The Importance Of Educational Challenges In Education

Within the past ten years, the number of English Language Learners (ELLs) has doubled. An increase of more than 2 million ELL students in the U.S schools, left professionals within the field of education with no choice but to face the challenge of understanding cultural differences. In addition to this, educators must understand how these differences affect students’ language development, learning style, academic achievement and most importantly, his or her performance on standardized tests. These differences must be understood, valued and respected by all service providers, especially those who are involved in the decision making process concerning the placement of students in special educational programs. (Roseberry-McKibbin, 2014).

in the first language, and it is the language that children begin to construct their knowledge and form meaningful communicative relationships” (p. 1). According to Karen Ford (2017), “Parents are also instrumental in supporting early language development” (p. 3) in the ELL student. With that being said, successful early childhood programs build upon the knowledge the young learners bring from home. Children come to literacy learning with varying knowledge; henceforth, the pathway to literacy is developmental. It’s the educator’s responsibility to assess and start where that child is developmentally and build on `prior experiences and knowledge. Educators must know their students as individuals, including their interest, their attitudes about reading, and their school and home experiences to provide robust classroom instruction with learning opportunity to meet individual needs.

In this article, the authors examine the challenges of working with English Language learners with learning disabilities. The article begins with a dilemma that many educators face daily, being able to meet the needs of all students in a classroom. The article identifies the characteristics of LD students, issues ELL students face learning a second language and the cultural context for teaching and learning. The next part of the article offers a framework that addresses the educational needs of students based on their language, disability and culture. It focuses on how general and special educators along with the ELL teacher can effectively collaborate together to meet the needs of all learners.

Teachers must find ways to communicate with one another if students are the ones being pulled to one side instead of another. As a way to check communication and vertical student preparation, a group of Alabama eighth-grade language arts teachers in the Jefferson County School District were asked to rate a list of ten items for their importance in preparing their students to enter high school. The same questionnaire was given to the district 's ninth -grade English teachers to ascertain their expectations for their incoming ninth grade students.

Ginny Osewalt shares with her readers five common techniques when working with students that have difficulties in learning and those whose principal language is not English. Osewalt prompts educators to keep in mind that the pace within the classroom my need to be slowed down to accommodate or stepped up to challenge individual students. She also stresses that all teachers need to use a variety of methods to meet all students needs and varied learning styles.

I visited PS 181 's language arts classroom for a period of 4 sessions, and stayed 2 hours per visit I recorded notes of interactions between the students/instructors, and my own conversations with the teachers. Since I was observing two classrooms at PS 181, I established a rapport with the teachers to get a clearer understanding about their jobs, asks about the standards that are in place, and whether or not the current structures in place are effective. Both classrooms contained a large amount of students. The middle school has a total of 4 6th grade classes, including a special education classroom of 12 students, 1 teacher, and 1 paraprofessional. The classed I visited included students of mixed proficiency reading, and writing levels. Upon entering these two classrooms on different occasions I noticed the bulletin boards listed classroom procedures. It’s important for the students to have a sense of accountability for their own actions. I also liked that both classrooms established procedures with the students so that when the students failed to follow the procedures they were breaking their own policies.

Those who are currently teaching are required to take a course called Rethinking Equity and Teaching English Language Learners (RETELL) or Secondary English Language (SEI) course so they can be better prepared to teach the students of other primary languages. The data from the ELL students in the three districts are more dramatic than percentages of students with disabilities. Compared to Norwood and Brockton’s ELL student population, Monson only had 7 ELL students in their district in 2016. When comparing the ELA, math, and science scores for all three towns, Monson didn’t even have sufficient data to record. Norwood and Brockton however, had interesting data to compare. In ELA, Norwood scored higher than Brockton with a percentage of 41 and Brockton at 13 percent for students who performed with high proficiency. In math, Norwood had a 40 percent higher academic standing, whereas Brockton only had 15 percent. Both Monson and Brockton ELL students performed below the achievement gap goal with negative scores. Norwood, however, performed above the state level for all three subjects. There was no data found in the scoring of ELL students in Monson for MCAS scores. Out of the 5th grade ELL students in Norwood, who participated in the MCAS, 6 scored in above average, 31 percent scored in proficient, 50 percent scored needs improvement, and 13 percent scored as failing.

