What does having a high percentage of English learners in a class mean in practice?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a school which has about 60% EL population. What does this mean?
Amazing kids from all over the world, who are eager to learn, caring, interesting and funny people. Many of them are smart enough to speak 2, 3 or 4 languages.

My kids who aren't as gifted linguistically, those who can only speak English, are not put on computers so I can "catch everyone else up". Nor are they given a book to read while I "catch everyone else up". In fact, the students who are only able to speak one language are often just in much of "catching up" as my bilingual and multilingual kids, if not more. Yes, even the white, middle income kids need remediation.

I think we need to stop saying our bilingual and multilingual kids need remediation and insist that every single student become proficient in at least two languages in order to graduate 8th grade. And then let's test the kids whose first language is English and see how they perform on assessments after a year or two in Urdu or Spanish or Polish. My guess is everyone else would have to sit around waiting while the "I only speak English" crowd has to catch up.

But, to the OP's question, it means that your child will have friends from different places, who speak different languages and what a rich school environment that will be! I put my own child in a heavily Spanish speaking school. She's now fully bilingual and headed to college on a full ride scholarship in her field of choice. We Americans need to stop understanding "smart" as a 1600 SAT and a top ten university and need to start understanding smart as learning more than one language.

This seems overly optimistic to me. We were in a diverse school and ended up having a child with dyslexia. I think if you have a test taking wunderkind like above they will do well in nearly any school. My kid was just ignored. Granted this was MCPS but APS seems equally hair on fire bad at basics. Also question the friendships this poster says came about - our diverse hood either had mama trying to recreate Mumbai - only play with other boys from Mumbai, cram school or major language differences (parents couldn’t coordinate play dates in English): also as one child got older he found a good friend via soccer but kid lived in such a scary neighborhood- and had likely gang members as friends we said no go to meeting up. Sorry to be the truth teller here but we moved from said diverse hood and at least got English speaking parents who could arrange play dates.

So true. We tried to be friendly with recent immigrants but the inability to communicate, the lack of a car, not even having an email. Unless they were our neighbors it just wasn’t happening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:IME as a teacher 20-30% EL is the sweet spot—you have your core curriculum and then have groups for enrichment, remediation, or language support. Particularly at the lower grades and particularly for literacy, key instruction happens in small leveled groups. I see much more of an impact on the gen ed curriculum when you get to 70% EL or more.

I am an instructional assistant and I agree with this assessment, except of course 0% ESL would be even better lol

[Anonymous]

My experience is dated so this may not be that helpful, but I went to a dcps with a high ESL population in the early nineties. I actually think it was a great experience for me, being with kids from all around the world.

Teachers would often have me pair up with a bilingual Spanish speaking kid to help re explain the lesson to a group of Spanish speaking kids. I liked doing that.

I also liked flying under the radar screen a lot because the kids who were esl did take up lots of the teachers time. They teachers would let me just hang out and read and write. My parents would only let me take high quality books to school to read, usually history books like biographies. I also would get dispatched to the first grade class room to help run reading groups with the younger kids.

I’m a professor now and I sometimes joke I should get to put my teaching experience from grade school on my cv!

This worked for me, but I was advanced and well behaved and had no special needs. I went to a top private school after grade school and was ahead in English and history but behind in math and science.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a school which has about 60% EL population. What does this mean?
Amazing kids from all over the world, who are eager to learn, caring, interesting and funny people. Many of them are smart enough to speak 2, 3 or 4 languages.

My kids who aren't as gifted linguistically, those who can only speak English, are not put on computers so I can "catch everyone else up". Nor are they given a book to read while I "catch everyone else up". In fact, the students who are only able to speak one language are often just in much of "catching up" as my bilingual and multilingual kids, if not more. Yes, even the white, middle income kids need remediation.

I think we need to stop saying our bilingual and multilingual kids need remediation and insist that every single student become proficient in at least two languages in order to graduate 8th grade. And then let's test the kids whose first language is English and see how they perform on assessments after a year or two in Urdu or Spanish or Polish. My guess is everyone else would have to sit around waiting while the "I only speak English" crowd has to catch up.

