Blog 6 - Investigation Questions Whether District Meets Needs of Bilingual Students

Upon finding and reading, I found this article very interesting and very relevant to what we are learning about this year.  This article explains how Chicago Public Schools are being audited and assessing their ability to provide services for students who are English Language Learners.  I know that so often we are hearing about budget issues in schools and not having enough jobs out there but when you really start to dissect some of these schools it is amazing to see how short we are falling of reaching the needs of our ELL students.  I'm sure there are other groups of students that are often not addressed like ELL students, but it is not fair to any of them to be put aside or not made a priority / become an afterthought.

Part of me is curious from reading this if there are just not enough ELL teachers out there to help meet the need.  I know this is one of the bigger growing departments as far as educators go.  When I was in college this was barely an area that I had even heard about, but not it is talked about and thrown around so often as another certification that many teachers should be striving to achieve just to get a teaching position.

The article addresses many of the things these schools are doing help build up their programs and fill the holes such as recruiting teachers, help educate and develop their current staff using local universities, and also getting money from the state and grants to build libraries of books in students native languages.  I understand how difficult this process is because no two ELL students are the same and come in different levels with different language backgrounds.  You can also say this for any student in any subject, so it is important to focus that all students need to be able to learn and achieve and not just those focusing on core subjects.  I think that all we have learned and talked about in this course (as well as the other ones in this program) that prepares us in multiple different ways to provide for our students using the resources we have and also be able to advocate for what we need for our students.  Advocating is so huge for these students because often they do not have an english voice to speak their concerns and needs.

http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2017/07/11/investigation-questions-whether-district-meets-needs-bilingual-students 

Comments

  1. UnknownJuly 25, 2017 at 4:19 AM

    It is a shame that this is happening in many schools through the country. One of the public schools where I live sees the highest number of EL's in the entire county, yet they are not prepared to support these children due to budget cuts which leads to lack of money. You are correct in saying that we need to advocate for these students and give them a voice.

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