What in the Heck is a English Language Learner ( E.L.L )?

English Language Learner( E.L.L ) programs are supposed to be designed to support students  in learning English. The problem is that many E.L.L students only know English and the "support" they are receiving is low quality and doesn't help them grow in the areas they need support in. All of this can be avoided by marking that English is the only language spoken at home when enrolling your child into school.

Transcript

Unknown Speaker  0:01  
Hello, welcome back to inclusive education, the show where I talk about building a more inclusive education for teachers, students and parents. In this episode, I want to talk about what E L L services are, and how students get identified for E L L services. If you are asking yourself what E L L services are, what they currently stand for in the year 2021 is in English Language Learner Services. So in the past, they have been called ESL, English second language, or like additional instruction, I'm not really sure, I know that teachers that have been teaching for a longer than I have have even more acronyms for it. But the general idea is that it is for students whose native language is not English. But before we get into all that, I would like to kind of start the episode with a personal story that I think will lend a little bit more human flavor to this, because I can only speak from my own experience, which overall has been a good one, I would say as a bilingual teacher, someone that has a master's degree in education, someone that continues to work in education, and has a lot of say, into how I delivered my instruction. In other words, how I get to do my job on a day to day basis. And as someone that has been working for six years, I think my personal experience has been a pretty good one. But for the vast majority of students and English Language Learner programs, it is not a smooth ride, it is often very difficult for the students to kind of succeed academically in the tasks that they're asked to do. And schools generally say that they support them by giving them extra minutes where they get to practice English, which seems like the whole school day you're practicing English, but it's something super specific what they're aiming to do. So I wanted to share my story just so you can kind of visualize how this would affect a student or a family on like a day to day basis, or through the span of a few years. Because it's really not that important on a day to day, but it does kind of add up. Like kid don't know anything. I'm an elementary, I'm going to school in Los Angeles, at a public school, LA Unified. One day, my fourth grade teacher, and other teachers and staff are very excited for me. And they're congratulating me that I was able to pass my test, which for me, that wasn't like anything new. I was like, okay, whatever, like. But they were like really excited. And I didn't understand why. And they gave me some document and they told me to give it to my mom. And I did. And then I asked her what it was about and like why people were so excited because it was notable to me as a fourth grader. And I usually don't notice these type of things

Unknown Speaker  3:55  
that my teachers were very excited. But my mom's told me that the paper that they gave us meant that I was now an official English speaker at school. And then that was confusing for me. Cuz I was like, Oh, I've been, you know, like, I talk English all the time. Like, what do you mean, I didn't know English? So I was confused. And then my mom thought that was funny. Now I think it's funny too, because I think it's funny in the way that she thought it was funny. But also I think it's funny now that it's kind of sad because there's not a unique story that students primarily know English but are labeled us English language learners. So before then I had different classes I would go to outside of like my regular school class, like during the school day, I would work with another teacher. They would like kind of helped me out and pronouncing things and also just reading in general. After that moment, like I didn't really Think about that, until Tao as like as an adult, as going through the education like being a teacher. And like kind of seeing it from the other end. Because then I was like, oh, that's what happened to me. Because as a student, like, I just had to deal with less like, I didn't have to be pulled out of the class and even more, and I didn't have to take the English language learner tests. And at that time, they were called ESL. I remember that, because, like, I think even into high school, but especially like middle school, I remember we were like, mean to the kids that were in ESL, we were like, Oh, those are the ESL kids like after them. Like you guys can't even talk English, even though they probably taught English just as well as we did. And sometimes, you know, there were kids that really didn't know much English. But a lot of the kids that were in that program, and still are today, mainly speak English and don't know any other language. And I want to talk about like, how does that even happen? So that's what I'm trying to get to in this episode, like, what is that, like, I don't have anything against the ELL program. But I do want to kind of talk about the reality of it and kind of talk about some of that tea.

