Half of K class is ESOL

[Anonymous]

i would definitely be concerned that more emphasis is placed on keeping the ESOL students at pace with the curriculum. Why would you even buy in an area like that (assuming you are a DCUM'er with HHI over 200K)?

[Anonymous]

Well, my kid's name is probably not your typical Michael Smith, but he was born here, I was born here, so he doesn't necessarily go to ESOL. In any case, why does this concern you at all? Is your own child forgetting English or smth?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I volunteered and chaperoned throughout the year and found many of the kids almost completely unable to communicate in English. I guess I expected most would be verbally fluent, just needing help with written language. Not so at all. This led to other issues. For one, my son found it hard to make friends because outside of the formal instruction, there was little English spoken. Also, non-ESOL instruction was very limited because so few kids could understand the lessons.
Bottom line was we definitely found downsides to a large ESOL population.

This has been our experience also.

DS found it tough to make friends - though, he did comment that he wanted to take Spanish! And, he did learn some Spanish.

And, DH and I found it difficult to build relationships with the other parents. Unfortunately we don't speak Spanish, and the other parents don't speak English, so we can only have a very superficial, polite relationship. Tough to build relationships when you can't communicate! I found this to be a big downside. Talking to parents at other schools, there seemed to be more of a sense of community than what we had.

But Chinese and French are sooooo much more useful and cool than learning Spanish, aren't they? Most DCUM'ers are right about how useless Spanish is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you have 22 kids, it's not a title I school. My experience is that ESOL kids catch up very quickly. The advanced reading group goes from 1-2 kids in K-1, to nearly about 40% in 4-5th.

Really? Because my experience in a school where there was that high of an ESL population was that kids DID NOT catch up quickly because as the PP pointed out, they did not get enough practice speaking English.

They spoke Spanish at home and at school with peers.

Their parents at home spoke no English or very limited English and could not read or write English.

It's a far different environment today then when I was a child and kids came to school not knowing English. Back then, for the most part, the parents did speak English so at home their was help and reinforcement of English and in school there were very few other kids to speak to who spoke Spanish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you have 22 kids, it's not a title I school. My experience is that ESOL kids catch up very quickly. The advanced reading group goes from 1-2 kids in K-1, to nearly about 40% in 4-5th.

Really? Because my experience in a school where there was that high of an ESL population was that kids DID NOT catch up quickly because as the PP pointed out, they did not get enough practice speaking English.

They spoke Spanish at home and at school with peers.

Their parents at home spoke no English or very limited English and could not read or write English.

It's a far different environment today then when I was a child and kids came to school not knowing English. Back then, for the most part, the parents did speak English so at home their was help and reinforcement of English and in school there were very few other kids to speak to who spoke Spanish.

Maybe it's because our Title I school receives more resources. Our class sizes are about 16 kids in K-2. I've watched kids that can barely speak English in K, turn into little chatter boxes by 2nd. And this is a school that is regularly frowned upon as "the weak link of the cluster" on DCUM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here - you are right.... I didn't mean to imply that at all.
I was only thinking in terms of how the class is run as a whole to accommodate all the students
there are 22 total in the class and 13 are ESOL.

Anonymous wrote:ESOL has nothing to do with intelligence or behavior. Why would this be a concern? I know several brilliant people who started off as ESOL students.

How do you know the kids qualify for ESOL? Why would you be given this information? Or, are you guessing, based on the kids' names?

It would be a safe assumption, in general.

Absolutely not.

-a teacher who works with many ELL students

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I volunteered and chaperoned throughout the year and found many of the kids almost completely unable to communicate in English. I guess I expected most would be verbally fluent, just needing help with written language. Not so at all. This led to other issues. For one, my son found it hard to make friends because outside of the formal instruction, there was little English spoken. Also, non-ESOL instruction was very limited because so few kids could understand the lessons.
Bottom line was we definitely found downsides to a large ESOL population.

This has been our experience also.

DS found it tough to make friends - though, he did comment that he wanted to take Spanish! And, he did learn some Spanish.

And, DH and I found it difficult to build relationships with the other parents. Unfortunately we don't speak Spanish, and the other parents don't speak English, so we can only have a very superficial, polite relationship. Tough to build relationships when you can't communicate! I found this to be a big downside. Talking to parents at other schools, there seemed to be more of a sense of community than what we had.

But Chinese and French are sooooo much more useful and cool than learning Spanish, aren't they? Most DCUM'ers are right about how useless Spanish is.

What do you mean? I don't hear anyone saying that Soanish is not useful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I volunteered and chaperoned throughout the year and found many of the kids almost completely unable to communicate in English. I guess I expected most would be verbally fluent, just needing help with written language. Not so at all. This led to other issues. For one, my son found it hard to make friends because outside of the formal instruction, there was little English spoken. Also, non-ESOL instruction was very limited because so few kids could understand the lessons.
Bottom line was we definitely found downsides to a large ESOL population.

This has been our experience also.

DS found it tough to make friends - though, he did comment that he wanted to take Spanish! And, he did learn some Spanish.

