Thing 21: Supporting English Learners

This subject is of particular interest to me because I taught in a dual language program for my first three years in the district.  I was the English component of a second grade partnership.  I did not speak any Spanish, and wasn't supposed to have to.  My partner, unfortunately spoke no English! It was her first year teaching also.  Neither of us really knew what we were doing so we spent most of the first year hugging and crying.  The program was supposed to be for students who were at grade level or above in their native language.  However, in an attempt to keep the program from being cut, it was filled with students who had learning disabilities, behavior problems, mental health issues, as well as students who spoke no English at all.  The bilingual programs were full at the time, so many Spanish speaking children who belonged there were put into Dual Language instead.

All of the English halves of the program had an ESL teacher who was supposed to come in daily to support the Spanish children when I had them, and a Spanish as a Second Language teacher went to the English speakers when my partner had them.  To add to my problems in this role, my ESL teacher was often late, did not show up, or was out "sick".  When he was out, he only left a Bingo game as plans. Eventually the program stopped placing teachers who did not speak both languages in the program.  My partner picked up English a lot faster than I picked up Spanish but we were both grandfathered in so we could have stayed indefinitely.  After our third year, my teaching partner decided to move to Florida and since a second grade position in General Education was available, I decided to leave the program.  I don't work in that school any more but I am still friends with many of the dual language teachers and apparently the problems I had have continued while some have gotten worse.  The administration was never very supportive of the program and failed to understand that children who were struggling in their own language did not belong.

If I had my teaching career to do over, I would have like to been certified in ESL so that I could travel and teach now that my children are grown.  Don't even suggest getting another certification! I have enough student loan debt to last me until I'm 70!

Sorry for that long story but I figured it was important to understanding my reasons for being interested in this topic.  At my current school we do not have many Spanish speaking students but we have many who speak Arabic and I would like to be better able to support them.  Coincidentally my father spoke Arabic and I am half Syrian.  I didn't learn much about the language growing up since my parents divorced when I was very young and my father wasn't around much.  As I've grown older, I have become much more interested in my heritage and feel connected to my Arab students even though most of them come from Yemen.  I also became close to my father in the last 12 or so years of his life.  He just died last year at the age of 95.  I went to Florida at least once a year for the last 10 years to see him, but more often two or three times a year. I have the credit card bills to prove it! I was with him when he took his last breath and I wouldn't trade that for a better debt to income ratio.

So now on to Thing 21:


"A February 23, 2017 National Public Radio (NPR) story reported “from 2000 to 2014, the growth of the ELL population was greatest in Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina.  Based on the most recent data available, NPR found that no matter where they go to school, most ELLs are struggling because they have little or no access to quality instruction tailored to their needs.”"(Source: English Language Learners: How Your State Is Doing)

I find this interesting and surprising.  When I think of the states mentioned, I don't think of them as being welcoming to people who are immigrating to the U.S. I may have a skewed perception but I know the history of these states in regards to their treatment of African-Americans.  I have seen first hand how ELL's are treated by other students in our schools. Even some teachers are very intolerant.  A friend who teachees in a Bilingual program told me that her librarian refused to provide instruction to her students "because they won't understand anyway". 

When teaching in the dual language program I often had to defend my students.  I found that teachers did not understand that body language is very important when a child can't understand the words being spoken.  Native English speakers often took offence when my Spanish students spoke to each other in their own language because they were sure they were talking about them.  It was awful.  In my current school I haven't seen as much intolerance but I'm not with the ELL's all day.  I recently had a substitute come and report a college student who is doing his field work in my school.  He is an Arab young man from Saudi Arabia and while on his break he was reading something on a website for Muslims.  The substitute was sure this meant he was a terrorist.  I informed her that he is a Muslim and was not a threat to anybody.  

The chart in the article English Language Learners: How Your State Is Doing shows that the overall graduation rate for NYS is 77.8% while the graduation rate for ELL's is only 37.1%.  Our overall grad rate is bad enough, but in comparison that is a very low rate for ELL's.  West Virginia has a higher ELL graduation rate (89% vs 84.5%) than for native English speakers and this is the only state where that is true.  I guess I have to adjust my perception of how some southern states treat ELL's.  The lowest ELL rate vs. native English speakers is Arizona with only 18% vs. 75.7%.  I'm sure our current administration has done nothing to improve the education of ELL's.  

10 Ways to Support ELL's in the School Library

1. Provide Foreign Language Materials in Easy-Access Displays

I am working on this one but I came across an interesting problem.  Just because a student is in 6th grade, it doesn't mean they can read at a 6th grade level in their native language.  I didn't even think of this at first but our wonderful ELL teachers made me aware.  This goes double for girls from Arab countries because they may have had limited if any exposure to formal education in their country of origin.  So I have been trying to find Arabic books at lower reading levels that are not "baby books".  It's hard enough to do this for English speakers who read well below grade level, double hard to do it in Arabic.  I have found some book sellers who have Arabic materials but they usually have lower reading levels in books that are of interest to young children.  Our second largest population of ELL's is from Nepal.  This is even more challenging to find. 

