Teacher Discussion Forums

In Negotiating Language Policies in Schools: Educators as Policymakers, there is a chapter on co-teaching. One of the classrooms highlighted involved a humanities teacher, and and ESL teacher who worked very hard to make sure the students saw them as equals. When you are pushing in to several classr...

I agree with the previous comments. I do believe a facilitator model looks good on paper, especially in light of the need for sustained and meaningful professional development for in-service teachers who have ELLs in their classrooms. As Staci said the model in the book didn't work primarily because...

While reading Chapter 7 "Language Policy through the Facilitator Model" in the book Negotiating Language Policies in Schools edited by Menken and Garcia, I learned of a new way of delivering services to ELLs. In the facilitator model, certified ESL teachers, act as teacher mentors essentially to reg...

Jeff, I think that is a great idea, though I'm not familiar with any such programs geared specifically to language learning. I do know that many urban charter schools have summer programs for their students, perhaps some of which do serve ELLs. I think though that at least living in primarily Englis...

Children seem to learn so readily at such young ages! My son had Spanish once a week from K through 5th grade and now in middle school has it as a 40 minute class daily. He'll have to take 2 years in high school. He hates it and knows no more Spanish now than he ever did. What a shame. And here's h...

In the book Forbidden language (edited by Gandara and Hopkins) there are several chapters which discuss dual-language programs. I'm very interested in this model as, if implemented correctly it can serve ELLs and Native English speakers. It seems though that the logistics of creating the program can...

I'm glad that someone brought this topic up. I am doing my student teaching at a high school right now and would really like to show the students a movie. Sometimes though I think that it's hard to justify spending that much class time. I'd really like to show 12 Angry Men, I'm planning on trying to...

While reading Chapter 6 in Forbidden Language: English Learners and Restrictive Language Policies, one particular sentiment struck me. According to the authors' research on achievement gaps and ELLs they concluded that some form of specially designed instruction (either EO or BE) helps to close the ...

I agree with most of the posters on this thread. Though I think that teachers can help support and encourage students in maintaining their L1, it ultimately depends on the value placed on that language within the family. There are some families who, in their desire to assimilate purposely don't enco...