But, to the OP's question, it means that your child will have friends from different places, who speak different languages and what a rich school environment that will be! I put my own child in a heavily Spanish speaking school. She's now fully bilingual and headed to college on a full ride scholarship in her field of choice. We Americans need to stop understanding "smart" as a 1600 SAT and a top ten university and need to start understanding smart as learning more than one language.

This seems overly optimistic to me. We were in a diverse school and ended up having a child with dyslexia. I think if you have a test taking wunderkind like above they will do well in nearly any school. My kid was just ignored. Granted this was MCPS but APS seems equally hair on fire bad at basics. Also question the friendships this poster says came about - our diverse hood either had mama trying to recreate Mumbai - only play with other boys from Mumbai, cram school or major language differences (parents couldn’t coordinate play dates in English): also as one child got older he found a good friend via soccer but kid lived in such a scary neighborhood- and had likely gang members as friends we said no go to meeting up. Sorry to be the truth teller here but we moved from said diverse hood and at least got English speaking parents who could arrange play dates.

This sounds very similar to our experience too, except the problem was that parents spoke very little English and had no interest in playdates or birthdays because they celebrated and hung out within the diaspora.
Fortunately got a spot at a good school in 3rd grade and it was night and day- my kid made a lot of friends.
Of course it was 60% ELL and low income and not 30% but still.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a school which has about 60% EL population. What does this mean?
Amazing kids from all over the world, who are eager to learn, caring, interesting and funny people. Many of them are smart enough to speak 2, 3 or 4 languages.

My kids who aren't as gifted linguistically, those who can only speak English, are not put on computers so I can "catch everyone else up". Nor are they given a book to read while I "catch everyone else up". In fact, the students who are only able to speak one language are often just in much of "catching up" as my bilingual and multilingual kids, if not more. Yes, even the white, middle income kids need remediation.

I think we need to stop saying our bilingual and multilingual kids need remediation and insist that every single student become proficient in at least two languages in order to graduate 8th grade. And then let's test the kids whose first language is English and see how they perform on assessments after a year or two in Urdu or Spanish or Polish. My guess is everyone else would have to sit around waiting while the "I only speak English" crowd has to catch up.

But, to the OP's question, it means that your child will have friends from different places, who speak different languages and what a rich school environment that will be! I put my own child in a heavily Spanish speaking school. She's now fully bilingual and headed to college on a full ride scholarship in her field of choice. We Americans need to stop understanding "smart" as a 1600 SAT and a top ten university and need to start understanding smart as learning more than one language.

Omg this is some fantasy land BS right here
Other posters have already covered the truth about elementary - your average or above average kid will be basically ignored and handed a book, ipad or some coloring sheets or simple worksheets during 75% of the day. The teacher will say glowing things bc your kid doesn’t have behavior issues and bc they teach at a level sufficient for grade level your child will be excelling. Side note - “grade level” is a low bar bc it’s a universal standard for an slightly below average student. If your child is struggling they will sweep it under the rug bc they don’t want to have to deal with parents who are going to push for services bc they already have too many kids and too few people to provide services.

also as far as having an UN delegation for friends like the PP claims - yeah that doesn’t happen. Kids self segregate in elementary and the non English speaking kids stick together as do their parents. Shocker - their parents don’t trust white Americans a lot of the time and don’t want to get involved with them more than necessary. I don’t necessarily blame them on this one.
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[Anonymous]

Kindergarten isn’t like when we were kids. It isn’t really about “coloring inside the lines” or mostly play. A lot of it is language-related.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IME as a teacher 20-30% EL is the sweet spot—you have your core curriculum and then have groups for enrichment, remediation, or language support. Particularly at the lower grades and particularly for literacy, key instruction happens in small leveled groups. I see much more of an impact on the gen ed curriculum when you get to 70% EL or more.

I am an instructional assistant and I agree with this assessment, except of course 0% ESL would be even better lol

What's been your experience with ESL students in class?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a school which has about 60% EL population. What does this mean?
Amazing kids from all over the world, who are eager to learn, caring, interesting and funny people. Many of them are smart enough to speak 2, 3 or 4 languages.