Unknown Speaker  6:20  
I wanted to talk about, first how students are even identified this program. And the way I've asked a lot of people and I've seen it happen, happen in different places, different school districts, different states, the way that people, the way that students are identified through this program is not based on their actual skill, but it is based on a survey that is given to their parents when they are enrolled in school. If the home language of the student is anything other than English, then they will automatically be placed in English Language Learner Program. But that's kind of suss. That's kind of like, why would one question you're asking a parent before they enroll their kid to school, I wouldn't affect like their whole school career. Based off of that one question to me, that doesn't sit right. And like academics for a long time. There's, at least for the past two decades, or I've been putting out papers on how being multilingual is actually an asset. And it helps your brain develop, you know, it's something actually that we should all strive for. But in a sense, our school system, for the most children just punishes them, based on them knowing a different language other than English. And sometimes even when they only speak English, they are still punished, which happens a lot in the African American community, that teachers like what I don't get what you're saying, like you need to be an ELL, which is, it's well documented. Unfortunately, we are in a system where if you don't talk Standard English, then you are considered less than, and the ELL program is a huge component of that. So the next part is based on my experience for most people, this is why you should not get into an ELL program. I am suggesting that if even if you're a proud bilingual person, just put that only English spoken into the home, it will save a lot of problems your kid hassle, because most ELL programs are if they're happening, they are taking students out of the general education classroom, they're supposed to receive the instruction and practice time and support that like all their other classmates are getting. And they will be taken from a portion of their day from that, which isn't necessarily bad. But then they will have to either read or write or speak, at least when they're smaller. Like in elementary, when they're in elementary, they're going to be pulled out of their class to do this. Or I've seen if some classrooms have so many ELL students that they might just have a section of their class where they all just do it together with their teacher, which leads me to kind of talk about who gets to be in charge of this program, right? Like if we're looking for like language specialists and whatnot. Like we're imagining someone that's more like dirt just worried about it. Teaching kids how to read or read, read more proficiently or write better or speak better. Or so actually two people that actually do it most of the time is just the classroom teacher in elementary and then middle school and high school, usually the person that does it is already teaching another subject. And they're just kind of tacked on. So I think in the high school level, I've seen a lot of like the Spanish teachers get to teach the ELL class seem pretty overwhelming for that person. And then in the middle school, I've seen like different teachers teach different things, and then also teach ELL classes, which doesn't really give them enough time to prepare, and kind of give the students the attention that they need, because they're all in different places. And it's really hard to kind of just teach them all at once, because there's some kids that don't speak barely any English. And there are some kids that only speak English and need a lot of help reading.

Unknown Speaker  11:05  
So there are two different places. And they have like 40 to 50 minutes together. So as you can imagine, I'm trying to describe it carefully. For people that haven't been there or done work in this setting. It's not ideal, it's terrible. Like, if I was a parent, I wouldn't want my kid in that class. Because it doesn't seem like a good use of their time. Another obstacle, ELL students have to struggle with his testing, they have to at least once a year take like a formal test. The four subject areas they have to perform in is reading, writing, speaking and listening. And they have to pass all four components. And the older the student is, the harder it is to test out because they need to get a higher score. And I've seen my kids get really stressed out for tests. When I was a student, I didn't really realize this, I think in college, I realized that I wasn't one of those kids. But I as a teacher, I get to see that, and they get really overwhelmed, they don't know what to do. And then this is time that they could be in class as well. But they need to finish this test to see if they can exit the program, or remain in it. Again, there's a few things that can happen. But usually, either the kid gets really overwhelmed and gives up and then has to do it again next year. Or they do it and then they still miss class. And they don't pass. So usually the key trick reclassified students where they're like, Okay, now you are officially an English only student and you know, the English language. That happens very rarely. And usually staff have to be on board with really trying to help these students get there. So a lot goes into it. So my previous episode, I talked about the stigma of special education. Unfortunately, there's a stigma for ELL students. When I say the words, ESL, students, et brings back a lot of memories for myself. It's basic, this guy in the same program, if I feel that way, students in this program also feel this way. They're kind of labeled, they feel like they're not good enough, because they kind of see their peers that are just like them similar backgrounds. They have to leave the class and do all this and during this class that they feel isn't good. And it just makes them feel bad, because they're not in a good class. And, you know, all these things affect us as humans. And it's hard to kind of put it all into words, but the students are aware that they're in the ELL program, and they don't feel great about it. And then they also don't feel great about it when they have to test for it, because they already have low self confidence. And then even then, I depending on where you are the different students, they might, you know, talk smack about kids that are in the ELL program. I also wanted to kind of give a little preview for the next episode, which is also like a big chunky one. So I wanted to break it up into two pieces. They overlap in between ELL students and sped students. So some ELL students are placed to sped because they're being assessed and English only and they speak a different language, put into a different bucket. Really, they don't need that support they need to be taught in their primary language. are tested in their primary language in order to kind of get a fair assessment of who they are. So there's a lot of weird oversights like that that happened in education. And they kind of want to explain a lot of this type of stuff. So hopefully, you have learned a few things. By listening to this podcast, you learned that ELL stands for English language services, and that they're horrible. And you can avoid them completely by just putting that English is the main language for the students at home. Completely avoid this whole bath, you learned about my personal story and how I reclassified as an English language learner. Student on the other side and no English, you kind of learned about

Unknown Speaker  15:56  
how people get classified in this. You have learned how it looks like on a day to day basis from like K to 12. Not enough planning time for the teachers, teachers are over overwhelmed. And the student has to test once a year and they get really stressed out about it. You've also learned about how students in this program get labeled. And you've heard about I have also preview the next episode, which is going to be about English language learners. And the relation to special education. There's a lot to unpack there. I want to thank you guys for listening to this podcast. It makes me really happy when I see that people have actually listened to it. There's been way more listens than I had anticipated. And I want to maintain being consistent with making the episodes. I just went through a boo. So I had to get all my stuff set up. But now I'm back and I'm gonna try to keep making some episodes for y'all. And now I have a different perspective that I want to continue sharing with you guys so should be excited about that. If you want more people to find out about this podcast, thanks for just share this podcast thing with them or share by Instagram posts about it. My Instagram is for verchachipupusa v e r c h ACHIPUPUsa and I got my little podcast thing on there too and I have posts

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