Motto: You Are On Your Own

A friend of mine, also from the NYC Teaching Fellows, was recently hired at a struggling elementary school in Manhattan. She is the only ESL teacher there because the other one quit about a month ago for “personal” reasons or some such. I doubt it was personal. It’s nearly December and the school still doesn’t know who their ELLs are. Have they not tested them? Or what? They told my friend she could “start teaching tomorrow!” but she has no students, no classroom (she’s a push-in) and nowhere to even hang her coat!

My school is far better organized and disciplined; they have one person responsible for testing all new ELLs. They have ten ESL teachers, including myself, most of whom have decades of experience and genuinely care about the students. There are areas where it needs to grow, too, of course.but this school is actually a great environment for ELLs and new teachers like myself because of all the support.

But one thing is sorely lacking. An ESL curriculum. My understanding is most schools don’t have one. So teachers end up creating their own lesson plans from scratch, although the veterans have years worth of chart tablets filled with lessons. This may be good for inviting creativity from the teachers, but there’s no real way to offer the students a comprehensive, “equal” education where every student is judged by the same goals and criteria. The main goal seems to be to get the reading on level, as determined by the Fountas & Pinnell reading levels.

If you’re reading this and are a teacher, does your school have an ESL curriculum? What are your thoughts on it?