My kids who aren't as gifted linguistically, those who can only speak English, are not put on computers so I can "catch everyone else up". Nor are they given a book to read while I "catch everyone else up". In fact, the students who are only able to speak one language are often just in much of "catching up" as my bilingual and multilingual kids, if not more. Yes, even the white, middle income kids need remediation.

I think we need to stop saying our bilingual and multilingual kids need remediation and insist that every single student become proficient in at least two languages in order to graduate 8th grade. And then let's test the kids whose first language is English and see how they perform on assessments after a year or two in Urdu or Spanish or Polish. My guess is everyone else would have to sit around waiting while the "I only speak English" crowd has to catch up.

But, to the OP's question, it means that your child will have friends from different places, who speak different languages and what a rich school environment that will be! I put my own child in a heavily Spanish speaking school. She's now fully bilingual and headed to college on a full ride scholarship in her field of choice. We Americans need to stop understanding "smart" as a 1600 SAT and a top ten university and need to start understanding smart as learning more than one language.

You've done a great job of outlining the positives of having a large cohort of EL students in class but by leaving out the downsides it sounds like propaganda.

Seriously, what are the tradeoffs for the diversity and richness these ELs bring to class? Great Schools says white students are getting 10/10 on assessment tests at this school while hispanic students are 4/10 - are you really saying teachers don't spend more time helping EL kids catch up and close a gap that large? I'm not even implying that's a bad thing, I'd understand if that's the reality but I'd like to understand what that looks like. You sound more knowledgeable than anyone else in here so I'd love it if you could share more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a school which has about 60% EL population. What does this mean?
Amazing kids from all over the world, who are eager to learn, caring, interesting and funny people. Many of them are smart enough to speak 2, 3 or 4 languages.

My kids who aren't as gifted linguistically, those who can only speak English, are not put on computers so I can "catch everyone else up". Nor are they given a book to read while I "catch everyone else up". In fact, the students who are only able to speak one language are often just in much of "catching up" as my bilingual and multilingual kids, if not more. Yes, even the white, middle income kids need remediation.

I think we need to stop saying our bilingual and multilingual kids need remediation and insist that every single student become proficient in at least two languages in order to graduate 8th grade. And then let's test the kids whose first language is English and see how they perform on assessments after a year or two in Urdu or Spanish or Polish. My guess is everyone else would have to sit around waiting while the "I only speak English" crowd has to catch up.

But, to the OP's question, it means that your child will have friends from different places, who speak different languages and what a rich school environment that will be! I put my own child in a heavily Spanish speaking school. She's now fully bilingual and headed to college on a full ride scholarship in her field of choice. We Americans need to stop understanding "smart" as a 1600 SAT and a top ten university and need to start understanding smart as learning more than one language.

Thank you… the premise of OPs and others post is just so wrong - I didn’t have words to adequately respond.

[Anonymous]

Gawd this post is seriously going to make me quit DCUM again - just revolting.

[Anonymous]

Long Branch is a wonderful school. Definitely don’t move to get away from Long Branch! That would be laughable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a school which has about 60% EL population. What does this mean?
Amazing kids from all over the world, who are eager to learn, caring, interesting and funny people. Many of them are smart enough to speak 2, 3 or 4 languages.

My kids who aren't as gifted linguistically, those who can only speak English, are not put on computers so I can "catch everyone else up". Nor are they given a book to read while I "catch everyone else up". In fact, the students who are only able to speak one language are often just in much of "catching up" as my bilingual and multilingual kids, if not more. Yes, even the white, middle income kids need remediation.

I think we need to stop saying our bilingual and multilingual kids need remediation and insist that every single student become proficient in at least two languages in order to graduate 8th grade. And then let's test the kids whose first language is English and see how they perform on assessments after a year or two in Urdu or Spanish or Polish. My guess is everyone else would have to sit around waiting while the "I only speak English" crowd has to catch up.

But, to the OP's question, it means that your child will have friends from different places, who speak different languages and what a rich school environment that will be! I put my own child in a heavily Spanish speaking school. She's now fully bilingual and headed to college on a full ride scholarship in her field of choice. We Americans need to stop understanding "smart" as a 1600 SAT and a top ten university and need to start understanding smart as learning more than one language.

