Blog #9 Webinar 10

Prompt #9

When working with ELD students, what are your challenges? Strengths? What could be done to increase your skills in this area?

The biggest challenge for me when working with ELL students is first and foremost identifying what they need. So many of my kids are from families where English is not necessarily the first language, but it is very difficult for me to distinguish between the kids who genuinely need help and those who do not. The problem I think comes from the difference between conversational skills in language and academic or technical proficiency. I think, with very few obvious exceptions, that all of my kids demonstrate a very high level of conversational English skills. This unfortunately has the tendency to make me feel like they understand everything I say and everything they read academically as well, which is not true a lot of the time. So, yeah, I think identifying what they need is my biggest challenge. My strength is that I am patient and willing to work with a kid as long as it takes once I figure out what the problem is and what they need as a solution. I do try to give multiple viewpoints whenever I am explaining something, I try to relate what I am saying to real world objects or applications, and I try to give feedback as quickly as possible. I encourage them to continue trying and reward and offer positive feedback when they succeed. I think the main thing that will increase my skills in this area is just more experience. The first year or two (or three!) of teaching, we are so swamped with everything it is difficult to see all the little details happening around us. I can only try to be there for my kids as much as possible and try to continue to get better and more comfortable with teaching and hope the rest will come from there.