Why My Job Rules
Why my job sucks: For the past 3 weeks, I’ve had to travel to high schools and middle schools to administer a speaking test to EL students. The SAME test. Over and over. ALL day long. Why my job rules: I’ve gotten to meet a bunch of cool students. At one high school, I met [...]
A Semester in the Coaching Life
An instructional coach, that is. Specifically an English Learners coach. Over the past decade, the school district I work for has adopted a instructional coaching model as part of it’s professional development and push to raise test scores. I can’t speak for middle and high schools, but every elementary school has a Literacy Coach and [...]
Coaching Tips I Can Learn From My Husband
Yep, I know it’s hard to believe that I’m taking advice from my husband (we have a pretty competitive relationship, mostly due to my need to be better than). And even harder to believe that I need coaching advice!!?? Well, we are both coaches, after all. He coaches volleyball and baseball and I coach – [...]
A Day of Firsts
Yesterday involved a couple of “firsts” in my new position as an ELL Consultant. Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly: First Model Lesson – I taught my first model lesson for a new ELL teacher to observe. Now, I shouldn’t have been nervous given I’ve been teaching for 11 years, but I’ve got [...]
A Week in the Life . . .
Steven and I both had to go back to school this week. The first week of school can be the most stressful week of the year for a teacher. Though I was not setting up a classroom this year, by Friday my brain was exploding and my anxiety level was high. Here’s a run-down of [...]
Why Do Teachers Cheat?
By now I’m sure you’ve heard of the Georgia teachers busted for changing their students’ answers on achievement tests. Now some Pennsylvania teachers are under fire for it, too. Teachers are held to a high standard by society: they are role models for our children. If a teacher gets in trouble with the law, it [...]
Something Old, Something New
Well, I have a new job. I will still be working for my school district, but instead of teaching ESL (or EL – English Learners – as my district now calls it), I will now be an EL Consultant for the district. I will still be on teacher schedule and teacher pay, but I will [...]
Battling the Worksheets
I’ve been reflecting on my teaching, and teaching in general, lately. The three principles that guide my teaching are: – How you teach is just as important as what you teach. – ELLs (English language learners) can do academically challenging tasks with some scaffolding. – ELLs need for everything to be put into a meaningful [...]
Math: The Universal Language?
I’ve heard it dozens of times. “Math is the easiest subject for English language learners (ELLs) to pick up because it’s all numbers. It’s a universal language.” Not so. From eleventh grade ELLs struggling to pass Algebra 1 to second grade ELLs struggling to memorize subtraction facts, I have decided that the “universal language” idea [...]
Habla Ingles?
Do you speak English? I ask this question all the time nowadays. Mostly when calling parents. Of course, they say no, so I tell them “Hablo poquito espanol” (I speak a little Spanish) and try to get my point across in my limited Spanish. And “poquito” typically means nothing as these parents start talking 50 [...]