Under IDEA (2004), Disproportionality continues to exist in several categories listed, especially the categories of the Specific Learning Disability (SLD), Emotional Disturbance (ED), and Intellectual Disability (ID) ,(Gamm, 2007). Disproportionality is defined as the “overrepresentation” and “under-representation” of a particular population or demographic group in special or gifted education programs relative to the presence of this group in the overall student population (National Association for Bilingual Education, 2002). So many factors are responsible for this disproportionality, but the key factors, as apparent from researchers are; (1) gender difference, (2) overrepresentation of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse CLD population, (3) unsuccessful teaching approaches, (4) poor classroom management skills, and (5) assessment policies and practices.

The school has many bilingual teachers and staff that are able to communicate with our Non- English speaking students. It is important that the communication needs of students are met and that they are spoken to in their native language. If students are not able to communicate because of a language barrier, then there is no way of knowing if their educational needs are being met. The student could then be misclassified as learning disabled when in reality they are struggling to learn because of the language barrier. There is also staff who can communicate with our hearing impaired students using American Sign Language as well as staff that are able to help blind students who read Braille. It is also important that the communication needs of these students are met as well. The school also has staff that comes from all different types of cultural backgrounds. Having a multi- cultural staff in a school is beneficial because they are able to better understand the mannerisms and communication styles of the students from the same culture. Students who come from different cultures may have different learning style and modes of communication. Staff member within that culturl would be more able to understand that specific students needs.. The diverse faculty and staff are also able to help communicate with the

In which cases students that come from disadvantaged homes, have learning difficulties that go away, misses extensive amounts of school and it affects their grade, students with vision impairments, or students that are cognitively below the learning standards and it affects their everyday living. Students must be affected in the areas of speaking, listening, reading, writing, processing, and mathematics.

Objective IV: Ensuring success for all students through high quality engagement strategies that support literacy development

Education sets out to achieve many goals, among them are empowering students with the ability to learn how to think critically and solve problems, how to work independently and cooperatively with others, and how to become lifelong learners. Meeting the needs of students is a difficult task, but even more so when dealing with students who are not proficient or possess limited skills with the English Language. Public schools across the country have seen significant growth in student diversity in the last few years in regards to race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and language (Johnson, 2015).

The modern classroom has many challenges that face it. Shrinking budgets, less parental involvement, higher expectations, and growing class sizes, just to name a few. If this list was not daunting enough you also have the special needs students that have an array problems in your classroom that need specialized attention, lessons and seating. There are many forms of diverse learners from students who suffer from ADHD to physical disabilities to students with autism to ones that are bullied in school. There are so many things going on in our students lives we sometimes forget they have lives, pressures and disabilities that affect their performance and attitude in our class that have a profound impact on how they learn. For this paper I

The key to any successful school district is the administration. Teachers essentially provide structure, organization, and the background of a child’s future. To educate students with learning disabilities, it is essential that the staff has the training and resources needed for the appropriate people, place, and time (Lazarus) (What is Inclusion, 2001, n.p). It is unrealistic to expect that regular education teachers will always be aware of the latest research or be able to readily adapt the school's

This article examines the challenges of learning that teachers and students are being faced with now in the “traditional” classroom. It is believed that students are not being able to use their “higher-order” thinking because they are not being provided with contextual support that enables them to actually apply what they are being taught. It has been said that the lack of focus on higher order learning is due to the state standardized testing that the students are required to take each year. The lack of providing contextual support is particularly concerning when considering opportunities in the poor, lower funded rural areas of the US. Schools that are located in the rural areas do not necessarily have access to the same resources and experiences for children that are located in the suburban and urban areas. Another one of the challenges that are seriously facing rural schools, is the inability to hire and retain qualified teachers.