Newcomer Program and Facilitator Model

[smontaez]

I find it so typical how districts knowingly put into place a structure that has been proven ineffective. Eastlake’s Newcomer Program sounds like the Early-Exit/Transitional Bilingual Education model in which students are transitioned out basically before they are ready, “sink or swim.” As mentioned in Forbidden Language – students in the Early-Exit BE program “generally do not develop their primary language skills beyond a very rudimentary level.” Then again, these structures are all about “English-only” policies, so it’s expected.

In theory the facilitator model would seem to have promise, but as usual, everyone has their own way of implementing and interpreting the policy. No uniformity leads to the ineffectiveness of a program and unfortunately the students are the ones who suffer the consequence of such indecisiveness.

In regard to the Eastlake District facilitator model, I was surprised that many teachers were allowed to just “opt out” and basically slam the door in Amy’s face. To me it seemed Amy was being spread too thin. Adjusting her schedule to accommodate the ELLs apparently didn’t last too long because as Carolina indicated, after classes were segregated so that Amy would be able to service all the ELLs in one classroom, Amy was only able to service the students briefly. As Carolina states, “…when you come in sometimes once a week not even an hour of the day and the rest of the week, the teacher is left with five ELL kids.”