Middle school EL teachers- TALK TO ME!
Hey everybody,
I teach in a middle school with about 70-80 EL students ranging from newcomers to long term ELs. We have 4 EL teachers. Historically, we have done a mix of sheltered EL classes and push-in support. We say we "co-teach" but it's not actual co-teaching because we don't have any common planning time. ANYWAYS, I am BURNT OUT and our service model is woefully inefficient. We are spread so thin trying to reach everybody throughout the school. We pull kids from core classes and exploratory classes for EL instruction, so they miss exploratories and don't have access to the core curriculum. I'm proposing a shift in our service model next year. I'd like to have a SLIFE cohort that moves together through their core class times and have their core classes co-taught with content teachers and EL teachers. I also want our EL teachers to move toward more content language specialization rather than general EL. For example, I would be the English Language Science teacher. So I would co-teach in science classes across teams. I would still teach reading to our emerging readers, but most of my focus would be on scaffolding science content for our ELs. This would enable EL teachers to focus on one content area rather than several and would allow for students to remain on core teams for most of the day. They also wouldn't need to miss any exploratory times. By keeping our SLIFE and newcomer students together, we can design accessible core classes WITH core teachers so they can benefit from the expertise of both a language specialist and content specialist. This also allows EL teachers more time in the schedule to co-teach and push-in to other content classes to support longer term ELs and dual-identified students.
THOUGHTS?????
Also, If there's anybody out there that does something similar, I'd love to hear from you about what your experience has been. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this model? I'd love to talk with you! Please send me a message or respond here.
At this point, I can't keep doing this hodge podge of EL service delivery. I'M SO BURNT OUT. Something needs to change.