April 2008 — Features
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ELL Spoken Here
Learn to Teach ELLs
An online resource for teachers of English language
learners who want to receive formal professional development
is PBS TeacherLine.
Teacherline's Supporting English Language Learners
series offers three courses for teachers who wish to "learn
skills and techniques that accelerate students' mastery of English
and enable students to keep pace with classroom instruction." The 10-
hour courses are designed to accommodate teachers' busy schedules
and are set to ESL (English as a Second Language) and ESOL (English
for Speakers of Other Languages) standards. The three course offerings,
which focus on preschool and lower elementary school students, are:
Oral Language Development. Offers theoretical and practical information to apply in helping non-native English speakers develop language skills, meet learning standards, and experience success in school.
Vocabulary Development in Grades PreK-3. Explains the similarities and differences between strategies for teaching vocabulary development to ELLs and strategies for instructing native English speakers, and the role that students' knowledge of their primary language has in their success in building a strong English vocabulary.
Assessing Language Development. Explore how to use classroom assessments as tools for diagnosing learning issues and as springboards to more effective educational practices, curricula, and teaching strategies.
PBS TeacherLine's senior manager of instructional design, Elizabeth Wolzak, herself a non-native English speaker, says that teachers taking the courses review each other's work and share resources. "That community is very strong in our courses," she says, "and it's one of the things that the teachers value most."
"In my first position, I was the only ELL teacher in the district," she says. "I was lost, and Dave's ESL Café offered a place to start."
Gundry, who once taught at a school where in one of her classes each of the 13 students spoke a different language, says her own feelings of being overwhelmed and alone subsided only when she began using different online tools and listservs. "You could ask a question and get a global response," she says. "Then I wasn't alone."
That sense of having to go it alone can drive teachers to lose faith in their own abilities. "You don't want to come across as incompetent," Hernandez says. "Because we're in education, how can we say that we don't know how to teach something? You don't want to admit that you're lost, that you need support."
Fortunately, support in the internet age is abundant. Technology has fast become the avenue for bringing ELL teachers together to share lessons, tips, and war stories. One popular web-based meeting ground is the Discovery Educator Network (DEN), an online community of educators swapping instructional ideas and resources. Linda Rush, a technology integration specialist at Notre Dame School, part of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas, became a DEN member two years ago and is now chair of the group's Texas Leadership Council.
