Introductions

[Lydia Breiseth]

Please let us know a little bit about yourself -- teaching experience, interests, hobbies, favorite children's book, etc.!

[Norma Reyes]

I'll introduce me. My name is Norma Reyes and I teach ESL 5/6 at a high school in San Diego, CA. ESL 5/6 is the last ESL class that my students get. I'm lucky to have small classes and to have my kids for two periods a day.
My school district is in the process of reinventing our curriculum. We use WRITE units for writing, and the Quest textbooks (which i'm not a fan of). This is my fourth year teaching, and third year with ESL.
I find that I am quite boring as a teacher because our curriculum is so scripted, but lacks support or transfer of concepts (honestly, i'm not even sure what they are and this is my second year with this curriculum). I find myself realizing that when I started this position and knew nothing I did a better job. The only training I was given was from QTEL (Quality Teachers of English Learners). I created my own units using texts that students will be expected to read in the next year. I find that I'm getting ready to go rogue and toss Quest out the window. Let someone else pick up the Quest and may they enjoy it and learn from it.

Sorry for the complaint, but this has really been bugging for the last couple of months as I realize that the texts are all informational, which is good, but really dry and geared more toward an ESL student in college.

[Kelly]

My name is Kelly and this is my first year teaching first grade ESL. I have spent the last 8 years teaching second grade ESL. I am required to teach the same curriculum as all the other teachers with additional langauge and vocabulary development activities that I come up with and implement.

I love the kids I work with, although there seems to be less support for the program this year...

[Marylind Arroyo]

Hi! I am an ESL Teacher at an elementary level school in Manatí. PR. I'm also working towards completing my Ed.D. in Teaching. Currently I started my pre-disssertation seminar. I've always been interested about working with a culturally pertinent curriculum for my students. All the material we get is good literature, but based on material not related to our culture. I'm always looking to enrich my classes with other materials that will catch my students attention. I'm looking forward to share with other ESL teachers about their interests and effective practices.

[Poornima]

Hi! I'm Poornima D'Souza. I work as a School Home Liaison with the Sioux Falls School District. I'm a bridge between the school and the refugee & immigrant students and their families. This is my 6th year with the district. My country of origin is India. We moved to the U.S as my husband was transferred from IBM India to IBM U.S. on an offshore project. I have two children. My son is a sophomore in college and my daughter is a junior at High School. My hobbies are web designing and graphics.
http://multiculturalmosaic.ning.com/
http://poornima.wikispaces.com/
I'm looking forward to collaborate and share resources and effective practices with other members

[Haley]

I teach five periods of high school ELD in Irvine, CA, where I have taught students for about 10 years, and have been teaching for about 20 years. My students speak a variety of languages, with over 60 languages other than English spoken natively on our campus, but my students primarily use Farsi, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Spanish while they learn English as a new language. Most of my time with students is devoted to students in our Newcomers program. I speak other languages but not the exact ones of most of my students, yet find the experience of learning languages transfers.

I am a teacher/mentor with a nearby university where I work with future teachers. I work on a secondary EL teacher grant and am particularly excited about how to build academic vocabulary in content areas, on the status of EL PLCs around the US, and on how teachers are coping with so many budgetary challenges in California at the same time being held to so many standards. I have taught in other content areas and in adult education for many years. I spend much time on improving instruction and working on interventions, frequently for my own students.

I am a graduate student studying Curriculum & Instruction. I am in an Educational Diversity course at this time. I attend a long class in Laguna Hills in Orange County one night a week in an accelerated cohort of experienced teachers. I researched homework policies, technology and RTI in particular over the past year. I attended a wonderful workshop on Bringing Words to Life, Robust Vocabulary Instruction with Isabel Beck of the University of Pittsburgh this week.

I may be beginning to forget my hobbies, but they include music, writing and reading. I heard about this EL Ning through reading a blog summary in Ed Week. Many times my needs closely match the needs of other teachers, and sometimes at other levels, and then once in a while I have a specific EL high school related need and not always during the school day but earlier or later in the day as I reflect.

I am entering finals week and evaluating student work at this time, but hope to update my profile shortly. Thank you for making me feel welcome.

[Laura Lamarre Anderson]

I'm Laura, a second year teacher. This year I accepted a job as the ELD teacher for a K-4 elementary school in Lowell, MA - last year I taught ESL Kindergarten. I LOVE my work, but am still working out the kinks and trying to get organized (never ending process). Most of my students are from Cambodia (or their parents were) but we see kids from all over the world. I work with a great principal who really supports ELD work and, although we don't have enough staff to provide adequate services to everyone, we are moving in the right direction.
I make use of the Colorin Colorado website regularly and look forward to great discussions on this site.

