Experiential Learning

ELL Teacher Interview - Cont 939

3 Aug 2017 - M.Britton

About the Interviewee

Tanya (Name Changed)

District ELL Helping Teacher
Has worked as an ELL Specialist at three different
Secondary Schools
Question 1: What outside agencies do you work with?

Ive worked with Frontier College, which is a Canadian non-profit

that provides volunteers (college students) to work one-on-one with
ELLs.

Not every high school Ive been in has had enough Ells to warrant
bringing in these volunteers. In some schools, there are fewer ELLs
and/or enough peer tutors.

Where the ELLs are primarily new immigrants or refugees, Ive

worked closely with settlement workers. Other schools have a higher
population of international students, in which case I am in contact
with international students liaisons / case workers.
Question 2: What do you feel the school district is doing
well in terms of supporting ELLs?

Our School district has provided a lot of Pro-D and opportunities for
collaboration from elementary to secondary.

We have an initiative called Spirals of Inquiry, which allows for release

time for teachers to collaborate and this has led to some significant
program changes.

We are also working on revamping the questions on the initial

assessments to better reflect best practices.

Another important support is the opportunity for SIOP (Sheltered

Instruction Observation Protocol) training for teachers. Teachers learn
strategies to meet content objectives and language objectives at the same
time. Students are supported in SIOP pull outs or co-taught.
Question #3: What are some of the greatest
challenges facing ELL teachers and what can be
done to alleviate them?

Part of best practices in ELL teaching requires collaboration

with subject area teachers to help pre-teach vocabulary and so
on. This can be really difficult in secondary schools because of
schedules. My availability hasnt always lined up with the
classes that could use my support and with a caseload of up to
130 students its impossible to visit all the classes that Id like to.

Running after school support classes, organizing field trips and

encouraging involvement in extra-curricular activities is also
really important.
Question #4: How welcoming are your
colleagues when you suggest coming into
their classrooms?

You need to have relationships with teachers in order to have

this kind of collaboration work. I found that in the school that
I had worked in for some time, it was no problem because the
teachers I was working with knew me and felt comfortable.
This was not the case when I started at a new school, but that
is to be expected.

I have had some teachers send me lesson plans, units and so on

that I could use to work with my students in their ELL blocks.
Ive had a lot of success collaborating with librarians too.
 After talking with Tanya and having a closer look at
SIOP as a way of supporting ELLs, I am really
encouraged that the philosophy and strategies we
have worked with in this course will have a positive
effect on our students, both ELLs and others that need
support.