Why then, one may wonder, aren’t more resources available to help ELL scholars learn not only English, but all of the subjects a well-rounded education includes?

I decided to become a content literacy teacher because I struggled a lot at school, because of my limited English. As well, because I feel that I did not received the adequate help from my content-area teachers, in other words they expected me to comprehend, and know how write and read in English perfectly. In my perspective second language students fell behind in their academics, because of the need of teachers that are committed to teach not only their subject area but to help students master their reading, writing, vocabulary and language proficiency. This problem leads ELL students to drop out of school, low self-esteem, and insecurity. For my point of view and experience some educators are not trained to deal with these kinds of situations.

The advice I will give regarding the education of English learners is for the teachers to have a lot of patience. Teachers that work with ELs must find ways to present the content using diverse methods. Even though the ELs are not proficient in English, it does not mean that they are unaware of the content. In addition, the ELs bring to the schools diverse funds of knowledge that the teachers may use to make the connections to the content begin taught. One way to have an idea of the diverse funds of knowledge is by understanding the community in which the students reside, including the various strengths from the community, as well as the challenges the community may experience.

To be an ESL student in the regular classroom is not easy for the students and the teachers. Researchers agree that most of the time, the high school and middle school teachers are less prepared to receive this type of students in their classroom (DelliCarpini). In regular classroom is difficult for the teachers to think they have different type of the students in the classroom. ESL students do not like to ask a lot of questions even they are not understanding what the teachers say.