[Matt Johns]

What a fascinating bio. I was curious if you came across any specific RTI models for secondary ELLs in your research? I have done some preliminary reading and the vast majority of scholarly research is focused on elementary literacy or language acquisition. We are seeking to develop an RTI model at the high school level that would allow us to monitor and meet the needs of long term ELL students. Any findings you have would be much appreciated.

Haley said:

I teach five periods of high school ELD in Irvine, CA, where I have taught students for about 10 years, and have been teaching for about 20 years. My students speak a variety of languages, with over 60 languages other than English spoken natively on our campus, but my students primarily use Farsi, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Spanish while they learn English as a new language. Most of my time with students is devoted to students in our Newcomers program. I speak other languages but not the exact ones of most of my students, yet find the experience of learning languages transfers.

I am a teacher/mentor with a nearby university where I work with future teachers. I work on a secondary EL teacher grant and am particularly excited about how to build academic vocabulary in content areas, on the status of EL PLCs around the US, and on how teachers are coping with so many budgetary challenges in California at the same time being held to so many standards. I have taught in other content areas and in adult education for many years. I spend much time on improving instruction and working on interventions, frequently for my own students.

I am a graduate student studying Curriculum & Instruction. I am in an Educational Diversity course at this time. I attend a long class in Laguna Hills in Orange County one night a week in an accelerated cohort of experienced teachers. I researched homework policies, technology and RTI in particular over the past year. I attended a wonderful workshop on Bringing Words to Life, Robust Vocabulary Instruction with Isabel Beck of the University of Pittsburgh this week.

I may be beginning to forget my hobbies, but they include music, writing and reading. I heard about this EL Ning through reading a blog summary in Ed Week. Many times my needs closely match the needs of other teachers, and sometimes at other levels, and then once in a while I have a specific EL high school related need and not always during the school day but earlier or later in the day as I reflect.

I am entering finals week and evaluating student work at this time, but hope to update my profile shortly. Thank you for making me feel welcome.

[Haley]

We needed to begin very basic. What was our mission? How do we initially identify our EL students? We looked to our instruction in its various settings, ELD, SDAIE, and mainstream. We needed a common language to discuss items with each other, LEP, FEP, R-FEP, or EL/ELL and then we were off and running. We were trained at various times and needed to understand each other and share common terminology, even if we understood what we met in any language. We observed each other including in across content areas and then we began to consider our instruction and responses. We work on it day by day and week by week in parts.

I am unsure where you are at in the RTI process, but I will simply express what we did, over time. We developed a pyramid of interventions with program supports in tiers. To do this we looked to ourselves and beyond our school and district. Who had a rapid process of EL language acquisition and what contributed to this development of language? Did these campuses have similarities to ours, in terms of formal and informal assessments and student demographics? We were comfortable with our program design. We moved into areas we would like to develop. I had to learn far more about budgets than I ever wished to know, but it is helping at this point, and maybe I had a personal need to understand budgets to understand why things were the way they were. It is not a requisite and yet it helped me to consider the big picture.

I model effective strategies in my classroom, and I differentiate instruction. I am not just writing that either. I have been working at it for years. I tutor students one on one or in small groups for the CAHSEE-ELA, the California High School Exit Exam, English Language Arts section, particularly the writing section. I am a part of Student Resource Teams, so when all teachers, counselors, parents or guardians and the student meet, we help to discern if a problem is a language difference, a language disability, or unrelated to learning language. If we determine the problem may be special ed related, we move into an SST or collect evidence. Those are some of my current areas of focus.

The core of your question asks for research. The research is out there. I began with books by Solution Tree authors for a general understanding of what was and was not a PLC, and what exactly was RTI. In terms of my daily needs, I find that much of what is written about RTI works for most students, including students learning English as a new language. It was in having all teachers work as a team in which we developed, including across content areas. Many interventions are the same for EL students as they are for all students who struggle. I have a sense more people will respond, too, with specific EL information.

Is Pennsylvania an area with many EL students? Send me a message on my wall. Just curious. Thank you for calling my bio fascinating. It has been quite a while since that happened.

[Haley]

For Matt Johns and anyone interested in tutoring as a means of instruction-

Read this article today and recalled your question. It is on RTI in high school settings, specifically on tutoring. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/01/22/19rtiells_ep.h29.html

Matt Johns said:

What a fascinating bio. I was curious if you came across any specific RTI models for secondary ELLs in your research? I have done some preliminary reading and the vast majority of scholarly research is focused on elementary literacy or language acquisition. We are seeking to develop an RTI model at the high school level that would allow us to monitor and meet the needs of long term ELL students. Any findings you have would be much appreciated.