2. Provide Books and Information on Countries of Origin

I have made it a priority to have books about the native counties of my students.  I also have several books in English with characters that are Arab and/or Muslim.  I especially like one book I found that features a little girl who wears a hijab. It's called Amira's Totally Chocolate World by Samia J. Mair. 
 The story is about how she wishes for chocolate during the fasting time of Ramadan and suddenly her whole world turns to chocolate.  It incorporates some familiar Muslim topics and I found that it gives the native English children a platform for asking questions about Muslim traditions, such as the hijab.  It also is an entertaining story that isn't directly teaching about Muslims, it just happens to be about a Muslim little girl.  I have also found it much easier to find e-books that come in multiple languages, including Arabic and Nepali.

3. Provide Electronic Access to Materials in Other Languages

There are some good websites with books in multiple languages such as 
Table of Contents: Books in Multiple Languages.  This site has many languages available but only one book in Nepali and 5 in Arabic.  It has dozens in Spanish, English, Italian, Romanian, French, Greek, and Portuguese.  There are many more languages that offer just a few....just one in Pennsylvania Dutch, one in Dari, two in Hindi. I followed the advice in the article and made a section for multilingual books on my library homepage.  I added the site above plus two of the recommended sites from the article. This should have been done before now! I have emailed links to teachers who have asked but should have had them on my homepage all along. 

4. Provide Audio Materials and Instruction on How to Use Them

I have many audio materials but they have not been widely used.  I have many books on CD and several Playaways.  I have not pushed the use of these but intend to do this to support these students.  I even have many portable CD players that I can loan to students to listen to books.  Including instructions on how to use them did not occur to me but I will add written directions in addition to promoting their use.  I have to get my school to provide batteries for the CD players and the Playaways which I am confident I can do. I have headphones on my desktop computers that students can use to listen to e-books and audio books in our catalog of electronic materials.  

5. Share Culturally Meaningful Stories

I mentioned a story about a Muslim girl that I use for my second graders every year, it's called Amira's Totally Chocolate World by 

J. Samia Mair, 

Craig Howarth (Illustrator)

"Amira loves chocolate so much that every night before she goes to sleep, she asks God to make everything chocolate. On Eid ul-Fitr, she wakes up to find a totally chocolate world! At first she loves her new world, but when she discovers that she misses all the beautiful colors in nature, she realizes that God, the Creator, knows best." Goodreads.com

Another of my favorites is 

Sitti's Secrets

by 

Naomi Shihab Nye,

Nancy Carpenter (Illustrator)

"Mona’s grandmother, her Sitti, lives in a small Palestinian village on the other side of the earth. Once, Mona went to visit her.

The couldn’t speak each other’s language, so they made up their own. They learned about each other’s worlds, and they discovered each other’s secrets. Then it was time for Mona to go back home, back to the other side of the earth. But even though there were millions of miles and millions of people between them, they remained true neighbors forever." goodreads.com

This one means a lot to me personally because I called my paternal grandmother Sittu which is another form of Sitti.  My father's grandparents were immigrants from Syria at around 1900.  I grew up calling my grandmother this Arabic word for grandmother.  I share this story with my students when I read this book to them.  

I have shared the following book with my students also:

Where in the World is Nepal? Geography Books | Children's Explore the World Books

by 

Baby Professor  (interesting name?)

I want to increase my collection of culturally meaningful books to share with my students.  I find it makes the students from these countries excited to share what is familiar to them and the non-ELL's feel more comfortable asking questions. I am going to work on a list for my collection development over the summer.  

6. Watch Your Words!

I have found I need to watch my words with non-ELL's as well.  Often metaphors are not understood by many children.  I do a lesson every year on similes and metaphors but in addition to this I have to be careful to explain any that I use.  I also stop often as ask if the children know what something means, even some things that I used to take for granted that everyone would know.  I have learned that students will not ask what something means for fear of being laughed at by their peers.  I have also found that the students who do know love to explain a word or phrase to their peers.  I am constantly learning from my students how to be a better teacher. 

7. Make Story Time Interactive

This is an area that I need to improve in.  I am not prone to using songs as much as I should for all of my students, not just ELL's.  I do however, encourage choral reading of repeated phrases by pausing for the students to fill them in for me.  

8. Use Visuals at Story Time

I made a big poster board of There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly by Simms Taback. Her mouth is a huge hole that the students can put the animals into when I get to that part of the story.  I found a plastic fly and spider.  I have Beanie Baby versions of the other animals she eats.  The kids love it.  I made cardboard props for the Halloween version of the story  

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat! by 

Lucille Colandro,

Jared Lee (Illustrator).  In this story she swallows a goblin, a wizard, a ghost, and other Halloween related things so I drew them onto cardstock, colored them, put them on some sturdy cardboard and laminated them.  I want to do the same thing with some of the other "Old Lady" books.  When I have read the story a few times while everyone participates, I let them play with the props and play teacher.  They really like this.  I also have many, many felt board pieces for a ton of fairy tales.  One or more librarians before me must have had a bigger budget because this is a beautiful collection that I use quite often and let the students play with to act out the stories themselves.  

