American Democracy and the Promise of Justice

Background

I am an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher at George Read Middle School in New Castle, Delaware, which is in the Colonial School District. Students at George Read come from diverse backgrounds and face many challenges in their school and home environments—over one-third of its 788 students are identified as being low income.²

About 11% of the student population are English Learners (ELs), with Spanish being the first language of the majority of them. In addition, about 28% of George Read’s students are Latino, and a high percentage of those students are bilingual in Spanish and English.

The EL students I see are those with intermediate to high English skills who are placed in the same section of an ELA class in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. I usually have about 17 ELs in each section of those classes, and I also service some 6th and 7th grade ELs who are additionally identified as Special Ed, and who have been placed in a Special Ed ELA class. I typically service about 50 ELs each year in grades 6-8. A few of the students I teach have been transitioned out of the Colonial School District’s “Newcomer” EL program for middle school that is housed at McCullough Middle School and taught by my ESL colleagues there. Students in grades 6-8 who are new immigrants or migrant students with limited English proficiency (as identified by the WIDA Screener for English proficiency³ and the HMH Reading Inventory⁴) are recommended to the Newcomer program at McCullough, regardless of their district feeder middle school. They are in a sheltered classroom all day for all content areas that are taught in English, and are not transitioned out into mainstream classes or back to their feeder middle schools until their English test scores have risen, and they demonstrate the academic, social, and emotional skills that would indicate success in the general school population. I often receive students at George Read who have been transitioned from the McCullough Newcomer Program; they usually need more linguistic support and help getting acclimated to a new school.

My ELs come from an array of countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, as well as Mexico. The students in my classes represent many facets of the EL population: first-generation English learners who have been in the United States for about three years; students who were born in the United States or another country speaking a language other than English and who are now bilingual; and those born in the United States into bilingual or multigenerational families. Students in the latter group may have the least exposure to their families’ native language(s) and countries, and may express that they do not speak a language other than English very well, or that they have never met many of their extended family members. I also have a few students who are in the ESL program though their only language is English; most of them are from countries in Africa or the Caribbean, and speak what is termed “non-U.S. English.”

Regardless of their language knowledge and whether they are conversationally bilingual, all students grapple with the increasing rigor of academic English and the demands of state and English proficiency tests. Many of them struggle to express themselves verbally and especially in writing, and their WIDA ACCESS writing and speaking scores are often what keeps them in the EL program.