Haley said:

I teach five periods of high school ELD in Irvine, CA, where I have taught students for about 10 years, and have been teaching for about 20 years. My students speak a variety of languages, with over 60 languages other than English spoken natively on our campus, but my students primarily use Farsi, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Spanish while they learn English as a new language. Most of my time with students is devoted to students in our Newcomers program. I speak other languages but not the exact ones of most of my students, yet find the experience of learning languages transfers.

I am a teacher/mentor with a nearby university where I work with future teachers. I work on a secondary EL teacher grant and am particularly excited about how to build academic vocabulary in content areas, on the status of EL PLCs around the US, and on how teachers are coping with so many budgetary challenges in California at the same time being held to so many standards. I have taught in other content areas and in adult education for many years. I spend much time on improving instruction and working on interventions, frequently for my own students.

I am a graduate student studying Curriculum & Instruction. I am in an Educational Diversity course at this time. I attend a long class in Laguna Hills in Orange County one night a week in an accelerated cohort of experienced teachers. I researched homework policies, technology and RTI in particular over the past year. I attended a wonderful workshop on Bringing Words to Life, Robust Vocabulary Instruction with Isabel Beck of the University of Pittsburgh this week.

I may be beginning to forget my hobbies, but they include music, writing and reading. I heard about this EL Ning through reading a blog summary in Ed Week. Many times my needs closely match the needs of other teachers, and sometimes at other levels, and then once in a while I have a specific EL high school related need and not always during the school day but earlier or later in the day as I reflect.

I am entering finals week and evaluating student work at this time, but hope to update my profile shortly. Thank you for making me feel welcome.

[Ruslana Westerlund]

Hello everyone! My name is Ruslana Westerlund. I have emigrated from Ukraine in 1995 and have taught ESL in K-12 schools since then. I have also worked with pre-service and in-service teachers teaching ESL Licensure courses. I am currently designing an online course in the Moodle platform titled Responsive Pegadogy for English Learners. That course will offered at Bethel University in the fall of 2011. I am also in a Doctorate of Educational Leadership, currently in the K-12 Educational Technology course. I work for the Minnesota Department of Educaiton, in the ELL Division supporting Educators of English Learners in the state of Minnesota. I also manage a Refugee School Impact Grant that is provided to school districts that are highly impacted by refugee populations.

Our committe is putting on a great ESL, Bilingual and Migrant Conference on April 29, 30. Our keynote speaker will be James Crawford, a famous name to most ELL teachers.

I am a mother of two children (ages 8 and 4). I consider myself a transcultural person, fully competent and flexible between two cultures and raising my children likewise. My oldest son Julian, by the way, is cheering for the Ukrainian athletes in the Olympics. He is 8 and loves Ukraine. He's been there 3 times with me.

This is a great network. I have started my own two weeks ago and have 195 members from 5 countries: Somalia, Turkey, Ukraine, India and United States. It's on Facebook called Educators of English Learners EELs. Check it out! http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Educators-of-English-Learners-EEL/279141708481?ref=ts

My favorite books are Russian and Ukrainian fairy tales that I pass on to my children. My favorite foods are Indian, Tibetan, Middle Eastern and, of course, Eastern European. My hobbies are outdoor activities: bonfires, biking, running, skiing, waterskiing. Even though I grew up on the river and we had cold snowy winters in a small village in Ukraine, I have never learned how to ice skate. That's what I would like to learn.

It's great to meet everyone!

Дякую і дуже приємно!

Ruslana

[Kimberly Tan]

I have taught 2nd, 4th, 5th grade general ed. classes. I'v also taught university ESL and a 4th grade CTT class. My 5th grade class had 12 ELLs and now I have only 5 ELLs who need extra ESL instruction! I have taught in Spain, Taiwan, China, and currently teach in New York City. I feel out of the loop on ELL instruction this year, so I'm here to share with and learn from all!

[Janet Davis]

My name is Janet. I am working as a teacher on special assignment as a "Professional Development Salary Point Class Credit Advisor" . (I didn't make that up, it's really the job title). I taught in the classroom for 24 years as a Spanish Bilingual teacher. Now I'm enjoying the opportunity to work as one of the three advisors in the PD Collaborative established in our Collective Bargaining Agreement. It's a great job working to help make PD better by coordinating efforts by United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) and LAUSD. UTLA is working to build our AFT Education, Research and Dissemination (ER&D) Program. It's exciting! The School, Family Community Course is one that may be of particular interest to teachers in this group with ELL's.
I'm going to represent UTLA at the California Association of Bilingual Education (CABE) Convention March 12 and 13. The workshops will be Friday 148. Bilingual Education and Civil Rights and Saturday, 230. La Educación Bilingüe y los Derechos Civil. Ricardo Lopez is filling in for my two UTLA sisters who were unable to attend. I'd love to see any of you going to the conference. Thank you Lydia for getting this going.