I don't know what just happened to my margins but they seem to have gotten smaller for the above paragraph and now are back to normal.  Hmm. 

9. Use Visuals in Your Correspondence Home

This is something that will definitely help with my ELL's.  It is very hard explaining that library books must be returned.  I have lost quite a few books this way.  I hadn't thought of coming up with a visual representation of returning the book.  I have relied on my ELL teachers to try to explain this to their students.  It must be a very strange concept to my Arab students, especially the girls who may not have ever gone to school before coming to the US.  Great idea. 

10. Promote the Public Library, too!

This is challenging for my non-ELL's as well as ELL's.  In order to get a library card, proof of address must be provided and parents are not inclined to send this with their children....if I can get them to understand what I am asking for.  Many of my students move around very often or don't have a permanent address.  Another problem I run into is that parents or other family members will use the child's library card to take out movies and then not return them so it makes it impossible for their child to continue using the cards.  This also happens with library books that the kids take out.  Returning books and movies seems to be a challenge for many families.  I am glad that the public libraries in my area have started limiting the number of books a child can borrow and I believe they have lowered the number of movies.  

I can't tell you how many times I have been told "we moved and didn't bring the books, movies, whatever, with us."  I didn't understand this until I learned that moving is very often an eviction and is done quickly with only what they can carry.  It's a different world that many of my students live in.  I grew up poor and on Welfare but I had a constant home and was not moved from school to school.  I didn't have relatives that we spent a few nights here and there with.  I have changed my perception on what "poor" is and realize that even though I often went hungry I was much more fortunate than most of my students are.  Now when a student tells me they left their library book at their old house when they moved I don't show my irritation, I just tell them that maybe they should keep their next book in school or put it into their backpack when they aren't reading it.  This has helped.  

As you can tell by how much I wrote about this article, I found it very helpful and interesting.  

I have signs around my library that read "libraries are for everyone" written in many languages and depicting many different kinds of people: people in wheelchairs, gay people (they have rainbow pins on or rainbow clothing) women wearing a hijab, people of all colors, people with a variety of hair and hair styles.  The variety of languages include Arabic, Nepali, Hebrew, Spanish, and English.  The only thing they don't include are people of different sizes.  I am waiting for the world to acknowledge that always showing people who are of average or thin statures stigmatizes the people in the real world who come in all shaped and sizes as well as colors, sexual orientations, and religions.  We are making progress but have a ways to go to make everyone feel that they are included.  

Next I'm reading School Librarians Can Support English Language Learners – Presentation slide deck by Diana Wendell. 

Right away I noticed the percentage of ELL's in NYC is 61% of those in NYS.  I'm not surprised that this number is so high....a trip to NYC makes it seem like this number is very high.  I love the diversity of NYC.  It is my favorite thing about going there.  I was surprised that the number wasn't higher in other parts of the state as well.  I often wonder how destinations are chosen by people coming to the US to settle, especially when I see a high population of ELL's in places like Tennessee, Arkansas, and Kentucky? There are a lot of Syrians and Lebanese in Geneva, NY (where I grew up) and in Utica, NY (where many of my relatives live).  Is this because one family chooses a place at random and other relatives and/or friends follow?  It's an interesting phenomenon. I see that Rochester and Utica made the list of top cities in NYS for ELL's.  I wonder what percent of the ELL's in Utica are Arabic speaking.  Most of the data in the presentation is from 2015-2016.  How much has the Arabic percentage has gone up since then due to the problems in the middle east?  It's scary that this population is increasing while American ignorance and prejudice seems to be increasing as well.  I would not feel comfortable wearing traditional Muslim clothing here or elsewhere in the US.  On International Hijab Day, I did wear a Hijab and on my short rides to school and back I noticed more people noticing me.  I mostly had the hijab on at school so I didn't experience much time out in public.  Frankly I was a bit nervous.  There is a Muslim woman who works at my local Wegmans and I notice her being stared at.  I always smile and speak to her and admire her bravery while feeling ashamed that this is something that requires admiration. 

Most of the info in this slide show came from the article “10 Ways to Support ELLs in the School Library” by Jacqueline Jules which I spent a ton of time on above, so I'm not going to say too much about it.  I did love the poster that said "Hate Has no Home Here" in many different languages.  

This chart of definitions is really helpful, and I'm sure I have used these terms inappropriately at some points in this blog:

◦ESL (English as a Second Language) = older terminology; maybe they have more than two languages??

◦ENL (English as a New Language) = the program 

◦ELL (English Language Learner) = the student 

◦SIFE (Students with Interrupted Formal Education)

 It was nice to see visual representations of the "10 Ways to Support ELL's in the School Library"

I think I need to end this Thing before I write more since I've already written way more than I'm sure you want to read.  I will bookmark many of these resources and continue to incorporate them in my lessons for my students.  I found this to be a very useful and interesting Thing to complete.