And, DH and I found it difficult to build relationships with the other parents. Unfortunately we don't speak Spanish, and the other parents don't speak English, so we can only have a very superficial, polite relationship. Tough to build relationships when you can't communicate! I found this to be a big downside. Talking to parents at other schools, there seemed to be more of a sense of community than what we had.

But Chinese and French are sooooo much more useful and cool than learning Spanish, aren't they? Most DCUM'ers are right about how useless Spanish is.

What do you mean? I don't hear anyone saying that Soanish is not useful.

I agree - I was confused about the Chinese/French post

[Anonymous]

It's funny the comment (intended as snark, I assume) about people acting as if Spanish is not important. I think one of the very frustrating things for parents with children assigned to schools with high percentage ESOL students is that the schools actually discourage spanish instruction for the english speaking kids. The first priority is to get everyone going with english, and establishing special programs that leverage the multiple languages at work in the classroom to everyone's benefit is the last thing that principals want to do. High stakes testing is no joke to the school, and muddying the water by keeping spanish alive in the classroom might hold the scores down. It's not that the parents don't want their kids to learn spanish - not at all. Instead, it's that their kids are plopped into a learning environment dominated by spanish speaking students, but their kids are then not given any meaningful instruction in the language - leaving the kids frustrated by communication barriers and the parents disappointed by the obvious fact that the schools are openly prioritizing bringing other kids up to speed rather than providing rich learning opportunities to their own kids. Any maybe it's asking too much of the overwhelmed school districts to think outside of the box etc., but it shouldn't surprise anyone that the parents of the english speaking kids express frustration with the language barriers their kids face in high ESOL schools where the schools aren't teaching spanish.

[Anonymous]

OP -

The truth of the matter is that language is not the only barrier in a high ESOL scenario. These are not kids from homes where parents are reading to them at night although in Spanish.

The kids doing well in MCPS are those with highly educated parents and with families that give importance to enrichment and learning outside of school. This is not what is true of the majority of the ESOL kids.

So, yes, MCPS and the teachers will make a very strong attempt to get them up to speed...but your kid will suffer in the end because standards will be dramatically lowered.

I for one applaud that MCPS will concentrate in teaching curriculum 2.0 to ESOL. That is the correct thing to do.

Being in a school that is heavily ESOL is not detrimental because of the language barrier ...it is detrimental because of the disparity in socio-economic status and educational level of parents.

[Anonymous]

^ all kinds of assumptions in that post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^ all kinds of assumptions in that post.

Not assumptions but generalizations. There can be some ESOL students who have truly just a language barrier. However the generalizations holds true with my experience in a Title 1 schools with > 80% ESOL.

And I will not try and be PC in an anonymous forum. OP can choose to do what she wants to do with this input. Getting a transfer is not going to be easy in MCPS. Her choices are limited to staying in the school and making sure that the kid is getting enriched instruction outside of school; hoping that her kid gets into HGC; changing her address and of course private school.

In MCPS the race lines, the language lines, the socio-economic lines are all coinciding. I am however not that arrogant to say that White and Asians are doing better because they are smarter. They are doing better simply because they are being provided more opportunities to succeed by their parents. In the cases where African Americans and Hispanic kids are thriving and excelling - they are also mostly coming from highly educated, middle class (or above) families.

Schools in Bethesda and Potomac are not doing well because the water there magically increases brain-power.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:i would definitely be concerned that more emphasis is placed on keeping the ESOL students at pace with the curriculum. Why would you even buy in an area like that (assuming you are a DCUM'er with HHI over 200K)?

Geez, is that a requirement to joining the DCUM club, having at least $200k HHI?

Not the OP but at a HHI of $150k we had a difficult time dinging a SFH that did not stretch our means that was NOT zoned for an ES with a majority ESOL. It's not that easy to just avoid "an area like that."

[Anonymous]

Oops, PP here, "dinging" was supposed to be "finding."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ all kinds of assumptions in that post.

Not assumptions but generalizations. There can be some ESOL students who have truly just a language barrier. However the generalizations holds true with my experience in a Title 1 schools with > 80% ESOL.

And I will not try and be PC in an anonymous forum. OP can choose to do what she wants to do with this input. Getting a transfer is not going to be easy in MCPS. Her choices are limited to staying in the school and making sure that the kid is getting enriched instruction outside of school; hoping that her kid gets into HGC; changing her address and of course private school.

In MCPS the race lines, the language lines, the socio-economic lines are all coinciding. I am however not that arrogant to say that White and Asians are doing better because they are smarter. They are doing better simply because they are being provided more opportunities to succeed by their parents. In the cases where African Americans and Hispanic kids are thriving and excelling - they are also mostly coming from highly educated, middle class (or above) families.

Schools in Bethesda and Potomac are not doing well because the water there magically increases brain-power.

Yea cause they usually don't
W
T
F?
You do realize the same could be said about White folk as well
See these are the kinds of idiots I don't want my kid going to school with...