Thank you… the premise of OPs and others post is just so wrong - I didn’t have words to adequately respond.

How are they wrong? In the spirit of honest exploration, where?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a school which has about 60% EL population. What does this mean?
Amazing kids from all over the world, who are eager to learn, caring, interesting and funny people. Many of them are smart enough to speak 2, 3 or 4 languages.

My kids who aren't as gifted linguistically, those who can only speak English, are not put on computers so I can "catch everyone else up". Nor are they given a book to read while I "catch everyone else up". In fact, the students who are only able to speak one language are often just in much of "catching up" as my bilingual and multilingual kids, if not more. Yes, even the white, middle income kids need remediation.

I think we need to stop saying our bilingual and multilingual kids need remediation and insist that every single student become proficient in at least two languages in order to graduate 8th grade. And then let's test the kids whose first language is English and see how they perform on assessments after a year or two in Urdu or Spanish or Polish. My guess is everyone else would have to sit around waiting while the "I only speak English" crowd has to catch up.

But, to the OP's question, it means that your child will have friends from different places, who speak different languages and what a rich school environment that will be! I put my own child in a heavily Spanish speaking school. She's now fully bilingual and headed to college on a full ride scholarship in her field of choice. We Americans need to stop understanding "smart" as a 1600 SAT and a top ten university and need to start understanding smart as learning more than one language.

Thank you… the premise of OPs and others post is just so wrong - I didn’t have words to adequately respond.

We used to group kids by ability so the whole class could be taught at similar levels. But that exposure the sociaeconomic trends in class distribution, so now we have remedial classes where mainstream kids are placed to just fill a seat and watch the teach focus on bridging gaps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a school which has about 60% EL population. What does this mean?
Amazing kids from all over the world, who are eager to learn, caring, interesting and funny people. Many of them are smart enough to speak 2, 3 or 4 languages.

My kids who aren't as gifted linguistically, those who can only speak English, are not put on computers so I can "catch everyone else up". Nor are they given a book to read while I "catch everyone else up". In fact, the students who are only able to speak one language are often just in much of "catching up" as my bilingual and multilingual kids, if not more. Yes, even the white, middle income kids need remediation.

I think we need to stop saying our bilingual and multilingual kids need remediation and insist that every single student become proficient in at least two languages in order to graduate 8th grade. And then let's test the kids whose first language is English and see how they perform on assessments after a year or two in Urdu or Spanish or Polish. My guess is everyone else would have to sit around waiting while the "I only speak English" crowd has to catch up.

But, to the OP's question, it means that your child will have friends from different places, who speak different languages and what a rich school environment that will be! I put my own child in a heavily Spanish speaking school. She's now fully bilingual and headed to college on a full ride scholarship in her field of choice. We Americans need to stop understanding "smart" as a 1600 SAT and a top ten university and need to start understanding smart as learning more than one language.

Thank you… the premise of OPs and others post is just so wrong - I didn’t have words to adequately respond.

We used to group kids by ability so the whole class could be taught at similar levels. But that exposure the sociaeconomic trends in class distribution, so now we have remedial classes where mainstream kids are placed to just fill a seat and watch the teach focus on bridging gaps.

That all makes perfect sense to me - not sure how others find the original post 'revolting' when asking how this dynamic manifests in practice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you have an average or above average kid they will spend a lot of time on the iPad or own their own chilling. There is no incentive to push kids to excel; there IS PUNISHMENT if the struggling kids dont improve, so where do you think the teachers will focus?

Its just how public school is structured; there is no benefit for the schools or teachers for doing better than pass the SOLs in higher and higher percentages. Teachers would love to spend time with your high performing kid and teach them interesting things, but there just isn't the time or resources.

The most important thing is making sure your kid is a strong and enthusiastic reader, so when they have all that down time they can just pull out a book and its not a complete waste of time.

Absolutely nailed it. My DD attended a school with a high ESOL population. She ended up reading independently 2+ hours every single day at school, because the teacher was too busy to deal with the advanced kids. It honestly didn't hurt her to be ignored and spend so much time reading. If you have a kid who is not an enthusiastic reader or is likely to waste the copious amounts of free time they'll be given during the school day, being in a high ESOL class could be a disaster.