TELL Specialist Ed. M2: Task 2-Struggles

Interview Time!

Choose 1 of the 3 questions below to answer. In order to respond to your chosen question, incorporate the learning materials reviewed, conduct research, visit a school and/or interview an ESL teacher. Also, be sure to share any personal insight and/or experiences of your own in your response.


Question 1: What struggles do students that are newcomers can face in the educational system? As a leader in your school (going beyond the classroom), what are the steps you will take to ensure students do not get lost in the shuffle? What successful strategies have your encountered in your professional career? What are some obstacles you may face and how can you ensure success?


Question 2: ELL teachers have to consider and embrace the aspects that make students unique. This includes such things as race, culture, heritage, religion, political background, geography, history, language, etc. These are after all additional considerations that play into their rate of language acquisition. As a leader in your school (going beyond the classroom), how can you support language acquisition?


Question 3: As a leader in your school (going beyond the classroom), how can you best provide the parents of newcomer students support for their children/child’s education regardless of not being able to speak English?

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Question #3:

I reached out to a friend who was in their practicum and got in touch with their mentor in their school who was willing to answer a question for me. I suspect the leader of the ELL department in the school has had many experiences with newcomer families as it was a fairly nonchalant response to the question that was given, very interesting and I hope to get the opportunity to work with people with these sorts of experiences in the future,

"For Q5, I would add that you can approach a settlement agency in the community to provide additional resources for the parents and child(ren).E.g. there are after-school Homework Clubs and English support programming for immigrant and refugee youth. I used to work for an immigrant-serving settlement agency and this past summer, another teacher finishing her AQ came by to interview one of our workers."
In regards to some of the readings from this module, a common struggle that newcomers face is integration. According to "Many Roots, Many Voices" one way for teachers to accommodate newcomer families and students is by actually getting a community member who is familiar with the background of the newcomer family and speak to staff/family(2007). Furthermore experiences like this one make it possible for ideas and experience to inspire growth in teachers and youth. "Building Capacities" speaks about building vocabulary in youth and assisting in the development of a strong communication base (2009). In developing experiences like this for oneself, a teacher is capable of seeing what potential experiences there are for students and how they can incorporate these experiences into the lives of their students, potentially helping students network to complete community service hours and/or finding placements for cooperative learning experiences. The point is, in building opportunities for one family in the community, we are building opportunities for leadership in the community and once someone feels confident enough to lead, organize a novel situation-its quite incredible to witness the growth (regardless of how little).